as children say, one is afraid, and the other dares not. Far off, men swell, bully, and threaten: bring them hand to hand, and they are a feeble folk.

It is a proverb, that "courtesy costs nothing;" but calculation might come to value love for its profit. Love is fabled to be blind; but kindness is necessary to perception; love is not a hood, but an eye-water. I you meet a sectary, or a hostile partisan, never recognise the dividing lines; but meet on what common ground remains,—if only that the sun shines, and the rain rains for both,—the area will widen very fast, and ere you know it, the boundary mountains, on which the eye had fastened, have melted into air. If he set out to contend, almost St. Paul will lie, almost St. John will hate. What low, poor, paltry, hypocritical people, an argument on religion will make of the pure and chosen souls. Shuffle they will, and crow, crook, and hide, feign to confess here, only that they may brag and conquer there, and not a thought has enriched either party, and not an emotion of bravery, modesty, or hope. So neither should you put yourself in a false position to your contemporaries, by indulging a vein of hostility and bitterness. Though your views are in straight antagonism to theirs, assume an identity of sentiment, assume that you are saying precisely that which all think, and in the flow of wit and love, roll out your paradoxes in solid column, with not the infirmity of a doubt. So at least shall you get an adequate deliverance. The natural motions of the soul are so much better than the voluntary ones, that you will never do yourself justice in dispute. The thought is not then taken hold of by the right handle, does not show itself proportioned, and in its true bearings, but bears ex

torted, hoarse, and half witness. But assume a consent, and it shall presently be granted, since, really, and underneath all their external diversities, all men are of one heart and mind.

Wisdom will never let us stand with any man or men, on an unfriendly footing. We refuse sympathy and intimacy with people, as if we waited for some better sympathy and intimacy to come. But whence and when? To-morrow will be like to-day. Life wastes itself whilst we are preparing to live. Our friends and fellow-workers die off from us. Scarcely can we say, we see new men, new women approaching us. We are too old to regard fashion, too old to expect patronage of any greater, or more powerful. Let us suck the sweetness of those affections and consuetudes that grow near us. These old shoes are easy to the feet. Undoubtedly, we can easily pick faults in our company, can easily whisper names prouder, and that tickle the fancy more. Every man's imagination hath its friends; and pleasant would life be with such companions. But, if you cannot have them on good mutual terms, you cannot have them. If not the Deity, but our ambition hews and shapes the new relations, their virtue escapes, as strawberries lose their flavour in garden beds.

Thus truth, frankness, courage, love, humility, and all the virtues range themselves on the side of prudence, or the art of securing a present well-being. I do not know if all matter will be found to be made of one element, as oxygen or hydrogen, at last, but the world of manners and actions is wrought of one stuff, and begin where we will, we are pretty sure in a short space, to be mumbling our ten commandments.

177

ESSAY VIII.

HEROISM.

"Paradise is under the shadow of swords."

Mahomet

IN the elder English dramatists, and mainly in the plays of Beaumont and Fletcher, there is a constant recognition of gentility, as if a noble behaviour were as easily marked in the society of their age, as colour is in our American population. When any Rodrigo, Pedro, or Valero enters, though he be a stranger, the duke or governor exclaims, This is a gentleman,-and proffers civilities without end; but all the rest are slag and refuse. In harmony with this delight in personal advantages, there is in their plays a certain heroic cast of character and dialogue,-as in Bonduca, Sophocles, the Mad Lover, the Double Marriage,-wherein the speaker is so earnest and cordial, and on such deep grounds of character, that the dialogue, on the slightest additional incident in the plot, rises naturally into poetry. Among many texts, take the following. The Roman Martius has conquered Athens,-all but the invincible spirits of Sophocles, the duke of Athens, and Dorigen, his wife. The beauty of the latter inflames Martious, and he seeks to save her husband:

but Sophocles will not ask his life, although assured that a word will save him, and the execution of both proceeds.

Valerius. Bid thy wife farewell.

Soph. No, I will take no leave. My Dorigen,

Yonder, above, 'bout Ariadne's crown,

My spirit shall hover for thee. Prithee, haste.

Dor. Stay, Sophocles,-with this, tie up my sight; Let not soft nature so transformed be

And lose her gentler sexed humanity,

To make me see my lord bleed. So, 't is well;
Never one object underneath the sun

Will I behold before my Sophocles;
Farewell; now teach the Romans how to die.
Mar. Dost know what 't is to die?
Soph. Thou dost not, Martius,

And therefore, not what 't is to live; to die
Is to begin to live. It is to end

An old, stale, weary work, and to commence
A newer, and a better. "Tis to leave

Deceitful knaves for the society

Of gods and goodness. Thou, thyself, must part

At last, from all thy garlands, pleasures, triumphs

And prove thy fortitude what then 't will do.

Val. But art not grieved nor vexed to leave thy life thus? Soph. Why should I grieve or vex for being sen

To them I ever loved best? Now I'll kneel,

But with my back toward thee; 't is the last duty
This trunk can do the gods.

Mar.. Strike, strike, Valerius,

Or Martius' heart will leap out at his mouth;
This is a man, a woman! Kiss thy lord,
And live with all the freedom you were wont.
O love! thou doubly hast afflicted me

With virtue and with beauty. Treacherous heart,
My hand shall cast thee quick into my urn,
Ere thou transgress this knot of piety.

Val. What ails my brother?

Soph. Martius, oh Martius,

Thou now hast found a way to conquer me.

Dor. Oh star of Rome! what gratitude can speak Fit words to follow such a deed as this?

Mar. This admirable duke, Valerius

With his disdain of fortune and of death,
Captived himself, has captivated me,

And though my arm hath ta'en his body here,
His soul hath subjugated Martius' soul.

By Romulus, he is all soul, I think;

He hath no flesh, and spirit cannot be gyved;
Then we have vanquished nothing; he is free,
And Martius walks now in captivity.

I do not readily remember any poem, play, sermon, novel, or oration, that our press vents in the last few years, which goes to the same tune. We have a great many flutes and flageolets, but not often the sound of any fife. Yet, Wordsworth's Laodamia, and the ode of "Dion," and some sonnets, have a certain noble music; and Scott will sometimes draw a stroke like the portrait of Lord Evandale, given by Balfour of Burley. Thomas Carlyle, with his natural taste for what is manly and daring in character, has suffered no heroic trait in his favourites to drop from his biographical and historical pictures. Earlier, Robert Burns has given us a song or two. In the Harleian Miscellanies, there is an account of the battle of Lutzen, which deserves to be read. And Simon Ockley's History of the Saracens, recounts the prodigies of individual valour with admiration, all the more evident on the part of the narrator, that he seems to think that his place in Christian Oxford requires of him some proper