1849.] Wonderful Structures of the Dark Ages. 119 nineteenth century even, have not attained their full growth. Doubtless there was disturbance, confusion, a semi-chaos, while the old elements of social life were dying out, a mingling with the new ideas which form our modern civilization, but he studies history most unwisely who separates the present from the past. There were creative centuries, when the earth was formless and void, when mighty internal fires were upheaving the mountains and wild currents were sweeping across the face of the earth; but without them we might have had no majestic rivers, no broad and luxuriant savannahs, no sunny hillsides, no sweet valleys, no heaven-reflecting lakes. We sometimes forget our necessary connection with the past; that each century has its controlling ideas, and though these may become obsolete, their influence must descend as a legacy to the future; that we are organically connected with all that have gone before, and if they had not been as they were, we should not be as we are; that out of the oppression of one generation springs the freedom of the next, and so from the lawlessness of the present, the tyranny of the future. We forget that, as a part of our great birth-right, we inherit the wisdom of the ancients; that the ages are bound together by ties the holiest, most vital,-without which there were no flow of life, no nation, no possible history,—and none can attempt to sever the chain, but the jar of the audacious blow will quiver along every separate fibre of existence. We forget that the course of the world itself is but one; that, like a grand drama, it is unfolding every century, and though we may not be able to determine whereabout in it we play our little parts, whether in the bustle and hurry of the third act, or in the rapid and solemn consummation of the fifth, we should remember that we can comprehend each only in its connection with the others, and all, only in the light of the great plan of the Providence of God. In those very ages which we so bravely despise, lay the germs of how many grand discoveries! In those very dark ages were produced poems, which no mean critics,—a little wildly we doubt not, but yet with a show of reason,-have compared with Homer, not unfavorably. Then were produced music and sacred hymns, with which the hearts of the devout will be solaced or inspired to the end of time. Then originated thatlar, sublime, religious architecture, misnamed Gothic, of which it is no extravagance to say that it ranks among the most marked and astonishing creations of human genius. The most free and untrammeled of all the orders of architecture, one hardly knows whether to admire most the invention and skill of the architects, or their extreme modesty and self-forgetfulness. All over Germany and the north of France, and the Low Countries, and England, rose as by magic, those complicated structures, massive and graceful, their foundations firm as the hills, their spires shooting heavenward, a delicate, fairy-like fretwork of stone, the admiration of generation after generation, and yet their builders are as little known as the builders of the pyramids. In those ages occurred some of those all-embracing movements of the masses, which seemed to break up society as an earthquake breaks up the strata of the earth, and which remain to some extent problems even now, but certainly incontestible proofs of the energy of the central forces which impelled them. In those ages were laid the strong foundations of governments, which have survived the disturbances of centuries, and are to-day laying their hands upon the islands of the eastern and the western continents. No surely, it will not do to be indiscriminate in condemnation of so many centuries and of people so various. Reverence for the past is a necessary element, not of the peculiarly imaginative mind merely, but of every mind which would fairly understand the present. It is needful for that harmonious culture on which the beauty of character depends. Antiquity has indeed passed away, but it is not wholly dead; beauty, truth and knowledge cannot wholly die. The intelligible forms of ancient poets The power, the beauty and the majesty That had their haunts in dale or piney mountain, Or forest by slow stream, or pebbly spring, Or chasms and wat'ry depths; all these have vanished. They live no longer in the faith of reason! But still the heart doth need a language, still Doth the old instinct bring back the old names. And even at this day 'Tis Jupiter who brings whate'er is great, And Venus who brings everything that's fair! It has been said that whatever tends to emancipate us from the present, whether to carry us backward with the historian, or, with the poet, transport us to an ideal future, does something to elevate and dignify our nature. That is a low and narrow m hich is solely. occupied with the passing hour. The scholar with his books is in closest communion with the "great living and the great dead,” whom at any time he can summon from the niches where they stand enshrined, those "ancient saints," as Bacon calls some of them, "full of true virtue, and that without delusion or imposture." For him they have lived; all their wisdom they lay at his feet. "1 no sooner 1849.] Practical Spirit. 121 come into the library," said Heinsius, the librarian at Leyden with mild and beautiful affection for the volumes he had looked upon so much, "but I bolt the door after me, excluding lust, ambition, avarice, and all such vices, whose nurse is idleness, the mother of ignorance and melancholy herself; and in the very lap of eternity, amidst so many divine souls, I take my seat with so lofty a spirit and such sweet content, that I pity all the great and rich who know not this happiness." That Of the best things indeed there may be made the worst use. which we commend as a just and healthful reverence, the parent of modesty and of wisdom, may possibly degenerate into a slavish and abject worship of objects most grotesque; of everything, indiscriminately, that has the stamp of age or a pretension to excellence. But this is the least likely of two extremes, and, if it exist, will probably be generated by the equally absurd and dangerous extreme of selfconceit and contemptuous rejection of authority. Between an irreverent and a superstitious mind, it is hard to choose. The line that divides them is not very broad; one is sometimes the product of the other. Both lead to intellectual barrenness; to bigotry, to tyranny; to the inquisition or the guillotine. Freedom from superstition is not always obedience to reason. The errors of the past should make us humble, not vain, since we are of the same nature with those whose mistakes we plume ourselves on avoiding. The star-gazer when he falls into the ditch, will neither get out the easier, nor be laughed at the less, because he flattered himself he was avoiding the errors of those dull souls who never saw anything but the dirt beneath their feet. Rather will we use the treasures of ancient wisdom, than bury them for fear of base metal, or because some have made of them an idol. We will read the old books, we will wander among ancient ruins, we will meditate in the sombre cathedrals, we will rest in the dim cloisters, not to dream away our life there, not to congeal our mind under the immutable forms of antiquity, but that all of the past which is beautiful and good and true may clothe our spirit, that we may wisely estimate the contests of our fathers,-may not have to fight over again the battles which they fought at such bitter expense, -may enter with a filial and grateful spirit into their inheri tance; that the infinitesimal present may not wholly engross us, and the dust and din of this noisy workshop do not blind and deafen us to the sights and sounds of beauty which fill the universe. We venture to suggest, as another point, a practical spirit as of great importance to our scholars. A scholar should ever be imbued VOL. VI. No. 21. 11 with the spirit of humanity, should despise and spurn all affectation of niceness as if he were not mortal but something far higher. He should ever be ready to apply his mind to the exigencies of the times, as looking for the permanent good of society; as having a foresight of the evils which threaten, and of the means of avoiding them; a comprehending and working out the problems of daily life; as guiding, not following the multitude; as dwelling upon the essential, the true, the eternal, because of the power which principles, however abstruse, exert when once they fully possess the mind. They who would portray great actions with most success, must have felt in their own hearts the power of true greatness. Aeschylus became not less sublime, earnest, terrible, by fighting at Salamis. A strong mind indeed pants for enterprise; to do something, not always to think. So common is this, that it sometimes leads to an apparent anomaly in character, and we find the student forsaking his books for some apparently less genial pursuit, when, in fact, he is but satisfying the craving of his soul for that species of culture which books cannot give. "That," says Lord Bacon, "will indeed dignify and exalt knowledge, if contemplation and action may be more nearly and strongly conjoined and united together than they have been,-a conjunction like unto that of the two highest planets, Saturn, the planet of rest and contemplation, and Jupiter, the planet of civil society and action." To this element of a scholar's life, our times are less adverse than to that which we have just adverted to. Indeed, the lowest practical aims too strongly entice us all. Like children, we are so anxious for the great play or struggle of life, that we can hardly wait to obtain or arrange our panoply, and were Richard Baxter alive, he might, perhaps, be tempted occasionally to repeat the criticism which he made upon certain preachers of his day, that they were like the animals which Herodotus speaks of as bred from the slime of the Nile, whose fore feet were pawing before their hind feet were made, and while yet they remained but plain mud.' The truly valuable practical spirit, is that which does not neglect thorough education for the sake of a present advantage, but, with its eye ever on the general good, would yet lead the student to the abstrusest, most recondite investigations; the practical spirit of thoughtful minds applying the conclusions of their wisdom to the conduct of human affairs-the spirit of profound jurists, of far sighted statesmen, of wise historians. There is a vulgar notion of the practical and the useful, as if it consisted in that merely which ministers to the physical wants; or, if above this, that it is confined to the mere logical processes of the mind; and so have souls of the finest mould, the most pure and beau 1849.] True Idea of the Practical. 123 tiful image of their Creator, been cast away with indifference; and nature herself seems liable to the charge of casting her pearls before swine. But, in truth, there often has been a close union between philosophic contemplation and executive skill. Scholars, as a class, have not been deficient in action. They have not always, like the prince of Denmark, had 'the native hue of resolution sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought.' From the days of Xenophon and Cicero, scholars have not been wanting in every age, great in the cabinet and in the field, as well as in letters. Still further, all art, all literature, is, in some of its relations, eminently practical. So far as it is an expression of ideas, so far does it tend to diffuse those sentiments, notions, feelings, call them what you please, which are the basis of social and individual action. This is true in that department of literature which has been often called most artificial, most ornamental, written, it has been said, so merely for our pleasure, that its absence has been thought entirely compatible with the fullest and best mental culture. We are rather of those who believe that poetry is of the highest possible utility. We sympathize with the words of Sir Philip Sidney, that "poets were the first bringers in of all civility; that no philosopher's precept can sooner make you an honest man than the reading of Virgil." We in part perceive in the noble language of Milton, "what religious, what glorious and magnificent use might be made of poetry, both in divine and human things." What is practical if that is not so which touches us nearest and deepest; which inspires us to be great and good, elevates us above ourselves, opens to us higher and more glorious regions of thought, snatches us from trivial pursuits, bears us backward to ante-mundane scenes, onward beyond "the flaming bounds of space and time," shows us something of which human genius is capable, and thus makes us respect ourselves the more, because we claim kindred with that genius no virtue of our common humanity, which reveals to us the most subtle, most essential, most comprehensive spirit of times and of peoples. It would indeed be easy to show that from the lofty summits of song, flow down streams to fertilize all the valleys and plains. There is a glory in Shakspeare and Milton that gilds every speaker of the English tongue. What money could purchase from Scotland (were the supposition possible) the fame of Burns? Modern Italy actually buys her daily bread with the cheerful tribute which the civilized world is annually paying to her ancient, or mediaeval art. No, no, the practical spirit of the scholar has no affinity with the wretched quackery which takes away the charm of childhood by de |