New-made graves may be likened to flower-beds in
which the gardener puts his rarest and most beautiful plants; but
alas, ill weeds sometimes take root there also.
which the gardener puts his rarest and most beautiful plants; but
alas, ill weeds sometimes take root there also.
Warner - World's Best Literature - v21 - Rab to Rus
In everything we shall seek after fine distinctions,-
subtlety instead of dogmatism, the relative in place of the abso-
lute. There is the future, as I anticipate it, if the future is to
belong to progress. Shall we attain a clearer view of the destiny
of man and his relations with the infinite? Shall we know more
surely the law of the origin of beings, the nature of conscience,
what is life and personality? Without lapsing into credulity, and
still persisting in its path of positive philosophy, will the world
recover its joy, its ardor, its hope, its deeper thoughts? Will
existence become again worth the possessing, and will the man
who believes in duty find in duty his reward? This science to
which we consecrate our life,- will it render back to us what
we sacrifice to it? I know not. But this is certain, that in seek-
ing out truth by scientific methods we shall have done our duty.
If truth be cheerless, we shall at least have the consolation of
## p. 12190 (#232) ##########################################
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ERNEST RENAN
having honestly discovered it: we may say that we deserved to
find it more consoling,- still, we will bear this witness in our
hearts, that we have been thoroughly sincere.
To tell the truth, I cannot dwell on such thoughts. History
demonstrates that there is in human nature a transcendent in-
stinct that urges it towards a nobler aim. The development of
man is inexplicable on the hypothesis that man is only a being
with an already finished destiny, virtue only a refined egotism,
religion but a chimera. Let us work on, then, gentlemen. What-
ever the author of Ecclesiastes may say in a moment of discour-
agement, science is not "the meanest occupation that God has
given to the sons of men. " It is the best. If all be vanity,
he who has consecrated his life to truth will be no more duped
than others. If all the good and true be real,-and we are sure
that they are, their seeker and lover will have unquestionably
breathed the finest spirit.
We shall not meet again, gentlemen.
At my next lecture, I
shall plunge into Hebraic philology, where the greater number of
you will not follow me. But I pray those who are young, and to
whom I may be allowed to offer a word of counsel, to favor me
with their attention. The impulse which is in you, and which
has shown itself more than once during this lecture in a manner
so honorable to me, is praiseworthy in its principle and of good
promise; but do not let it degenerate into frivolous activity.
Direct your attention to solid studies; believe that the liberal
thing par excellence is cultivation of mind, nobleness of heart,
independence of judgment. Prepare for our country generations
ripe for all that makes the glory and the ornament of life. Be-
ware of rash enthusiasms; and remember that liberty is won
only by earnestness, respect for ourselves and others, devotion to
the commonweal, and to the special work that each of us in this
world is called upon to establish or to continue.
-
## p. 12191 (#233) ##########################################
ERNEST RENAN
12191
THE PERSISTENCE OF THE CELTIC RACE
From La Poésie des Races Celtiques'
-
IT
F THE excellence of races were to be decided by their purity of
blood and inviolability of character, it must be confessed that
none would be able to vie with the nobility of the still exist-
ing remnants of the Celtic race. No human family has ever
lived more isolated from the world, and remained more pure from
all foreign mixture. Driven by conquests to half-forgotten islands
and peninsulas, it has raised an insurmountable barrier to all
outside influence: it has depended upon itself for everything, and
has drawn its life from its own sources. Hence this dominant
individuality, this hate of the foreign element, which even to our
day has been the distinguishing trait of the Celtic races. The
civilization of Rome hardly touched them, and left but little mark
upon them.
The Germanic invasion drove them back but did
not absorb them. At the present moment they are resisting
another and even more dangerous invasion, that of modern civ
ilization, so destructive to local distinctions and national types.
Ireland especially (and this may be the secret of her irremedia-
ble weakness) is the only European country where the native
can show the title of his descent, and can point out with certi-
tude, even as far back as the prehistoric shadows, the race from
which he sprang.
It is in this retired life, in this defiance of all outside influ-
ence, that we must seek the explanation of the principal traits of
the Celtic racial character. It has all the faults and all the
qualities of the solitary man: at once proud and timid, strong in
feeling and feeble in action; at home free and open, away from
home awkward and shy. It distrusts the stranger because it sees
in him a being more subtle than itself, seeking to impose on its
simplicity. Indifferent to the admiration of others, it asks only
one thing, that it be left alone. It is essentially a domestic
race, made for family life and the joys of home.
It is easily seen that natures so strongly concentrated would
not be of a kind to present one of those brilliant developments.
that impress the world with the sudden ascendency of a people;
and that is undoubtedly why the Cymric race has always played
a subordinate part. Lacking in the power to reach out, strange
## p. 12192 (#234) ##########################################
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ERNEST RENAN
to all instincts of aggression and conquest, not caring to have its
thought take the lead in the world outside, it has known only
how to retreat into the least essential space; and then, driven
into this last corner, meet its enemies with invincible resistance.
Even its fidelity has been merely a wasted devotion. Hard to
conquer, and always behind time, it is faithful to its conquerors
when the latter have ceased being faithful to themselves.
It was
the last to surrender its religious independence to Rome, and it
has become the greatest stronghold of Catholicism; it was the
last in France to surrender its political independence to the king,
it has given the world the last royalists.
Thus the Celtic race has spent itself resisting the age and
defending desperate causes. It would seem that at no time has
it had any gift for political life: the sense of family has stifled
all attempts at a larger organization. It would seem also that
the peoples of which it is composed are not in themselves open
to progress.
Life is to them a fixed condition which it is not
in the power of man to change. Gifted with but little initiative
power, too apt to look upon themselves as minors under tutelage,
they are inclined to believe in fatality and to resign themselves.
to it. To see it so submissive to God, one would hardly believe
this race to be the daughter of Japhet.
Hence the reason of its sadness. Take the songs of its bard
of the sixteenth century: the defeats they bewail are more than
the victories they glorify. Its history is but one long complaint;
it till remembers its exile, its flights over the waters.
If at
times it seems to awaken into glad life, a tear soon sparkles
behind its smile; it does not know that strange forgetfulness of
human life and its vicissitudes which we call gayety.
Its songs
of joy end in elegies: nothing approaches the delightful sadness
of its national melodies; one is tempted to call them dews from
heaven, which, falling on the soul drop by drop, sink into it like
memories of another world. One never feels more completely
the secret delights of consciousness, those poetic memories
where all the sensations of life meet at once, so vague, so deep,
so penetrating, that were they to last but a moment longer one
would die thereof, without being able to say whether it were of
bitter sorrow or of tenderness.
――――
The infinite delicacy of sentiment which characterizes the
Celtic race is intimately connected with its necessity of concen-
tration. Undemonstrative natures are nearly always those that
## p. 12193 (#235) ##########################################
ERNEST RENAN
12193
feel most intensely; the deeper the sentiment, the less can it ex-
press itself. Hence this charming modesty, this something, as it
were, veiled, serious, exquisite,― equally far from the rhetoric of
sentiment, too familiar in the Latin races, and from the conscious
naïveté of Germany,- which expresses itself in so admirable a
way in the songs published by M. de la Villemarqué. The ap-
parent reserve of the Celtic peoples, so often taken for coldness,
comes from this timidity of soul which makes them think that a
feeling loses half its worth when it is expressed, and that the
heart must have no audience beside itself.
If it were permissible to give nations a sex as we do indi-
viduals, we should unhesitatingly say that the Celtic race, espe-
cially taken in its Cymric and Breton branches, is an essentially
feminine race. No human family has, I believe, brought so much
mystery into love.
No other has had a more delicate conception
of the ideal of woman, and has been more dominated thereby.
It is a sort of intoxication, a madness, a dizziness. Read the
strange Mabinogion of Pérédur, or its French imitation Parceval
the Gaul: these pages are, so to speak, soft with feminine senti-
ment. Woman appears therein like a sort of vague vision, some-
thing between man and the supernatural world. I know of no
literature which offers anything analogous. Compare Genevra
and Isolde with the Scandinavian furies Gudrun and Krimhilde,
and you will admit that woman, as chivalry has conceived her,-
this ideal of tenderness and beauty set up as the supreme end of
life, is neither a classic, nor a Christian, nor a Germanic crea-
tion, but truly Celtic.
The power of imagination is almost always in proportion to
the concentration of feeling and to the lack of events in outward
life. The very limitation of the imagination of Greece and Italy
comes from the easy self-expression of the peoples of the South,
with whom the soul, spent upon the outside world, has very little
self-reflection. Compared with classic imagination, Celtic imagina-
tion is really the infinite compared to the finite. In the beautiful
Mabinogion of The Dream' of Maxen Wledig, the emperor
Maxime sees in his dream a young girl so beautiful that on
awakening he declares that he cannot live without her. For
several years his ambassadors travel through the world to find
her for him. She is finally discovered in Bretagne. This is what
the Celtic race did: it grew tired of taking its dreams for reali-
ties, and running after beautiful visions. The essential element
XXI-763
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of Celtic poetic life is adventure,- that is to say, the pursuit of
the unknown, a never-ending hunt after the always fleeing object
af desire. This is what St. Brandan dreamed on the other side
of the waters; this is what Pérédur sought in his mystic chiv-
alry; this is what the knight Owenn expected of his subterranean
peregrinations. This race wants the infinite; it is thirsting for
it, it seeks it at all hazards, beyond the grave, beyond hell. The
essential fault of the Breton people- the leaning toward drink, a
fault which according to the traditions of the sixteenth century
was the cause of its disasters. comes from this invincible need
of illusion. Do not say that it is an appetite for gross pleasures,
for, aside from this, there never was a people more sober and
free from sensuality; no, the Bretons sought in the hydromel
what Owenn, St. Brandan, and Pérédur, sought in their way,—
the vision of the invisible world. Even to-day, in Ireland,
drunkenness is part of all patronal feasts,- that is to say, of the
feasts which have best preserved their national and popular
character.
-
Hence this profound sentiment of the future, and the eternal
destiny of its race, which has always upheld the Cymry, and
makes it appear young still beside its aged conquerors. Hence
this dogma of the resurrection of heroes, which seems to have
been one of those most difficult for Christianity to uproot. Hence
this Celtic belief in the coming of a Messiah (messianisme'), this
belief in a future which will restore the Cymry and deliver it
from its oppressors, like the mysterious Leminok which Merlin.
has promised them, the Lez-Breiz of the Armoricans, the Arthur
of the Gauls. The hand which raises itself out of the lake when
Arthur's sword falls in, which seizes it and brandishes it three
times, is the hope of the Celtic races. Little peoples gifted with
imagination do usually thus take their revenge over those who
conquer them. Feeling strong within and feeble without, they
protest, they grow inspired: and such a struggle, strengthening
their forces tenfold, makes them capable of miracles. Almost
all great appeals to the supernatural are due to people hoping
against all hope. Who can say what has in our days been fer-
menting in the heart of that most obstinate and most helpless of
nations, Poland? Israel humiliated dreamt of the spiritual con-
quest of the world, and succeeded.
Translated for A Library of the World's Best Literature' by Olga Flinch.
## p. 12195 (#237) ##########################################
12195
FRITZ REUTER
(1810-1874)
MONG the novelists of the German realistic school, Fritz Reuter
occupies the first place. No one of them has come nearer
than he to the heart of life, nor understood with greater
sympathy the lives of the people, in whose apparently monotonous
and commonplace conditions he found endless dramatic possibilities
of humor and pathos. He is the novelist of the proletariat; his works
are steeped in the clear sunshine of the working-day world. With
the romantic moonshine of an artificial nobility he had nothing to do.
His life was favorable for the fostering
of his peculiar genius. He was born on
the 7th of November, 1810, at Stavenhagen
in Mecklenburg-Schwerin: his boyhood was
passed in this sleepy, out-of-the-way Ger-
man town, among such types of people as
he has immortalized in his novels. His
father was burgomaster and sheriff of the
place, and was also a farmer; he purposed
however that his son should study law.
Until his fourteenth year the boy was edu-
cated at home with private tutors; then
he entered the gymnasium at Friedland in
Mecklenburg-Strelitz, and afterwards passed
through the higher classes of the gymna-
sium at Parchim. In 1831 he attended lectures on jurisprudence at
the University of Rostock, going the following year to the Univer-
sity of Jena, where he became a member of the Burschenschaft Ger-
mania. The government, alarmed by the revolutionary agitation of
1830, was on the lookout for undue exhibitions of patriotism among
the student body. The riot at Frankfort in 1833 served as a pretext
for making arrests. Reuter was seized, on no other evidence of guilt
than that of wearing the German colors, was tried and condemned
to death for high treason. This sentence was commuted by King
Frederick William III. to thirty years' imprisonment. Reuter was
taken from one Prussian fortress to another; in 1838, through the
intervention of the Grand-Duke of Mecklenburg, he was delivered over
to the authorities of his native State. A two-years' imprisonment in
FRITZ REUTER
## p. 12196 (#238) ##########################################
12196
FRITZ REUTER
the fortress of Dömitz followed. In 1840, Frederick William IV.
having proclaimed an amnesty after his accession, Reuter was set
free. Severe as his experiences had been, they had ripened him and
prepared him for his life's work, though at that time he was scarcely
aware of his gifts. He went to Heidelberg to resume his legal stud-
ies; but the death of his father compelled his return to Stavenhagen,
where he undertook the charge of the farm. During this period he
gained that practical knowledge of agriculture and of the farmer's
life which he has interwoven in his masterpiece, 'My Apprenticeship
on the Farm. ' In 1850 he was obliged, however, to abandon farming:
removing to Sreptow in Pomerania, he became a private tutor, and
soon afterwards married Luise Kunze, the daughter of a clergyman.
His life at this time was full of drudgery; but he found occasion to
write a number of tales and anecdotes in prose and verse, which were
published in 1853 in a volume with the title Läuschen un Rimels'
(Funny Tales and Nonsense Rhymes). These were written in Platt
Deutsch, the Low German which is so well adapted for the expres-
sion of simple and natural feeling, and for the portrayal of the con-
crete life of the people. Reuter was possessed with the spirit of
homeliness, and he used the hearty dialect with consummate tact to
embody this spirit. The great success of his first book led him to
write and publish another, 'Polterabendgedichte' (Nuptial-Eve Stories).
In 1855 appeared 'De Reis nah Belligen' (An Account of a Journey
to Belgium), a humorous poem relating the adventures of a number
of Mecklenburg peasants, who travel to Belgium for the sake of learn-
ing the secrets of an advanced civilization.
<
In 1856 Reuter removed to Neubrandenburg, devoting himself en-
tirely to literary work. In 1858 he published 'Kein Hüsung,' a poem
of village life; in 1859 Hanne Nüte un de Lüdde Pudel,' considered
his masterpiece in verse; and in 1861 Schurr-Murr,' a collection of
tales. Soon afterwards he began the publication of Olle Kamellen,'
literally Old Camomile-Flowers,' meaning "old tales, old recollec-
tions,"
-a series which was to include his best work. The first,
'Zwei Lustige Geschichte' (Two Pleasant Stories), included 'Wo aus
ik tau 'ne Fru kamm,' a little skit of how he wooed his wife; and
'Ut de Franzosentid' (In the Year '13), a novel of the time of the
uprising of the German people against Napoleon. The scenes are
laid in Stavenhagen, Reuter's native town; and its characters are
drawn from real life. This work has had enormous popularity in
Europe and America. No. 2 of the series, 'Ut Mine Festungstid'
(My Imprisonment), was founded on Reuter's own experience as a
prisoner. Nos. 3, 4, and 5 were embodied in 'Ut Mine Stromtid'
(My Apprenticeship on the Farm); No. 6, the last of the series,
was entitled 'Dörchläuchting. '
## p. 12197 (#239) ##########################################
FRITZ REUTER
12197
Of these novels the greatest is 'Ut Mine Stromtid. ' On it is based
Reuter's claim of being the most eminent realist of his country,
Nothing could be more true to life than this straightforward story of
Mecklenburg farmers, of their quiet simple lives, relieved by homely
fun and homely pathos. The light of Reuter's genius does not serve
as a halo to idealize lowly existence, after the manner of sentimental-
ists: like penetrative daylight it reveals the little details which make
up the picture. He is masterful in his drawing of character. His
men and women are persons whom the reader knows, and loves or
hates: so abundant is their life, so impressive their personality. The
good-hearted comical bailiff Bräsig; the twins Mina and Lina; Parson
Behrens and his bustling, loving little wife; the stripling Fred Trid-
delfitz; the rascal Pomuchelskopp,- are from the world Reuter knew
best. He paints the sunshine and shadow of their lives with unri-
valed delicacy of touch. The humor of Triddelfitz's love-making, the
pathos of the old pastor's death in his quiet home, are consummate
in truthfulness. The strong humanity of the novel places it in the
first rank.
After a journey to the East, Reuter published 'Die Montechi und
Capuleti in Konstantinopel'; but the book shows plainly that the
author was out of his element.
He died in 1874. In 1875 appeared his 'Nachgelassene Schriften'
(Posthumous Works) in two volumes, supplementing the edition of his
writings in thirteen volumes which had been published between 1863
and 1868.
THE OLD PARSON'S DEATH
From 'My Apprenticeship on the Farm›
E
VERY house in the parish had its share of happiness, each
of them after its kind; but one house formed an exception.
to this rule, although it used to have its full share. In
winter round the fireside, and in summer under the great lime-
tree, or in the arbor in the garden, there always used to be a
calm peaceful happiness, in which the child Louisa, as she played
about the old house and grounds, and little Mrs. Behrens, who
ruled all things duster in hand, had had part; and also the good
old clergyman, who had now done with all earthly things for-
Peace had taken leave of the house, and had gone forth
calmly to the place from whence she came; and during that
time of illness, care and sorrow had taken up their abode there,
deepening with the growing weakness of the good old man.
ever.
He
## p. 12198 (#240) ##########################################
12198
FRITZ REUTER
did not lie long in bed, and had no particular illness; so that
Dr. Strump of Rahnstädt could not find amongst all the three
thousand seven hundred and seventy-seven diseases of which he
knew, one that suited the present case. Peace seemed to have
laid her hand on the old man's head in blessing, and to have
said to him: "I am going to leave thee, but only for a short
time. I shall afterwards return to thy Regina. Thou needst
me no more, because thou hast had me in thy heart during all
the long years thou hast fought the good fight of faith. Now
sleep softly: thou must needs be tired. "
And he was tired,- very tired. His wife had laid him on the
sofa under the pictures, that he might look out at the window as
much as he liked; Louisa had covered him comfortably with rugs
and shawls: and then they had both left the room softly, that he
might rest undisturbed. Out of doors the first flakes of snow
were falling slowly, slowly, from the sky; it was as quiet and still
outside as within his heart: and he felt as if the blessing of
Christ were resting upon him. No one saw it, but his Regina
was the first to find it out. He rose, and pushing the large
arm-chair up to the cupboard, opened the door, and sitting down,
began to examine the treasures that he had kept as relics of the
past. Some of them had belonged to his father, and some to his
mother: they were all reminiscences of what he had loved.
This cupboard was the place where he had stowed away
whatever reminded him of all the chief events of his life; and
they had become relics, the sight of which did him good when
he was down-hearted. They were not preserved in crystal vessels
or in embroidered cases, but were simply placed on the shelf,
and kept there to be looked at whenever he wanted to see them.
When he felt low and sad, it did him good to take out these
relics and to live over again in thought the happy days of which
they reminded him; and he never closed the cupboard door
without gaining strength and courage, or without thanking God
silently for his many blessings. There lay the Bible his father
had given him when he was a boy; the beautiful glass vase his
old college friend had sent him; the pocket-book his Regina
had worked for him during their engagement; the shell which
a sailor had sent him in token of his gratitude for having been
shown the way to become a better man; the pieces of paper on
which Louisa, Mina, and Lina had written their Christmas and
New-Year's Day messages of affection, as also some of their
――
## p. 12199 (#241) ##########################################
FRITZ REUTER
12199
earlier bits of handiwork; the withered myrtle wreath his wife
had worn on her wedding day; the large pictorial Bible with the
silver clasps, that Hawermann had given him on his seventieth
birthday, and the silver-mounted meerschaum that Bräsig had
given him on the same occasion; and down below on the lowest
shelf were three pairs of shoes,- the shoes that Louisa, Regina,
and he had worn when they first entered the parsonage.
Old shoes are not beautiful in themselves, but the memories
attached to these made them beautiful in his eyes; so he took
them out of the cupboard, and laid them down by his side, and
then, placing his first Bible on his knee, he opened it at our
Lord's Sermon on the Mount, and began to read. No one saw
him, but that was not necessary; and his Regina knew when it
was all over. He grew very tired; and resting his head in the
corner of the great chair, fell asleep like a little child.
And so they found him when they came back. Mrs. Behrens
seated herself on the arm of his chair, clasped him in her arms,
closed his eyes, and then, resting her head against his, wept
silently. Louisa knelt at his feet, and laying her folded hands
on his knee, looked with tearful eyes at the two quiet faces that
were so dear to her. Then Mrs. Behrens rose, and folding down
the leaf of the Bible, drew it softly out of her husband's hand;
and Louisa also rose, and threw her arms round her foster-
mother's neck. They both wept long and passionately; till at
last, when it was growing dusk, Mrs. Behrens replaced the shoes
in the cupboard, saying as she did so, "I bless the day when we
came to this house together;" and while laying Louisa's little
shoes beside them, she added, "And I bless the day when the
child came to us. >>>
She then closed the cupboard door.
The good old clergyman was buried three days later in the
piece of ground he had long ago sought out for his last resting-
place; and any one standing by the grave which was lighted by
the earliest rays of the morning sun, might easily see into the
parlor in the parsonage-house.
The people who had been at the funeral were all gone home,
and Hawermann had also been obliged to go; but Uncle Bräsig,
who had spent the day at the parsonage, helping his friends in
every possible way, had announced his intention of remaining
for the night. Seeing the two women standing arm-in-arm at
the window, buried in sad thought, he slipped quietly up-stairs to
## p. 12200 (#242) ##########################################
12 200
FRITZ REUTER
"
his bedroom, and going to the window looked sorrowfully down
into the church-yard, where the newly made grave showed dis-
tinctly against the white snow surrounding it. He thought of
the good man who lay there, and who had so often helped him
with kindness and advice; and he swore to himself that he would
be a faithful friend to Mrs. Behrens. Down-stairs the two sad-
hearted women were gazing at the same grave, and silently
vowing to show each other all the love and tenderness that he
who was gone from them had been wont to bestow. Little Mrs.
Behrens thanked God and her husband for the comforter she had
in her adopted daughter, whom she held in her arms, and whose
smooth hair she stroked as she kissed her lovingly. Louisa
prayed that God would bless the lessons she had learned from
her foster-father, and would give her strength to be a good and
faithful daughter to the kind woman who had been as a mother
to her.
New-made graves may be likened to flower-beds in
which the gardener puts his rarest and most beautiful plants; but
alas, ill weeds sometimes take root there also.
THE MILLER AND THE JUSTICE
From In the Year '13'
WAS baptized, and had godfathers-four of them; and if my
godfathers were still alive, and walked through the streets
with me, people would stop and say, "Look, what fine fel-
lows! You won't see many such. " They were indeed godfathers!
And one of them was a head taller than the others, and tow-
ered above them as Saul did above his brethren. This was old
Amtshauptmann Weber. He used to wear a well-brushed blue
coat, yellowish trousers, and well-blacked boots; and his face was
so marked by the small-pox that it looked as if the Devil had
been threshing his peas on it, or as if he had sat down upon
his face on a cane-bottomed chair. On his broad forehead there
stood written, "Not the fear of Man, but the fear of God. " And
he was the right man in the right place.
About eleven o'clock in the morning he might be seen sitting
in an arm-chair in the middle of the room, whilst his wife fast-
ened a napkin under his chin, put the powder on his hair, tied
it behind, and twisted it into a neat pigtail.
## p. 12201 (#243) ##########################################
FRITZ REUTER
12201
When the old gentleman walked up and down under the shade
of the chestnut-trees at noon, his little rogue of a pigtail wagged
merrily, and nodded over the collar of his blue coat, as if it
wanted to say to any one who would listen: "Yes; look, old fel-
low! What do you think of me? I am only the tip of his hair;
and if I wag so comically out here, you may fancy how merry
it must be inside his head. "
When I took him a message from my father, and managed to
give it straight off, he would pat me on the head, and then say:
"Now, away with you, boy. Off like a shot! When you pull
the trigger, the gun mustn't hang fire, but must go off like a
flash of lightning. Run to Ma'm'selle Westphalen, and ask her
for an apple. "
To my father he would say: "Well, friend, what do you
think? Are you not glad that you have a son? Boys are much
better than girls: girls are always fretting and crying. Thank
God, I have a boy too,-my Joe. What say you, eh? "
My father told my mother. "Do you know," said he, "what
the old Amtshauptmann says? boys are better than girls. "
Now, I was in the room at the time, and overheard this; and
of course I said to myself: "My godfather is always right: boys
are better than girls, and every one should have his deserts. "
So I took the large piece of plum-cake for myself, and gave my
sister the small one, and thought not a little of myself, for I
knew now that I was the larger half of the apple. But this was
not to last: the tables were to be turned.
-
One day it was at the time when the rascally French had
just come back from Russia, and everything was in commotion-
some one knocked at the Herr Amtshauptmann's door. « Come
in," cried the old gentleman; and in came old Miller Voss of
Gielow, ducking his head nearly down to the ground by way of
a bow.
"Good afternoon, Herr Amtshauptmann," said he.
"Good morning, miller. "
Now, though the one said "good afternoon," and the other
said "good morning," each was right from his own point of
view: for the miller got up at four o'clock in the morning, and
with him it was afternoon; while with the Amtshauptmann it
was still early in the morning, as he did not rise until eleven.
"What is it, miller? "
"Herr Amtshauptmann, I've come to you about a weighty
I'll tell you what it is: I want to be made a bankrupt. ”
matter.
## p. 12202 (#244) ##########################################
12202
FRITZ REUTER
"What, miller! "
"I want to be made a bankrupt, Herr Amtshauptmann. ”
"Hm-hm," muttered the Amtshauptmann, "that's an ugly
business. " And he paced up and down the room scratching his
head. "How long have you been at the bailiwick of Stemhagen? "
"Three-and-thirty years, come midsummer. "
"Hm-hm," again muttered the Amtshauptmann: "and how
old are you, miller? "
"Come peas-harvest five-and-sixty, or maybe six-and-sixty: for
as to our old Pastor Hammerschmidt, he wasn't much given to
writing, and didn't trouble his head about parish registers; and
the Frau Pastor, who made the entries,-i' faith she had a deal
to do besides,-only attended to them every three years, so that
there might be enough to make it worth while, and then some
fine afternoon she would go through the village and write down
the children's ages-but more according to height and size than
to what they really were; and my mother always said she had
cut a year from me because I was small and weakly. But less
than five-and-sixty I'm not. I am sure of that. "
During this speech the Amtshauptmann had kept walking
up and down the room, listening with only one ear; he now
stood still before the miller, looked straight into his eyes, and
said sharply, "Then, Miller Voss, you're much too old for any-
thing of the kind. "
"How so, Herr? " exclaimed the poor miller, quite cast down.
«< Bankruptcy is a hard matter: at your age you could not
carry it through. "
"Do you think so, Herr? »
"Yes, I do. We are both too old for it. We must leave such
things to younger people. What do you think folks would say if
I were to get myself declared bankrupt? Why, they would say,
of course, the old Amtshauptmann up at the Schloss had gone
quite mad! And," added he, laying his hand gently on the
miller's shoulder, "they would be right, Miller Voss.
you, eh? »
What say
The miller looked down at the toes of his boots, and scratched
his head: "It's true, Herr. "
"Tell me," said the old gentleman, patting him kindly on
the shoulder, "where does the shoe pinch? What is troubling
you? "
"Troubling, say you! Herr Amtshauptmann," shouted the
miller, clapping his hand to the side of his head as if a wasp
## p. 12203 (#245) ##########################################
FRITZ REUTER
12203
had stung him, "troubling! torturing, you mean. Torturing!
That Jew! that cursed Jew! and then the lawsuit, Herr Amts-
hauptmann, the cursed lawsuit! "
"Look you, miller, that's another of your follies,―entangling
yourself at your age in a lawsuit. "
"True enough, Herr: but when I began it I was in my
prime, and thought to be able to fight it out; now I see clear
enough that your lawsuit has a longer breath than an honest
miller. "
"But I think it is coming to an end now. "
"Yes, Herr Amtshauptmann, and then I shall be hard up; for
my affairs are in a bad way. The lawyers have muddled them;
and as for my uncle, old Joe Voss,-why, his son, who will soon
get possession of all, is a downright vagabond, and they say he's
sworn a great oath to oust me from the Borcherts Inn at Mal-
chin. But I have the right on my side, Herr Amtshauptmann,
and how I got into this lawsuit I don't know to this day; for
old Frau Borcherts while she was still alive - she was the aunt
of my mother's sister's daughter- and Joe Voss-he was my
cousin — »
"I know the story," interrupted the Amtshauptmann; "and if
you would follow my advice you would make it up. "
"But I can't, Herr: for Joe Voss's rascally son wouldn't be
satisfied with less than half the money; and if I pay that I shall
be a beggar. No, Herr Amtshauptmann, it may go as it will; but
one thing I'm resolved on: I won't give in though I go to prison
for it. Is a ruffian like that, who struts about with his father's
money in his pocket, spending it right and left, and who doesn't
know what it is to have to keep up a house in these hard times,
-and who's never had his cattle carried off by those cursed
French, nor his horses stolen out of the stable, nor his house
plundered, is such a rascal as that to get the better of me?
By your leave, Herr, I could kick the fellow. "
"Miller Voss, gently, Miller Voss," said the old gentleman:
"the lawsuit will come to an end some time or other. It is going
on. "
«<
Going, Herr Amtshauptmann? It's flying, as the Devil said
when he tied the Bible to his whip and swung it around his
head. "
"True, true, Miller Voss; but at present you're not much
pressed. "
## p. 12204 (#246) ##########################################
12204
FRITZ REUTER
"Pressed? Why, I'm fixed in a vise-in a vise- and say!
That Jew, Herr Amtshauptmann, that thrice-cursed Jew! "
"What Jew is it? " asked the Herr Amtshauptmann; and the
miller twirls his hat between his finger and thumb, looks cau-
tiously round to see that no one is listening, draws closer to the
old gentleman, and laying a finger on his lips, whispers, "Itzig,
Herr Amtshauptmann. "
"Whew! " said the old Herr. "How came you to be mixed
up with that fellow ? »
"Herr Amtshauptmann, how came the ass to have long ears?
Some go to gather wild strawberries, and get stung by nettles:
The sexton of Gägelow thought his wheelbarrow was full of holy
angels, and when he had got to the top of the mountain, and
expected to see them fly up to heaven, the Devil's grandmother
was sitting in the wheelbarrow, and she grinned at him and said,
'Neighbor, we shall meet again! ' In my troubles, when the
enemy had taken everything I had, I borrowed two hundred
thalers from him; and for the last two years I have been obliged
to renew the bill from term to term, and the debt has crept up
to five hundred thalers, and the day after to-morrow I shall be
forced to pay it. "
"But, miller, did you sign? »
"Yes, Herr Amtshauptmann. "
"Then you must pay.
What's written is written. "
But, Herr Amtshauptmann, I thought-
>>>>
"It can't be helped, miller. What's written is written. "
"But the Jew—? ”
"Miller, what's written is written. "
"Then, Herr Amtshauptmann, what shall I do? »
The old gentleman began again to walk backwards and for-
wards in the room, tapping his forehead. At last he stopped,
looked earnestly in the miller's face, and said, "Miller, young
people get out of such difficulties better than old ones: send me
one of your boys. "
The old miller looked once more at the toes of his boots, and
then turning his face away, said in a tone which went straight to
the old Amtshauptmann's heart, "Sir, whom shall I send? My
Joe was ground to death in the mill; and Karl was carried off
to Russia by the French last year, and he's not come back. "
"Miller," replied the old Amtshauptmann, patting him on the
back, "have you then no children at all? "
## p. 12205 (#247) ##########################################
FRITZ REUTER
12205
"I have," said he, wiping a tear from his eye, "a little girl
left. "
“Well, miller, I am not particularly fond of girls myself: they
are always fretting and crying. "
"That's true, sir: they are always fretting and crying. "
"And they can be of no use in a matter like this, miller. "
"But what will happen to me then? "
"The Jew will put in an execution, and will take away every-
thing. "
"Well, Herr Amtshauptmann, the French have done that
twice already, so the Jew may as well try it now. At any rate
he will leave the millstone behind; and you think I'm too old to
be made bankrupt? "
"Yes, miller, I fear so. "
"Well then, good day, Herr Amtshauptmann;" and so saying
he went away.
## p. 12206 (#248) ##########################################
12206
JAMES FORD RHODES
(1848-)
HE historical work of James Ford Rhodes proves, what is
oftentimes denied, that it is possible to record fully a con-
temporaneous period, with impartiality and with due regard
to perspective. In his 'History of the United States from the Com-
promise of 1850' he has not only done this: he has treated one of
the most intricate periods in the history of this country, or of any
country, with a degree of insight into its complex forces not always
attained by historians of remoter events, from which the mists of
partisanship have faded. The treatment of
the Civil War, and of the causes which led
to it, requires delicate but firm handling.
It demands of the historian not alone pen-
etrative scholarship: for its satisfactory ac-
complishment, he must be inspired with
that spirit of Americanism which is in no
sense local or partisan. Mr. Rhodes has
performed his difficult task well, because he
is constantly guided by a luminous patriot-
ism. His historical acumen is synonymous
with the American temper.
JAMES FORD RHODES
His early training fostered those quali-
ties by which he was developed into an
American historian. He was born in Cleve-
land, Ohio, on May 1st, 1848, of parents who had come from New
England. His father, who was engaged in the coal and iron business,
was a man of strong character and of decided opinions, a Democrat,
and a kinsman of Stephen A. Douglas, whose printed speeches in
the Congressional Globe were read eagerly by James Ford Rhodes,
then a boy of ten. It was his good fortune to be constantly under
the guidance of those whose interest in public affairs was deep and
vital. When the Civil War broke out, his teacher in the Cleveland
High School accustomed the scholars to read aloud in turn every
morning the political news of the day, explaining to them that they
were living in times fraught with history. In 1865, Mr. Rhodes,
who had already shown his preference for history and literature over
the classics and mathematics, entered as a special student in the
G
## p. 12207 (#249) ##########################################
JAMES FORD RHODES
12207
University of the City of New York. There he devoted himself to
historical work under Professor Benjamin N. Martin, and to science
under John W. Draper. Under Professor Martin, his enthusiasm for
history was further awakened. His text-books became guide-books;
especially Buckle's great History of Civilization,' which first inspired.
him with the ambition to become himself a historian. The following
year he entered a university in Chicago, where he studied metaphys-
ics and rhetoric, and read largely in the works of Sir William Ham-
ilton, Mill, McCosh, and Herbert Spencer.
In 1867 he went to Paris, with a mind keenly alert, through train-
ing and influence, to political situations and conditions. The spectacle
of the Second Empire reinforced his democracy, and deepened his love
of civil liberty. His studies of the conditions then existing in France
led to his becoming the Paris correspondent of the Chicago Times.
About this time it became evident to him that he was expected to
engage in his father's business, so he put aside for the time his
dream of a literary career; but before returning to the United States
he attended lectures at the Collège de France, going afterwards to
Berlin to study iron metallurgy under Dr. Wedding; he further pre-
pared himself for his new interests by making a tour of the iron and
steel works of Western Germany, and of South Wales, England, and
Scotland. In 1868 he entered into business life. In the following
year he was obliged to travel extensively through the South: he was
thus brought in contact with the fermenting forces of a region strug-
gling out of one stage of its existence into another. His desire to
write history was re-awakened, and he now ordered his life to that
end; accumulating a large historical library, and laboring to render
himself financially independent, that he might have time and oppor-
tunity in the future for the labors of scholarship. After fifteen years
of successful business enterprise, he entered upon his life's work at
the end of the year 1885.
In 1893 the first two volumes of his great work were issued, and
in 1895 the third appeared. It is not yet completed. The period
which it covers extends from the Compromise of 1850 to the election
of President Cleveland. The first volume deals primarily with slay-
ery, its history, its nature, and its effects upon the political and
social development of the United States; there having been, as Mr.
Rhodes states, "no other than a single cause for secession and the
war that ensued,-slavery. " The question of State Rights entered
into it only incidentally, and if slavery had not existed, could never
have precipitated the war; since the unification of the United States
was being constantly effected by the forces of growth. Steam and
electricity, immigration, intermarriage, and the multiplying business
interests, were constantly obliterating sectional differences, and mold-
## p. 12208 (#250) ##########################################
12208
JAMES FORD RHODES
ing the many into the one by a slow, silent, but organic process.
Over the institution of slavery, however, the forces of civilization and
progress had no power. They could not make organic use of it,
because it was a moral evil, and as a moral evil was directly in the
path of honorable national advancement.
Mr. Rhodes's discussion of this subject is in the spirit of the
patriot rather than of the Northerner; at the same time, it is imper-
sonal. He is in the sweep of the historical movement, but no preju-
dice nor blindness disturbs the even course of his record. His book
in a sense has written itself, after the manner of history.
His scholarship is singularly conscientious and painstaking. He
has consulted a vast number of sources, giving special attention to
the utterances of the press; thus recognizing the truth that news-
papers, being obliged to say what the public wishes them to say, are
as fair indices as may be found of the popular temper. He has veri-
fied his statements step by step, with a diligence worthy of Teutonic
scholarship; yet his work is in the best sense popular. It is clear,
straightforward, and inspiriting. The quality of inspiration is most
clearly manifest in his portraits of such men as Daniel Webster and
Henry Clay. His sympathies in every case are not partisan but
human. His history, while of great value to his own generation, will
fulfill perhaps its greatest mission in revealing to later generations
the living spirit of a time farther and farther removed from their
comprehension and their sympathy.
DANIEL WEBSTER
TWO
From History of the United States. ' Copyright 1892, by James Ford Rhodes
wo of the great senatorial triumvirate had spoken; the Senate
and the country had yet to hear the greatest of them all.
Daniel Webster spoke on the compromise resolutions the 7th
of March. In the course of this work, whenever possible, his
precise words have been used, in narration and illustration; for
in intellectual endowment Webster surpassed all of our public.
men. No one understood the fundamental principles of our polity
better; no one approached his wonderful power of expression. It
seemed that the language of the constitutional lawyer who laid
down principles of law that the profound legal mind of Marshall
fixed in an immutable judicial decision, and who at the same
time could make clear abstruse points and carry conviction to the
understanding of men who were untrained in logic or in law,
## p. 12209 (#251) ##########################################
JAMES FORD RHODES
12209
was best fitted to guide us through the maze of constitutional
interpretation in which our history abounds. Indeed, the politi-
cal history of the country for twenty-seven years preceding 1850
might be written as well and fully from the speeches, State
papers, and letters of Webster, as the story of the latter days of
the Roman republic from the like material of Cicero which has
come down to us.
As an orator, Webster has been compared in simplicity to
Demosthenes and in profundity to Burke. This is the highest
praise. The wonderful effect of his oratory is strikingly told by
George Ticknor, who, fresh from a long intercourse with the
most distinguished men in England and on the Continent, went
to hear Webster deliver his Plymouth oration. Ticknor writes:
"I was never so excited by public speaking before in my life.
Three or four times I thought my temples would burst with the
gush of blood;" and though from his youth an intimate friend of
Webster's, he was so impressed that "when I came out I was
almost afraid to come near him. It seemed to me as if he was
like the mount that might not be touched, and that burned with
fire. " Thomas Marshall, of Kentucky, heard the reply to Hayne;
and when Webster came to the peroration he "listened as to
one inspired, and finally thought he could see a halo around the
orator's head like what one sees in the old pictures of saints and
martyrs. "
He was
The diction of Webster was formed by a grateful study of
Shakespeare and Milton: through his communion with these.
masters, his whole soul was thoroughly attuned to the highest
thinking and purest harmonies of our literature. He is one of
the few orators whose speeches are read as literature.
our greatest lawyer, yet in a bad cause he was not a good
advocate, for he had not the flexibility of mind which made the
worse appear the better reason; but in cases apparently hopeless,
with the right on his side, he won imposing triumphs. He was
our greatest Secretary of State. He had, said Sumner, "by the
successful and masterly negotiation of the treaty of Washington,"
earned the title of "Defender of Peace. "
The Graces presided at his birth. His growth developed the
strong physical constitution with which nature had endowed him,
equally with a massive brain.
subtlety instead of dogmatism, the relative in place of the abso-
lute. There is the future, as I anticipate it, if the future is to
belong to progress. Shall we attain a clearer view of the destiny
of man and his relations with the infinite? Shall we know more
surely the law of the origin of beings, the nature of conscience,
what is life and personality? Without lapsing into credulity, and
still persisting in its path of positive philosophy, will the world
recover its joy, its ardor, its hope, its deeper thoughts? Will
existence become again worth the possessing, and will the man
who believes in duty find in duty his reward? This science to
which we consecrate our life,- will it render back to us what
we sacrifice to it? I know not. But this is certain, that in seek-
ing out truth by scientific methods we shall have done our duty.
If truth be cheerless, we shall at least have the consolation of
## p. 12190 (#232) ##########################################
12190
ERNEST RENAN
having honestly discovered it: we may say that we deserved to
find it more consoling,- still, we will bear this witness in our
hearts, that we have been thoroughly sincere.
To tell the truth, I cannot dwell on such thoughts. History
demonstrates that there is in human nature a transcendent in-
stinct that urges it towards a nobler aim. The development of
man is inexplicable on the hypothesis that man is only a being
with an already finished destiny, virtue only a refined egotism,
religion but a chimera. Let us work on, then, gentlemen. What-
ever the author of Ecclesiastes may say in a moment of discour-
agement, science is not "the meanest occupation that God has
given to the sons of men. " It is the best. If all be vanity,
he who has consecrated his life to truth will be no more duped
than others. If all the good and true be real,-and we are sure
that they are, their seeker and lover will have unquestionably
breathed the finest spirit.
We shall not meet again, gentlemen.
At my next lecture, I
shall plunge into Hebraic philology, where the greater number of
you will not follow me. But I pray those who are young, and to
whom I may be allowed to offer a word of counsel, to favor me
with their attention. The impulse which is in you, and which
has shown itself more than once during this lecture in a manner
so honorable to me, is praiseworthy in its principle and of good
promise; but do not let it degenerate into frivolous activity.
Direct your attention to solid studies; believe that the liberal
thing par excellence is cultivation of mind, nobleness of heart,
independence of judgment. Prepare for our country generations
ripe for all that makes the glory and the ornament of life. Be-
ware of rash enthusiasms; and remember that liberty is won
only by earnestness, respect for ourselves and others, devotion to
the commonweal, and to the special work that each of us in this
world is called upon to establish or to continue.
-
## p. 12191 (#233) ##########################################
ERNEST RENAN
12191
THE PERSISTENCE OF THE CELTIC RACE
From La Poésie des Races Celtiques'
-
IT
F THE excellence of races were to be decided by their purity of
blood and inviolability of character, it must be confessed that
none would be able to vie with the nobility of the still exist-
ing remnants of the Celtic race. No human family has ever
lived more isolated from the world, and remained more pure from
all foreign mixture. Driven by conquests to half-forgotten islands
and peninsulas, it has raised an insurmountable barrier to all
outside influence: it has depended upon itself for everything, and
has drawn its life from its own sources. Hence this dominant
individuality, this hate of the foreign element, which even to our
day has been the distinguishing trait of the Celtic races. The
civilization of Rome hardly touched them, and left but little mark
upon them.
The Germanic invasion drove them back but did
not absorb them. At the present moment they are resisting
another and even more dangerous invasion, that of modern civ
ilization, so destructive to local distinctions and national types.
Ireland especially (and this may be the secret of her irremedia-
ble weakness) is the only European country where the native
can show the title of his descent, and can point out with certi-
tude, even as far back as the prehistoric shadows, the race from
which he sprang.
It is in this retired life, in this defiance of all outside influ-
ence, that we must seek the explanation of the principal traits of
the Celtic racial character. It has all the faults and all the
qualities of the solitary man: at once proud and timid, strong in
feeling and feeble in action; at home free and open, away from
home awkward and shy. It distrusts the stranger because it sees
in him a being more subtle than itself, seeking to impose on its
simplicity. Indifferent to the admiration of others, it asks only
one thing, that it be left alone. It is essentially a domestic
race, made for family life and the joys of home.
It is easily seen that natures so strongly concentrated would
not be of a kind to present one of those brilliant developments.
that impress the world with the sudden ascendency of a people;
and that is undoubtedly why the Cymric race has always played
a subordinate part. Lacking in the power to reach out, strange
## p. 12192 (#234) ##########################################
12192
ERNEST RENAN
to all instincts of aggression and conquest, not caring to have its
thought take the lead in the world outside, it has known only
how to retreat into the least essential space; and then, driven
into this last corner, meet its enemies with invincible resistance.
Even its fidelity has been merely a wasted devotion. Hard to
conquer, and always behind time, it is faithful to its conquerors
when the latter have ceased being faithful to themselves.
It was
the last to surrender its religious independence to Rome, and it
has become the greatest stronghold of Catholicism; it was the
last in France to surrender its political independence to the king,
it has given the world the last royalists.
Thus the Celtic race has spent itself resisting the age and
defending desperate causes. It would seem that at no time has
it had any gift for political life: the sense of family has stifled
all attempts at a larger organization. It would seem also that
the peoples of which it is composed are not in themselves open
to progress.
Life is to them a fixed condition which it is not
in the power of man to change. Gifted with but little initiative
power, too apt to look upon themselves as minors under tutelage,
they are inclined to believe in fatality and to resign themselves.
to it. To see it so submissive to God, one would hardly believe
this race to be the daughter of Japhet.
Hence the reason of its sadness. Take the songs of its bard
of the sixteenth century: the defeats they bewail are more than
the victories they glorify. Its history is but one long complaint;
it till remembers its exile, its flights over the waters.
If at
times it seems to awaken into glad life, a tear soon sparkles
behind its smile; it does not know that strange forgetfulness of
human life and its vicissitudes which we call gayety.
Its songs
of joy end in elegies: nothing approaches the delightful sadness
of its national melodies; one is tempted to call them dews from
heaven, which, falling on the soul drop by drop, sink into it like
memories of another world. One never feels more completely
the secret delights of consciousness, those poetic memories
where all the sensations of life meet at once, so vague, so deep,
so penetrating, that were they to last but a moment longer one
would die thereof, without being able to say whether it were of
bitter sorrow or of tenderness.
――――
The infinite delicacy of sentiment which characterizes the
Celtic race is intimately connected with its necessity of concen-
tration. Undemonstrative natures are nearly always those that
## p. 12193 (#235) ##########################################
ERNEST RENAN
12193
feel most intensely; the deeper the sentiment, the less can it ex-
press itself. Hence this charming modesty, this something, as it
were, veiled, serious, exquisite,― equally far from the rhetoric of
sentiment, too familiar in the Latin races, and from the conscious
naïveté of Germany,- which expresses itself in so admirable a
way in the songs published by M. de la Villemarqué. The ap-
parent reserve of the Celtic peoples, so often taken for coldness,
comes from this timidity of soul which makes them think that a
feeling loses half its worth when it is expressed, and that the
heart must have no audience beside itself.
If it were permissible to give nations a sex as we do indi-
viduals, we should unhesitatingly say that the Celtic race, espe-
cially taken in its Cymric and Breton branches, is an essentially
feminine race. No human family has, I believe, brought so much
mystery into love.
No other has had a more delicate conception
of the ideal of woman, and has been more dominated thereby.
It is a sort of intoxication, a madness, a dizziness. Read the
strange Mabinogion of Pérédur, or its French imitation Parceval
the Gaul: these pages are, so to speak, soft with feminine senti-
ment. Woman appears therein like a sort of vague vision, some-
thing between man and the supernatural world. I know of no
literature which offers anything analogous. Compare Genevra
and Isolde with the Scandinavian furies Gudrun and Krimhilde,
and you will admit that woman, as chivalry has conceived her,-
this ideal of tenderness and beauty set up as the supreme end of
life, is neither a classic, nor a Christian, nor a Germanic crea-
tion, but truly Celtic.
The power of imagination is almost always in proportion to
the concentration of feeling and to the lack of events in outward
life. The very limitation of the imagination of Greece and Italy
comes from the easy self-expression of the peoples of the South,
with whom the soul, spent upon the outside world, has very little
self-reflection. Compared with classic imagination, Celtic imagina-
tion is really the infinite compared to the finite. In the beautiful
Mabinogion of The Dream' of Maxen Wledig, the emperor
Maxime sees in his dream a young girl so beautiful that on
awakening he declares that he cannot live without her. For
several years his ambassadors travel through the world to find
her for him. She is finally discovered in Bretagne. This is what
the Celtic race did: it grew tired of taking its dreams for reali-
ties, and running after beautiful visions. The essential element
XXI-763
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▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬
## p. 12194 (#236) ##########################################
12194
ERNEST RENAN
of Celtic poetic life is adventure,- that is to say, the pursuit of
the unknown, a never-ending hunt after the always fleeing object
af desire. This is what St. Brandan dreamed on the other side
of the waters; this is what Pérédur sought in his mystic chiv-
alry; this is what the knight Owenn expected of his subterranean
peregrinations. This race wants the infinite; it is thirsting for
it, it seeks it at all hazards, beyond the grave, beyond hell. The
essential fault of the Breton people- the leaning toward drink, a
fault which according to the traditions of the sixteenth century
was the cause of its disasters. comes from this invincible need
of illusion. Do not say that it is an appetite for gross pleasures,
for, aside from this, there never was a people more sober and
free from sensuality; no, the Bretons sought in the hydromel
what Owenn, St. Brandan, and Pérédur, sought in their way,—
the vision of the invisible world. Even to-day, in Ireland,
drunkenness is part of all patronal feasts,- that is to say, of the
feasts which have best preserved their national and popular
character.
-
Hence this profound sentiment of the future, and the eternal
destiny of its race, which has always upheld the Cymry, and
makes it appear young still beside its aged conquerors. Hence
this dogma of the resurrection of heroes, which seems to have
been one of those most difficult for Christianity to uproot. Hence
this Celtic belief in the coming of a Messiah (messianisme'), this
belief in a future which will restore the Cymry and deliver it
from its oppressors, like the mysterious Leminok which Merlin.
has promised them, the Lez-Breiz of the Armoricans, the Arthur
of the Gauls. The hand which raises itself out of the lake when
Arthur's sword falls in, which seizes it and brandishes it three
times, is the hope of the Celtic races. Little peoples gifted with
imagination do usually thus take their revenge over those who
conquer them. Feeling strong within and feeble without, they
protest, they grow inspired: and such a struggle, strengthening
their forces tenfold, makes them capable of miracles. Almost
all great appeals to the supernatural are due to people hoping
against all hope. Who can say what has in our days been fer-
menting in the heart of that most obstinate and most helpless of
nations, Poland? Israel humiliated dreamt of the spiritual con-
quest of the world, and succeeded.
Translated for A Library of the World's Best Literature' by Olga Flinch.
## p. 12195 (#237) ##########################################
12195
FRITZ REUTER
(1810-1874)
MONG the novelists of the German realistic school, Fritz Reuter
occupies the first place. No one of them has come nearer
than he to the heart of life, nor understood with greater
sympathy the lives of the people, in whose apparently monotonous
and commonplace conditions he found endless dramatic possibilities
of humor and pathos. He is the novelist of the proletariat; his works
are steeped in the clear sunshine of the working-day world. With
the romantic moonshine of an artificial nobility he had nothing to do.
His life was favorable for the fostering
of his peculiar genius. He was born on
the 7th of November, 1810, at Stavenhagen
in Mecklenburg-Schwerin: his boyhood was
passed in this sleepy, out-of-the-way Ger-
man town, among such types of people as
he has immortalized in his novels. His
father was burgomaster and sheriff of the
place, and was also a farmer; he purposed
however that his son should study law.
Until his fourteenth year the boy was edu-
cated at home with private tutors; then
he entered the gymnasium at Friedland in
Mecklenburg-Strelitz, and afterwards passed
through the higher classes of the gymna-
sium at Parchim. In 1831 he attended lectures on jurisprudence at
the University of Rostock, going the following year to the Univer-
sity of Jena, where he became a member of the Burschenschaft Ger-
mania. The government, alarmed by the revolutionary agitation of
1830, was on the lookout for undue exhibitions of patriotism among
the student body. The riot at Frankfort in 1833 served as a pretext
for making arrests. Reuter was seized, on no other evidence of guilt
than that of wearing the German colors, was tried and condemned
to death for high treason. This sentence was commuted by King
Frederick William III. to thirty years' imprisonment. Reuter was
taken from one Prussian fortress to another; in 1838, through the
intervention of the Grand-Duke of Mecklenburg, he was delivered over
to the authorities of his native State. A two-years' imprisonment in
FRITZ REUTER
## p. 12196 (#238) ##########################################
12196
FRITZ REUTER
the fortress of Dömitz followed. In 1840, Frederick William IV.
having proclaimed an amnesty after his accession, Reuter was set
free. Severe as his experiences had been, they had ripened him and
prepared him for his life's work, though at that time he was scarcely
aware of his gifts. He went to Heidelberg to resume his legal stud-
ies; but the death of his father compelled his return to Stavenhagen,
where he undertook the charge of the farm. During this period he
gained that practical knowledge of agriculture and of the farmer's
life which he has interwoven in his masterpiece, 'My Apprenticeship
on the Farm. ' In 1850 he was obliged, however, to abandon farming:
removing to Sreptow in Pomerania, he became a private tutor, and
soon afterwards married Luise Kunze, the daughter of a clergyman.
His life at this time was full of drudgery; but he found occasion to
write a number of tales and anecdotes in prose and verse, which were
published in 1853 in a volume with the title Läuschen un Rimels'
(Funny Tales and Nonsense Rhymes). These were written in Platt
Deutsch, the Low German which is so well adapted for the expres-
sion of simple and natural feeling, and for the portrayal of the con-
crete life of the people. Reuter was possessed with the spirit of
homeliness, and he used the hearty dialect with consummate tact to
embody this spirit. The great success of his first book led him to
write and publish another, 'Polterabendgedichte' (Nuptial-Eve Stories).
In 1855 appeared 'De Reis nah Belligen' (An Account of a Journey
to Belgium), a humorous poem relating the adventures of a number
of Mecklenburg peasants, who travel to Belgium for the sake of learn-
ing the secrets of an advanced civilization.
<
In 1856 Reuter removed to Neubrandenburg, devoting himself en-
tirely to literary work. In 1858 he published 'Kein Hüsung,' a poem
of village life; in 1859 Hanne Nüte un de Lüdde Pudel,' considered
his masterpiece in verse; and in 1861 Schurr-Murr,' a collection of
tales. Soon afterwards he began the publication of Olle Kamellen,'
literally Old Camomile-Flowers,' meaning "old tales, old recollec-
tions,"
-a series which was to include his best work. The first,
'Zwei Lustige Geschichte' (Two Pleasant Stories), included 'Wo aus
ik tau 'ne Fru kamm,' a little skit of how he wooed his wife; and
'Ut de Franzosentid' (In the Year '13), a novel of the time of the
uprising of the German people against Napoleon. The scenes are
laid in Stavenhagen, Reuter's native town; and its characters are
drawn from real life. This work has had enormous popularity in
Europe and America. No. 2 of the series, 'Ut Mine Festungstid'
(My Imprisonment), was founded on Reuter's own experience as a
prisoner. Nos. 3, 4, and 5 were embodied in 'Ut Mine Stromtid'
(My Apprenticeship on the Farm); No. 6, the last of the series,
was entitled 'Dörchläuchting. '
## p. 12197 (#239) ##########################################
FRITZ REUTER
12197
Of these novels the greatest is 'Ut Mine Stromtid. ' On it is based
Reuter's claim of being the most eminent realist of his country,
Nothing could be more true to life than this straightforward story of
Mecklenburg farmers, of their quiet simple lives, relieved by homely
fun and homely pathos. The light of Reuter's genius does not serve
as a halo to idealize lowly existence, after the manner of sentimental-
ists: like penetrative daylight it reveals the little details which make
up the picture. He is masterful in his drawing of character. His
men and women are persons whom the reader knows, and loves or
hates: so abundant is their life, so impressive their personality. The
good-hearted comical bailiff Bräsig; the twins Mina and Lina; Parson
Behrens and his bustling, loving little wife; the stripling Fred Trid-
delfitz; the rascal Pomuchelskopp,- are from the world Reuter knew
best. He paints the sunshine and shadow of their lives with unri-
valed delicacy of touch. The humor of Triddelfitz's love-making, the
pathos of the old pastor's death in his quiet home, are consummate
in truthfulness. The strong humanity of the novel places it in the
first rank.
After a journey to the East, Reuter published 'Die Montechi und
Capuleti in Konstantinopel'; but the book shows plainly that the
author was out of his element.
He died in 1874. In 1875 appeared his 'Nachgelassene Schriften'
(Posthumous Works) in two volumes, supplementing the edition of his
writings in thirteen volumes which had been published between 1863
and 1868.
THE OLD PARSON'S DEATH
From 'My Apprenticeship on the Farm›
E
VERY house in the parish had its share of happiness, each
of them after its kind; but one house formed an exception.
to this rule, although it used to have its full share. In
winter round the fireside, and in summer under the great lime-
tree, or in the arbor in the garden, there always used to be a
calm peaceful happiness, in which the child Louisa, as she played
about the old house and grounds, and little Mrs. Behrens, who
ruled all things duster in hand, had had part; and also the good
old clergyman, who had now done with all earthly things for-
Peace had taken leave of the house, and had gone forth
calmly to the place from whence she came; and during that
time of illness, care and sorrow had taken up their abode there,
deepening with the growing weakness of the good old man.
ever.
He
## p. 12198 (#240) ##########################################
12198
FRITZ REUTER
did not lie long in bed, and had no particular illness; so that
Dr. Strump of Rahnstädt could not find amongst all the three
thousand seven hundred and seventy-seven diseases of which he
knew, one that suited the present case. Peace seemed to have
laid her hand on the old man's head in blessing, and to have
said to him: "I am going to leave thee, but only for a short
time. I shall afterwards return to thy Regina. Thou needst
me no more, because thou hast had me in thy heart during all
the long years thou hast fought the good fight of faith. Now
sleep softly: thou must needs be tired. "
And he was tired,- very tired. His wife had laid him on the
sofa under the pictures, that he might look out at the window as
much as he liked; Louisa had covered him comfortably with rugs
and shawls: and then they had both left the room softly, that he
might rest undisturbed. Out of doors the first flakes of snow
were falling slowly, slowly, from the sky; it was as quiet and still
outside as within his heart: and he felt as if the blessing of
Christ were resting upon him. No one saw it, but his Regina
was the first to find it out. He rose, and pushing the large
arm-chair up to the cupboard, opened the door, and sitting down,
began to examine the treasures that he had kept as relics of the
past. Some of them had belonged to his father, and some to his
mother: they were all reminiscences of what he had loved.
This cupboard was the place where he had stowed away
whatever reminded him of all the chief events of his life; and
they had become relics, the sight of which did him good when
he was down-hearted. They were not preserved in crystal vessels
or in embroidered cases, but were simply placed on the shelf,
and kept there to be looked at whenever he wanted to see them.
When he felt low and sad, it did him good to take out these
relics and to live over again in thought the happy days of which
they reminded him; and he never closed the cupboard door
without gaining strength and courage, or without thanking God
silently for his many blessings. There lay the Bible his father
had given him when he was a boy; the beautiful glass vase his
old college friend had sent him; the pocket-book his Regina
had worked for him during their engagement; the shell which
a sailor had sent him in token of his gratitude for having been
shown the way to become a better man; the pieces of paper on
which Louisa, Mina, and Lina had written their Christmas and
New-Year's Day messages of affection, as also some of their
――
## p. 12199 (#241) ##########################################
FRITZ REUTER
12199
earlier bits of handiwork; the withered myrtle wreath his wife
had worn on her wedding day; the large pictorial Bible with the
silver clasps, that Hawermann had given him on his seventieth
birthday, and the silver-mounted meerschaum that Bräsig had
given him on the same occasion; and down below on the lowest
shelf were three pairs of shoes,- the shoes that Louisa, Regina,
and he had worn when they first entered the parsonage.
Old shoes are not beautiful in themselves, but the memories
attached to these made them beautiful in his eyes; so he took
them out of the cupboard, and laid them down by his side, and
then, placing his first Bible on his knee, he opened it at our
Lord's Sermon on the Mount, and began to read. No one saw
him, but that was not necessary; and his Regina knew when it
was all over. He grew very tired; and resting his head in the
corner of the great chair, fell asleep like a little child.
And so they found him when they came back. Mrs. Behrens
seated herself on the arm of his chair, clasped him in her arms,
closed his eyes, and then, resting her head against his, wept
silently. Louisa knelt at his feet, and laying her folded hands
on his knee, looked with tearful eyes at the two quiet faces that
were so dear to her. Then Mrs. Behrens rose, and folding down
the leaf of the Bible, drew it softly out of her husband's hand;
and Louisa also rose, and threw her arms round her foster-
mother's neck. They both wept long and passionately; till at
last, when it was growing dusk, Mrs. Behrens replaced the shoes
in the cupboard, saying as she did so, "I bless the day when we
came to this house together;" and while laying Louisa's little
shoes beside them, she added, "And I bless the day when the
child came to us. >>>
She then closed the cupboard door.
The good old clergyman was buried three days later in the
piece of ground he had long ago sought out for his last resting-
place; and any one standing by the grave which was lighted by
the earliest rays of the morning sun, might easily see into the
parlor in the parsonage-house.
The people who had been at the funeral were all gone home,
and Hawermann had also been obliged to go; but Uncle Bräsig,
who had spent the day at the parsonage, helping his friends in
every possible way, had announced his intention of remaining
for the night. Seeing the two women standing arm-in-arm at
the window, buried in sad thought, he slipped quietly up-stairs to
## p. 12200 (#242) ##########################################
12 200
FRITZ REUTER
"
his bedroom, and going to the window looked sorrowfully down
into the church-yard, where the newly made grave showed dis-
tinctly against the white snow surrounding it. He thought of
the good man who lay there, and who had so often helped him
with kindness and advice; and he swore to himself that he would
be a faithful friend to Mrs. Behrens. Down-stairs the two sad-
hearted women were gazing at the same grave, and silently
vowing to show each other all the love and tenderness that he
who was gone from them had been wont to bestow. Little Mrs.
Behrens thanked God and her husband for the comforter she had
in her adopted daughter, whom she held in her arms, and whose
smooth hair she stroked as she kissed her lovingly. Louisa
prayed that God would bless the lessons she had learned from
her foster-father, and would give her strength to be a good and
faithful daughter to the kind woman who had been as a mother
to her.
New-made graves may be likened to flower-beds in
which the gardener puts his rarest and most beautiful plants; but
alas, ill weeds sometimes take root there also.
THE MILLER AND THE JUSTICE
From In the Year '13'
WAS baptized, and had godfathers-four of them; and if my
godfathers were still alive, and walked through the streets
with me, people would stop and say, "Look, what fine fel-
lows! You won't see many such. " They were indeed godfathers!
And one of them was a head taller than the others, and tow-
ered above them as Saul did above his brethren. This was old
Amtshauptmann Weber. He used to wear a well-brushed blue
coat, yellowish trousers, and well-blacked boots; and his face was
so marked by the small-pox that it looked as if the Devil had
been threshing his peas on it, or as if he had sat down upon
his face on a cane-bottomed chair. On his broad forehead there
stood written, "Not the fear of Man, but the fear of God. " And
he was the right man in the right place.
About eleven o'clock in the morning he might be seen sitting
in an arm-chair in the middle of the room, whilst his wife fast-
ened a napkin under his chin, put the powder on his hair, tied
it behind, and twisted it into a neat pigtail.
## p. 12201 (#243) ##########################################
FRITZ REUTER
12201
When the old gentleman walked up and down under the shade
of the chestnut-trees at noon, his little rogue of a pigtail wagged
merrily, and nodded over the collar of his blue coat, as if it
wanted to say to any one who would listen: "Yes; look, old fel-
low! What do you think of me? I am only the tip of his hair;
and if I wag so comically out here, you may fancy how merry
it must be inside his head. "
When I took him a message from my father, and managed to
give it straight off, he would pat me on the head, and then say:
"Now, away with you, boy. Off like a shot! When you pull
the trigger, the gun mustn't hang fire, but must go off like a
flash of lightning. Run to Ma'm'selle Westphalen, and ask her
for an apple. "
To my father he would say: "Well, friend, what do you
think? Are you not glad that you have a son? Boys are much
better than girls: girls are always fretting and crying. Thank
God, I have a boy too,-my Joe. What say you, eh? "
My father told my mother. "Do you know," said he, "what
the old Amtshauptmann says? boys are better than girls. "
Now, I was in the room at the time, and overheard this; and
of course I said to myself: "My godfather is always right: boys
are better than girls, and every one should have his deserts. "
So I took the large piece of plum-cake for myself, and gave my
sister the small one, and thought not a little of myself, for I
knew now that I was the larger half of the apple. But this was
not to last: the tables were to be turned.
-
One day it was at the time when the rascally French had
just come back from Russia, and everything was in commotion-
some one knocked at the Herr Amtshauptmann's door. « Come
in," cried the old gentleman; and in came old Miller Voss of
Gielow, ducking his head nearly down to the ground by way of
a bow.
"Good afternoon, Herr Amtshauptmann," said he.
"Good morning, miller. "
Now, though the one said "good afternoon," and the other
said "good morning," each was right from his own point of
view: for the miller got up at four o'clock in the morning, and
with him it was afternoon; while with the Amtshauptmann it
was still early in the morning, as he did not rise until eleven.
"What is it, miller? "
"Herr Amtshauptmann, I've come to you about a weighty
I'll tell you what it is: I want to be made a bankrupt. ”
matter.
## p. 12202 (#244) ##########################################
12202
FRITZ REUTER
"What, miller! "
"I want to be made a bankrupt, Herr Amtshauptmann. ”
"Hm-hm," muttered the Amtshauptmann, "that's an ugly
business. " And he paced up and down the room scratching his
head. "How long have you been at the bailiwick of Stemhagen? "
"Three-and-thirty years, come midsummer. "
"Hm-hm," again muttered the Amtshauptmann: "and how
old are you, miller? "
"Come peas-harvest five-and-sixty, or maybe six-and-sixty: for
as to our old Pastor Hammerschmidt, he wasn't much given to
writing, and didn't trouble his head about parish registers; and
the Frau Pastor, who made the entries,-i' faith she had a deal
to do besides,-only attended to them every three years, so that
there might be enough to make it worth while, and then some
fine afternoon she would go through the village and write down
the children's ages-but more according to height and size than
to what they really were; and my mother always said she had
cut a year from me because I was small and weakly. But less
than five-and-sixty I'm not. I am sure of that. "
During this speech the Amtshauptmann had kept walking
up and down the room, listening with only one ear; he now
stood still before the miller, looked straight into his eyes, and
said sharply, "Then, Miller Voss, you're much too old for any-
thing of the kind. "
"How so, Herr? " exclaimed the poor miller, quite cast down.
«< Bankruptcy is a hard matter: at your age you could not
carry it through. "
"Do you think so, Herr? »
"Yes, I do. We are both too old for it. We must leave such
things to younger people. What do you think folks would say if
I were to get myself declared bankrupt? Why, they would say,
of course, the old Amtshauptmann up at the Schloss had gone
quite mad! And," added he, laying his hand gently on the
miller's shoulder, "they would be right, Miller Voss.
you, eh? »
What say
The miller looked down at the toes of his boots, and scratched
his head: "It's true, Herr. "
"Tell me," said the old gentleman, patting him kindly on
the shoulder, "where does the shoe pinch? What is troubling
you? "
"Troubling, say you! Herr Amtshauptmann," shouted the
miller, clapping his hand to the side of his head as if a wasp
## p. 12203 (#245) ##########################################
FRITZ REUTER
12203
had stung him, "troubling! torturing, you mean. Torturing!
That Jew! that cursed Jew! and then the lawsuit, Herr Amts-
hauptmann, the cursed lawsuit! "
"Look you, miller, that's another of your follies,―entangling
yourself at your age in a lawsuit. "
"True enough, Herr: but when I began it I was in my
prime, and thought to be able to fight it out; now I see clear
enough that your lawsuit has a longer breath than an honest
miller. "
"But I think it is coming to an end now. "
"Yes, Herr Amtshauptmann, and then I shall be hard up; for
my affairs are in a bad way. The lawyers have muddled them;
and as for my uncle, old Joe Voss,-why, his son, who will soon
get possession of all, is a downright vagabond, and they say he's
sworn a great oath to oust me from the Borcherts Inn at Mal-
chin. But I have the right on my side, Herr Amtshauptmann,
and how I got into this lawsuit I don't know to this day; for
old Frau Borcherts while she was still alive - she was the aunt
of my mother's sister's daughter- and Joe Voss-he was my
cousin — »
"I know the story," interrupted the Amtshauptmann; "and if
you would follow my advice you would make it up. "
"But I can't, Herr: for Joe Voss's rascally son wouldn't be
satisfied with less than half the money; and if I pay that I shall
be a beggar. No, Herr Amtshauptmann, it may go as it will; but
one thing I'm resolved on: I won't give in though I go to prison
for it. Is a ruffian like that, who struts about with his father's
money in his pocket, spending it right and left, and who doesn't
know what it is to have to keep up a house in these hard times,
-and who's never had his cattle carried off by those cursed
French, nor his horses stolen out of the stable, nor his house
plundered, is such a rascal as that to get the better of me?
By your leave, Herr, I could kick the fellow. "
"Miller Voss, gently, Miller Voss," said the old gentleman:
"the lawsuit will come to an end some time or other. It is going
on. "
«<
Going, Herr Amtshauptmann? It's flying, as the Devil said
when he tied the Bible to his whip and swung it around his
head. "
"True, true, Miller Voss; but at present you're not much
pressed. "
## p. 12204 (#246) ##########################################
12204
FRITZ REUTER
"Pressed? Why, I'm fixed in a vise-in a vise- and say!
That Jew, Herr Amtshauptmann, that thrice-cursed Jew! "
"What Jew is it? " asked the Herr Amtshauptmann; and the
miller twirls his hat between his finger and thumb, looks cau-
tiously round to see that no one is listening, draws closer to the
old gentleman, and laying a finger on his lips, whispers, "Itzig,
Herr Amtshauptmann. "
"Whew! " said the old Herr. "How came you to be mixed
up with that fellow ? »
"Herr Amtshauptmann, how came the ass to have long ears?
Some go to gather wild strawberries, and get stung by nettles:
The sexton of Gägelow thought his wheelbarrow was full of holy
angels, and when he had got to the top of the mountain, and
expected to see them fly up to heaven, the Devil's grandmother
was sitting in the wheelbarrow, and she grinned at him and said,
'Neighbor, we shall meet again! ' In my troubles, when the
enemy had taken everything I had, I borrowed two hundred
thalers from him; and for the last two years I have been obliged
to renew the bill from term to term, and the debt has crept up
to five hundred thalers, and the day after to-morrow I shall be
forced to pay it. "
"But, miller, did you sign? »
"Yes, Herr Amtshauptmann. "
"Then you must pay.
What's written is written. "
But, Herr Amtshauptmann, I thought-
>>>>
"It can't be helped, miller. What's written is written. "
"But the Jew—? ”
"Miller, what's written is written. "
"Then, Herr Amtshauptmann, what shall I do? »
The old gentleman began again to walk backwards and for-
wards in the room, tapping his forehead. At last he stopped,
looked earnestly in the miller's face, and said, "Miller, young
people get out of such difficulties better than old ones: send me
one of your boys. "
The old miller looked once more at the toes of his boots, and
then turning his face away, said in a tone which went straight to
the old Amtshauptmann's heart, "Sir, whom shall I send? My
Joe was ground to death in the mill; and Karl was carried off
to Russia by the French last year, and he's not come back. "
"Miller," replied the old Amtshauptmann, patting him on the
back, "have you then no children at all? "
## p. 12205 (#247) ##########################################
FRITZ REUTER
12205
"I have," said he, wiping a tear from his eye, "a little girl
left. "
“Well, miller, I am not particularly fond of girls myself: they
are always fretting and crying. "
"That's true, sir: they are always fretting and crying. "
"And they can be of no use in a matter like this, miller. "
"But what will happen to me then? "
"The Jew will put in an execution, and will take away every-
thing. "
"Well, Herr Amtshauptmann, the French have done that
twice already, so the Jew may as well try it now. At any rate
he will leave the millstone behind; and you think I'm too old to
be made bankrupt? "
"Yes, miller, I fear so. "
"Well then, good day, Herr Amtshauptmann;" and so saying
he went away.
## p. 12206 (#248) ##########################################
12206
JAMES FORD RHODES
(1848-)
HE historical work of James Ford Rhodes proves, what is
oftentimes denied, that it is possible to record fully a con-
temporaneous period, with impartiality and with due regard
to perspective. In his 'History of the United States from the Com-
promise of 1850' he has not only done this: he has treated one of
the most intricate periods in the history of this country, or of any
country, with a degree of insight into its complex forces not always
attained by historians of remoter events, from which the mists of
partisanship have faded. The treatment of
the Civil War, and of the causes which led
to it, requires delicate but firm handling.
It demands of the historian not alone pen-
etrative scholarship: for its satisfactory ac-
complishment, he must be inspired with
that spirit of Americanism which is in no
sense local or partisan. Mr. Rhodes has
performed his difficult task well, because he
is constantly guided by a luminous patriot-
ism. His historical acumen is synonymous
with the American temper.
JAMES FORD RHODES
His early training fostered those quali-
ties by which he was developed into an
American historian. He was born in Cleve-
land, Ohio, on May 1st, 1848, of parents who had come from New
England. His father, who was engaged in the coal and iron business,
was a man of strong character and of decided opinions, a Democrat,
and a kinsman of Stephen A. Douglas, whose printed speeches in
the Congressional Globe were read eagerly by James Ford Rhodes,
then a boy of ten. It was his good fortune to be constantly under
the guidance of those whose interest in public affairs was deep and
vital. When the Civil War broke out, his teacher in the Cleveland
High School accustomed the scholars to read aloud in turn every
morning the political news of the day, explaining to them that they
were living in times fraught with history. In 1865, Mr. Rhodes,
who had already shown his preference for history and literature over
the classics and mathematics, entered as a special student in the
G
## p. 12207 (#249) ##########################################
JAMES FORD RHODES
12207
University of the City of New York. There he devoted himself to
historical work under Professor Benjamin N. Martin, and to science
under John W. Draper. Under Professor Martin, his enthusiasm for
history was further awakened. His text-books became guide-books;
especially Buckle's great History of Civilization,' which first inspired.
him with the ambition to become himself a historian. The following
year he entered a university in Chicago, where he studied metaphys-
ics and rhetoric, and read largely in the works of Sir William Ham-
ilton, Mill, McCosh, and Herbert Spencer.
In 1867 he went to Paris, with a mind keenly alert, through train-
ing and influence, to political situations and conditions. The spectacle
of the Second Empire reinforced his democracy, and deepened his love
of civil liberty. His studies of the conditions then existing in France
led to his becoming the Paris correspondent of the Chicago Times.
About this time it became evident to him that he was expected to
engage in his father's business, so he put aside for the time his
dream of a literary career; but before returning to the United States
he attended lectures at the Collège de France, going afterwards to
Berlin to study iron metallurgy under Dr. Wedding; he further pre-
pared himself for his new interests by making a tour of the iron and
steel works of Western Germany, and of South Wales, England, and
Scotland. In 1868 he entered into business life. In the following
year he was obliged to travel extensively through the South: he was
thus brought in contact with the fermenting forces of a region strug-
gling out of one stage of its existence into another. His desire to
write history was re-awakened, and he now ordered his life to that
end; accumulating a large historical library, and laboring to render
himself financially independent, that he might have time and oppor-
tunity in the future for the labors of scholarship. After fifteen years
of successful business enterprise, he entered upon his life's work at
the end of the year 1885.
In 1893 the first two volumes of his great work were issued, and
in 1895 the third appeared. It is not yet completed. The period
which it covers extends from the Compromise of 1850 to the election
of President Cleveland. The first volume deals primarily with slay-
ery, its history, its nature, and its effects upon the political and
social development of the United States; there having been, as Mr.
Rhodes states, "no other than a single cause for secession and the
war that ensued,-slavery. " The question of State Rights entered
into it only incidentally, and if slavery had not existed, could never
have precipitated the war; since the unification of the United States
was being constantly effected by the forces of growth. Steam and
electricity, immigration, intermarriage, and the multiplying business
interests, were constantly obliterating sectional differences, and mold-
## p. 12208 (#250) ##########################################
12208
JAMES FORD RHODES
ing the many into the one by a slow, silent, but organic process.
Over the institution of slavery, however, the forces of civilization and
progress had no power. They could not make organic use of it,
because it was a moral evil, and as a moral evil was directly in the
path of honorable national advancement.
Mr. Rhodes's discussion of this subject is in the spirit of the
patriot rather than of the Northerner; at the same time, it is imper-
sonal. He is in the sweep of the historical movement, but no preju-
dice nor blindness disturbs the even course of his record. His book
in a sense has written itself, after the manner of history.
His scholarship is singularly conscientious and painstaking. He
has consulted a vast number of sources, giving special attention to
the utterances of the press; thus recognizing the truth that news-
papers, being obliged to say what the public wishes them to say, are
as fair indices as may be found of the popular temper. He has veri-
fied his statements step by step, with a diligence worthy of Teutonic
scholarship; yet his work is in the best sense popular. It is clear,
straightforward, and inspiriting. The quality of inspiration is most
clearly manifest in his portraits of such men as Daniel Webster and
Henry Clay. His sympathies in every case are not partisan but
human. His history, while of great value to his own generation, will
fulfill perhaps its greatest mission in revealing to later generations
the living spirit of a time farther and farther removed from their
comprehension and their sympathy.
DANIEL WEBSTER
TWO
From History of the United States. ' Copyright 1892, by James Ford Rhodes
wo of the great senatorial triumvirate had spoken; the Senate
and the country had yet to hear the greatest of them all.
Daniel Webster spoke on the compromise resolutions the 7th
of March. In the course of this work, whenever possible, his
precise words have been used, in narration and illustration; for
in intellectual endowment Webster surpassed all of our public.
men. No one understood the fundamental principles of our polity
better; no one approached his wonderful power of expression. It
seemed that the language of the constitutional lawyer who laid
down principles of law that the profound legal mind of Marshall
fixed in an immutable judicial decision, and who at the same
time could make clear abstruse points and carry conviction to the
understanding of men who were untrained in logic or in law,
## p. 12209 (#251) ##########################################
JAMES FORD RHODES
12209
was best fitted to guide us through the maze of constitutional
interpretation in which our history abounds. Indeed, the politi-
cal history of the country for twenty-seven years preceding 1850
might be written as well and fully from the speeches, State
papers, and letters of Webster, as the story of the latter days of
the Roman republic from the like material of Cicero which has
come down to us.
As an orator, Webster has been compared in simplicity to
Demosthenes and in profundity to Burke. This is the highest
praise. The wonderful effect of his oratory is strikingly told by
George Ticknor, who, fresh from a long intercourse with the
most distinguished men in England and on the Continent, went
to hear Webster deliver his Plymouth oration. Ticknor writes:
"I was never so excited by public speaking before in my life.
Three or four times I thought my temples would burst with the
gush of blood;" and though from his youth an intimate friend of
Webster's, he was so impressed that "when I came out I was
almost afraid to come near him. It seemed to me as if he was
like the mount that might not be touched, and that burned with
fire. " Thomas Marshall, of Kentucky, heard the reply to Hayne;
and when Webster came to the peroration he "listened as to
one inspired, and finally thought he could see a halo around the
orator's head like what one sees in the old pictures of saints and
martyrs. "
He was
The diction of Webster was formed by a grateful study of
Shakespeare and Milton: through his communion with these.
masters, his whole soul was thoroughly attuned to the highest
thinking and purest harmonies of our literature. He is one of
the few orators whose speeches are read as literature.
our greatest lawyer, yet in a bad cause he was not a good
advocate, for he had not the flexibility of mind which made the
worse appear the better reason; but in cases apparently hopeless,
with the right on his side, he won imposing triumphs. He was
our greatest Secretary of State. He had, said Sumner, "by the
successful and masterly negotiation of the treaty of Washington,"
earned the title of "Defender of Peace. "
The Graces presided at his birth. His growth developed the
strong physical constitution with which nature had endowed him,
equally with a massive brain.
