To what
we to attribute this difference in the manners of the lower
people in the two kingdoms ?
we to attribute this difference in the manners of the lower
people in the two kingdoms ?
Warner - World's Best Literature - v26 to v30 - Tur to Zor and Index
Business was distasteful to him, and
he soon forsook it. He passed several years rather aimlessly, and
then drifted into farming; chiefly because his mother had a farm
which she wished to turn over to his care, and because he did not
know what else to do. He soon found he was losing money, and
after some three thousand experiments in cultivation he changed to
a larger farm in Essex; there too he was unfortunate, and after five
years was glad to pay a more practical farmer £100 to take it off
his hands. He had not lost interest in spite of his failures, and the
latter had taught him practical insight. He decided to travel about
## p. 16263 (#613) ##########################################
ARTHUR YOUNG
16263
the country in search of land which could be profitably cultivated;
and he thus gained a wide knowledge of prevailing conditions, which
he published in a number of successful volumes. A hater of slavery, a
Free-Trader, an idolatrous admirer of Rousseau, he studied all ques-
tions from a philosophic as well as utilitarian point of view. The
(Farmer's Tour through the East of England,' the “Tour in Ireland,
(A Six-Weeks' Tour through the Southern Counties of England and
Wales, (A Six-Months' Tour through the North of England,' were
valuable expositions, full of wise suggestions. They embraced also
questions of population and political economy. These, with many
essays upon kindred subjects contributed to agricultural journals,
made his theory more profitable to him than his practice. In Ire-
land he met Lord Kingsborough; who, strongly attracted by his
scientific views, intrusted him with the management of his great
estate, in which he was brilliantly successful.
In 1783 he inaugurated (The Annals of Agriculture,' a monumental
work in forty-five quarto volumes, of which he was editor, and for
which he wrote many papers.
Many learned men were among its
contributors, and George III. is said to have written for it over the
name of Ralph Robinson. The Annals, definitely established his
reputation. Bradfield Hall, which belonged to him after the death
of his mother in 1785, became a kind of academy of agriculture.
Among those who came to study farming under his direction were
the nephew of the Polish ambassador, and three young Russians sent
by the Empress Catherine. Many English and foreign friends of note
visited him; and particularly, after the appearance of the Travels,'
he received and corresponded with many brilliant statesmen,- with
Washington, Pitt, Burke, Lafayette, and others.
A few years after Arthur Young's return from his last French
journey, the Board of Agriculture was established by act of Parlia-
ment. Such a board had long been one of his favorite projects; and
he was fittingly made its secretary, with a salary of £600.
Fanny Burney's vivacious pen has given a vivid impression of
Arthur Young's delightful personality. At the age of twenty-four he
married her stepmother's sister, Miss Martha Allen, - not an amiable
lady, from all accounts, — with whom he was not happy. Probably
he was glad to escape home friction in the society of the gay and
congenial Burneys. Miss Burney describes him as witty and hand-
some, and fond of fine clothes. Sometimes he is in the depths of
depression over his unlucky speculations; but he soon throws off care,
and is hopefully ready for a new experiment.
When about sixty-six he became totally blind; in spite of which
calamity he continued busy, and intelligently interested in public
events, until his death in London, April 20th, 1820.
## p. 16264 (#614) ##########################################
16264
ARTHUR YOUNG
ASPECTS OF FRANCE BEFORE THE REVOLUTION
From Travels in France)
HE .
T*Liancourt are pretty, and spread with a sort of cultivation
I had never seen before,- a mixture of vineyards (for here
the vines first appeared), gardens, and corn. A piece of wheat,
a scrap of lucerne, a patch of clover or vetches, a bit of vine,
with cherry and other fruit trees scattered among all, and the
whole cultivated with the spade: it makes a pretty appearance,
but must form a poor system of trifling.
Chantilly. - Magnificence is its reigning character; it is never
lost. There is not taste or beauty enough to soften it into
milder features: all but the château is great, and there is some-
thing imposing in that; except the gallery of the great Condé's
battles and the cabinet of natural history,' which is rich in very
fine specimens, most advantageously arranged, it contains nothing
that demands particular notice; nor is there one room which in
England would be called large. The stable is truly great, and
exceeds very much indeed anything of the kind I had ever seen.
It is 580 feet long and 40 feet broad, and is sometimes filled
with 240 English horses. I had been so accustomed to the imi-
tation in water of the waving and irregular lines of nature, that
I came to Chantilly prepossessed against the idea of a canal;
but the view of one here is striking, and has the effect which
magnificent scenes impress. It arises from extent, and from
the right lines of the water uniting with the regularity of the
objects in view. It is Lord Kames, I think, who says the part
of the garden contiguous to the house should partake of the
regularity of the building; with much magnificence about a place
this is unavoidable. The effect here however is lessened by the
parterre before the castle, in which the division and the diminu-
tive jets d'eau are not of a size to correspond with the magnifi-
cence of the canal. The menagerie is very pretty, and exhibits
a prodigious variety of domestic poultry from all parts of the
world, - one of the best objects to which a menagerie can be
applied; these and the Corsican stag had all my attention. The
hameau contains an imitation of an English garden; the taste is
but just introduced into France, so that it will not stand a criti-
cal examination. The most English idea I saw is the lawn in
## p. 16265 (#615) ##########################################
ARTHUR YOUNG
16265.
front of the stables; it is large, of a good verdure, and well
kept, — proving clearly that they may have as fine lawns in the
north of France as in England. The labyrinth is the only com-
plete one I have seen, and I have no inclination to see another:
it is in gardening what a rebus is in poetry. In the sylvæ are
a
many very fine and scarce plants. I wish those persons who
view Chantilly, and are fond of fine trees, would not forget to
ask for the great beech; this is the finest I ever saw, straight as
an arrow, and as I guess, not less than 80 or go feet high, – 40
feet to the first branch, and 12 feet diameter at five from the
ground. It is in all respects one of the finest trees that can
anywhere be met with. Two others are near it, but not equal
to this superb one. The forest around Chantilly, belonging to
the Prince of Condé, is immense, spreading far and wide; the
Paris road crosses it for ten miles, which is its least extent.
They say the capitainerie, or paramountship, is above 100 miles
in circumference. This is to say, all the inhabitants for that
extent are pestered with game, without permission to destroy it,
in order to give one man diversion. Ought not these capitaine-
ries to be extirpated ?
On the breaking up of the party, went with Count Alexandre
de la Rochefoucauld post to Versailles, to be present at the fête
of the day following (Whitsunday); slept at the Duke de Lian-
court's hôtel.
The 27th. - Breakfasted with him at his apartments in the
palace, which are annexed to his office of grand master of the
wardrobe, one of the principal in the court of France. Here I
found the duke surrounded by a circle of noblemen, among
whom was the Duke de la Rochefoucauld, well known for his
attention to natural history; I was introduced to him, as he is
going to Bagnères-de-Luchon in the Pyrenees, where I am to
have the honor of being in his party.
The ceremony of the day was the King's investing the
Duke of Berri, son of the Count d'Artois, with the cordon bleu.
The Queen's band was in the chapel where the ceremony was
performed, but the musical effect was thin and weak. During
the service the King was seated between his two brothers, and
seemed by his carriage and inattention to wish himself a-hunting.
He would certainly have been as well employed as in hearing
afterwards from his throne a feudal oath of chivalry, I suppose,
## p. 16266 (#616) ##########################################
16266
ARTHUR YOUNG
or some such nonsense, administered to a boy of ten years old.
Seeing such pompous folly I imagined it was the dauphin, and
asked a lady of fashion near me; at which she laughed in my
face, as if I had been guilty of the most egregious idiotism: noth-
ing could be done in a worse manner; for the stifling of her
expression only marked it the more. I applied to M. de la
Rochefoucauld to learn what gross absurdity I had been guilty
of so unwittingly; when, forsooth, it was because the dauphin, as
all the world knows in France, has the cordon bleu put around
him as soon as he is born. So unpardonable was it for a for-
eigner to be ignorant of such an important part of French his-
tory, as that of giving a babe a blue slobbering-bib instead of a
white one!
The 31st. — On leaving it, enter soon the miserable province
of Sologne, which the French writers call the triste Sologne.
Through all this country they have had severe spring frosts, for
che leaves of the walnuts are black and cut off. I should not
have expected this unequivocal mark of a bad climate after pass-
ing the Loire. To La Ferté Lowendahl, a dead flat of hungry
sandy gravel, with much heath. The poor people who cultivate
the soil here are métayers,—that is, men who hire the land
without ability to stock it; the proprietor is forced to provide
cattle and seed, and he and his tenant divide the produce: a mis-
erable system, that perpetuates poverty and excludes instruction.
Meet a man employed on the roads who was prisoner at Fal-
mouth four years; he does not seem to have any rancor against
the English, nor yet was he very well pleased with his treatment.
At La Ferté is a handsome château of the Marquis de Croix,
with several canals and a great command of water. To Nonant-
le-Fuzelier, a strange mixture of sand and water. Much in
closed: and the houses and cottages of wood filled between the
studs with clay or bricks, and covered not with slate but tile,
with some barns boarded like those in Suffolk, rows of pollards
in some of the hedges, an excellent road of sand, the general
features of a woodland country, — all combined to give a strong
resemblance to many parts of England; but the husbandry is so
little like that of England that the least attention to it destroyed
every notion of similarity. -27 miles.
June 1. - The same wretched country continues to La Loge;
the fields are scenes of pitiable management, as the houses are
## p. 16267 (#617) ##########################################
ARTHUR YOUNG
16267
a
of misery. Yet all this country highly improvable, if they knew
what to do with it: the property, perhaps, of some of those glit-
tering beings who figured in the procession the other day at
Versailles. Heaven grant me patience while I see a country thus
neglected, and forgive me the oaths I swear at the absence and
ignorance of the possessors. - Enter the generality of Bourges,
and soon after, a forest of oak belonging to the Count d'Artois;
the trees are dying at top before they attain any size. There
the miserable Sologne ends; the first view of Verson and its
vicinity is fine. A noble vale spreads at your feet, through which
the river Cher leads, seen in several places to the distance of
some leagues; a bright sun burnished the water, like a string of
lakes amidst the shade of a vast woodland.
The 31st. — Cross a mountain by a miserable road, and reach
Beg de Rieux, which shares, with Carcassonne, the fabric of Lon-
drins for the Levant trade. - Cross much waste to Béziers. - I
met to-day with an instance of ignorance in a well-dressed French
merchant, that surprised me. He had plagued me with abund.
ance of tiresome foolish questions, and then asked for the third
or fourth time what country I was of.
I told him I was
Chinese. How far off is that country? – I replied, 200 leagues.
Deux cents lieus! Diable! c'est un grand chemin ! The other
day a Frenchman asked me, after telling him I was an Eng-
lishman, if we had trees in England ? I replied that we had a
few. Had we any rivers ? Oh, none at all. Ah, ma foi, c'est
bien triste ! This incredible ignorance, when compared with
the knowledge so universally disseminated in England, is to be
attributed, like everything else, to government.
The 16th. – Accompanied the Count de la Rochefoucauld to
Liancourt. - 38 miles.
I went thither on a visit for three or four days; but the
whole family contributed so generally to render the place in
every respect agreeable, that I stayed more than three weeks. At
about half a mile from the château is a range of hills that was
chiefly a neglected waste: the Duke of Liancourt has lately con-
verted this into a plantation, with winding walks, benches, and
covered seats, in the English style of gardening. The situation
is very fortunate. These ornamented paths follow the edge of
the declivity to the extent of three or four miles. The views
they command are everywhere pleasing, and in some places great.
## p. 16268 (#618) ##########################################
16268
ARTHUR YOUNG
Nearer to the château the Duchess of Liancourt has built a me-
nagerie and dairy in a pleasing taste. The cabinet and ante-
room are very pretty, the saloon elegant, and the dairy entirely
constructed of marble. At a village near Liancourt, the duke
has established a manufacture of linen and stuffs mixed with
thread and cotton, which promises to be of considerable utility;
there are 25 looms employed, and preparations making for more.
As the spinning for these looms is also established, it gives
employment to great numbers of hands who were idle; for they
have no sort of manufacture in the country, though it is popu-
lous. Such efforts merit great praise. Connected with this is
the execution of an excellent plan of the duke's for establishing
habits of industry in the rising generation. The daughters of
the poor people are received into an institution to be educated
to useful industry: they are instructed in their religion, taught
to write and read, and to spin cotton; are kept till marriageable,
and then a regulated proportion of their earnings given them as
a marriage portion. There is another establishment of which I
am not so good a judge: it is for training the orphans of soldiers
to be soldiers themselves. The Duke of Liancourt has raised
some considerable buildings for their accommodation, well adapted
to the purpose.
The whole is under the superintendence of a
worthy and intelligent officer, M. le Roux, captain of dragoons
and croix de St. Louis, who sees to everything himself. There
are at present 120 boys, all dressed in uniform. - My ideas have
all taken a turn which I am too old to change: I should have
been better pleased to see 120 lads educated to the plow, in
habits of culture superior to the present; but certainly the estab-
lishment is humane, and the conduct of it excellent.
The ideas I had formed before I came to France, of a coun-
try residence in that kingdom, I found at Liancourt to be far
from correct. I expected to find it a mere transfer of Paris to
the country, and that all the burthensome forms of a city were
preserved, without its pleasures; but I was deceived, - the mode
of living, and the pursuits, approach much nearer to the habits
of a great nobleman's house in England than would commonly
be conceived. A breakfast of tea for those who chose to repair
.
to it; riding, sporting, planting, gardening, till dinner, and that
not till half-after two o'clock, instead of their old-fashioned hour
of twelve; music, chess, and the other common amusements of
## p. 16269 (#619) ##########################################
ARTHUR YOUNG
16269
a rendezvous-room, with an excellent library of seven or eight
thousand volumes, were well calculated to make the time pass
agreeably, and to prove that there is a great approximation in
the modes of living at present in the different countries of
Europe. Amusements, in truth, ought to be numerous within
doors: for in such a climate none are to be depended on with-
out; the rain that has fallen here is hardly credible. I have for
five-and-twenty years past remarked in England that I never
was prevented by rain from taking a walk every day without
going out while it actually rains; it may fall heavily for many
hours, but a person who watches an opportunity gets a walk or
a
a ride. Since I have been at Liancourt, we have had three days
in succession of such incessantly heavy rain, that I could not go
a hundred yards from the house to the duke's pavilion without
danger of being quite wet. For ten days, more rain fell here, I
am confident, had there been a gauge to measure it, than ever
fell in England in thirty. The present fashion in France, of
passing some time in the country, is new: at this time of the
year, and for many weeks past, Paris is, comparatively speaking,
empty. Everybody that have country-seats are at them; and
those who have none visit others who have. This remarkable
revolution in the French manners is certainly one of the best
customs they have taken from England; and its introduction was
effected the easier, being assisted by the magic of Rousseau's
writings. Mankind are much indebted to that splendid genius,
who, when living, was hunted from country to country - to seek
an asylum — with as much venom as if he had been a mad dog;
thanks to the vile spirit of bigotry, which has not yet received
its death's wound. Women of the first fashion in France are
now ashamed of not nursing their own children; and stays are
universally proscribed from the bodies of the poor infants, which
were for so many ages tortured in them, as they are still in
Spain. The country residence may not have effects equally
obvious; but they will be no less sure in the end, and in all
respects beneficial to every class in the State.
The Duke of Liancourt, being president of the provincial
assembly of the election of Clermont, and passing several days
there in business, asked me to dine with the assembly, as he
said there were to be some considerable farmers present. These
assemblies, which had been proposed many years past by the
## p. 16270 (#620) ##########################################
16270
ARTHUR YOUNG
French patriots, and especially by the Marquis de Mirabeau, the
celebrated l'ami des hommes; which had been treated by M.
Necker, and which were viewed with eyes of jealousy by certain
persons who wished for no better government than one whose
abuses were the chief foundation of their fortunes,- these as-
semblies were to me interesting to see. I accepted the invitation
with pleasure. Three considerable farmers — renters, not proprie-
-
tors, of land — were members, and present. I watched their car-
riage narrowly to see their behavior in the presence of a great
lord of the first rank, considerable property, and high in royal
favor: and it was with pleasure that I found them behaving with
becoming ease and freedom; and though modest, and without
anything like flippancy, yet without any obsequiousness offens-
ive to English ideas. They started their opinions freely, and
adhered to them with becoming confidence. A most singular
spectacle was to see two ladies present at a dinner of this sort,
with five or six and twenty gentlemen: such a thing could not
happen in England. To say that the French manners in this
respect are better than our own, is the assertion of an obvious
truth. If the ladies are not present at meetings where the con-
versation has the greatest probability of turning on subjects of
more importance than the frivolous topics of common discourse,
the sex must either remain on one hand in ignorance, or on the
other filled with the foppery of over-education, – learned, affected,
and forbidding. The conversation of men not engaged in trifling
pursuits is the best school for the education of a woman.
The 14th. – To the Benedictine abbey of St. Germain, to see
pillars of African marble, etc. It is the richest abbey in France:
the abbot has 300,000 liv. a year (£13,125). I lost my patience at
such revenues being thus bestowed: consistent with the spirit of
the tenth century, but not with that of the eighteenth. What a
noble farm would the fourth of this income establish! . what tur-
nips, what cabbages, what potatoes, what clover, what sheep, what
wool! Are not these things better than a fat ecclesiastic?
active English farmer was mounted behind this abbot, I think he
would do more good to France with half the income than half
the abbots of the kingdom with the whole of theirs. Pass the
Bastile: another pleasant object to make agreeable emotions vi-
brate in a man's bosom, I search for good farmers, and run my
head at every turn against monks and State prisoners.
>
.
If an
## p. 16271 (#621) ##########################################
ARTHUR YOUNG
16271
In the evening to M. Lomond, a very ingenious and invent-
ive mechanic, who has made an improvement of the jenny
for spinning cotton. Common machines are said to make too
hard a thread for certain fabrics, but this forms it loose and
spongy.
In electricity he has made a remarkable discovery:
you write two or three words on a paper; he takes it with him
into a room, and turns a machine inclosed in a cylindrical case,
at the top of which is an electrometer, a small fine pith-ball; a
wire connects with a similar cylinder and electrometer in a dis-
tant apartment; and his wife, by remarking the corresponding
motions of the ball, writes down the words they indicate: from
which it appears he has formed an alphabet of motions. As
the length of the wire makes no difference in the effect, a cor
respondence might be carried on at any distance: within and
without a besieged town, for instance; or for a purpose much
more worthy, and a thousand times more harmless,— between
two lovers prohibited or prevented from any better connection.
Whatever the use may be, the invention is beautiful. M. Lomond
has many other curious machines, all the entire work of his own
hands: mechanical invention seems to be in him a natural pro-
pensity.
The 5th. – To Montauban. The poor people seem poor in-
deed; the children terribly ragged, if possible worse clad than if
with no clothes at all; as to shoes and stockings, they are luxu-
ries. A beautiful girl of six or seven years playing with a stick,
and smiling under such a bundle of rags as made my heart ache
to see her: they did not beg, and when I gave them anything
seemed more surprised than obliged. One third of what I have
seen of this province seems uncultivated, and nearly all of it in
misery. What have kings, and ministers, and parliaments, and
States, to answer for their prejudices, seeing millions of hands
that would be industrious, idle and starving through the execra-
ble maxims of despotism, or the equally detestable prejudices
of a feudal nobility! Sleep at the Lion d'Or, at Montauban, an
abominable hole. — 20 miles.
The 6th. — The same inclosed country to Brooms; but near
that town, improves to the eye, from being more hilly. At the
little town of Lamballe, there are above fifty families of noblesse
that live in winter, who reside on their estates in the summer.
There is probably as much foppery and nonsense in their circles,
## p. 16272 (#622) ##########################################
16272
ARTHUR YOUNG
and for what I know as much happiness, as in those of Paris.
Both would be better employed in cultivating their lands, and
rendering the poor industrious. - 30 miles.
The 12th. - Walking up a long hill, to ease my mare, I was
joined by a poor woman, who complained of the times, and that
it was a sad country: demanding her reasons, she said her hus-
band had but a morsel of land, one cow, and a poor little horse;
yet they had a franchar (42 lb. ) of wheat, and three chickens, to
pay as a quit-rent to one Seigneur; and four franchar of oats,
one chicken and i f. to pay to another, besides very heavy tailles
and other taxes. She had seven children, and the cow's milk
helped to make the soup. But why, instead of a horse, do not
you keep another cow ? Oh, her husband could not carry his
produce so well without a horse; and asses are little used in the
country. It was said, at present, that something was to be done
by some great folks for such poor ones, but she did not know who
nor how, but God send us better, car les tailles & les droits nous
écrasent. - This woman, at no great distance, might have been
taken for sixty or seventy, her figure was so bent, and her face
so furrowed and hardened by labor,— but she said she was
only twenty-eight. An Englishman who has not traveled, can-
not imagine the figure made by infinitely the greater part of the
countrywomen in France: it speaks, at the first sight, hard and
severe labor; I am inclined to think that they work harder than
the men, and this, united with the more miserable labor of bring-
ing a new race of slaves into the world, destroys absolutely all
symmetry of person and every feminine appearance.
To what
we to attribute this difference in the manners of the lower
people in the two kingdoms ? To GOVERNMENT.
The 26th. — For twenty miles to Lisle sur Daube, the country
nearly as before; but after that, to Baume les Dames, it is all
mountainous and rock, much wood, and many pleasing scenes of
the river flowing beneath. The whole country is in the greatest
agitation; at one of the little towns I passed, I was questioned
for not having a cockade of the tiers état. They said it was
ordained by the ticrs; and if I was not a seigneur, I ought to
obey. But suppose I am a seigneur, what then, my friends?
What then ? they replied sternly: why, be hanged; for that most
likely is what you deserve. It was plain this was no moment
for joking; the boys and girls began to gather, whose assembling
are
## p. 16273 (#623) ##########################################
ARTHUR YOUNG
16273
has everywhere been the preliminaries of mischief; and if I had
not declared myself an Englishman, and ignorant of the ordi-
nance, I had not escaped very well. I immediately bought a
cockade; but the hussy pinned it into my hat so loosely that
before I got to Lisle it blew into the river, and I was again in
the same danger. My assertion of being English would not do.
I was a seigneur, perhaps in disguise, and without doubt a great
rogue. At this moment a priest came into the street with a let-
ter in his hand: the people immediately collected around him,
and he then read aloud a detail from Befort, giving an account
of M. Necker's passing, with some general features of news from
Paris, and assurances that the condition of the people would be
improved. When he had finished, he exhorted them to abstain
from all violence: and assured them they must not indulge them-
selves with any ideas of impositions being abolished; which he
touched on as if he knew that they had got such notions. When
he retired, they again surrounded me, who had attended to the
letter like others; were very menacing in their manner; and
expressed many suspicions: I did not like my situation at all,
especially on hearing one of them say that I ought to be secured
till somebody would give an account of me. I was on the steps
of the inn, and begged they would permit me a few words; I
assured them that I was an English traveler, and to prove it,
I desired to explain to them a circumstance in English taxation,
which would be a satisfactory comment on what M. l'Abbé had
told them, to the purport of which I could not agree. He had
asserted that the impositions must be paid as heretofore: that
the impositions must be paid was certain, but not as heretofore,
as they might be paid as they were in England. Gentlemen, we
have a great number of taxes in England, which you know noth-
ing of in France; but the tiers état, the poor, do not pay them,
they are laid on the rich: every window in a man's house pays,
but if he has no more than six windows he pays nothing; a
seigneur with a great estate pays the vingtièmes and tailles, but
the little proprietor of a garden pays nothing; the rich for their
horses, their voitures, and their servants, and even for the lib.
erty to kill their own partridges, but the poor farmer nothing
of all this; and what is more, we have in England a tax paid
by the rich for the relief of the poor: hence the assertion of M.
l'Abbé, that because taxes existed before, they must exist again,
XXVII-1018
## p. 16274 (#624) ##########################################
16274
ARTHUR YOUNG
did not at all prove that they must be levied in the same man-
ner; our English method seemed much better. There was not
a word of this discourse they did not approve of; they seemed
to think that I might be an honest fellow, which I confirmed by
crying, vive le tiers, sans impositions, when they gave me a bit
of a huzza, and I had no more interruption from them. My mis-
erable French was pretty much on a par with their own patois.
I got however another cockade, which I took care to have so
fastened as to lose it no more. I did not half like traveling in
such an unquiet and fermenting moment: one is not secure for
an hour beforehand. — 35 miles.
The 27th. – To Besançon: the country, mountain, rock, and
wood, above the river; some scenes are fine. I had not arrived
an hour before I saw a peasant pass the inn on horseback, fol.
lowed by an officer of the guard bourgeois, of which there are
1,200 here and 200 under arms, and his party-colored attachment,
and these by some infantry and cavalry. I asked why the militia.
took the pas of the King's troops ? For a very good reason, they
replied: the troops would be attacked and knocked on the head, but
the populace will not resist the milice. This peasant, who is a
rich proprietor, applied for a guard to protect his house, in a vil.
lage where there is much plundering and burning. The mischiefs
which have been perpetrated in the country, towards the mount-
ains and Vesoul, are numerous and shocking. Many châteaus
have been burnt, others plundered, the seigneurs hunted down
like wild beasts, their wives and daughters ravished, their papers
and titles burnt, and all their property destroyed: and these
abominations not inflicted on marked persons, who were odious
for their former conduct or principles, but an indiscriminating
blind rage for the love of plunder. Robbers, galley-slaves, and
villains of all denominations, have collected and instigated the
peasants to commit all sorts of outrages. Some gentlemen at
the table d'hôte informed me that letters were received from the
Maconois, the Lyonois, Auvergne, Dauphiné, etc. , and that simi-
lar commotions and mischiefs were perpetrating everywhere; and
that it was expected they would pervade the whole kingdom.
The backwardness of France is beyond credibility in everything
that pertains to intelligence. From Strasbourg hither, I have not
been able to see a newspaper.
Here I asked for the Cabinet Lit-
téraire ? None. The gazettes ? At the coffee-house. Very easily
## p. 16275 (#625) ##########################################
ARTHUR YOUNG
16275
replied; but not so easily found. Nothing but the Gazette de
France; for which, at this period, a man of common-sense would
not give one sol. To four other coffee-houses: at some no paper
at all, not even the Mercure; at the Caffé Militaire, the Courier
de l'Europe a fortnight old; and well-dressed people are now
talking of the news of two or three weeks past, and plainly by
their discourse know nothing of what is passing. The whole
town of Besançon has not been able to afford me a sight of the
Journal de Paris, nor of any paper that gives a detail of the trans-
actions of the States; yet it is the capital of a province large as
half a dozen English counties, and containing * 25,000 souls, - with,
,
strange to say! the post coming in but three times a week. At
this eventful moment, with no license, nor even the least restraint
on the press, not one paper established at Paris for circulation in
the provinces, with the necessary steps taken by affiche, or pla-
card, to inform the people in all the towns of its establishment.
For what the country knows to the contrary, their deputies are
in the Bastile, instead of the Bastile being razed; so the mob
plunder, burn, and destroy, in complete ignorance: and yet with
all these shades of darkness, these clouds of tenebrity, this uni-
versal mass of ignorance, there are men every day in the States
who are puffing themselves off for the FIRST NATION IN EUROPE!
the GREATEST PEOPLE IN THE UNIVERSE! as if the political juntos,
or literary circles of a capital, constituted a people; instead of the
universal illumination of knowledge, acting by rapid intelligence
on minds prepared by habitual energy of reasoning to receive,
combine, and comprehend it. That this dreadful ignorance of the
mass of the people, of the events that most intimately concern
them, is owing to the old government, no one can doubt; it is
however curious to remark, that if the nobility of other provinces
are hunted like those of Franche Comté, of which there is little
reason to doubt, that whole order of men undergo a proscription,
suffer like sheep, without making the least effort to resist the
attack. This appears marvelous, with a body that have an army
of 150,000 men in their hands; for though a part of those troops
would certainly disobey their leaders, yet let it be remembered
that out of the 40,000 or possibly 100,000 noblesse of France, they
might, if they had intelligence and union amongst themselves,
* That is, the town, not the province.
## p. 16276 (#626) ##########################################
162 76
ARTHUR YOUNG
fill half the ranks of more than half the regiments of the
kingdom with men who have fellow-feelings and fellow-sufferings
with themselves: but no meetings, no associations among them;
no union with military men; no taking refuge in the ranks of
regiments to defend or avenge their cause : fortunately for France
they fall without a struggle, and die without a blow. That uni.
versal circulation of intelligence which in England transmits the
least vibration of feeling or alarm, with electric sensibility, from
one end of the kingdom to another, and which unites in bands of
connection men of similar interests and situations, has no exist-
ence in France. Thus it may be said, perhaps with truth, that
the fall of the King, court, lords, nobles, army, church, and par-
liaments, is owing to a want of intelligence being quickly circu-
lated, consequently is owing to the very effects of that thraldom
in which they held the people: it is therefore a retribution rather
than a punishment.
## p. 16277 (#627) ##########################################
16277
EDWARD YOUNG
(1684-1765)
COX
He author of the Night Thoughts) had a vogue in his day
that is not easy to understand for one who now reads his
sententious verse. But fashion changes in words and in lit-
erature, and the poetry of one century may become the commonplace
of the next. Such a well-known line as
«Procrastination is the thief of time,
makes one smile: it is hopelessly hackneyed. Yet it may very well
have struck the eighteenth-century reader as a thought admirably
expressed. Again, Young's worst and best
are far apart. He lacked self-criticism, and
more often than not is incredibly bald
and dull. But his thought has strength;
and there are passages in his verse which
are undeniably fine, and have entered into
familiar quotation. Then, too, in the hand-
ling of that difficult form, blank verse (in
which the Night Thoughts' is written),
Young shows himself an artist, especially
notable in a day when blank verse was in
comparative disrepute, and the trail of the
heroic couplet still over English poetry.
Young's quiet life had few salient feat- EDWARD YOUNG
ures for the chronicler. He was born at
Upham, Hampshire, England, in 1684; was educated at Winchester
School and at Oxford, winning a fellowship in law at All Souls' Col-
lege in that university. His doctor-of-law degree was taken in 1719,
and he took orders as a Church of England clergyman in 1727. Pre-
ferment came to him soon; for the next year he was appointed a
royal chaplain, and in 1730 became rector of Welwyn in Hertford-
shire, remaining in that living the rest of his life. In 1731 he mar-
ried the Earl of Lichfield's daughter. His only other appointment,
thirty years later, was that of clerk of the closet to the Princess
Dowager of Wales. His death occurred at his rectory, April 12th,
1765. It will be seen by this digest of biographical facts that Young
was a personage of some importance by position and connection, -
## p. 16278 (#628) ##########################################
16278
EDWARD YOUNG
came
which may account in part for the contemporaneous acceptance of
his literary work. He began by publishing The Last Day,' in 1813.
followed by “The Force of Religion,' — the former poem, though
unattractive as a whole, containing some of his most characteristic
work. Next came the formal and dreary tragedies, Busiris (1719).
and "The Revenge (1721). In “The Universal Passion were col-
lected his satires, in which the influence of Pope is to be seen: the
theme and manner are more sprightly than is true of the writer's
most typical work.
Much minor poetry, - including a paraphrase of the Book of Job,
- various laudatory epistles to people of rank, and another play,
from his pen, which was easy-flowing. The first Night
Thought' appeared in 1742, the last in 1744. This series, upon which
Young's fame rests securely, is didactic and solemn in tone, and may
be characterized broadly as religious verse;
the full title, Night
Thoughts on Life, Death, and Immortality,' indicates the subject-
matter. Young was led to make verse on these lofty themes by the
deaths of those dear to him: he turns to religion for consolation in
his grief, and finds it. As has been implied, his poetry is only to be
read now with any pleasure in judicious selections. Those that fol-
low are examples of the poet at his most eloquent: that on Procras-
tination and that on (Tired Nature's Sweet Restorer) are the most
famous that can be found in the entire body of his works. A col-
lected edition of Young's writings in four volumes was published in
1762.
FROM NIGHT THOUGHTS)
PROCRASTINATION
B
Y NATURE's law, what may be, may be now:
There's no prerogative in human hours.
In human hearts what bolder thought can rise
Than man's presumption on to-morrow's dawn?
Where is to-morrow? In another world.
For numbers this is certain; the reverse
Is sure to none: and yet on this perhaps,
This peradventure, infamous for lies,
As on a rock of adamant we build
Our mountain hopes, spin out eternal schemes,
As we the fatal sisters could out-spin,
And big with life's futurities expire.
Not e’en Philander had bespoke his shroud,
Nor had he cause; a warning was denied :
## p. 16279 (#629) ##########################################
EDWARD YOUNG
16279
-
How many fall as sudden, not as safe;
As sudden, though for years admonished home!
Of human ills the last extreme beware;
Beware, Lorenzo, a slow sudden death.
How dreadful that deliberate surprise!
Be wise to-day; 'tis madness to defer:
Next day the fatal precedent will plead;
Thus on, till wisdom is pushed out of life.
Procrastination is the thief of time;
Year after year it steals, till all are fled,
And to the mercies of a moment leaves
The vast concerns of an eternal scene.
If not so frequent, would not this be strange ?
That 'tis so frequent, this is stranger still.
Of man's miraculous mistakes this bears
The palm, —« That all men are about to live,
Forever on the brink of being born. ”
All pay themselves the compliment to think
They one day shall not drivel: and their pride
On this reversion takes up ready praise, -
At least, their own; their future selves applaud
How excellent that life they ne'er will lead.
Time lodged in their own hands is folly's vails;
That lodged in fate's to wisdom they consign.
The thing they can't but purpose, they postpone.
'Tis not in folly not to scorn a fool,
And scarce in human wisdom to do inore.
All promise is poor dilatory man,
And that through every stage: when young indeed,
In full content we sometimes nobly rest,
Unanxious for ourselves; and only wish,
As duteous sons, our fathers were more wise.
At thirty man suspects himself a fool,
Knows it at forty and reforms his plan;
At fifty chides his infamous delay,
Pushes his prudent purpose to resolve;
In all the magnanimity of thought
Resolves, and re-resolves, - then dies the same.
THE DEATH OF FRIENDS
OUR dying friends come o'er us like a cloud,
To damp our brainless ardors; and abate
That glare of life which often blinds the wise.
Our dying friends are pioneers, to smooth
## p. 16280 (#630) ##########################################
16280
EDWARD YOUNG
Our rugged pass to death; to break those bars
Of terror and abhorrence Nature throws
'Cross our obstructed way; and thus to make
Welcome as safe, our port from every storm.
Each friend by fate snatched from us is a plume
Plucked from the wing of human vanity,
Which makes us stoop from our aerial heights,
And, damped with omen of our own decease,
On drooping pinions of ambition lowered,
Just skim earth's surface ere we break it up,
O’er putrid earth to scratch a little dust
And save the world a nuisance. Smitten friends
Are angels sent on errands full of love:
For us they languish, shall they die, in vain ?
Ungrateful, shall we grieve their hovering shades
Which wait the revolution in our hearts?
Shall we disdain their silent soft address,
Their posthumous advice and pious prayer ?
Senseless as herds that graze their hallowed graves,
Tread underfoot their agonies and groans,
Frustrate their anguish and destroy their deaths ?
ASPIRATION
O Thou great arbiter of life and death,
Nature's immortal, unmaterial sun,
Whose all-prolific beam late called me forth
From darkness — teeming darkness where I lay,
The worm's inferior, and in rank beneath
The dust I tread on - high to bear my brow,
To drink the spirit of the golden day,
And triumph in existence; and could know
No motive but my bliss; and hast ordained
A rise in blessing, with the patriarch's joy,--
Thy call I follow to the land unknown.
I trust in thee, and know in whom I trust:
Or life, or death, is equal; neither weighs;
All weight in this, - Oh, let me live to thee!
SILENCE AND DARKNESS
TIRED nature's sweet restorer, balmy sleep!
He, like the world, his ready visit pays
Where fortune smiles, the wretched he forsakes:
## p. 16281 (#631) ##########################################
EDWARD YOUNG
16281
Swift on his downy pinions Alies from woe,
And lights on lids unsullied with a tear.
From short (as usual) and disturbed repose,
I wake: how happy they who wake no more!
Yet that were vain, if dreams infest the grave.
I wake, emerging from a sea of dreams
Tumultuous; where my wrecked desponding thought
From wave to wave of fancied misery
At random drove, her helm of reason lost :
Though now restored, 'tis only change of pain,
(A bitter change! ) severer for severe:
The day too short for my distress! and Night,
Even in the zenith of her dark domain,
Is sunshine to the color of my fate.
Night, sable goddess! from her ebon throne,
In rayless majesty, now stretches forth
Her leaden sceptre o'er a slumbering world:
Silence, how dead! and darkness, how profound !
Nor eye, nor listening ear, an object finds;
Creation sleeps. 'Tis as the general pulse
Of life stood still, and Nature made a pause -
An awful pause! - prophetic of her end.
And let her prophecy be soon fulfilled :
Fate! drop the curtain,- I can lose no more.
Silence and darkness! solemn sisters! twins
From ancient night, who nurse the tender thought
To reason, and on reason build resolve
(That column of true majesty in man),
Assist me: I will thank you in the grave;
The grave, your kingdom - there this frame shall fall
A victim sacred to your dreary shrine.
But what are ye? -- Thou, who didst put to flight
Primeval silence, when the morning stars
Exulted, shouted o'er the rising ball,
0 Thou! whose Word from solid darkness struck
That spark, the sun, - strike wisdom from my soul:
My soul which flies to thee, her trust, her treasure,
As misers to their gold, while others rest.
1,
FORMALISM
Oye cold-hearted, frozen formalists!
On such a theme 'tis impious to be calm;
Passion is reason, transport temper, here!
## p. 16282 (#632) ##########################################
16282
EDWARD YOUNG
Shall Heaven, which gave us ardor, and has shown
Her own for man so strongly, not disdain
What smooth emollients in theology
Recumbent virtue's downy doctors preach, -
That prose of piety, a lukewarm phrase ?
Rise odors sweet from incense uninflamed ?
Devotion, when lukewarm, is undevout;
But when it glows, its heat is struck to heaven,
To human hearts her golden harps are strung;
High heaven's orchéstra chaunts Amen to man.
THE BETTER PART
No man is happy, till he thinks, on earth
There breathes not a more happy than himself:
Then envy dies, and love o'erflows on all;
And love o'erflowing makes an angel here:
Such angels all, entitled to repose
On Him who governs fate. Though tempest frowns,
Though nature shakes, how soft to lean on Heaven!
To lean on Him on whom archangels lean!
With inward eyes, and silent as the grave,
They stand collecting every beam of thought,
Till their eyes kindle with divine delight;
For all their thoughts, like angels, seen of old
In Israel's dream, come from, and go to, heaven:
Hence are they studious of sequestered scenes;
While noise and dissipation comfort thee.
Were all men happy, revelings would cease,
That opiate for inquietude within.
Lorenzo! never man was truly blessed,
But it composed and gave him such a cast
As folly might mistake for want of joy.
A cast unlike the triumph of the proud;
A modest aspect, and a smile at heart.
Oh for a joy from thy Philander's spring!
A spring perennial, rising in the breast,
And permanent as pure! no turbid stream
Of rapturous exultation swelling high;
Which, like land floods, impetuous pour awhile,
Then sink at once, and leave us in the mire.
What does the man who transient joy prefers ?
What but prefer the bubbles to the stream ?
## p. 16282 (#633) ##########################################
## p. 16282 (#634) ##########################################
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## p. 16282 (#635) ##########################################
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he soon forsook it. He passed several years rather aimlessly, and
then drifted into farming; chiefly because his mother had a farm
which she wished to turn over to his care, and because he did not
know what else to do. He soon found he was losing money, and
after some three thousand experiments in cultivation he changed to
a larger farm in Essex; there too he was unfortunate, and after five
years was glad to pay a more practical farmer £100 to take it off
his hands. He had not lost interest in spite of his failures, and the
latter had taught him practical insight. He decided to travel about
## p. 16263 (#613) ##########################################
ARTHUR YOUNG
16263
the country in search of land which could be profitably cultivated;
and he thus gained a wide knowledge of prevailing conditions, which
he published in a number of successful volumes. A hater of slavery, a
Free-Trader, an idolatrous admirer of Rousseau, he studied all ques-
tions from a philosophic as well as utilitarian point of view. The
(Farmer's Tour through the East of England,' the “Tour in Ireland,
(A Six-Weeks' Tour through the Southern Counties of England and
Wales, (A Six-Months' Tour through the North of England,' were
valuable expositions, full of wise suggestions. They embraced also
questions of population and political economy. These, with many
essays upon kindred subjects contributed to agricultural journals,
made his theory more profitable to him than his practice. In Ire-
land he met Lord Kingsborough; who, strongly attracted by his
scientific views, intrusted him with the management of his great
estate, in which he was brilliantly successful.
In 1783 he inaugurated (The Annals of Agriculture,' a monumental
work in forty-five quarto volumes, of which he was editor, and for
which he wrote many papers.
Many learned men were among its
contributors, and George III. is said to have written for it over the
name of Ralph Robinson. The Annals, definitely established his
reputation. Bradfield Hall, which belonged to him after the death
of his mother in 1785, became a kind of academy of agriculture.
Among those who came to study farming under his direction were
the nephew of the Polish ambassador, and three young Russians sent
by the Empress Catherine. Many English and foreign friends of note
visited him; and particularly, after the appearance of the Travels,'
he received and corresponded with many brilliant statesmen,- with
Washington, Pitt, Burke, Lafayette, and others.
A few years after Arthur Young's return from his last French
journey, the Board of Agriculture was established by act of Parlia-
ment. Such a board had long been one of his favorite projects; and
he was fittingly made its secretary, with a salary of £600.
Fanny Burney's vivacious pen has given a vivid impression of
Arthur Young's delightful personality. At the age of twenty-four he
married her stepmother's sister, Miss Martha Allen, - not an amiable
lady, from all accounts, — with whom he was not happy. Probably
he was glad to escape home friction in the society of the gay and
congenial Burneys. Miss Burney describes him as witty and hand-
some, and fond of fine clothes. Sometimes he is in the depths of
depression over his unlucky speculations; but he soon throws off care,
and is hopefully ready for a new experiment.
When about sixty-six he became totally blind; in spite of which
calamity he continued busy, and intelligently interested in public
events, until his death in London, April 20th, 1820.
## p. 16264 (#614) ##########################################
16264
ARTHUR YOUNG
ASPECTS OF FRANCE BEFORE THE REVOLUTION
From Travels in France)
HE .
T*Liancourt are pretty, and spread with a sort of cultivation
I had never seen before,- a mixture of vineyards (for here
the vines first appeared), gardens, and corn. A piece of wheat,
a scrap of lucerne, a patch of clover or vetches, a bit of vine,
with cherry and other fruit trees scattered among all, and the
whole cultivated with the spade: it makes a pretty appearance,
but must form a poor system of trifling.
Chantilly. - Magnificence is its reigning character; it is never
lost. There is not taste or beauty enough to soften it into
milder features: all but the château is great, and there is some-
thing imposing in that; except the gallery of the great Condé's
battles and the cabinet of natural history,' which is rich in very
fine specimens, most advantageously arranged, it contains nothing
that demands particular notice; nor is there one room which in
England would be called large. The stable is truly great, and
exceeds very much indeed anything of the kind I had ever seen.
It is 580 feet long and 40 feet broad, and is sometimes filled
with 240 English horses. I had been so accustomed to the imi-
tation in water of the waving and irregular lines of nature, that
I came to Chantilly prepossessed against the idea of a canal;
but the view of one here is striking, and has the effect which
magnificent scenes impress. It arises from extent, and from
the right lines of the water uniting with the regularity of the
objects in view. It is Lord Kames, I think, who says the part
of the garden contiguous to the house should partake of the
regularity of the building; with much magnificence about a place
this is unavoidable. The effect here however is lessened by the
parterre before the castle, in which the division and the diminu-
tive jets d'eau are not of a size to correspond with the magnifi-
cence of the canal. The menagerie is very pretty, and exhibits
a prodigious variety of domestic poultry from all parts of the
world, - one of the best objects to which a menagerie can be
applied; these and the Corsican stag had all my attention. The
hameau contains an imitation of an English garden; the taste is
but just introduced into France, so that it will not stand a criti-
cal examination. The most English idea I saw is the lawn in
## p. 16265 (#615) ##########################################
ARTHUR YOUNG
16265.
front of the stables; it is large, of a good verdure, and well
kept, — proving clearly that they may have as fine lawns in the
north of France as in England. The labyrinth is the only com-
plete one I have seen, and I have no inclination to see another:
it is in gardening what a rebus is in poetry. In the sylvæ are
a
many very fine and scarce plants. I wish those persons who
view Chantilly, and are fond of fine trees, would not forget to
ask for the great beech; this is the finest I ever saw, straight as
an arrow, and as I guess, not less than 80 or go feet high, – 40
feet to the first branch, and 12 feet diameter at five from the
ground. It is in all respects one of the finest trees that can
anywhere be met with. Two others are near it, but not equal
to this superb one. The forest around Chantilly, belonging to
the Prince of Condé, is immense, spreading far and wide; the
Paris road crosses it for ten miles, which is its least extent.
They say the capitainerie, or paramountship, is above 100 miles
in circumference. This is to say, all the inhabitants for that
extent are pestered with game, without permission to destroy it,
in order to give one man diversion. Ought not these capitaine-
ries to be extirpated ?
On the breaking up of the party, went with Count Alexandre
de la Rochefoucauld post to Versailles, to be present at the fête
of the day following (Whitsunday); slept at the Duke de Lian-
court's hôtel.
The 27th. - Breakfasted with him at his apartments in the
palace, which are annexed to his office of grand master of the
wardrobe, one of the principal in the court of France. Here I
found the duke surrounded by a circle of noblemen, among
whom was the Duke de la Rochefoucauld, well known for his
attention to natural history; I was introduced to him, as he is
going to Bagnères-de-Luchon in the Pyrenees, where I am to
have the honor of being in his party.
The ceremony of the day was the King's investing the
Duke of Berri, son of the Count d'Artois, with the cordon bleu.
The Queen's band was in the chapel where the ceremony was
performed, but the musical effect was thin and weak. During
the service the King was seated between his two brothers, and
seemed by his carriage and inattention to wish himself a-hunting.
He would certainly have been as well employed as in hearing
afterwards from his throne a feudal oath of chivalry, I suppose,
## p. 16266 (#616) ##########################################
16266
ARTHUR YOUNG
or some such nonsense, administered to a boy of ten years old.
Seeing such pompous folly I imagined it was the dauphin, and
asked a lady of fashion near me; at which she laughed in my
face, as if I had been guilty of the most egregious idiotism: noth-
ing could be done in a worse manner; for the stifling of her
expression only marked it the more. I applied to M. de la
Rochefoucauld to learn what gross absurdity I had been guilty
of so unwittingly; when, forsooth, it was because the dauphin, as
all the world knows in France, has the cordon bleu put around
him as soon as he is born. So unpardonable was it for a for-
eigner to be ignorant of such an important part of French his-
tory, as that of giving a babe a blue slobbering-bib instead of a
white one!
The 31st. — On leaving it, enter soon the miserable province
of Sologne, which the French writers call the triste Sologne.
Through all this country they have had severe spring frosts, for
che leaves of the walnuts are black and cut off. I should not
have expected this unequivocal mark of a bad climate after pass-
ing the Loire. To La Ferté Lowendahl, a dead flat of hungry
sandy gravel, with much heath. The poor people who cultivate
the soil here are métayers,—that is, men who hire the land
without ability to stock it; the proprietor is forced to provide
cattle and seed, and he and his tenant divide the produce: a mis-
erable system, that perpetuates poverty and excludes instruction.
Meet a man employed on the roads who was prisoner at Fal-
mouth four years; he does not seem to have any rancor against
the English, nor yet was he very well pleased with his treatment.
At La Ferté is a handsome château of the Marquis de Croix,
with several canals and a great command of water. To Nonant-
le-Fuzelier, a strange mixture of sand and water. Much in
closed: and the houses and cottages of wood filled between the
studs with clay or bricks, and covered not with slate but tile,
with some barns boarded like those in Suffolk, rows of pollards
in some of the hedges, an excellent road of sand, the general
features of a woodland country, — all combined to give a strong
resemblance to many parts of England; but the husbandry is so
little like that of England that the least attention to it destroyed
every notion of similarity. -27 miles.
June 1. - The same wretched country continues to La Loge;
the fields are scenes of pitiable management, as the houses are
## p. 16267 (#617) ##########################################
ARTHUR YOUNG
16267
a
of misery. Yet all this country highly improvable, if they knew
what to do with it: the property, perhaps, of some of those glit-
tering beings who figured in the procession the other day at
Versailles. Heaven grant me patience while I see a country thus
neglected, and forgive me the oaths I swear at the absence and
ignorance of the possessors. - Enter the generality of Bourges,
and soon after, a forest of oak belonging to the Count d'Artois;
the trees are dying at top before they attain any size. There
the miserable Sologne ends; the first view of Verson and its
vicinity is fine. A noble vale spreads at your feet, through which
the river Cher leads, seen in several places to the distance of
some leagues; a bright sun burnished the water, like a string of
lakes amidst the shade of a vast woodland.
The 31st. — Cross a mountain by a miserable road, and reach
Beg de Rieux, which shares, with Carcassonne, the fabric of Lon-
drins for the Levant trade. - Cross much waste to Béziers. - I
met to-day with an instance of ignorance in a well-dressed French
merchant, that surprised me. He had plagued me with abund.
ance of tiresome foolish questions, and then asked for the third
or fourth time what country I was of.
I told him I was
Chinese. How far off is that country? – I replied, 200 leagues.
Deux cents lieus! Diable! c'est un grand chemin ! The other
day a Frenchman asked me, after telling him I was an Eng-
lishman, if we had trees in England ? I replied that we had a
few. Had we any rivers ? Oh, none at all. Ah, ma foi, c'est
bien triste ! This incredible ignorance, when compared with
the knowledge so universally disseminated in England, is to be
attributed, like everything else, to government.
The 16th. – Accompanied the Count de la Rochefoucauld to
Liancourt. - 38 miles.
I went thither on a visit for three or four days; but the
whole family contributed so generally to render the place in
every respect agreeable, that I stayed more than three weeks. At
about half a mile from the château is a range of hills that was
chiefly a neglected waste: the Duke of Liancourt has lately con-
verted this into a plantation, with winding walks, benches, and
covered seats, in the English style of gardening. The situation
is very fortunate. These ornamented paths follow the edge of
the declivity to the extent of three or four miles. The views
they command are everywhere pleasing, and in some places great.
## p. 16268 (#618) ##########################################
16268
ARTHUR YOUNG
Nearer to the château the Duchess of Liancourt has built a me-
nagerie and dairy in a pleasing taste. The cabinet and ante-
room are very pretty, the saloon elegant, and the dairy entirely
constructed of marble. At a village near Liancourt, the duke
has established a manufacture of linen and stuffs mixed with
thread and cotton, which promises to be of considerable utility;
there are 25 looms employed, and preparations making for more.
As the spinning for these looms is also established, it gives
employment to great numbers of hands who were idle; for they
have no sort of manufacture in the country, though it is popu-
lous. Such efforts merit great praise. Connected with this is
the execution of an excellent plan of the duke's for establishing
habits of industry in the rising generation. The daughters of
the poor people are received into an institution to be educated
to useful industry: they are instructed in their religion, taught
to write and read, and to spin cotton; are kept till marriageable,
and then a regulated proportion of their earnings given them as
a marriage portion. There is another establishment of which I
am not so good a judge: it is for training the orphans of soldiers
to be soldiers themselves. The Duke of Liancourt has raised
some considerable buildings for their accommodation, well adapted
to the purpose.
The whole is under the superintendence of a
worthy and intelligent officer, M. le Roux, captain of dragoons
and croix de St. Louis, who sees to everything himself. There
are at present 120 boys, all dressed in uniform. - My ideas have
all taken a turn which I am too old to change: I should have
been better pleased to see 120 lads educated to the plow, in
habits of culture superior to the present; but certainly the estab-
lishment is humane, and the conduct of it excellent.
The ideas I had formed before I came to France, of a coun-
try residence in that kingdom, I found at Liancourt to be far
from correct. I expected to find it a mere transfer of Paris to
the country, and that all the burthensome forms of a city were
preserved, without its pleasures; but I was deceived, - the mode
of living, and the pursuits, approach much nearer to the habits
of a great nobleman's house in England than would commonly
be conceived. A breakfast of tea for those who chose to repair
.
to it; riding, sporting, planting, gardening, till dinner, and that
not till half-after two o'clock, instead of their old-fashioned hour
of twelve; music, chess, and the other common amusements of
## p. 16269 (#619) ##########################################
ARTHUR YOUNG
16269
a rendezvous-room, with an excellent library of seven or eight
thousand volumes, were well calculated to make the time pass
agreeably, and to prove that there is a great approximation in
the modes of living at present in the different countries of
Europe. Amusements, in truth, ought to be numerous within
doors: for in such a climate none are to be depended on with-
out; the rain that has fallen here is hardly credible. I have for
five-and-twenty years past remarked in England that I never
was prevented by rain from taking a walk every day without
going out while it actually rains; it may fall heavily for many
hours, but a person who watches an opportunity gets a walk or
a
a ride. Since I have been at Liancourt, we have had three days
in succession of such incessantly heavy rain, that I could not go
a hundred yards from the house to the duke's pavilion without
danger of being quite wet. For ten days, more rain fell here, I
am confident, had there been a gauge to measure it, than ever
fell in England in thirty. The present fashion in France, of
passing some time in the country, is new: at this time of the
year, and for many weeks past, Paris is, comparatively speaking,
empty. Everybody that have country-seats are at them; and
those who have none visit others who have. This remarkable
revolution in the French manners is certainly one of the best
customs they have taken from England; and its introduction was
effected the easier, being assisted by the magic of Rousseau's
writings. Mankind are much indebted to that splendid genius,
who, when living, was hunted from country to country - to seek
an asylum — with as much venom as if he had been a mad dog;
thanks to the vile spirit of bigotry, which has not yet received
its death's wound. Women of the first fashion in France are
now ashamed of not nursing their own children; and stays are
universally proscribed from the bodies of the poor infants, which
were for so many ages tortured in them, as they are still in
Spain. The country residence may not have effects equally
obvious; but they will be no less sure in the end, and in all
respects beneficial to every class in the State.
The Duke of Liancourt, being president of the provincial
assembly of the election of Clermont, and passing several days
there in business, asked me to dine with the assembly, as he
said there were to be some considerable farmers present. These
assemblies, which had been proposed many years past by the
## p. 16270 (#620) ##########################################
16270
ARTHUR YOUNG
French patriots, and especially by the Marquis de Mirabeau, the
celebrated l'ami des hommes; which had been treated by M.
Necker, and which were viewed with eyes of jealousy by certain
persons who wished for no better government than one whose
abuses were the chief foundation of their fortunes,- these as-
semblies were to me interesting to see. I accepted the invitation
with pleasure. Three considerable farmers — renters, not proprie-
-
tors, of land — were members, and present. I watched their car-
riage narrowly to see their behavior in the presence of a great
lord of the first rank, considerable property, and high in royal
favor: and it was with pleasure that I found them behaving with
becoming ease and freedom; and though modest, and without
anything like flippancy, yet without any obsequiousness offens-
ive to English ideas. They started their opinions freely, and
adhered to them with becoming confidence. A most singular
spectacle was to see two ladies present at a dinner of this sort,
with five or six and twenty gentlemen: such a thing could not
happen in England. To say that the French manners in this
respect are better than our own, is the assertion of an obvious
truth. If the ladies are not present at meetings where the con-
versation has the greatest probability of turning on subjects of
more importance than the frivolous topics of common discourse,
the sex must either remain on one hand in ignorance, or on the
other filled with the foppery of over-education, – learned, affected,
and forbidding. The conversation of men not engaged in trifling
pursuits is the best school for the education of a woman.
The 14th. – To the Benedictine abbey of St. Germain, to see
pillars of African marble, etc. It is the richest abbey in France:
the abbot has 300,000 liv. a year (£13,125). I lost my patience at
such revenues being thus bestowed: consistent with the spirit of
the tenth century, but not with that of the eighteenth. What a
noble farm would the fourth of this income establish! . what tur-
nips, what cabbages, what potatoes, what clover, what sheep, what
wool! Are not these things better than a fat ecclesiastic?
active English farmer was mounted behind this abbot, I think he
would do more good to France with half the income than half
the abbots of the kingdom with the whole of theirs. Pass the
Bastile: another pleasant object to make agreeable emotions vi-
brate in a man's bosom, I search for good farmers, and run my
head at every turn against monks and State prisoners.
>
.
If an
## p. 16271 (#621) ##########################################
ARTHUR YOUNG
16271
In the evening to M. Lomond, a very ingenious and invent-
ive mechanic, who has made an improvement of the jenny
for spinning cotton. Common machines are said to make too
hard a thread for certain fabrics, but this forms it loose and
spongy.
In electricity he has made a remarkable discovery:
you write two or three words on a paper; he takes it with him
into a room, and turns a machine inclosed in a cylindrical case,
at the top of which is an electrometer, a small fine pith-ball; a
wire connects with a similar cylinder and electrometer in a dis-
tant apartment; and his wife, by remarking the corresponding
motions of the ball, writes down the words they indicate: from
which it appears he has formed an alphabet of motions. As
the length of the wire makes no difference in the effect, a cor
respondence might be carried on at any distance: within and
without a besieged town, for instance; or for a purpose much
more worthy, and a thousand times more harmless,— between
two lovers prohibited or prevented from any better connection.
Whatever the use may be, the invention is beautiful. M. Lomond
has many other curious machines, all the entire work of his own
hands: mechanical invention seems to be in him a natural pro-
pensity.
The 5th. – To Montauban. The poor people seem poor in-
deed; the children terribly ragged, if possible worse clad than if
with no clothes at all; as to shoes and stockings, they are luxu-
ries. A beautiful girl of six or seven years playing with a stick,
and smiling under such a bundle of rags as made my heart ache
to see her: they did not beg, and when I gave them anything
seemed more surprised than obliged. One third of what I have
seen of this province seems uncultivated, and nearly all of it in
misery. What have kings, and ministers, and parliaments, and
States, to answer for their prejudices, seeing millions of hands
that would be industrious, idle and starving through the execra-
ble maxims of despotism, or the equally detestable prejudices
of a feudal nobility! Sleep at the Lion d'Or, at Montauban, an
abominable hole. — 20 miles.
The 6th. — The same inclosed country to Brooms; but near
that town, improves to the eye, from being more hilly. At the
little town of Lamballe, there are above fifty families of noblesse
that live in winter, who reside on their estates in the summer.
There is probably as much foppery and nonsense in their circles,
## p. 16272 (#622) ##########################################
16272
ARTHUR YOUNG
and for what I know as much happiness, as in those of Paris.
Both would be better employed in cultivating their lands, and
rendering the poor industrious. - 30 miles.
The 12th. - Walking up a long hill, to ease my mare, I was
joined by a poor woman, who complained of the times, and that
it was a sad country: demanding her reasons, she said her hus-
band had but a morsel of land, one cow, and a poor little horse;
yet they had a franchar (42 lb. ) of wheat, and three chickens, to
pay as a quit-rent to one Seigneur; and four franchar of oats,
one chicken and i f. to pay to another, besides very heavy tailles
and other taxes. She had seven children, and the cow's milk
helped to make the soup. But why, instead of a horse, do not
you keep another cow ? Oh, her husband could not carry his
produce so well without a horse; and asses are little used in the
country. It was said, at present, that something was to be done
by some great folks for such poor ones, but she did not know who
nor how, but God send us better, car les tailles & les droits nous
écrasent. - This woman, at no great distance, might have been
taken for sixty or seventy, her figure was so bent, and her face
so furrowed and hardened by labor,— but she said she was
only twenty-eight. An Englishman who has not traveled, can-
not imagine the figure made by infinitely the greater part of the
countrywomen in France: it speaks, at the first sight, hard and
severe labor; I am inclined to think that they work harder than
the men, and this, united with the more miserable labor of bring-
ing a new race of slaves into the world, destroys absolutely all
symmetry of person and every feminine appearance.
To what
we to attribute this difference in the manners of the lower
people in the two kingdoms ? To GOVERNMENT.
The 26th. — For twenty miles to Lisle sur Daube, the country
nearly as before; but after that, to Baume les Dames, it is all
mountainous and rock, much wood, and many pleasing scenes of
the river flowing beneath. The whole country is in the greatest
agitation; at one of the little towns I passed, I was questioned
for not having a cockade of the tiers état. They said it was
ordained by the ticrs; and if I was not a seigneur, I ought to
obey. But suppose I am a seigneur, what then, my friends?
What then ? they replied sternly: why, be hanged; for that most
likely is what you deserve. It was plain this was no moment
for joking; the boys and girls began to gather, whose assembling
are
## p. 16273 (#623) ##########################################
ARTHUR YOUNG
16273
has everywhere been the preliminaries of mischief; and if I had
not declared myself an Englishman, and ignorant of the ordi-
nance, I had not escaped very well. I immediately bought a
cockade; but the hussy pinned it into my hat so loosely that
before I got to Lisle it blew into the river, and I was again in
the same danger. My assertion of being English would not do.
I was a seigneur, perhaps in disguise, and without doubt a great
rogue. At this moment a priest came into the street with a let-
ter in his hand: the people immediately collected around him,
and he then read aloud a detail from Befort, giving an account
of M. Necker's passing, with some general features of news from
Paris, and assurances that the condition of the people would be
improved. When he had finished, he exhorted them to abstain
from all violence: and assured them they must not indulge them-
selves with any ideas of impositions being abolished; which he
touched on as if he knew that they had got such notions. When
he retired, they again surrounded me, who had attended to the
letter like others; were very menacing in their manner; and
expressed many suspicions: I did not like my situation at all,
especially on hearing one of them say that I ought to be secured
till somebody would give an account of me. I was on the steps
of the inn, and begged they would permit me a few words; I
assured them that I was an English traveler, and to prove it,
I desired to explain to them a circumstance in English taxation,
which would be a satisfactory comment on what M. l'Abbé had
told them, to the purport of which I could not agree. He had
asserted that the impositions must be paid as heretofore: that
the impositions must be paid was certain, but not as heretofore,
as they might be paid as they were in England. Gentlemen, we
have a great number of taxes in England, which you know noth-
ing of in France; but the tiers état, the poor, do not pay them,
they are laid on the rich: every window in a man's house pays,
but if he has no more than six windows he pays nothing; a
seigneur with a great estate pays the vingtièmes and tailles, but
the little proprietor of a garden pays nothing; the rich for their
horses, their voitures, and their servants, and even for the lib.
erty to kill their own partridges, but the poor farmer nothing
of all this; and what is more, we have in England a tax paid
by the rich for the relief of the poor: hence the assertion of M.
l'Abbé, that because taxes existed before, they must exist again,
XXVII-1018
## p. 16274 (#624) ##########################################
16274
ARTHUR YOUNG
did not at all prove that they must be levied in the same man-
ner; our English method seemed much better. There was not
a word of this discourse they did not approve of; they seemed
to think that I might be an honest fellow, which I confirmed by
crying, vive le tiers, sans impositions, when they gave me a bit
of a huzza, and I had no more interruption from them. My mis-
erable French was pretty much on a par with their own patois.
I got however another cockade, which I took care to have so
fastened as to lose it no more. I did not half like traveling in
such an unquiet and fermenting moment: one is not secure for
an hour beforehand. — 35 miles.
The 27th. – To Besançon: the country, mountain, rock, and
wood, above the river; some scenes are fine. I had not arrived
an hour before I saw a peasant pass the inn on horseback, fol.
lowed by an officer of the guard bourgeois, of which there are
1,200 here and 200 under arms, and his party-colored attachment,
and these by some infantry and cavalry. I asked why the militia.
took the pas of the King's troops ? For a very good reason, they
replied: the troops would be attacked and knocked on the head, but
the populace will not resist the milice. This peasant, who is a
rich proprietor, applied for a guard to protect his house, in a vil.
lage where there is much plundering and burning. The mischiefs
which have been perpetrated in the country, towards the mount-
ains and Vesoul, are numerous and shocking. Many châteaus
have been burnt, others plundered, the seigneurs hunted down
like wild beasts, their wives and daughters ravished, their papers
and titles burnt, and all their property destroyed: and these
abominations not inflicted on marked persons, who were odious
for their former conduct or principles, but an indiscriminating
blind rage for the love of plunder. Robbers, galley-slaves, and
villains of all denominations, have collected and instigated the
peasants to commit all sorts of outrages. Some gentlemen at
the table d'hôte informed me that letters were received from the
Maconois, the Lyonois, Auvergne, Dauphiné, etc. , and that simi-
lar commotions and mischiefs were perpetrating everywhere; and
that it was expected they would pervade the whole kingdom.
The backwardness of France is beyond credibility in everything
that pertains to intelligence. From Strasbourg hither, I have not
been able to see a newspaper.
Here I asked for the Cabinet Lit-
téraire ? None. The gazettes ? At the coffee-house. Very easily
## p. 16275 (#625) ##########################################
ARTHUR YOUNG
16275
replied; but not so easily found. Nothing but the Gazette de
France; for which, at this period, a man of common-sense would
not give one sol. To four other coffee-houses: at some no paper
at all, not even the Mercure; at the Caffé Militaire, the Courier
de l'Europe a fortnight old; and well-dressed people are now
talking of the news of two or three weeks past, and plainly by
their discourse know nothing of what is passing. The whole
town of Besançon has not been able to afford me a sight of the
Journal de Paris, nor of any paper that gives a detail of the trans-
actions of the States; yet it is the capital of a province large as
half a dozen English counties, and containing * 25,000 souls, - with,
,
strange to say! the post coming in but three times a week. At
this eventful moment, with no license, nor even the least restraint
on the press, not one paper established at Paris for circulation in
the provinces, with the necessary steps taken by affiche, or pla-
card, to inform the people in all the towns of its establishment.
For what the country knows to the contrary, their deputies are
in the Bastile, instead of the Bastile being razed; so the mob
plunder, burn, and destroy, in complete ignorance: and yet with
all these shades of darkness, these clouds of tenebrity, this uni-
versal mass of ignorance, there are men every day in the States
who are puffing themselves off for the FIRST NATION IN EUROPE!
the GREATEST PEOPLE IN THE UNIVERSE! as if the political juntos,
or literary circles of a capital, constituted a people; instead of the
universal illumination of knowledge, acting by rapid intelligence
on minds prepared by habitual energy of reasoning to receive,
combine, and comprehend it. That this dreadful ignorance of the
mass of the people, of the events that most intimately concern
them, is owing to the old government, no one can doubt; it is
however curious to remark, that if the nobility of other provinces
are hunted like those of Franche Comté, of which there is little
reason to doubt, that whole order of men undergo a proscription,
suffer like sheep, without making the least effort to resist the
attack. This appears marvelous, with a body that have an army
of 150,000 men in their hands; for though a part of those troops
would certainly disobey their leaders, yet let it be remembered
that out of the 40,000 or possibly 100,000 noblesse of France, they
might, if they had intelligence and union amongst themselves,
* That is, the town, not the province.
## p. 16276 (#626) ##########################################
162 76
ARTHUR YOUNG
fill half the ranks of more than half the regiments of the
kingdom with men who have fellow-feelings and fellow-sufferings
with themselves: but no meetings, no associations among them;
no union with military men; no taking refuge in the ranks of
regiments to defend or avenge their cause : fortunately for France
they fall without a struggle, and die without a blow. That uni.
versal circulation of intelligence which in England transmits the
least vibration of feeling or alarm, with electric sensibility, from
one end of the kingdom to another, and which unites in bands of
connection men of similar interests and situations, has no exist-
ence in France. Thus it may be said, perhaps with truth, that
the fall of the King, court, lords, nobles, army, church, and par-
liaments, is owing to a want of intelligence being quickly circu-
lated, consequently is owing to the very effects of that thraldom
in which they held the people: it is therefore a retribution rather
than a punishment.
## p. 16277 (#627) ##########################################
16277
EDWARD YOUNG
(1684-1765)
COX
He author of the Night Thoughts) had a vogue in his day
that is not easy to understand for one who now reads his
sententious verse. But fashion changes in words and in lit-
erature, and the poetry of one century may become the commonplace
of the next. Such a well-known line as
«Procrastination is the thief of time,
makes one smile: it is hopelessly hackneyed. Yet it may very well
have struck the eighteenth-century reader as a thought admirably
expressed. Again, Young's worst and best
are far apart. He lacked self-criticism, and
more often than not is incredibly bald
and dull. But his thought has strength;
and there are passages in his verse which
are undeniably fine, and have entered into
familiar quotation. Then, too, in the hand-
ling of that difficult form, blank verse (in
which the Night Thoughts' is written),
Young shows himself an artist, especially
notable in a day when blank verse was in
comparative disrepute, and the trail of the
heroic couplet still over English poetry.
Young's quiet life had few salient feat- EDWARD YOUNG
ures for the chronicler. He was born at
Upham, Hampshire, England, in 1684; was educated at Winchester
School and at Oxford, winning a fellowship in law at All Souls' Col-
lege in that university. His doctor-of-law degree was taken in 1719,
and he took orders as a Church of England clergyman in 1727. Pre-
ferment came to him soon; for the next year he was appointed a
royal chaplain, and in 1730 became rector of Welwyn in Hertford-
shire, remaining in that living the rest of his life. In 1731 he mar-
ried the Earl of Lichfield's daughter. His only other appointment,
thirty years later, was that of clerk of the closet to the Princess
Dowager of Wales. His death occurred at his rectory, April 12th,
1765. It will be seen by this digest of biographical facts that Young
was a personage of some importance by position and connection, -
## p. 16278 (#628) ##########################################
16278
EDWARD YOUNG
came
which may account in part for the contemporaneous acceptance of
his literary work. He began by publishing The Last Day,' in 1813.
followed by “The Force of Religion,' — the former poem, though
unattractive as a whole, containing some of his most characteristic
work. Next came the formal and dreary tragedies, Busiris (1719).
and "The Revenge (1721). In “The Universal Passion were col-
lected his satires, in which the influence of Pope is to be seen: the
theme and manner are more sprightly than is true of the writer's
most typical work.
Much minor poetry, - including a paraphrase of the Book of Job,
- various laudatory epistles to people of rank, and another play,
from his pen, which was easy-flowing. The first Night
Thought' appeared in 1742, the last in 1744. This series, upon which
Young's fame rests securely, is didactic and solemn in tone, and may
be characterized broadly as religious verse;
the full title, Night
Thoughts on Life, Death, and Immortality,' indicates the subject-
matter. Young was led to make verse on these lofty themes by the
deaths of those dear to him: he turns to religion for consolation in
his grief, and finds it. As has been implied, his poetry is only to be
read now with any pleasure in judicious selections. Those that fol-
low are examples of the poet at his most eloquent: that on Procras-
tination and that on (Tired Nature's Sweet Restorer) are the most
famous that can be found in the entire body of his works. A col-
lected edition of Young's writings in four volumes was published in
1762.
FROM NIGHT THOUGHTS)
PROCRASTINATION
B
Y NATURE's law, what may be, may be now:
There's no prerogative in human hours.
In human hearts what bolder thought can rise
Than man's presumption on to-morrow's dawn?
Where is to-morrow? In another world.
For numbers this is certain; the reverse
Is sure to none: and yet on this perhaps,
This peradventure, infamous for lies,
As on a rock of adamant we build
Our mountain hopes, spin out eternal schemes,
As we the fatal sisters could out-spin,
And big with life's futurities expire.
Not e’en Philander had bespoke his shroud,
Nor had he cause; a warning was denied :
## p. 16279 (#629) ##########################################
EDWARD YOUNG
16279
-
How many fall as sudden, not as safe;
As sudden, though for years admonished home!
Of human ills the last extreme beware;
Beware, Lorenzo, a slow sudden death.
How dreadful that deliberate surprise!
Be wise to-day; 'tis madness to defer:
Next day the fatal precedent will plead;
Thus on, till wisdom is pushed out of life.
Procrastination is the thief of time;
Year after year it steals, till all are fled,
And to the mercies of a moment leaves
The vast concerns of an eternal scene.
If not so frequent, would not this be strange ?
That 'tis so frequent, this is stranger still.
Of man's miraculous mistakes this bears
The palm, —« That all men are about to live,
Forever on the brink of being born. ”
All pay themselves the compliment to think
They one day shall not drivel: and their pride
On this reversion takes up ready praise, -
At least, their own; their future selves applaud
How excellent that life they ne'er will lead.
Time lodged in their own hands is folly's vails;
That lodged in fate's to wisdom they consign.
The thing they can't but purpose, they postpone.
'Tis not in folly not to scorn a fool,
And scarce in human wisdom to do inore.
All promise is poor dilatory man,
And that through every stage: when young indeed,
In full content we sometimes nobly rest,
Unanxious for ourselves; and only wish,
As duteous sons, our fathers were more wise.
At thirty man suspects himself a fool,
Knows it at forty and reforms his plan;
At fifty chides his infamous delay,
Pushes his prudent purpose to resolve;
In all the magnanimity of thought
Resolves, and re-resolves, - then dies the same.
THE DEATH OF FRIENDS
OUR dying friends come o'er us like a cloud,
To damp our brainless ardors; and abate
That glare of life which often blinds the wise.
Our dying friends are pioneers, to smooth
## p. 16280 (#630) ##########################################
16280
EDWARD YOUNG
Our rugged pass to death; to break those bars
Of terror and abhorrence Nature throws
'Cross our obstructed way; and thus to make
Welcome as safe, our port from every storm.
Each friend by fate snatched from us is a plume
Plucked from the wing of human vanity,
Which makes us stoop from our aerial heights,
And, damped with omen of our own decease,
On drooping pinions of ambition lowered,
Just skim earth's surface ere we break it up,
O’er putrid earth to scratch a little dust
And save the world a nuisance. Smitten friends
Are angels sent on errands full of love:
For us they languish, shall they die, in vain ?
Ungrateful, shall we grieve their hovering shades
Which wait the revolution in our hearts?
Shall we disdain their silent soft address,
Their posthumous advice and pious prayer ?
Senseless as herds that graze their hallowed graves,
Tread underfoot their agonies and groans,
Frustrate their anguish and destroy their deaths ?
ASPIRATION
O Thou great arbiter of life and death,
Nature's immortal, unmaterial sun,
Whose all-prolific beam late called me forth
From darkness — teeming darkness where I lay,
The worm's inferior, and in rank beneath
The dust I tread on - high to bear my brow,
To drink the spirit of the golden day,
And triumph in existence; and could know
No motive but my bliss; and hast ordained
A rise in blessing, with the patriarch's joy,--
Thy call I follow to the land unknown.
I trust in thee, and know in whom I trust:
Or life, or death, is equal; neither weighs;
All weight in this, - Oh, let me live to thee!
SILENCE AND DARKNESS
TIRED nature's sweet restorer, balmy sleep!
He, like the world, his ready visit pays
Where fortune smiles, the wretched he forsakes:
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EDWARD YOUNG
16281
Swift on his downy pinions Alies from woe,
And lights on lids unsullied with a tear.
From short (as usual) and disturbed repose,
I wake: how happy they who wake no more!
Yet that were vain, if dreams infest the grave.
I wake, emerging from a sea of dreams
Tumultuous; where my wrecked desponding thought
From wave to wave of fancied misery
At random drove, her helm of reason lost :
Though now restored, 'tis only change of pain,
(A bitter change! ) severer for severe:
The day too short for my distress! and Night,
Even in the zenith of her dark domain,
Is sunshine to the color of my fate.
Night, sable goddess! from her ebon throne,
In rayless majesty, now stretches forth
Her leaden sceptre o'er a slumbering world:
Silence, how dead! and darkness, how profound !
Nor eye, nor listening ear, an object finds;
Creation sleeps. 'Tis as the general pulse
Of life stood still, and Nature made a pause -
An awful pause! - prophetic of her end.
And let her prophecy be soon fulfilled :
Fate! drop the curtain,- I can lose no more.
Silence and darkness! solemn sisters! twins
From ancient night, who nurse the tender thought
To reason, and on reason build resolve
(That column of true majesty in man),
Assist me: I will thank you in the grave;
The grave, your kingdom - there this frame shall fall
A victim sacred to your dreary shrine.
But what are ye? -- Thou, who didst put to flight
Primeval silence, when the morning stars
Exulted, shouted o'er the rising ball,
0 Thou! whose Word from solid darkness struck
That spark, the sun, - strike wisdom from my soul:
My soul which flies to thee, her trust, her treasure,
As misers to their gold, while others rest.
1,
FORMALISM
Oye cold-hearted, frozen formalists!
On such a theme 'tis impious to be calm;
Passion is reason, transport temper, here!
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16282
EDWARD YOUNG
Shall Heaven, which gave us ardor, and has shown
Her own for man so strongly, not disdain
What smooth emollients in theology
Recumbent virtue's downy doctors preach, -
That prose of piety, a lukewarm phrase ?
Rise odors sweet from incense uninflamed ?
Devotion, when lukewarm, is undevout;
But when it glows, its heat is struck to heaven,
To human hearts her golden harps are strung;
High heaven's orchéstra chaunts Amen to man.
THE BETTER PART
No man is happy, till he thinks, on earth
There breathes not a more happy than himself:
Then envy dies, and love o'erflows on all;
And love o'erflowing makes an angel here:
Such angels all, entitled to repose
On Him who governs fate. Though tempest frowns,
Though nature shakes, how soft to lean on Heaven!
To lean on Him on whom archangels lean!
With inward eyes, and silent as the grave,
They stand collecting every beam of thought,
Till their eyes kindle with divine delight;
For all their thoughts, like angels, seen of old
In Israel's dream, come from, and go to, heaven:
Hence are they studious of sequestered scenes;
While noise and dissipation comfort thee.
Were all men happy, revelings would cease,
That opiate for inquietude within.
Lorenzo! never man was truly blessed,
But it composed and gave him such a cast
As folly might mistake for want of joy.
A cast unlike the triumph of the proud;
A modest aspect, and a smile at heart.
Oh for a joy from thy Philander's spring!
A spring perennial, rising in the breast,
And permanent as pure! no turbid stream
Of rapturous exultation swelling high;
Which, like land floods, impetuous pour awhile,
Then sink at once, and leave us in the mire.
What does the man who transient joy prefers ?
What but prefer the bubbles to the stream ?
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## p. 16282 (#634) ##########################################
1. CRI
Jio
ÉMILE ZOLA.
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