Tablets
I consider it the best part of an education to have been born and brought up in the country; the arts of handicraft and husbandry coming by mother wit, like the best use of books, the language one speaks. There is virtue in country houses, in gardens and orchards, in fields, streams and groves, in rustic recreations and plain manners, that neither cities nor universities enjoy. Nor is it creditable to the teaching that so few college graduates take to husbandry and rural pursuits. Held subordinate to thought, as every calling should be, these promote intellectual freshness and moral vigor. They have been made classic by the genius of antiquity; are recreations most becoming to men of every profession and rank in life: —
"Books, wise discourse, garden and fields,And all the joys that unmixed nature yields."Rural influences seem to be most desirable, if not necessary, for cherishing the home virtues, especially in a community like ours, where, by prejudices of tradition, we seek culture more through books and universities than from that closer contact with men and things to which newer communities owe so much, which agriculture promotes, and for which the classic authors chiefly deserve to be studied.
Men follow what they love, and the love of rural enjoyments is almost universal. Every one likes the country whose tastes are cultivated in the least, and who enjoys what is primitive and pure. The citizen tires of city pleasures. He soon finds that there is no freedom comparable to that which the country affords; for though he dwell in the city for advantages of libraries, and social entertainments, he seeks the country for inspiration when these lose their attractions, his spirits as his friendships, crave refreshment and renewal.
"Who in sad cities dwell,Are of the green trees fully sensible."We see how this appetite declares itself in the general swarming during the summer season from the cities to the suburban towns, if not to the hill countries, for the freedom, the health, found there; and how to gratify and meet the demand for more natural satisfactions, our Guide Books have become, not only the most attractive geographies of the territories therein described, but works of taste, combining some of the choicest illustrations of poetry and prose in our literature: sketches of such scenes and parties are sure of an eager reading. The rustic books, too, are beginning to be inquired after; translations of the ancient authors, which bring the sentiment of the originals within the grasp of the plainest minds. And we look forward to the time, when, according to the recommendation of Cowley and Milton, – poets who did so much for the culture of their time, – these authors will be studied in our schools and universities, as Virgil and Horace have been so long, for cultivating the love of nature, of rural pursuits, beauty of sentiment, the graces of style, without an acquaintance with which, the epithet of a liberal and elegant culture were misapplied on any graduate. Nor need the students be restricted to Greek and Roman pastoral poets, when some of our own authors have given charming examples of treating New England life and landscape in their pages. A people's freshest literature springs from free soil, tilled by free men. Every man owes primary duty to the soil, and shall be held incapable by coming generations if he neglect planting an orchard at least, if not a family, or book, for their benefit.
"Agriculture, for an honorable and high-minded man," says Xenophon, "is the best of all occupations and arts by which men procure the means of living. For it is a pursuit that is most easy to learn and most pleasant to practise; it puts the bodies of men in the fairest and most vigorous condition, and is far from giving such constant occupation to their minds as to prevent them from attending to the interests of their friends or their country. And it affords some incitement to those who pursue it to become courageous, as it produces and sustains what is necessary for human life without the need of walls or fortresses. A man's home and fireside are the sweetest of all human possessions."
I have always admired the good sense and fine ambition of a friend of mine, who, on quitting College, with fair prospects of winning respect in any of the learned professions, chose rather to step aside into the quiet retreat of a cottage, and there give himself to the pleasures and duties of cultivating his family and grounds. And this he did from a sense of its suitableness to promote the best ends and aims; esteeming his gifts and accomplishments due to pursuits which seemed the natural means of securing self-respect and independence. His first outlay was moderate – a sequestered field, on which he erected a comfortable dwelling, planned for convenience and hospitality. His grounds were laid out and planted with shrubbery, the slopes dotted with evergreens and shapely trees. A nursery was set; a conservatory, with suitable outbuildings and ornaments. As he gave himself personally to the work, everything prospered that he touched. A few years' profits paid for his investment, and his thrift soon enabled him to add an adjoining orchard to his first purchase. And so successful was his adventure, that his most sceptical neighbors, the old farmers, confessed him to be the better husbandman; his gold was ruddier than theirs; his fields the neater. Nor did our Evelyn disgrace social engagements. His friendships were kept in as good plight as his grounds. He was none the worse citizen for being the better neighbor and gentleman they found him to be, nor the less worthy of the honors of his college. "'Tis impossible that he who is a true scholar, and has attained besides the felicity of being a good gardener, should give jealousy to the State in which he lives." Civilization has a deeper stake in the tillage of the ground than in the other arts, since its roots are fast planted therein, and it thrives only as this flourishes. Omit the garden, degrade this along with the orchard to mere material uses, treat these as of secondary importance, and the State falls fast into worldliness and decay.
"Oh blessed shades! oh gentle, cool retreatFrom all the immoderate heatIn which the frantic world does burn and sweat!This does the Lion-star, Ambition's rage;This Avarice, the Dog-star's thirst assuage;Everywhere else their fatal power we see,They make and rule man's wretched destiny;They neither set, nor disappear,But tyrannize o'er all the year, —Whilst we ne'er feel their heat nor influence here.The birds that dance from bough to bough,And sing above in every tree,Are not from fears and cares more free,Than we who muse or toil below,And should by right be singers too.What Prince's quire of music can excelThat which within this shade does dwell?To which we nothing pay or give?They, like all other poets, liveWithout reward or thanks for their obliging pains;'Tis well if they become not prey:The whistling winds add their less ardent strains,And a grave bass the murmuring fountains play.Nature does all this harmony bestow;But, to our plants, arts, music, too,The pipe, theorbo, and guitar, we owe,The lute itself, which once was green and mute;When Orpheus struck the inspired luteThe trees danced round and understood,By sympathy, the voice of wood."Methinks I see great Dioclesian walkIn the Salonian garden's noble shade,Which by his own imperial hands was made;I see him smile, methinks, as he does talkWith the ambassadors, who come in vainTo entice him to a throne again."If I, my friends," said he, "should to you showAll the delights that in these gardens grow,'Tis likelier much that you should with me stay,Than 'tis that you should carry me away;And trust me not, my friends, if every dayI walk not here with more delightThan ever, after the most happy fight,In triumph to the capitol I ride,To thank the gods, and to be thought myself almost a god."Do we ask, on viewing the rural pictures which the Pastoral Poets afford us, – Whither is our modern civilization tending? What solid profits has it gained on the state of things they describe, seeing the primitive virtues and customs, once enjoyed by our ancestors, are fading, – the generosity, the cheer, the patriotism, the piety, the republican simplicity and heartiness of those times? Machinery is fast displacing the poetry of farm and fireside; the sickle, the distaff, the chimney-piece, the family institution, being superseded by prose powers; and, with their sway, have come slavery, pusillanimity, dishonor. I know there are reconciling compensations for all risks of revolution. For while the Demos thus takes his inch, Divinity secures his ell; so the garment of mankind comes the fuller from the loom in this transfer of labors. The fig leaf thus cunningly woven, costs fair honors, nevertheless, and we covet in our hearts the florid simplicity of times of sturdier virtues and unassailable integrity.2
II
RECREATION
"Thou who wouldst know the things that be,Bathe thy heart in the sunrise red,Till its stains of earthly dross are fled."Goethe.RECREATIONi. – the fountainsNature is wholesome. Without her elixirs daily taken we perish of lassitude and inanity. The fountains must be stirred to their depths and their torrents sent bounding along their sluices, else we sink presently into the pool of inertia, victims of indecision and slaves of fate. "Thy body, O well disposed man, is a meadow through which flow three hundred and sixty-five rivulets." Every pulse pushes nature's quaternion along life's currents recreating us afresh; the morn feeding the morn, Memnon's music issuing from every stop, as if the Orient itself had sung.
Nature is virtuous. Imparting sanity and sweetness, it spares from decay, giving life with temperance and a continency that keeps our pleasures chaste and perennial. Nothing short of her flowing atmosphere suffices to refill our urns. Neither books, company, conversation, – not Genius even, the power present in persons, nature's nature pouring her floods through mind, – not this is enough. Nature is the good Baptist plunging us in her Jordan streams to be purified of our stains, and fulfil all righteousness. And wheresoever our lodge, there is but the thin casement between us and immensity. Nature without, mind within, inviting us forth into the solacing air, the blue ether, if we will but shake our sloth and cares aside, and step forth into her great contentments.
As from himself he fled,Possessed, insane,Tormenting demons drove him from the gate:Away he sped,Casting his woes behind,His joys to find,His better mind.'Tis passing strange,The glorious change,The pleasing pain!Recovered,Himself againOver his threshold led,Peace fills his breast,He finds his rest;Expecting angels his arrival wait.If we cannot spin our tops briskly as boys do theirs, the wailers may chant their dirges over us. Enthusiasm is existence; earnestness, life's exceeding great reward. How busy then, and above criticism. Our cup runs over. But a parted activity, divorcing us from ourselves, degrades our noblest parts to the sway of the lowest and renders our task a drudgery and shame. For what avails, if while one's mind hovers about Olympus, his members flounder in Styx, and he is drawn asunder in the conflict? Let the days deify the days, the work the workman, giving the joyous task that leaves pleasant memories behind, and ennobles in the performance:
Tasked daysAbove delays;Hours that borrowSpeed of the morrow,Light from sorrow:Business bate not,Want nor wait not,Doubt nor date not;Life from limb forbid to sever,Recreate in rapt endeavor.We come as a muse to our toil and find amusement in it; to a taskmaster whose company never tires. 'Tis life, the partaking of immortality. A day lived so, glorifies all moments afterwards. Long postponed, perhaps, the hours wearisome, till broke this immortal morning with engagements that time can complete never, nor compel, and whose importunity outlasts the hours.
Sleep, too, having the keys of life in its keeping. How we rise from its delectable divinations with eyes sovereign and anointed for the day's occupations. All our powers are touched with flame, all things are possible. But last night, the world had come to an end; the floods ebbed low, as if the fates were reversing the torch. How we blazed all the morning, to be cinders yesternight. Then came the god to re-kindle our faded embers, the Phœnix wings her way to meet the rising dawn and embrace the young world once more. Sleep took the sleep out of us. From forth the void there rises a roseate morn upon us.
The flattering East her gates impearled,We hunt the morning round the world.Nor is a day lived if the dawn is left out of it, with the prospects it opens. Who speaks charmingly of nature or of mankind, like him who comes bibulous of sunrise and the fountains of waters?
"Mornings are mysteries, the first world's youth,Man's resurrection, and the future's budShown in their birth; they make us happy,Make us rich."Rise in the morning, riseWhile yet the streaming tideFlames o'er the blue acclivities,And pours its splendors wide;Kindling its high intentAlong the firmament,Silence and sleep to break,Imaginations wake,Ideas insphereAnd bring them here.Loiter nor playIn soft delay;Speed glad thy course alongThe orbs and globes among,And as yon toiling sunAttain thy high meridian:Radiant and round thy day; —Speed, speed thee on thy way."Every day is a festival, and that which makes it the more splendid is gladness. For as the world is a spacious and beautiful temple, so is life the most perfect institution that introduces us into it. And it is but just that it should be full of cheerfulness and tranquillity." Our dispositions are the atmosphere we breathe, and we carry our climate and world in ourselves. Good humor, gay spirits are the liberators, the sure cure for spleen and melancholy. Deeper than tears, these irradiate the tophets with their glad heavens. Go laugh, vent the pits, transmuting imps into angels by the alchymy of smiles. The satans flee at the sight of these redeemers. And he who smiles never is beyond redemption. Once clothed in a suit of light we may cast aside forever our sables. Our best economist of this flowing estate is good temper, without whose presidency life is a perplexity and disaster. Luck is bad luck and ourselves a disappointment and vexation. Victims of our humors, we victimize everybody. How the swift repulsions play: our atoms all insular, insulating; demonized, demonizing, from heel to crown; at the mercy of a glance, a gesture, a word, and ourselves overthrown. Equanimity is the gem in Virtue's chaplet and St. Sweetness the loveliest in her calendar. "On beholding thyself, fear," says the oracle. Only the saints are sane and wholesome.
ii. – the cheap physician"That which makes us have no needOf physic, that's physic indeed.Hark, hither, reader, wilt thou seeNature her own physician be?Wilt see a man all his own wealth,His own music, his own health, —A man whose sober soul can tellHow to wear her garments well:Her garments that upon her sit,As garments should do, close and fit;A well-clothed soul that's not oppressed,Nor choked with what she should be dressed;A soul sheathed in a crystal shrine,Through which all her bright features shine,As when a piece of wanton lawn,A thin, aerial veil is drawnO'er beauty's face, seeming to hide,More sweetly shows the blushing bride:A soul, whose intellectual beamsNo mists do mask, no lazy streams:A happy soul that all the wayTo heaven rides in a summer's day?Wouldst see a man whose well-warmed bloodBathes him in a genuine flood, —A man whose tuned humors beA seat of rarest harmony?Wouldst see blithe looks, fresh cheeks beguileAge; wouldst see December smile?Wouldst see nests of new roses growIn a bed of reverend snow?Warm thought, free spirits flatteringWinter's self into a spring?In sum, wouldst see a man that canLive to be old, and still a manWhose latest and most leaden hoursFall with soft wings, stuck with soft flowers;And when life's sweet fable ends,Soul and body part like friends;No quarrels, murmurs, no delay,A kiss, a sigh, – and so away, —This rare one, reader, wouldst thou see?Hark within, and thyself be he."III
FELLOWSHIP
"Health is the first good lent to men,A gentle disposition then,Next competence by no by ways,Lastly with friends to enjoy one's days."Herrick.FELLOWSHIPi. – hospitalityEvelyn writes of the manners and architecture of his times: "'Tis from the want of symmetry in our buildings, decorum in our houses, that the irregularity of our humors and affections may be shrewdly discerned." But not every builder is gifted with the genius and personal qualities to harmonize the apartments to the dispositions of the inmates. I confess to a partiality for the primitive style of architecture commended by Evelyn, and question whether in our refinements on these we have not foregone comforts and amenities essential to true hospitality. What shall make good to us the ample chimney-piece of his day, with the courtesies it cherished, the conversation, the cheer, the entertainments? Very welcome were the spacious yards and hospitable door-knockers on those ancestral mansions, fast disappearing from our landscape, supplanted by edifices and surroundings more showy and pretentious; yet, with all their costliness, looking somewhat asquint on the visitor, as if questioning his right to enter them; and, when admitted, seem unfamiliar, solitary, desolate, with their elaborate decorations and furnishings. Can we not build an elegant comfort, convenience, ease, into the walls and apartments, rendering the mansion an image of the nobilities becoming the residence of noblemen? To what end the house, if not for conversation, kindly manners, the entertainment of friendships, the cordialities that render the house large, and the ready receptacle of hosts and guests? If one's hospitalities fail to bring out the better qualities of his company, he fails of being the noble host, be his pretensions what they may. Let him entertain the dispositions, the genius, of his guests, the conversation being the choicer banquet; for, without baits for these, what were the table but a manger, alike wanting in elegancy as in hospitality, and the feast best taken in silence as an animal qualification, and no more.
What solitude like those homes where no home is, no company, no conversation, into which one enters with dread, and from which he departs with sadness, as from the sight of hostile tribes bordering on civilization, strangers to one another, and of mixed bloods! \Civility has not completed its work if it leave us unsocial, morose, insultable. Sympathy wanting, all is wanting; its personal magnetism is the conductor of the sacred spark that lights our atoms, puts us in human communion, and gives us to company, conversation, and ourselves.
"Oh wretched and too solitary, heWho loves not his own company;He'll find the weight of it many a day,Unless he call in sin and vanity,To help to bear it away."The surest sign of age is loneliness. While one finds company in himself and his pursuits, he cannot be old, whatever his years may number.
Perhaps those most prize society who find the best in solitude, being equal to either; strong enough to enjoy themselves aside from companies they would gladly meet and repay by a freedom from prejudices and scruples in which these share and pride themselves, yet whose exclusiveness thrusts them out of their own houses and themselves also.
"It ever hath been known,They others' virtues scorn who doubt their own."If solitude makes us love ourselves, society gives us to others, peopling what were else a solitude. It takes us out of ourselves as from a multitude to partake of closer intimacies and satisfactions. Alone and apart, however well occupied, we lose the elasticity and dignity that come from sympathy with the aims and prospects of others. Nor has any been found equal to uninterrupted solitude. Our virtues need the enamel of intercourse. Exalting us above our private piques, prejudices, egotisms, into the commonwealth of charities, good company makes us catholic, courteous, sane; we retire from it with a new estimate of ourselves and of mankind. If intercourse have not this wholesome effect, it is dissipating and best shunned. Nor is fellowship possible without a certain delicacy and respect of diffidence. There hides a natural piety in this personal grace, while nothing good comes of brass, from whose embrasures there vollies forth but impudence, insolence, defiance. But the more influential powers are attended by a bashful genius, and step forth from themselves with a delicacy of boldness alike free from any blemishes of egotism or pretence. Nor do we accept as genuine the person not characterized by this blushing bashfulness, this youthfulness of heart, this sensibility to the sentiment of suavity and self-respect. Modesty is bred of self-reverence. Fine manners are the mantle of fair minds. None are truly great without this ornament. A fine genius has the timidity, the graces of a virgin nature, whose traits are as transparent in the boldest flights of imagination as discernible in the stateliest tread of reason, the play of fancy: a pleasing hesitancy, a refrain, setting off the more boldly by such graceful carriage, the natural graces due to beauty and truth; and bearing down all else by its charming persuasions.
Affinities tell. Every one is not for every one; nor any one good enough to flatter or scorn any; the kindly recognition being due to the meanest; even the humblest conferring a certain respect by his call. Yet one might as properly entertain every passing vagary in the presence chamber of his memory as every vagrant visitor seeking his acquaintance. Introductions are of small account. What are one's claims, a glance detects; if ours, he stays, and house and heart are his by silent understanding. If not ours, nor we his, the way is plain. He leaves presently as a traveller the innkeeper's door, an inmate for his meal only and the night.
The heroic bearing is always becoming. Egotists of the amiable species, one kindly considers. But the sour malcontents, devastators of one's time and patience, – what to do with such? Summon your fairest sunshine forthwith: give your visitor's humors no quarters from the shafts; smite him with the kindly radiance for dissipating his melancholy, and so send him away the wholesomer, the sweeter for the interview, if not a convert to the sun's catholicism, the courtesies due to civility and good fellowship. So when X, your worst sample approaches, meet him blandly at your door, and ask him civilly to leave his dog outside. But if he persist in bringing him along into your parlor, never hesitate on setting the cur forthwith upon his master though you should find him at your throat straightways. It were giving your visitor the warmest reception possible under the circumstances, and an interview very memorable to all parties. One need not fear dealing his compliments short and significant on the occasion; the deer running down the dogs for a wonder.
Does it seem cold and unhandsome, this specular survey of persons? Yet all hearts crave eyes whereby to measure themselves. And what better foil for one's egotism than this reflection of himself in the mirror of another's appreciation? The frank sun withholds his beams from none for any false delicacy. Nor till one rejoices in being helped to discern excellence in another, desiring to comprehend and compliment his own therein, is he freed from the egotism that excludes him from the best benefits one can bestow. Happy if we have dissolved our individualism in the fluent affections, and so made intercourse possible and delightful between us.
"We have three friends most useful to us; a sincere friend, a faithful friend, a friend that hears every thing, examines what is told him, and speaks little. But we have three also whose friendship is pernicious; a hypocrite, a flatterer, and a great talker. Contract friendship with the man whose heart is upright and sincere, who loves to learn and can teach you something in his turn. And in what part of the world soever thou chance to spend thy life, correspond with the wisest and associate with the best."
ii. – conversationGood humor, flowing spirits, a sprightly wit, are essentials of good discourse. Add genial dispositions, graceful elocution, and to these accomplishments diffidence as the flower of the rest. There can be no eloquence where these are wanting. Any amount of sense, of logic, matter, leaves the discourse incomplete, interest flags, and disappointment ensues. None has command of himself till he can wield his powers sportfully, life sparkling from all his gifts and taking captive alike speaker and hearer, as they were docile children of his genius and surprised converts for the moment. "And I," says Socrates, "through my youth often change my mind, but looking to you and apprehending that you speak the things that are divine, I think so too." If one cannot inspire faith in what he says, no arts avail. Earnestness, sincerity, are orators whose persuasions are irresistible; they hold all gifts in fusion, magnetize, divinize, harmonize all. Good conversation is lyrical: a pentecost of tongues, touching the chords of melody in all minds, it prompts to the best each had to give, to better than any knew they had, what none claims as his own, as if he were the organ of some invisible player behind the scenes. What abandonments, reserves, which no premeditation, no cunning could have checked or called forth. What chasms are spanned with a trope, what pits forded, summits climbed, prospects commanded, perspectives gained, – the tour of the spheres made at a glance, a sitting; the circle coming safely out of the adventure. All men talk, few converse; of gossip we have enough, of argument more than enough, rhetoric, debate – omit these, speak from the heart to the heart underlying all differences, and we have conversation. For disputing there is the crowd; for ruminating, the woods; the clubs for wit and the superficial fellowship.
