serviceable deeds? You doubt who is 3 The only absolutely and unapproach- 10 ably heroic element in the soldier's work seems to be that he is paid little for it- and regularly: while you traffickers, and exchangers, and others occupied in presumably benevolent business, like to 15 be paid much for it - and by chance. I never can make out how it is that a knight-errant does not expect to be paid for his trouble, but a peddler-errant always does; that people are willing to 20 take hard knocks for nothing, but never to sell ribbons cheap; - that they are ready to go on fervent crusades to recover the tomb of a buried God, but never on any travels to fulfil the orders 25 of a living one; - that they will go anywhere barefoot to preach their faith, but must be well bribed to practise it, and are perfectly ready to give the Gospel gratis, but never the loaves and fishes.1 If you choose to take the matter up on any such soldierly principle, to do your commerce, and your feeding of nations, for fixed salaries; and to be as particular about giving people the best food, and the best cloth, as soldiers are about giving them the best gunpowder, I could carve something for you on your exchange worth looking at. But I can only at present suggest decorating its frieze with pendent purses; and making its pillars broad at the base, for the sticking of bills. And in the innermost chambers of it there might be a statue of Britannia of the Market, who may have, perhaps advisably, a partridge for her crest, typical at once of her courage in fighting for noble ideas, and of her interest in game; and round its neck the inscription in golden letters, Perdix fovit quae non peperit. Then, for her 1 Please think over this paragraph, too briefly and antithetically put, but one of those which I am happiest in having written. spear, she might have a weaver's beam; and on her shield, instead of St. George's Cross, the Milanese boar, semi-fleeced, with the town of Gennesaret proper, in the field, and the legend In the best market,' and her corselet, of leather, folded over her heart in the shape of a purse, with thirty slits in it for a piece of money to go in at, on each day of the month. And I doubt not but that people would come to see your exchange, and its goddess, with applause. Nevertheless, I want to point out to you certain strange characters in this goddess of yours. She differs from the great Greek and Medieval deities essentially in two things first, as to the continuance of her presumed power; secondly, as to the extent of it. Ist, as to the Continuance. The Greek Goddess of Wisdom gave continual increase of wisdom, as the Christian Spirit of Comfort (or Comforter) continual increase of comfort. There was no question, with these, of any limit or cessation of function. But with your Agora Goddess, that is just the most important question. Getting onbut where to? Gathering together but how much? Do you mean to gather always- never to spend? If so, I wish you joy of your goddess, for I am just as well off as you, without the trouble of worshipping her at all. But if you 35 do not spend, somebody else will-somebody else must. And it is because of this (among many other such errors) that I have fearlessly declared your so-called science of Political Economy to be no science; because, namely, it has omitted the study of exactly the most important branch of the business - the study of spending. For spend you must, and as much as you make, ultimately. You 45 gather corn:- will you bury England under a heap of grain; or will you, when you have gathered, finally eat? You gather gold: - will you make your house-roofs of it, or pave your streets with it? That is still one way of spending it. But if you keep it, that you may get more, I'll give you more; I'll give you all the gold you want - all you can imagine if you can tell me what you'll do with it. You shall have thousands of 40 2 Jerem. xvii. 11 (best in Septuagint and Vulgate). 'As the partridge, fostering what she brought not 55 forth, so he that getteth riches, not by right shall leave them in the midst of his days, and at his end shall be a fool.' it.' Meaning fully, 'We have brought our pigs to gold pieces; thousands of thousands stables, and coach-houses; a moderately millions mountains, of gold: where sized park; a large garden and hotwill you keep them? Will you put an houses; and pleasant carriage drives Olympus of silver upon a golden Pelion through the shrubberies. In this man- make Ossa like a wart? Do you think 5 sion are to live the favored votaries of the rain and dew would then come down the Goddess; the English gentleman, with to you, in the streams from such moun- his gracious wife, and his beautiful famtains, more blessedly than they will down ily; always able to have the boudoir and the mountains which God has made for the jewels for the wife, and the beautiyou, of moss and whinstone? But it is 10 ful ball dresses for the daughters, and not gold that you want to gather! What hunters for the sons, and a shooting in is it? greenbacks? No; not those neither. the Highlands for himself. At the botWhat is it then is it ciphers after a tom of the bank, is to be the mill; not capital I? Cannot you practise writing less than a quarter of a mile long, with ciphers, and write as many as you want? 15 a steam engine at each end, and two in Write ciphers for an hour every morn- the middle, and a chimney three hundred ing, in a big book, and say every even- feet high. In this mill are to be in coning, I am worth all those naughts more stant employment from eight hundred to than I was yesterday. Won't that do? a thousand workers, who never drink, Well, what in the name of Plutus is it 20 never strike, always go to church on you want? Not gold, not greenbacks, Sunday, and always express themselves not ciphers after a capital I? You will in respectful language. have to answer, after all, 'No; we want, somehow or other, money's worth.' Well, what is that? Let your Goddess 25 of Getting-on discover it, and let her learn to stay therein. II. But there is yet another question to be asked respecting this Goddess of Getting-on. The first was of the continuance of her power; the second is of its extent. 30 Pallas and the Madonna were supposed to be all the world's Pallas, and all the world's Madonna. They could 35 teach all men, and they could comfort all men. But, look strictly into the nature of the power of your Goddess of Getting-on; and you will find she is the Goddess i Is not that, broadly, and in the main features, the kind of thing you propose to yourselves? It is very pretty indeed, seen from above; not at all so pretty, seen from below. For, observe, while to one family this deity is indeed the Goddess of Getting-on, to a thousand families she is the Goddess of not Getting-on. Nay,' you say, they have all their chance.' Yes, so has every one in a lottery, but there must always be the same number of blanks. ‘Ah! but in a lottery it is not sl and intelligence which take the lead but blind chance.' What then! do you think the old practice, that they should take who have the power, and they should keep who can,' is less iniquitous, when the power has become power of brains instead of fist? and that, though we may not take advantage of a child's or a woman's weakness, we may of a man's foolishness? Nay, but finally, work must be done, and some one must be at the top, some one at the bottom.' Granted, my friends. Work must always be, and captains of work must always be; and if you in the least remember the tone of any of my writings, you must know that they are thought unfit for this age. because they are always insisting on need of government, and speaking with scorn 55 of liberty. But I beg you to observe that there is a wide difference between being captains or governors of work, and not of everybody's getting on 40 - but only of somebody's getting on. This is a vital, or rather deathful, distinction. Examine it in your own ideal of the state of national life which this Goddess is to evoke and maintain. I 45 asked you what it was, when I was last here you have never told me. Now, shall I try to tell you? 1 Your ideal of human life then is, I think, that it should be passed in a pleas- 50 ant undulating world, with iron and coal everywhere. underneath it. On each pleasant bank of this world is to be a beautiful mansion, with two wings; and taking the profits of it. It does not fol- 40 You will tell me I need not preach against these things, for I cannot mend them. No, good friends, I cannot; but you can, and you will; or something else can and will. Even good things have no abiding power-and shall these evil things persist in victorious evil? All 45 history shows, on the contrary, that to be the exact thing they never can do. Change must come; but it is ours to determine whether change of growth, or change of death. Shall the Parthenon be 50 in ruins on its rock, and Bolton priory in its meadow, but these mills of yours be the consummation of the buildings of the earth, and their wheels be as the wheels of eternity? Think you that 55 'men may come, and men may go,' but -mills go on forever? Not so; out of these, better or worse shall come; and it is for you to choose which. I know that none of this wrong is done with deliberate purpose. I know, on the 5 contrary, that you wish your workmen well; that you do much for them, and that you desire to do more for them, if you saw your way to such benevolence safely. I know that even all this wrong and misery are brought about by a warped sense of duty, each of you striving to do his best; but unhappily, not knowing for whom this best should be done. And all our hearts have been betrayed by the plausible impiety of the modern economist, that 'To do the best for yourself, is finally to do the best for others.' Friends, our great Master said not so; and most absolutely we shall find this world is not made so. Indeed, to do the best for others, is finally to do the best for ourselves; but it will not do to have our eyes fixed on that issue. The Pagans had got beyond that. Hear what a Pagan says of this matter; hear what were, perhaps, the last written words of Plato,- if not the last actually written (for this we cannot know), yet assuredly in fact and power his parting words in which, endeavoring to give full crowning and harmonious close to all his thoughts, and to speak the sum of them by the imagined sentence of the Great Spirit, his strength and his heart fail him, and the words cease, broken off forever. They are at the close of the dialogue called ' Critias,' in which he describes, partly from real tradition, partly in ideal dream, the early state of Athens; and the genesis, and order, and religion, of the fabled isle of Atlantis; in which genesis he conceives the same first perfection and final degeneracy of man, which in our own Scriptural tradition is expressed by saying that the Sons of God intermarried with the daughters of men, for he supposes the earliest race to have been indeed the children of God; and to have corrupted themselves, until 'their spot was not the spot of his children.' And this, he says, was the end; that indeed through many generations, so long as the God's nature in them yet was full, they were submissive to the sacred laws, and carried themselves lovingly to all that had kindred with them in divineness; for The rest is silence. Last words of the chief wisdom of the heathen, spoken of this idol of riches; this idol of yours; this golden image high by measureless cubits, 5 set up where your green fields of England are furnace-burnt into the likeness of the plain of Dura: this idol, forbidden to us, first of all idols, by our own Master and faith; forbidden to us also 10 by every human lip that has ever, in any age or people, been accounted of as able to speak according to the purposes of God. Continue to make that forbidden deity your principal one, and soon 15 no more art, no more science, no more pleasure will be possible. Catastrophe will come; or worse than catastrophe, slow moldering and withering into Hades. But if you can fix some conception of a true human state of life to be striven for-life good for all men as for yourselves - if you can determine some honest and simple order of existence; following those trodden ways of wisdom, which are pleasantness, and seeking her quiet and withdrawn paths, which are peace; - then, and so sanctifying wealth into 'commonwealth,' all your art, your literature, your daily labors, your domestic affection, and citizen's duty, will join and increase into one magnificent harmony. You know then how to build, well enough; you will build with stone well, but with flesh better; temples not made with hands, but riveted of hearts; and that kind of marble, crimson-veined, is indeed eternal. their uttermost spirit was faithful and will 1 I imagine the Hebrew chant merely intends passionate repetition, and not a distinction of this somewhat fanciful kind; yet we may profitably make it in reading the English. ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON (1809-1892) Tennyson was born at Somersby Rectory in Lincolnshire. The rich level landscape of the reclaimed fen district is clearly visible in his poems. He soon began to imitate the English masters of verse and the compositions written between 15 and 17' in Poems by Two Brothers (1827) show his transitory allegiance to Byron and Scott. At Trinity College, Cambridge, he took the Newdigate prize in 1829 with a blank verse poem on Timbuctoo, and the next year issued Poems, Chiefly Lyrical. Numerous collegians, of whom many were afterward eminent in scholarship and affairs, became his sworn admirers and steadily announced that a new poet had arrived. Poems (1833) showed a further advance in quality and scope, but this and the preceding volume were ridiculed by the reviews for certain obvious affectations and slips of taste and Tennyson waited nine years before publishing again. During this interval, he set himself with great earnestness to comprehend the thoughts and movements of his time, enriched his mind by constant study of the classics and of English literature, recreated the best of his old poems and composed with great deliberation his new ones. When his two volumes of 1842 appeared, such poems as The Lady of Shalott and The Palace of Art had been transformed and with them came Ulysses, Morte d'Arthur, Locksley Hall and many others of moderate length, every one exquisitely tempered and wrought. His reputation was immediately secure, and steadily increased during fifty years more of continuous authorship. In 1850 he received the laurel greener from the brows of him that uttered nothing base.' The Princess had already appeared and In Memoriam which had been growing since the death of his friend Arthur Hallam in 1833, now sealed his title not only to the laureateship but to the position of chief spiritual guide to his age. Maud (1855) represented something of a departure from his previous methods toward a less réstrained style and a more vigorous grasp on the realities of life, a departure which he carried still farther in some of his ballads' and in realistic studies such as The Northern Farmer. The chief enterprise of his later years, however, was The Idylls of the King, at which he wrought from 1856-59, and again in 1868-72, when the poem became substantially complete. For nearly ten years his chief energies were given to the production of his seven dramas; of these Queen Mary, Harold, and Becket were all written by 1879, though the last was not published until several years later. From 1880 until his death in 1892 every few years added another volume of miscellaneous poems. At least in his lyrics, Tennyson's voice remained to the last, unchanged to hoarse or mute,' a 'clear call' with only a few dark overtones caught from the perplexities of the new era into which his life extended. In the few years since his death, we have moved fast and far from the platforms of the Victorian age; its problems are not our problems, and still less its solutions. Our interest, then, shifts more and more from Tennyson's message,' which was of his time, and attaches to the rich and instructed beauty of his art, which is imperishable. |