At our best

Contents

Chapter Page

I. At Our Best 3

II. Our Elect 42

I. At Our Best

• Though Time thy bloom is stealing, There 's still beyond his art The wild-flower wreath of feeling."

Halleck.

( The soul of music slumbers in the shell, Till wak'd and kindled by the master's spell; And feeling hearts, touch them but lightly, pour A thousand melodies unheard before."

Rogers's Human Life.

W 7"E have had many definitions of genius, r and many refusals to attempt to define

it, as somewhat that is indefinable, a thing that eludes and takes some other shape, and when we think we have it we have it not. Like beauty, inspiration, and instinct, it lies in a region of uncertain and shifting lights ; is itself, and not itself; appears to be this till another view

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dawns, and it must be that : but the last will not stick better than the first, in the presence of some other revelation. But, after all the learned clamor, what if genius were so simple a thing as a larger and finer degree of sensibility, a plus of vital heat, some more feeling and spirit among our talents !

Every one knows what advantage lies in being kindled. For he who could say nothing before can say anything now, and with rare logic, imagination, and pertinency: sterility becomes suddenly fertile, as if the desert were to bloom and bear fruit at once ; cowardice gives place to courage, or we have exchanged our fawn for a lion. Am I the same man to-day I was yesterday ? — now so aerial and lithe, and full of rapt visions, and eager for better communions, having down my rare books for rare occasions, or fleeing to gaze again, and worthily, at some fine landscape or work of art, but then only a mole without eyes in some dark corner, or an oyster in the mud, or a foolish bat flying blind in the day. The same, and not the same ; the same plus a heat that has freed the frozen and pent-up currents, or a quickened sensibility that gives me to myself, installs me in full command of my powers, and befriends intuitions and spontaneities, as a better atmosphere gives sharpness and range to the eye.

Every one is now and then above his talent, and would be taken to be, not himself, but another ; as the dray-horse, on occasions, rises into airs and antics, and we must think some Flying Childers or Arabian barb had slept within him until now. The most ordinary minds ascend into mounts they cannot keep, caught up and borne aloft by some tidal wave of feeling. We overtake our dreams, if speeded by a new and powerful impulse. Once or twice, or oftener, in a lifetime, we shall meet the universe aplomb and level, and find open and easy and charming relations ; see eye to eye ; vibrate like harps to the finer winds ; look into strange secrets and break old illusions with a cool unconcern, as if we were beforehand with these things, and realize that we have given a moment's relief to the usual condescensions in our favor. The angels of every order seem on the point of proclaiming our peership. High legends and heroic anecdotes read as if quite low in their tone ; belief in miracles is at last easy ; and we should expect, were the celebrated wits and wise men back again, they would offer us their hand, and ask us to dinner, and install us in their clubs.

b AT OUR BEST.

We have suddenly broken into superior ranks. And how Hope now plumes her wings ! Henceforth we have done with common clay ! Adieu, ye lower walks and dull, foolish hours !

But alas ! to-morrow will be another yesterday. We all know the valley on the other side of this mountain, and that our descent is too sure to the old ways of plodding and jogging. Here we are once more hammering cold iron, for the fire has gone out in our forge ; again bungling and botching at our tasks ; again at our doom of forcing very ordinary results that but just now came of themselves, and with a higher beauty and charm. We have not the sensibility for long elevation; cannot command at pleasure the degree of feeling or inspiration that insures a ready and easy success. Our April tide ends in an August drought.

The fervent spirit cannot be too much counted on or coveted, and especially by Englishmen and Americans, who have inherited the coldness and hardness of their Saxon ancestors. The first petition in all our prayers might well be, — " Give us more and finer feeling, O most vital One ! " The outcry of Hafiz for ecstasy, which he calls " wine," abating its Oriental verbiage, might well enough be adopted by any of us, and said before breakfast every morning : —

" Quickly furnish me Solomon's ring ; Alexander's weird glass be my meed ; The philospher's stone to me bring ; Also give me the cup of Jemschid : — In one word, I but ask, Host of mine, That thou fetch me a draught of thy wine ! Bring me wine ! I would wash this old cowl From the stains which have made it so foul. Bring me wine ! By my puissant arm The thick net of deceit and of harm, Which the priests have spread over the world, Shall be rent, and in laughter be hurled. Bring me wine ! I the earth will subdue. Bring me wine ! I the heaven will storm through. Bring me wine, bring it quick, make no halt ! To the throne of both worlds I will vault. All is in the red streamlet divine. Bring me wine ! O my Host, bring me wine ! "

Whilst the East delights to be drunk with feeling, the West seems to have some dread of fervor. It takes to one kind of intoxication readily enough, but it is not that of the heart. Emotion is at some discount with us, as if it were not quite creditable or bankable. I believe laughter is down in the books as somewhat vulgar ; and our religion seems to be in some dread of pentecosts and loss of respectability, through fervor. We have a conceit never to show any signs of surprise ; for who would have his neighbors know that he was not beforehand with all secrets ? or that he does not stand level with all that may happen, and in a mood to wonder rather that the fallings-out are so trivial ? There is a modern pride of coldness and stolidity, which is fatal to our poetry, and our social ease and triumph, and the unction and prevailing power of our prayers. We have made an idol of dignity and deliberation. Even our grief must conform, and mind the degrees and shadings of its costume, punctiliously observing the full and the half and the' quarter mourning, and we know not what smaller fractions.

But where must we look, if not into this inner world of feelings, if we would know both the extent and the rank of the life we have lived, and are living ? What is the web we have spun, and are spinning, with these quick threads ? Do we feel only like the mollusk and snail, slightly and at wide intervals ? Then our life is a mere span, however long. It lacks vital states, and is as near nothing as it can be and not be that. On the contrary, have we many and fine movings of mind and heart, as we may suppose a seraph to abound in ideas and emotions of a high and delightful order ? Then our life shall be rich and great, if it be short. Who has not before now found the morning set at an immeasurable distance from the evening, by the many vicissitudes of the day? So much life in so brief a time quite deludes memory ! This morning is a week old to the soul that has been through many scenes and experiences since its dawn. " A fortnight ! what an eternity ! " exclaimed Mariana to Wilhelm, in Goethe's mystical but charming story : a quick and fertile love had crowded the space with a world of thoughts, sentiments, dreams, fancies, and activities, so many and so happily full as to cause it to seem out of all proportion to the few fleeting days. Who does not frequently live two hours in one, or even better than that ? And this is a miracle of sensibility. The cultivated and fervid spirit manufactures life with as much profusion as the sun breeds clouds. And of a great and vital nature, keen of sight and feeling, as an e very-day advantage, the words of Thomas Fuller were fitly spoken : "In seventy or eighty years a man may have a deep gust of the world."

The importance of sensibility, or holding ourselves at our best, may be seen in the fact, which can never be too much dwelt on, that the world is ourselves over again, — thrown out, as it were, from our vital states ; or, in other words, it is a birth from the loins of our higher being, and true to its lineage. Has it not as many aspects as spectators? since every beholder is under some personal necessity of being its maker to the extent of its relations to himself. To the stone, which has no manufacturing power, it is a blank world, — that is, nothing ; to the lower orders it must look quite small and meaningless ; to cats it can be only a feline universe, and to dogs a canine ; and to larks and lions it is but that which their interpreting nature permits it to be. And so to a Hottentot it is what his meagreness can make of it, and no more and no other ; whilst to Plato it was great as his greatness could create it, and as diverse as the powers of his marvellous eye. The poetic sensibility suffuses the universe with a charming picturesqueness, as Johnson said of the poet of the Seasons, " He could not see two candles without forming a poetic image out of them." The poet lives in a finer world than other people. He overlays its prose with the ready poetry of his own spirit. His eyes, " larger, other eyes than ours," give roundness and ripple to all things. His fancy dresses the plain and enlivens the dull. To the spiritual the immensity is a spacious tabernacle filled with God or gods, and invites to a constant worship : whilst the unspiritual nowhere see a higher presence, but think the spaces are quite empty.

The practical man misses a thousand finer graces from Nature, but perpetually delights in the economies there displayed ; that the means are so sure to the end ; that so much is accomplished with so little fuss ; and that the machinery is always well oiled. He sees what a fine scavenger the ocean is, coming up twice a day to the back doors of the cities and carting off, in a deodorizing brine, all filthy offences. He cannot too much dwell on the fact that water is so variously and widely useful, that it is good to drink, to have our hands clean, to run saw-mills, to make roads of perfect grade from inland to sea, to float clippers and steamers like shuttles between continents, and to save an army with watering-pots in our gardens and meadows. He thinks how many candles the sun dispenses with, and regards the night as very needful to the hired men and spent horses and oxen, — reminding one of the calculating Yankee who thought Niagara a fine place to wash sheep. Of this man it may be said, as of Wordsworth's Peter Bell, and of all hard, matter-of-fact men: —

" The soft blue sky did never melt Into his heart ; he never felt The witchery of the soft blue sky."

But here is our visionary, on whose stomach every thing practical lies hard as not meant for it, and who is under some constitutional bias toward "airy nothings." He sees forests as the home of nymphs ; is a devotee of alchemy and astrology, to which chemistry and astronomy are as a farthing-candle to the sun ; dreams dreams like an ancient divinator, and the more romantic they are, the more they are confided in ; in short, he regards all things as what they are not. The humor of his eye, or his visual sensibility, unlike the practical man's, plays fantastical tricks and clothes the universe in miraculous forms and hues. To him there are no fairy stories, for these are his truths ; he questions no myths ; he sees chariots and horses, with marvellous trains, rushing through every sky, on all sorts of strange errands. What are the old plain truths and the verdicts of exact science, in his estimate, compared with those which are rapped out by spirits and established by the wild dance of tables ! Where is there integrity like that of a hazel stick, or wisdom so wise and so much to the point as that which is found at the bottom of a teacup ! His world is his own make, and indeed a marvel !

I once went into a friend's cupola that overlooked the city and the sea and a broad horizon of hills, and found he had glass windows of several tints and various shadings, that he might gratify his moods, — possibly modify them a trifle. When he had on a verdant humor, he would run to the green outlook ; when a saffron whim, he as promptly indulged it; again, a depression, begotten of an east wind, or late supper of pork and beans, or a fall in stocks, would send him to the blue lights ; at another time he found himself invited to the dim religious shades ; and, in seasons of ardency and glowing heat, he forsook all but the scarlet and crimson hues. But I thought how unphilosophical was this philosopher, since his own moods would supply adequate ochre, cochineal, logwood, indigo, jaundice, or what not, with w T hich to decorate or daub the world. There is no painter like the soul, and its colors are instant and made on the spot. The eye is a fountain of hues.

So Montaigne said, " The feast is in the palate ; " and it is evident, as a famous instance shows, that sublimit}?- must be in the eye before it can be seen looming on mountain or ocean, — for whilst Byron, who "always liked to break his mind on something craggy," was gazing in awe at Mont Blanc, from the Valley of Chamouni, he overheard an Englishwoman remark quite indifferently to her party, " Did you ever see any thing more rural ? " And whoever watches visitors at Niagara cannot fail to detect that every one brings in his eye the Falls he sees ; or, rather, that what they appear to one and another is a matter already decided by the order and measure of impressionability in each. And should we not always go unattended to the great scenes of nature, also to the masterpieces of art, — especially if we have natural and acquired gifts, — that our views may be entirely free and our sensibility unperverted ? Should we not shake off the frivolous, the conceited, the cold, as we would exclude the profane from our altars? The high meaning of Coleridge's well-known lines will never be set aside : —

" We receive but what we give, And in our life alone does Nature live ; Ours is her wedding garment, ours her shroud ! And would we aught behold of higher worth, Than that inanimate cold world allowed To the poor, loveless, ever-anxious crowd, Ah ! from the soul itself must issue forth A light, a glory, a fair luminous cloud,

Enveloping the earth.

And from the soul itself must there be sent A sweet and potent voice, of its own birth, Of all sweet sounds the life and element."

Books, arts, men, and conversation share the fate that befalls the universe, from the presence of our creating and fashioning spirits, that must see so or so, and not otherwise. It was said, " Gibbon Gibbonized history ; " and I suppose every one of us rubs his identity into the book he reads, or reads himself as much as his author, by being a sort of joint-composer. It would be difficult to say to what extent the meanings are the reader's, and not the writer's. We can believe that many an old author would be struck with wonder to know what wise meanings, beyond all his intentions, his modern commentator gets out of him, or puts into him. A high sensibility befriends greatly the pages it comes to, and all books have a heavy debt to their good readers. A better logic improves the argument ; a more perfect imagination finishes the pictures. Only they who bring Bible to Bible, or a superior literary sense to literature, do them justice, or gladden themselves by their perusal. After reading one of Southey's sonnets, with a throbbing heart and eyes brimming with tears, Dr. Channing handed it to a lady, who read it and observed : " Doctor, I do think it is pretty." "Pretty!" exclaimed the great divine, with what of horror we may well imagine. But we have only to remember that he and she found in the lines what they brought to them ; whilst to one of conceivable lowness and stolidity they would have been utterly desert lines.

All written and spoken jests, as we well know, are quite lost on those natures that have not the jest-creating humor, but must regard every thing: through their solemn directness as much like a statement under oath. They are jestblind, as some are color-blind. They cannot discern, from constitutional defect, the jocular side of a story. It is a famous anecdote in this line, that of the young mother, w^ho, amid her idolatry for her first-born, asked Charles Lamb, the incorrigible but facetious bachelor, how he liked babies, and when he replied, " Boiled, ma'am," she thought him a cannibal who should be straightway banished to the Fejee Islands.

Music is made by the skill and sensibility of the listener, who takes the atmospheric motions supplied him and works them up the best he can. The instrument and voice furnish, as it were, raw material, and the final manufacture is in the ear and the soul, and according to their music-making capacity and habit; as one man can make a good shoe, and another only a bad, out of the same piece of leather. Woe to the party that goes to the opera and is not prepared to carry the opera ; for such an one will find what a fellow-sufferer has called " the measured malice of music." Dr. Johnson thought that if he were to enjoy music, even in heaven, a new sense must be given him ; and he signified his rough disrelish by replying to a woman who asked him if he did not think it was wonderful that so many tunes could be made from eight notes, — "No, I don't think it wonderful; but I wish it had been impossible." Walter Scott shared a similar defect. He only claimed to have a " reasonable good ear for a jig, but that solos and sonatas gave him the spleen." And we have it from Julian Charles Young, the son of the tragedian, who spent a short season at Abbotsford, that "a young lady in the house sang divinely ; but her singing gave Scott no pleasure."

We know that a bad mill makes bad flour of the best wheat ; whilst a fine power of grinding and bolting renders another result for our tables. And human nature is a laboratory with an equal dependence on itself for the way the world is worked up, the soul being a prime factor in all vision, interpretation, and conclusion, and setting a personal stamp on action. The ego intrudes 2 in all we think and say and do. No man can escape himself. Character crops out and changes all things to its own complexion. Mrs. Siddons's tragic genius turned the world into a stage, and, we are told, she stabbed her potatoes and ordered a broth with a histrionic air. And not less does the spirit tell for itself in you and me, and give shape and color to events ; and he who would have a new universe must first make himself over, and become another man.

Another miracle of sensibility is seen in the magic power it exerts over others. There is no limit to be set to the sway of the kindled and earnest life ; as if it drew infinitude into its service, or it were such a charm to yield to its magnetism that we cannot and would not resist. The enchanted are ever the enchanters. Momus never misses his gift, nor Apollo, nor any one else. The lawyer who has most of vital heat has the jury; and even the judge, in spite of himself, falls under the spell, as the bird plays into the jaws of the snake. The wide-awake boy or man is given the lead in all enterprises and adventures. The battle may be lost ; but some enthusiastic general, like Montluc or Sheridan, arrives on the ground and charges every soldier with his own courage and force

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— like multiplying himself by tens of thousand^

— and the tide is turned. Sydney Smith easily enough overcame the most dubious gravity with his volumes of wit ; and every wag is a housewarmer wherever he comes, and sets the most glum silence into an uproar. When Whitefield begged for charity, with his whole being frantic, misers unbuttoned their pockets ; and so cool a man as Dr. Franklin was lucky in not having his whole estate along with him, to throw into the contribution-box. Aflame with an idea, Peter the Hermit melted Europe into the frenzy of consent, and drew on the Crusades. These are examples of the supremacy of sensibility, whose magic wand touches and controls us daily, for good or evil, — in the orator's voice, or the friend's- persuasions, or the beggar's appeals. What wilt thou have, my precious enthusiast ? Time, toil, money, tears, submission, the surrender of reason, or my body for the pillory or the flames? Take them, and be welcome. It was said that when Brahma walked the earth, the gold in its veins exclaimed, " Here am I, O most Eminent ! take me, and do with me as thou wilt." So we hasten to offer ourselves, body and soul, to the magnet of high emotion ; and may have need next year, or sooner, to return on our too hasty steps.

And it would almost seem that all those objects about which we apply ourselves, the mate- . rials upon which we work, such as wood and stone, brass and iron, truth and art, facts and fancies, have a voluntary regard for the spirit of genius ; for the inspired workman finds a sort of mysterious concurrence on their part — as it were, an advance to meet him half way, and a desire to fall in with his purpose — that the uninspired does not. The best work, of every kind, is done with heat and a freedom from painful effort, is a vital more than a mechanical operation ; and there can be only low results in the absence of high feeling. " Authors' moods " are proverbial ; and what heavy prices are paid for them I need not say. The haymakers find a little stimulation at " 'leven o'clock " sharpens the scythe or softens the grass, and makes an acre look less than it is. The work in the kitchen goes on well if there is spirit for it, and ill if there is not. We all know the value of the social impulse in society, and with what stammering and discredit we come off without it, forgetting our best thoughts and fine vocabulary, and furnishing but a modicum of stale bread to the invited feast. Honey-bees will yield everything to this man, and sting the next ; and there seems to be a like favoritism in all nature. What partiality among the stupid fish toward your hook, or mine ! How game puts itself in the way of Nimrod, and is out of the way before Benedict comes near ! But the secret of all success is an inspiration in the work in hand, which makes a jack-knife and gimlet better than a kit of tools to a dullard.

Once more, it is feeling that rounds us into persons, one by one, and into groups socially. Temperament breaks up the uniformity of society and groups us on the score of like and like. Our magnetisms unite us. If we have nothing in common, we shall be quite indifferent to each other ; or, like all opposites, we shall repel and fly asunder. My solitude is more companionable than the presence of ten or a thousand who do not belong to me by deeper sympathies. And unless in every party and neighborhood the social distribution is a free process, and according to this higher law, there shall be no ease or satisfaction of intercourse. What is yours you will find and enjoy, and what is not yours you will gladly leave to him whose it may be ; and it may happen that this inclusion and exclusion shall drive one and another into the corner to sit alone. And if it is contended that this is undemocratic and ill-usage of fellow-guests, we must reply, it is idle to hold a quarrel with gravitation that groups stars and souls alike.

" For sparks electric only strike On souls electrical alike ; The flash of intellect expires, Unless it meet congenial fires/'

Decorum and even a degree of tenderness, on high grounds, are due to all, — yes, to bores who come when they are not wanted and stay till the crack of doom, and to fribbles and triflers who chaffer in the face of every solemnity ; but all Nature, tugging at her own, and seeking the congenial alliances, excuses us from forced social connections. It is a broad privilege, with the highest sanction, this of " jackdaw to jackdaw " and emmet to emmet. The whole world is giving us this text daily. The affinities of sensibility are to be guarded by reason, but are not to be denied, since they are better guides than our wits, and carry the prophecy of the best society in respect of variety and elevation. All miscellaneous life must be low and unpoetic ; and, shall we not say, without the best moral tone ? Spare us the feeling that is elective and fastidious, and that draws us out of and above a Chinese uniformity ! Let me seek and reject

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whom I must, with this sure sense of my being ; and I will honor him who covets or shuns me. For this he also has right and title in his constitution, as well as in the better results that will follow.

In short, the sharing of a high degree of fine feeling, since it fills the time and place with a happy sufficingness, multiplying and magnifying vital conditions to our hearts' content, will save all need of running after sensations. It is the grace that helps us to stay at home with more of realization and relish than any who have it not can find in travel. It renews Eden under any sky. It makes life seem great and worth the while, and reconciles us to our being and lot. We weary of dulness, but a fulness of better emotions breeds contentment ; and we would stay, like Peter, where the sacred tide so abounds. Paradise will be happily busy, and therefore we shall not want to run away. The rapt student forgets to go to bed till somebody blows out his candle. " Twelve o'clock ! why, I thought it was just in the edge of the evening," says the enchanted visitor, and haltingly asks for his hat.

But how shall we reach an eminent vitality, and its better wit and succession of transports ?

How are we to hold ourselves at the top of our emotional condition? How have our batteries charged ?

The first requisite is a large share of quiet and repose in our habits, to admit of a healthy and full state of nerves, senses, animal spirits, and of the finer reservoirs, — mind, heart, and soul. There is not only more dignity but better feeling in a serene bearing and a life of pauses and waiting. Some of the best things are not overtaken by pursuit, will not condescend to a man out of breath, hate and fly the insanity of haste, refuse to fellowship with exhaustion ; and few will need to be told that among these best things is a perfect degree of sensibility. By too much whirl we are jaded and benumbed. Overwork leads to underfeeling. Weariness has an effect like morphine. I noticed that our party who walked up Mt. Washington from the Glen House, and squandered their powers, had much less of rapture on the summit than those who rode up : we saw with a blur, and felt after a sluggish fashion, or were lying around the stove asleep, whilst the others were on the fresh run for views, and abounding with emotions ; that is, we had foolishly saved three dollars, and lost the clouds and the most sublime of the sublimities. It is the testimony of generals that tired soldiers are much less capable of patriotic feelings and military pride, and are unfit to meet the ardor and courage of fresh troops. Excess of study dazes the brain, and the idler is often the better scholar, as having his powers highly charged and in full play ; and so eloquence is not more facts gathered by incessant delving, but more feeling drawn from the open sky and the genial walk. The unfinished sermon that steals the minister's sleep on Saturday night makes prolific return to his congregation on Sunday ; and the man who walks five miles to worship is a bad worshipper at church, however devout he may be at home, for piety moves with the blood, or the Holy Ghost respects a high state of health. To come to the social circle from too many toils and cares, from the hours of hard work, is to incur the discredit of dotage and senility in early life, with our heavy eyes and stupid "yes" and " no" in the conversation. If my friend comes a long way to see me, and has spent a day and a night in the cars without sleep, I will shake hands with him and send him to bed, and turn the key on him for twenty-four hours ;