A Commonplace Book of Thoughts, Memories, and Fancies Part 6

The brow stamped "with the hieroglyphics of an eternal sorrow," is a strong and beautiful expression of Bishop Taylor's.

He says truly: "It is seldom that G.o.d sends such calamities upon men as men bring upon themselves and suffer willingly." And again: "What will not tender women suffer to hide their shame!" What indeed! And again: "Nothing is intolerable that is necessary." And again: "Nothing is to be esteemed evil which G.o.d and nature have fixed with eternal sanctions."

There is not one of these ethical sentences which might not be treated as a text and expounded, opening into as many "branches" of consideration as ever did a Presbyterian sermon. Yet several involve a fallacy, as it seems to me;-others a deeper, wider, and more awful signification than Taylor himself seems to have contemplated when he uttered them.

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52.

The same reasons which rendered Goethe's "Werther" so popular, so pa.s.sionately admired at the time it appeared-just after the seven years'

war,-helped to render Lord Byron so popular in his time. It was not the individuality of "Werther," nor the individuality of "Childe Harold"

which produced the effect of making them, for a time, a pervading power,-a _part_ of the life of their contemporaries. It was because in both cases a chord was struck which was ready to vibrate. A phase of feeling preexistent, palpitating at the heart of society, which had never found expression in any poetic form since the days of Dante, was made visible and audible as if by an electric force; words and forms were given to a diffused sentiment of pain and resistance, caused by a long period of war, of political and social commotion, and of unhealthy moral excitement. "Werther" and "Childe Harold" will never perish; because, though they have ceased to be the echo of a wide despair, there will always be, unhappily, individual minds and hearts to respond to the individuality.

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Lord Byron has sometimes, to use his own expression, "curdled" a whole world of meaning into the compa.s.s of one line:-

"The starry Galileo and his woes."

"The blind old man of Chio's rocky isle."

Here every word, almost every syllable, paints an idea. Such lines are _picturesque_. And I remember another, from Thomson, I think:-

"Placed far amid the melancholy main."

In general, where words are used in description, the objects and ideas flow with the words in succession. But in each of these lines the mind takes in a wide horizon, comprising a mult.i.tude of objects at once, as the eye takes in a picture, with scene, and action, and figures, fore-ground and background, all at once. That is the reason I call such lines _picturesque_.

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53.

I have a great admiration for power, a great terror of weakness-especially in my own s.e.x,-yet feel that my love is for those who overcome the mental and moral suffering and temptation, through excess of tenderness rather than through excess of strength; for those whose refinement and softness of nature mingling with high intellectual power and the capacity for strong pa.s.sion, present to me a problem to solve, which, when solved, I take to my heart. The question is not, which of the two diversities of character be the highest and best, but which is most sympathetic with my own.

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54.

C-- told me, that some time ago, when poor Bethune the Scotch poet first became known, and was in great hards.h.i.+p, C-- himself had collected a little sum (about 30_l._), and sent it to him through his publishers.

Bethune wrote back to refuse it absolutely, and to say that, while he had head and hands, he would not accept _charity_. C-- wrote to him in answer, still anonymously, arguing against the principle, as founded in false pride, &c. Now poor Bethune is dead, and the money is found untouched,-left with a friend to be returned to the donors!

This sort of disgust and terror, which all finely const.i.tuted minds feel with regard to pecuniary obligation,-my own utter repugnance to it, even from the hands of those I most love,-makes one sad to think of. It gives one such a miserable impression of our social humanity!

Goethe makes the same remark in the "Wilhelm Meister:-"Es ist sonderbar welch ein wunderliches Bedenken man sich macht, Geld von Freunden und Gonnern anzunehmen, von denen man jede andere Gabe mit Dank und Freude empfangen wurde."

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55.

"In the celestial hierarchy, according to Dionysius Areopageta, the angels of Love hold the first place, the angels of Light the second, and the Thrones and Dominations the third. Among terrestrials, the Intellects, which act through the imagination upon the heart of man-_i.

e._ poets and artists-may be accounted first in order; the merely scientific intellects the second; and the merely ruling intellects-those which apply themselves to the government of mankind, without the aid of either science or imagination-will not be disparaged if they are placed last."

All government, all exercise of power-no matter in what form-which is not based in love and directed by knowledge, is a tyranny. It is not of G.o.d, and shall not stand.

"A time will come when the operations of charity will no longer be carried on by machinery, relentless, ponderous, indiscriminate, but by human creatures, watchful, tearful, considerate, and wise."-_Westminster Review._

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56.

"Those writers who never go further into a subject than is compatible with making what they say indisputably clear to man, woman, and child, may be the lights of _this_ age, but they will not be the lights of _another_."

"It is not always necessary that truth should take a bodily form,-a material palpable form. It is sometimes better that it should dwell around us spiritually, creating harmony,-sounding through the air like the solemn sweet tone of a bell."

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57.

Women are inclined to fall in love with priests and physicians, because of the help and comfort they derive from both in perilous moral and physical maladies. They believe in the presence of real pity, real sympathy, where the tone and look of each have become merely habitual and conventional,-I may say professional. On the other hand, women are inclined to fall in love with criminal and miserable men out of the pity which in our s.e.x is akin to love, and out of the power of bestowing comfort or love. "Car les femmes out un instinct celeste pour le malheur." So, in the first instance, they love from grat.i.tude or faith; in the last, from compa.s.sion or hope.

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58.

"Men of all countries," says Sir James Mackintosh, "appear to be more alike in their best qualities than the pride of civilisation would be willing to allow."

And in their _worst_. The distinction between savage and civilised humanity lies not in the _qualities_, but the _habits_.

59.

Coleridge notices "the increase in modern times of vicious a.s.sociations with things in themselves indifferent," as a sign of unhealthiness in taste, in feeling, in conscience.

The truth of this remark is particularly ill.u.s.trated in the French literature of the last century.

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60.

"And yet the compensations of calamity are made apparent to the understanding also after long intervals of time. A fever, a mutilation, a cruel disappointment, a loss of wealth, a loss of friends, seems at the moment unpaid loss and unpayable, but the sure years reveal the deep remedial force that underlies all facts. The death of a dear friend, wife, brother, lover, which seemed nothing but privation, somewhat later a.s.sumes the aspect of a guide or genius; for it commonly operates a revolution in our way of life, terminates an epoch of infancy or youth which was waiting to be closed, breaks up a wonted occupation, or a household, or a style of living, and allows the formation of new influences that prove of the first importance during the next years."-_Emerson._