The Landing-Place:

·OR

ESSAYS INTERPOSED FOR AMUSEMENT, RETROSPECT, AND PREPARATION.

MISCELLANY THE FIRST.

Etiam a musis si quando animum paulisper abducamus, apud Musas nihilominus feriamur: at reclines quidem, at otiosas, at de his et illas inter se libere colloquentes.

ESSAY I.

O blessed Lefters that combine in one
All ages past, and make one live with all:
By you we do confer with who are gone
And the Dead-living unto Council call!
By you the Unborn shall have communion
Of what we feel and what doth us befall.

Since Writings are the Veins, the Arteries,
And undecaying Life-strings of those Hearts,
That still shall pant and still shall exercise
Their mightiest powers when Nature none imparts.
And the strong constitution of their Praise
Wear out the infection of distemper'd days.

DANIEL'S Musophilus.

tual complacency for pleasurable sensation. The events and characters of one age, like the strains in music, recal those of another, and the variety by which each is individualized, not only gives a charm and poignancy to the resemblance, but likewise renders the whole more intelligible. Meantime ample room is afforded for the exercise both of the judgment and the fancy, in distinguishing cases of real resemblance from those of intentional imitation, the analogies of nature, revolving upon herself, from the masquerade figures of cunning and vanity.

It is not from identity of opinions, or from similarity of events and outward actions, that a real resemblance can be deduced. On the contrary, men of great and stirring powers, who are destined to mould the age in which they are born, must first mould THE Intelligence, which produces or controls hu- themselves upon it. Mahomet born twelve centuries man actions and occurrences, is often represented by later, and in the heart of Europe, would not have the Mystics under the name and notion of the su- been a false Prophet; nor would a false Prophet of preme Harmonist. I do not myself approve of these the present generation have been a Mahomet in the metaphors: they seem to imply a restlessness to un-sixth century. I have myself, therefore, derived the derstand that which is not among the appointed objects of our comprehension or discursive faculty. But certainly there is one excellence in good music, to which, without mysticism, we may find or make an analogy in the records of History. I allude to that sense of recognition, which accompanies our sense of novelty in the most original passages of a great composer. If we listen to a Symphony of CIMAROSA, the present strain still seems not only to recal, but almost to renew, some past movement, another and yet the same! Each present movement bringing back, as it were, and embodying the spirit of some melody that had gone before, anticipates and seems trying to overtake something that is to come : and the musician has reached the summit of his art, when having thus modified the Present by the Past, he at the same time weds the Past in the Present to some prepared and corresponsive Future. The auditor's thoughts and feelings move under the same influence: retrospect blends with anticipation, and Hope and Memory (a female Janus) become one power with a double aspect. A similar effect the reader may produce for himself in the pages of History, if he will be content to substitute an intellec

deepest interest from the comparison of men, whose characters at the first view appear widely dissimilar, who yet have produced similar effects on their different ages, and this by the exertion of powers which on examination will be found far more alike, than the altered drapery and costume would have led us to suspect. Of the heirs of fame few are more respected by me, though for very different qualities, than Erasmus and Luther: scarcely any one has a larger share of my aversion than Voltaire; and even of the better-hearted Rousseau I was never more than a very lukewarm admirer. I should perhaps too rudely affront the general opinion, if I avowed my whole creed concerning the proportions of real talent between the two purifiers of revealed Religion, now neglected as obsolete, and the two modern conspirators against its authority, who are still the Alpha and Omega of Continental Genius. Yet when I abstract the questions of evil and good, and measure only the effects produced and the mode of producing them, I have repeatedly found the idea of Voltaire, Rousseau, and Robespierre, recal in a similar cluster and connection that of Erasmus, Luther, and Munster.

Those who are familiar with the works of Erasmus, feelings and conduct. From what point of likeness and who know the influence of his wit, as the pio- can we commence the comparison between a Luther neer of the reformation; and who likewise know, and a Rousseau? And truly had I been seeking for that by his wit, added to the vast variety of know- characters that, taken as they really existed, closely ledge communicated in his works, he had won over resemble each other, and this too to our first appreby anticipation so large a part of the polite and let-hensions, and according to the common rules of biotered world to the Protestant party; will be at no loss | graphical comparison, I could scarcely have made a in discovering the intended counterpart in the life more unlucky choice: unless I had desired that my and writings of the veteran Frenchman. They will parallel of the German "Son of Thunder" and the see, indeed, that the knowledge of the one was solid Visionary of Geneva, should sit on the same bench through its whole extent, and that of the other exten- with honest Fluellen's of Alexander the Great and sive at a cheap rate, by its superficiality; that the wit | Harry of Monmouth. Still, however, the same andof the one is always bottomed on sound sense, peology would hold as in my former instance; the ef ples and enriches the mind of the reader with an fects produced on their several ages by Luther and endless variety of distinct images and living inte- Rousseau, were commensurate with each other, and rests: and that his broadest laughter is every where were produced in both cases by (what their contemtranslatable into grave and weighty truth; while the poraries felt as) serious and vehement eloquence, and wit of the Frenchman, without imagery, without cha- an elevated tone of moral feeling: and Luther. not racter, and without that pathos which gives the ma- less than Rousseau, was actuated by an almost supergic charm to genuine humor, consists, when it is most stitious hatred of superstition, and a turbulent prejuperfect, in happy turns of phrase, but far too often dice against prejudices. In the relation too which in fantastic incidents, outrages of the pure imagina- their writings severally bore to those of Erasmus and tion, and the poor low trick of combining the ridicu- Voltaire, and the way in which the latter co-operated lous with the venerable, where he, who does not with them to the same general end, each finding its laugh, abhors. Neither will they have forgotten, that own class of admirers and Proselytes, the parallel is the object of the one was to drive the thieves and complete. mummers out of the temple, while the other was propelling a worse banditti, first to profane and pillage, and ultimately to raze it. Yet not the less will they perceive, that the effects remain parallel, the circumstances analogous, and the instruments the same. In each case the effects extended over Europe, were attested and augmented by the praise and patronage of thrones and dignities, and are not to be explained but by extraordinary industry and a life of literature; in both instances the circumstances were supplied by an age of hopes and promises-the age of Erasmus restless from the first vernal influences of real know-him in his natural weaknesses as well as in his origi ledge, that of Voltaire from the hectic of imagined superiority. In the voluminous works of both, the instruments employed are chiefly those of wit and amusive erudition, and alike in both the errors and evils (real or imputed) in Religion and Politics are the objects of the battery. And here we must stop. The two Men were essentially different. Exchange mutually their dates and spheres of action, yet Voltaire, had he been ten-fold a Voltaire, could not have made up an Erasmus; and Erasmus must have emptied himself of half his greatness and all his goodness, to have become a Voltaire.

I cannot, however, rest here! Spite of the apparent incongruities, I am disposed to plead for a resemblance in the Men themselves, for that similarity in their radical natures, which I abandoned all pretence and desire of showing in the instances of Voltaire and Erasmus. But then my readers must think of Luther not as he really was, but as he might have been, if he had been born in the age and under the circumstances of the Swiss Philosopher. For this purpose I must strip him of many advantages which he derived from his own times, and must contemplate

nal strength. Each referred all things to his own ideal. The ideal was indeed widely different in the one and in the other: and this was not the least of Luther's many advantages, or (to use a favorite phrase of his own) not one of his least favors of preventing grace. Happily for him he had derived his standard from a common measure already received by the good and wise: I mean the inspired writings. the study of which Erasmus had previously restored among the learned. To know that we are in sympathy with others, moderates our feelings, as well as strengthens our convictions: and for the mind, which opposes itself to the faith of the multitude, it is more especially desirable, that there should exist an object out of itself, on which it may fix its attention, and thus balance its own energies.

Rousseau, on the contrary, in the inauspicious spirit of his age and birth-place,* had slipped the cable

Shall we succeed better or worse with the next pair, in this our new dance of death, or rather of the shadows which we have brought forth-two by two -from the historic ark? In our first couple we have at least secured an honorable retreat, and though we failed as to the agents, we have maintained a fair analogy in the actions and the objects. But the heroic LUTHER, a Giant awaking in his strength! and Voltaire in one of his Letters exults, that in this, Calvin's the crazy ROUSSEAU, the Dreamer of love-sick Tales, own City, some half dozen only of the most ignorant believ and the spinner of speculative Cobwebs ; shy of lighted in Christianity under any form. This was, no doubt, one as the Mole, but as quick-eared too for every whisper of the public opinion; the Teacher of stoic Pride in his principles, yet the victim of morbid Vanity in his

*Infidelity was so common in Geneva about that time, that

of Voltaire's usual lies of exaggeration: it is not however to dark Master in whose service he employed himself, had am be denied, that here, and throughout Switzerland, he and the ple grounds of triumph.

this advantage over most of its kindred, that being capable of a double interpretation, it is equally flattering to the Protestant and the Papist, and is regarded by the wonder-loving zealots of both parties, with equal faith.

Whether the great man ever did throw his inkstand at his Satanic Majesty, whether he ever boasted of the exploit, and himself declared the dark blotch on his Study-Wall in the Warteburg, to be the result and relict of this author-like hand grenado, (happily for mankind he used his ink-stand at other times to better purpose, and with more effective hostility against the arch-fiend) I leave to my reader's own judgment; on condition, however, that he has preɣiously perused Luther's table-talk, and other writings of the same stamp, of some of his most illustrious contemporaries, which contain facts still more strange and whimsical, related by themselves and of themselves, and accompanied with solemn protestations of the Truth of their statements. Luther's table-talk, which to a truly philosophic mind, will not be less interesting than Rousseau's confessions, I have not myself the means of consulting at present, and cannot therefore say, whether this ink-pot adventure is, or is not, told or referred to in it; but many considerations incline me to give credit to the story.

Bishops and Theologians to wit, doth privily chase and catch the poor little innocent beasts? Ah! the simple and credulous souls came thereby far too plain before my eyes. Thereto comes a yet more frightful mystery: as at my earnest entreaty we had saved alive one poor little hare, and I had concealed it in the sleeve of my great coat, and had strolled off a short distance from it, the dogs in the mean time found the poor hare. Such, too, is the fury of the Pope with Satan, that he destroys even the souls that had been saved, and troubles himself little about my pains and entreaties. Of such hunting then I have had enough." In another passage he tells his correspondent, "you know it is hard to be a Prince, and not in some degree a Robber, and the greater a Prince the more a Robber." Of our Henry the Eighth, he says, must answer the grim Lion that passes himself off for King of England. The ignorance in the Book is such as one naturally expects from a King; but the bitterness and impudent falsehood is quite leonine." And in his circular letter to the Princes, on occasion of the Peasant's War, he uses a language so inflammatory, and holds forth a doctrine which borders so near on the holy right of insurrection, that it may as well remain untranslated.

Had Luther been himself a Prince, he could not have desired better treatment than he received during his eight months' stay in the Warteburg; and in consequence of a more luxurious diet than he had been accustomed to, he was plagued with temptations both from the "Flesh and the Devil." It is evident from his letters* that he suffered under great irritability of his nervous system, the common effect of deranged digestion in men of sedentary habits, who are at the same time intense thinkers: and this irritability added to, and revivifying, the impressions made upon

tems of his manhood, is abundantly sufficient to explain all his apparitions and all his nightly combats with evil spirits. I see nothing improbable in the supposition, that in one of those unconscious half sleeps, or rather those rapid alternations of the sleep ing with the half-waking state, which is the true witching time,

Luther's unremitting literary labor and his sedentary mode of life, during his confinement in the Warteburg, where he was treated with the greatest kindness, and enjoyed every liberty consistent with his own safety, had begun to undermine his former unusually strong health. He suffered many and most distressing effects of indigestion and a deranged state of the digestive organs. Melancthon, whom he had desired to consult the Physicians at Erfurth, sent him some de-obstruent medicines, and the advice to take regular and severe exercise. At first he fol-him in early life, and fostered by the theological syslowed the advice, sate and laboured less, and spent whole days in the chase; but like the young Pliny, he strove in vain to form a taste for this favorite amusement of the "Gods of the earth," as appears from a passage in a letter to George Spalatin, which I translate for an additional reason: to prove to the admirers of Rousseau, (who perhaps will not be less affronted by this biographical parallel, than the zealous Lutherans will be offended) that if my comparison Wherein the spirits hold thelr wont to walk," should turn out groundless on the whole, the failure the fruitful matrix of Ghosts-I see nothing improba will not have arisen either from the want of sensibil-ble, that in some one of those momentary slumbers, ity in our great reformer, or of angry aversion to those in high places, whom he regarded as the oppressors of their rightful equals. "I have been," he writes, "employed for two days in the sports of the field, and was willing myself to taste this bitter-sweet amusement of the great heroes: we have caught two hares, and one brace of poor little partridges. An employment this which does not ill suit quiet leisurely folks: for even in the midst of the ferrets and dogs, I have had theological fancies. But as much pleasure as the might be made from Luther's Letters, especially from these I can scarcely conceive a more delightful Volume than general appearance of the scene and the mere look-that were written from the Warteburg, if they were transing on occasioned me, even so much it pitied me to think of the mystery and emblem which lies beneath it. For what does this symbol signify, but that the Devil, through his godless huntsman and dogs, the

"the season

into which the suspension of all Thought in the perplexity of intense thinking so often passes; Luther should have had a full view of the Room in which he was sitting, of his writing Table and all the Implements of Study, as they really existed, and at the same time a brain image of the Devil, vivid enough to have acquired apparent Outness, and a distance

lated in the simple, sinewy, idiomatic, hearty mother-tengu of the original. A difficult task I admit-and scarcely possi ble for any man, however great his talents in other respecta, whose favorite reading has not lain long among the English writers from Edward the Sixth to Charles the First.

the sacred letters and the eyes of his understanding, by the malice of the evil one, and for a trial of his faith! Must he then at length confess, must he subscribe the name of LUTHER to an Exposition which consecrates a weapon for the hand of the idolatrous Hierarchy? Never! never!

There still remains one auxiliary in reserve, the translation of the seventy. The Alexandrine Greeks, anterior to the Church itself, could extend no support to its corruptions-the Septuagint will have profaned the Altar of Truth with no incense for the Nostrils of the universal Bishop to snuff up. And here again his hopes are baffled! Exactly at this perplexed passage had the Greek Translator given his understanding a holiday, and made his pen supply its place. O honored Luther! as easily mightest thou convert the whole City of Rome, with the Pope and the conclave of Cardinals inclusive, as strike a spark of light from the words, and nothing but words, of the Alexandrine Version. Disappointed, despondent, enraged, ceasing to think, yet continuing his brain on the stretch in solicitation of a thought; and gradually giving himself up to angry fancies, to recollections of past persecutions, to uneasy fears and inward defiances and floating Images of the evil Being, their supposed personal author; he sinks, without perceiving it, into a trance of slumber: during which his brain retains its waking energies, excepting that what would have been mere thoughts before now (the action and counterweight of his senses and of their impressions being withdrawn) shape and condense them

regulated by the proportion of its distinctness to that of the objects really impressed on the outward senses. If this Christian Hercules, this heroic Cleanser of the Augean Stable of Apostasy, had been born and educated in the present or the preceding generation, he would, doubtless, have heid himself for a man of genius and original power. But with this faith alone he would scarcely have removed the mountains which he did remove. The darkness and superstition of the age, which required such a Reformer, had moulded his mind for the reception of ideas concerning himself, better suited to inspire the strength and enthusiasm necessary for the task of reformation, ideas more in sympathy with the spirits whom he was to influence. He deemed himself gifted with supernatural influxes, an especial servant of Heaven, a chosen Warrior, fighting as the General of a small but faithful troop, against an Army of evil Beings headed by the Prince of the Air. These were no metaphorical Beings in his apprehension. He was a Poet indeed, as great a Poet as ever lived in any age or country; but his poetic images were so vivid, that they mastered the Poet's own mind! He was possessed with them, as with substances distinct from himself: LUTHER did not write, he acted Poems. The Bible was a spiritual indeed but not a figurative armoury in his belief; it was the magazine of his warlike stores, and from thence he was to arm himself, and supply both shield and sword, and javelin, to the elect. Methinks I see him sitting, the heroic Student, in his Chamber in the Warteburg, with his midnight Lamp before him, seen by the late Travel-selves into things, into realities! Repeatedly halfler in the distant Plain of Bischofsroda, as a Star on wakening, and his eye-lids as often re-closing, the the Mountain! Below it lies the Hebrew Bible open, objects which really surrounded him form the place on which he gazes, his brow pressing on his palm, and scenery of his dream. All at once he sees the brooding over some obscure Text, which he desires Arch-fiend coming forth on the wall of the room, to make plain to the simple Boor and to the humble from the very spot perhaps, on which his eyes had Artizan, and to transfer its whole force into their own been fixed vacantly during the perplexed moments natural and living Tongue! And he himself does of his former meditation: the Ink-stand, which he not understand it! Thick darkness lies on the origi-had at the same time been using, becomes associated nal Text, he counts the letters, he calls up the roots of each separate word, and questions them as the familiar Spirits of an Oracle. In vain! thick darkness continues to cover it! not a ray of meaning dawns through it. With sullen and angry hope he reaches for the VULGATE, his old and sworn enemy, the treacherous confederate of the Roman Antichrist, which he so gladly, when he can, re-rebukes for idolatrous falsehoods, that had dared place

"Within the sanctuary itself their shrines,
Abominations!".

Now-O thought of humiliation-he must intreat its
aid. See! there has the sly spirit of apostasy work-
ed-in a phrase which favors the doctrine of purgatory,
the intercession of Saints, or the efficacy of Prayers
for the Dead. And what is worst of all, the interpre
tation is plausible. The original Hebrew might be
forced into this meaning: and no other meaning
seems to lie in it, none to hover above it in the heights
of Allegory, none to lurk beneath it even in the depths
of Cabala! This is the work of the Tempter! it is a
cloud of darkness conjured up between the truth of

with it: and in that struggle of rage, which in these distempered dreams almost constantly precedes the helpless terror by the pain of which we are fully awakened, he imagines that he hurls it at the intruder, or not improbably in the first instant of awakening, while yet both his imagination and his eyes are possessed by the dream, he actually hurls it. Some weeks after, perhaps, during which interval he had often mused on the incident, undetermined whether to deem it a visitation of Satan to him in the body or out of the body, he discovers for the first time the dark spot on his wall, and receives it as a sign and pledge vouchsafed to him of the event having actually taken place.

Such was Luther under the influences of the age and country in and for which he was born. Conceive him a citizen of Geneva, and a contemporary of Voltaire suppose the French language his mothertongue, and the political and moral philosophy of English Free-thinkers re-modelled by Parisian Fort Esprits, to have been the objects of his study;-conceive this change of circumstances, and Luther will no longer dream of Fiends or of Antichrist- but