Book: Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, Issue 35, September, 1860

V >> Various >> Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, Issue 35, September, 1860




And yet how little positive satisfaction does the lover of truth, the
aspirant for what is authentic and significant, find in current and even
popular histories! Certain general notions of the character of nations
we, indeed, distinctly and correctly attain: that Chinese civilization
is stationary, the French instinctively a military race, the Swiss
mercenary, and adventurous in engineering and religious reform,--that
modern German literature was as sudden as simultaneous in its
development,--that Holland redeemed her foundations from the sea,--that
Italy owes to art, and England to manufactures, her growth and grandeur.
These and such as these are problems which the history of the respective
countries, however inadequately told, reveals with authenticity; but
when we go beyond and below the patent facts of local civilization, to
the analysis of character, and, through it, of destiny, few and far
between are the satisfactory records whence we can draw legitimate
materials for inference and conjecture. The most attractive method
is apt to be that upon which least reliance can be placed. We seldom
consult Sir Walter's essays at serious history, while the novels he
created out of historic material are as familiar as they are endeared;
but their imaginative charm is in the inverse ratio of their
authenticity. With every new candidate for public favor in this sphere
of literature, there arises a "mooted question" whereon the historian
and his readers are irreconcilably divided. The character of Penn, of
Marlborough, and of the facts of the Massacre at Glencoe are still
vehemently discussed, whenever Macaulay's popular History is referred
to. Froude advances a new and plausible theory of the character of Henry
VIII.; few of Bancroft's American readers accept his estimate of John
Jay, Sam Adams, or Dr. Johnson, or of the political character of the
Virginia Colonists; and Palfrey and Arnold interpret quite diversely
the influence and career of Roger Williams. Nor are such discrepancies
surprising, when we remember how the history which transpires now and
here fails of harmonious report. Every battle, diplomatic arrangement,
political event, nay, each personal occurrence, which forms the staple
of to-day's journalism and talk, is regarded from so many different
points of view, and stated under so many modifying influences, that only
judicial minds have a prospect of reaching the exact truth. Hence the
true way to profit by History is eclectic.

Let the erudition of the German, the genial animation of the French,
the Saxon good sense, the Italian grace be enjoyed, and whatsoever of
glamour or of inadequacy these charms hide be duly estimated; reflection
and sympathy will often separate the gold of truth from the alloy of
prejudice or fantasy. Above all, let this eclectic test be applied
beyond nominal history,--to the geological data on the ancient
rock,--the handwriting of the ages upon race, costume, language,--the
incidental, but genuine history innate in all true literature, vivid
elements whereof live in passages of Milton's controversial writings, in
Petrarch's sonnets, De Foe's fictions, our Revolutionary correspondence,
South's sermons, Swift's diaries, Burke's speeches, French memoirs,
Walpole's letters, in the poems, plays, and epistles of the past, and
every fact and person which society and life offer to our cognizance or
sympathy.

"When we are much attached to our ideas, we endeavor to attach
everything to them," says Madame de Stael. "The secret of writing well,"
observes a Scotch professor, "is to write from a full mind." These
two maxims seem to us to illustrate the whole subject of historical
composition; an earnest votary thereof will instinctively find material
in every interest and influence that sways events or moulds character,
and from the assimilation of all these will educe a vital and harmonious
picture and philosophy. There is an historical as well as a judicial or
poetic type of mind; and to such there is no object too trifling, no
fact too remote, not directly or indirectly to minister to the unwritten
history which vaguely shapes itself to his intelligence. In his reading
and travel it is by no means to the ostensible monuments and trophies of
the past that his observation and inquiry are confined: the Letters of
Madame de Sevigne give him authentic hints for the social tendencies
of France and their influence upon politics, as the blood-stains at
Holyrood identify the place of Rizzio's murder; the "Edinburgh
Review" reveals the spirit of the Reform movement as clearly as the
Parliamentary records its letter; the South-Sea House and the Temple are
as suggestive as Whitehall and the Abbey,--for trade and jurisprudence,
in the retrospect, are as much a part of the by-gone life and present
character of a nation, as the fate and the fame of her dead kings; and a
Spanish ballad is as valuable an illustration as a Madrid state-paper;
while the life of Harry Vane vindicates the Puritan nature as clearly
as the letter of a Venetian ambassador exhibits the domestic life of a
Pope.

The redeeming influence of strong personal sympathy and earnest
conviction, both in the choice of a subject and the method of its
treatment, has been signally illustrated by a countryman of our own.
The interest of the general reader and the approbation of historical
scholars were at once enlisted by Motley's "Rise and Fall of the Dutch
Republic." That work differs from and is superior to any American
historical composition by virtue of a certain fluent animation, a
certain decided and sustained tone, such as can be derived only from an
absolute relation between the author's mind and heart and his subject.
Accordingly his record not only seizes upon the attention, but wins the
sympathy of the reader, who recognizes a vital and genuine spirit in the
work, which gives it unity, completeness, and a living style, whereby
its incidents, characters, and philosophy are unfolded, not only with
art, but with nature, and so made real, attractive, and significant.
That we are right in ascribing these merits to the affinity between the
author and his work is amply evidenced by his own confession in a letter
called forth by the death of Prescott, in which he says,--

"It seems to me but as yesterday, though it must be now twelve years
ago, that I was talking with our ever-lamented friend Stackpole about my
intention of writing a history upon a subject to which I have since that
time been devoting myself. I had then made already some general studies
in reference to it, without being in the least aware that Prescott had
the intention of writing the history of Philip II. Stackpole had heard
the fact, and that large preparations had already been made for the
work, although 'Peru' had not yet been published. I felt, naturally,
much disappointed. I was conscious of the immense disadvantage to myself
of making my appearance, probably at the same time, before the public,
with a work not at all similar in plan to 'Philip II.,' but which must,
of necessity, traverse a portion of the same ground. My first thought
was, inevitably as it were, only of myself. It seemed to me that I had
nothing to do but to abandon at once a cherished dream, and probably to
renounce authorship. _For I had not first made up my mind to write a
history, and then cast about to take up a subject. My subject had taken
up me, drawn me on, and absorbed me into itself. It was necessary for
me, it seemed, to write the book I had been thinking much of,--even if
it were destined to fall dead from the press,--and I had no inclination
or interest to write any other_."

The same inspiration is partially obvious in those portions of every
history which come home to the writer's experience: as, for instance,
some of the military episodes in Colletta's "History of Naples," he
having been a soldier,--and the descriptive phases of Parkman's "History
of Pontiac," the author having been a Prairie traveller, and familiar
with the woods and the bivouac. In like manner, it is the idiosyncrasy
of historians which gives original value to their labors: Botta's
knowledge of American localities and civilization was meagre, but his
sympathy with the patriots of the Revolution was strong, and this gave
warmth and effect to his "Guerra Americana"; Niebuhr was specially
gifted to develop what has been called the law of investigation, and
hence he penetrates the Roman life, and lays bare much of its unapparent
meaning and spirit. So apt and patient are the Germans in research, that
they have been justly said to "quarry" out the past; while so native are
rhetoric, theorizing, and fancifulness to the French, that they make
history, as they do life and government, theatrical and picturesque,
rather than gravely real and practically suggestive.

A peculiar feature in the labors of modern historians is the research
expended upon what the elder annalists regarded as purely incidental
and extraneous. The collation of archives, official correspondence, and
state-papers is now but the rough basis of research; memoirs are equally
consulted,--localities minutely examined,--the art and literature of a
given era analyzed,--the geography, climate, and ethnology of the scene
made to illustrate the life and polity,--social phases, educational
facts estimated as not less valuable than statistics of armies and
judicial enactments. Michelet has some charming rural pictures and
female portraits in his History of France; Macaulay thinks no custom
or economy of a reign insignificant in the great historical aggregate.
Topography, botany, artistic knowledge are not less parts of the
chronicler's equipment than philology, rhetoric, and philosophy; a
newspaper is not beneath nor a traveller's gossip beyond his scope;
architecture reveals somewhat which diplomacy conceals; an inscription
is not more historical than the average temperature or the staple
productions. Whatever affects national character and destiny, whatever
accounts for national manners or confirms individual sway, is brought
into the record. Diaries, like those of Pepys and Evelyn, the tithe-book
of a county, the taste in portraiture, the costume and the play-bill
yield authentic hints not less than the census, the parliamentary
edicts, or the royal signatures; the popular poem, the social favorite,
the _cause celebre_, what pulpit, bar, peasant and beau, doctor and lady
_a la mode_ do, say, and are, then and there, must coalesce with
the battle, the legislation, and the treaty,--or these last are but
technical landmarks, instead of human interests.

Even our most generalized historical ideas are made emphatic only
through association and observation. How the vague sense of Roman
dominion is deepened as we trace the outline of a camp, the massive
ranges of a theatre, or the mouldy effigy on a coin, in some region
far distant from the Imperial centre,--as at Nismes or Chester! How
complete becomes the idea of mediaeval life, contemplated from the
ramparts of a castle, in the "dim, religious light" of an old monastic
chapel, or amid the obsolete trappings and weapons of an armory! What
a distinct and memorable revelation of ancient Greece is the Venus or
Apollo, a Parthenon frieze or a fateful drama! The best political essays
on the French Revolution are based on the economical and social facts
recorded in the Travels of Arthur Young. The equivocal action of
Massena, when he commanded Paris against the Allies, is explained in
the recently published letter of Joseph Bonaparte, wherein we learn his
deficiency of muskets. Humboldt accounted for the defects of Prescott's
"Conquest of Mexico" by the fact that the historian had never visited
that country. Napoleon gave a key to the misfortunes of Italy, when he
said, "It is a peninsula too long for its breadth." And the significance
of the Seven Years' War is expressed in a single phrase by Milton's last
biographer, when he defines it as the "consummation politically and the
attenuation spiritually of the movement begun in Europe by the Lutheran
Reformation."

Indeed, so intimate is the connection between private life and public
events, between political and social phenomena, that the historical mind
finds material in all literature, and the very attempt to keep to a high
strain and to bend facts to theory limits the authenticity of professed
annalists. What Macaulay says of an eminent party-leader is modified to
those who have studied the character through his memoirs or writings.
The charming narrative of Robertson, the characterization of Hume, the
stately periods of Gibbon, fail to win implicit confidence, when the
scene, the age, or the personages described are known to the reader
through original authorities. When Bancroft declares a treaty of
Colonial governors against Indian ravages the germ of democratic
government, we know that it is his attachment to a theory, and not the
actual circumstances, which leads to such an inference; for the very
authority he cites merely indicates a defensive alliance among rulers,
not a coalition of the ruled. And so when to an account of the Battle
of Lexington he appends a rhetorical argument connecting that event, so
meagre and simple in itself and so wonderful in its consequences, with
the progress of truth and humanity in political science and reformed
religion, we feel that the reasoning is forced and irrelevant,--more an
experiment in fine writing than an evolution of absolute truth.

Thus continually is the independent reader of history taught
eclecticism: he makes allowance for the want of careful research in this
writer, for the love of effect in that,--for the skepticism of one,
and the credulity of another,--for enthusiasm here, and fastidiousness
there,--and especially for the greater or less attachment to certain
opinions, and the absence or presence of strong convictions and genuine
sympathies. Hence, to read history aright, we must read human nature as
well; we must bring the light of philosophy and of faith, the calmness
of judgment and the insight of love, to the record; collateral
revelations drawn from our own experience, modified acceptance of both
statement and inference, superiority to the blandishments of style,
are as needful for the right interpretation of a chronicle as of a
scientific problem. Thus history is perpetually rewritten; fresh
knowledge opens new vistas in the past as well as the future; the
discovery of to-day may rectify, in important respects, the statement
which has been unchallenged for centuries; one new truth leavens a
thousand old formulas; and nothing is more gradual than the elucidation
of historical events and characters. Even our own brief annals suggest
how large must be the historian's faith in time: only within a year or
two has it been possible to demonstrate the justice of Washington's
estimate of Lee, and how completely the sagacious provision of Schuyler
secured the capture of Burgoyne. Since the American Revolution, one of
these men has been as much overrated as the other has failed of
just appreciation--because the documentary wisdom requisite for an
enlightened judgment has not until now been patent.[C]

[Footnote C: See Lossing's _Life and Correspondence of General
Schuyler_, and Professor Moore's paper on Charles Lee.]

With the imposing array of professed histories and historians in view,
it is curious to revert to the actual sources of our own historic
ideas,--those which are definite and pervasive. The vast number of
intelligent readers, who have made no special study of this kind
of literature, probably derive their most distinct and attractive
impressions of the past from poetry, travel, and the choicest works of
the novelist; local association and imaginative sympathy, rather than
formal chronicles, have enlightened and inspired them in regard to
Antiquity and the great events and characters of modern Europe. This
fact alone suggests how inadequate for popular effect have been the
average labors of historians; and so fixed is the opinion among scholars
that it is impossible for the annalist to be profound and interesting,
authentic and animated, at the same time, that a large class of the
learned repudiate as spurious the renown of Macaulay,--although his
research and his minuteness cannot be questioned, and only in a few
instances has his accuracy been successfully impugned. They distrust him
chiefly because he is agreeable, doubt his correctness for the reason
that his style fascinates, and deem admiration for him inconsistent with
their own self-respect, because he is such a favorite as no historian
ever was before, and his account of a parliament, a coinage, or a feud
as winsome as a portraiture of a woman. In one of his critical essays,
Macaulay himself gives a partial explanation of this protest of the
minority in his own case. "People," he remarks, "are very loath to admit
that the same man can unite very different kinds of excellence. It is
soothing to envy to believe that what is splendid cannot be solid and
what is clear cannot be profound." And it has been most justly said of
his own method of writing history, "He must make _everything_ clear and
bright, and bring it into the range of his analysis; his exaggeration
chiefly applies to individual characters, not to general facts"; and the
reason given for the decided preference manifested for his vivid record
is not less true than philosophical,--"We learn so much from him
_enjoyably_." It is precisely the lack of this pleasurable trait which
makes the greater part of the annals of the past a dead letter to the
world, and wins to romance, ballad, epic, fiction, relic, and poetry the
keen attention which facts coldly "set in a note-book" never enlisted.
How many of us unconsciously have adopted the portraits of the early
English kings as Shakspeare drew them! To what a host of living souls is
the history of Scotland what the author of "Waverley" makes it! Charles
I. haunts the fancy, not as drawn by Hume, but as painted by Vandyck.
The institutions of the Middle Ages are realized to every reflective
tourist through the architecture of Florence more than by the municipal
details of Hallam. Pyramids, obelisks, mummies have brought home
Egyptian civilization; the "old masters," that of Europe in the
fifteenth century; the ruins of the Colosseum, Roman art and barbarism,
as they never were by Livy or Gibbon. Lady Russell's letters tell us of
the Civil War in England,--Saint Mark's, at Venice, of Byzantine taste
and Oriental commerce,--the Escurial and the Alhambra, Versailles, a
castle on the Rhine, and a "modest mansion on the banks of the Potomac,"
of their respective eras and their characteristics, social, political,
religious,--more than the most elaborate register, muster-roll, or
judicial calendar. For around and within these memorials lingers the
life of Humanity; they speak to the eye as well as to memory,--to the
heart as well as the intelligence; they draw us by human associations
to the otherwise but technical statement; they lure us to repeople
solitudes and reanimate shadows; and having become intimate with the
scenes, the effigies, the monuments of the Past, we have, as it were, a
vantage-ground of actual experience an impulse from personal observation
and, perhaps, a sympathy born of local inspiration, whereby the phantoms
of departed ages are once more clothed with flesh, and their sorrows and
triumphs are renewed in the soul of enlightened contemplation.

* * * * *


MY NEIGHBOR, THE PROPHET.


The point of commencement for a story is altogether arbitrary. Some
writers stick to Nature and go back to the Creation; others take a few
dozen of the grandfatherly old centuries for granted; others seize Time
by the forelock and bounce into the middle of a narrative; but, as I
said before, the beginning is a mere matter of taste and convenience.
I choose to open my tale with the day on which I took possession of my
newly purchased country-house.

It was a pretty little cottage, wooden, old-fashioned, a story and a
half high, with a long veranda, a shady door-yard, and a sunny garden. I
bought it as it was, furniture included, of a gentleman who was about
to remove southward on account of his wife's health, or, to speak
more exactly, on account of her want of it. I laugh here to think
how surprised you will be when you learn that these matters have no
connection with my story. All the important events which I propose
to relate might have happened had this gentleman never sold nor I
purchased; and, as a proof of it, I can adduce the fact that they
actually did occur some years before we enjoyed the honor of each
other's acquaintance. But I could not resist the temptation of the
episode. I am as delighted at getting into my first house as was my
little son when he poked his chubby legs into his first trousers.

"Who is my nearest neighbor?" I asked of the former proprietor, when he
made his parting call.

"What, the occupant of the new house just below you? I can tell you very
little of him. I haven't made his acquaintance, and don't know his name.
We call him the Mormon."

"Mercy on us! You don't mean to hint at anything in the way of polygamy,
I hope. He doesn't keep an omnibus with seats for twenty, does he?"

"No, not so bad as that. In fact, I don't know much about him. I thought
you were aware of his--his style of living," stammered my friend. "Oh,
I dare say he is respectable enough. But then we noticed three or four
women about the house, and only one man; and so we clapped the title of
Mormon on him. Nicknaming is funny work, you know,--a short and easy way
to be witty. I believe, however, that he does pretend to be a prophet."

"The Pilgrim Fathers protect us! Why, he may attempt to proselytize us
by force. He may declare a religious war against us. It would be no
joke, if he should invade us with the sword in one hand, and the Koran,
or whatever he may call his revelation, in the other."

"Oh, don't be alarmed. He is quite harmless, and even unobtrusive. A
sad-faced, pale, feeble-looking, white-bearded old man. He won't attack
you, or probably even speak to you. I will tell you all I know of
him. The house was built under his direction about six months ago.
I understand that the women own it, and that they are not relatives
according to the flesh, but simply sisters in faith. They have some
queer sort of religion which I am shamefully ignorant of. At all events,
they believe this old gentleman to be a prophet, and consider it a duty
or a pleasure to support him. That is the extent of my knowledge. I hope
it doesn't disgust you with your neighborhood?"

"By no means. May you find as pleasant a one, wherever you settle!"

"Thank you. Well, it is nearly train-time, and I suppose I must leave
you and my old place. I wish you every happiness in it."

And so the old proprietor sighingly departed, leaving the new one
smiling on the doorstep. I was just thinking how nicely the world is
arranged, so that one man's trouble may turn out another man's blessing,
(the illness in this gentleman's family, for instance, being the cause
of my getting a neat country-house cheap,) when my attention was
arrested by the appearance of a thin, feeble-looking, white-bearded old
man, who passed down the street with head bent and hands joined behind
him. I stared at him till he got by; then I ran down to the gate and
looked after him earnestly; and at last I darted forward, hatless, in
eager pursuit. He heard my approaching steps, and put his snowy beard
against his right shoulder in the act of taking a glance rearward. I now
recognized the profile positively, and began conversation.

"Is it possible? My dear Doctor Potter, how are you? Don't you know me?
Your old friend Elderkin."

"Sir? Elderkin? Oh!--ah!--yes! How do you do, Mr. Elderkin?" he
stammered, seeming very awkward, and hardly responding at all to my
vigorous hand-shaking.

"I am delighted to see you again," I continued. "I have had no news of
you these five years. Do you live in this neighborhood?"

"I--I reside in the next house, Sir," he replied, not looking me in the
face, but glancing around uneasily, as if he wanted to run away.

"What! are you the prophet?" I blurted out before I could stop myself.

"I am, Mr. Elderkin," he said, blushing until I thought his white hair
would turn crimson.

We stared at each other in silence for ten seconds, each wishing himself
or his interlocutor at the antipodes.

"I congratulate you on your gift," I remarked, as soon as I could speak.
"I will see you again soon, and have a talk on the subject. We have
discussed similar matters before. Good day, Doctor."

"Good day, Mr. Elderkin," he replied, drawing himself up with a poor
pretence at self-respect.

He was greatly changed. Heterodoxy had not been so fattening to him as
Orthodoxy. When I knew him, six years before, as pastor of a flourishing
church, Doctor of Divinity, and staunch Calvinist, he had a plump and
rosy face, a portly form, and vigorous carriage. He was a great favorite
with the ladies, as clergymen are apt to be, and consequently never
lacked for delicate and appetizing sustenance. He was esteemed,
self-respectful, and happy; and all these things tend to good health and
good looks. I propose to make myself famous as the Gibbon of the decline
and fall of this reverend gentleman, once so honorably established on
the everlasting hills of Orthodoxy, and now so overthrown and trampled
under foot by the Alaric of Spiritualism. I do not expect, indeed, that
anybody will take warning by my friend's sad history; nor do I insist
that people in general would find it advantageous to learn much wisdom
from the experience of others; for it is very clear, that, if we
attempted only what our neighbors or our fathers had succeeded in doing,
we should kill all chance of variety or improvement. It would be a
stupidly wise world; there would be no sins, and, very possibly, no
virtues; instead of "Everything happens," it would be "Nothing happens."
Believing and hoping, therefore, that Dr. Potter's calamities will not
be the smallest check upon any person who shall feel disposed to follow
in his footsteps, I present the story to the public, not at all as a
lesson, but merely as an item of curious information.

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