 Section 13 of Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Volume 8. Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Volume 8. Section 13. The Execution by Cesare Cantu. Cesare Cantu, 1805-1895 Cesare Cantu, an Italian historian, was born at the Brevio on the Ada December 2, 1805. The eldest of ten children he belonged to an old, though impoverished family. To obtain for him a gratuitous education his parents destined him for the priesthood. On the death of his father in 1827 he became the sole support of his mother, brothers and sisters. In 1825 he had made his appearance as a writer with a poem entitled, Algiso and the Lombard League. His history of Como, following in 1829, gave him a standing in the world of letters. Although not a member of the Revolutionary Society Young Italy, he was the confidant of two of its leaders, Albera and Balzetti, a circumstance which led to his arrest in 1833. Seized by the Austrian officials in the midst of his lecture at the Lyceum in Milan, he was incarcerated in the prison in the convent of Santa Margarita. Although deprived of books and pen, he beguiled the time by writing with a toothpick and candle-smoke on the back of a map and on scraps of paper, Margarita Pusterla, with one exception the most popular historical novel in the Italian language. Liberated at the end of a year but deprived of his professorship, he and his family would probably have starved had he not chance to meet a publisher who wanted a history of the world. The result of this meeting was his universal history in thirty-five volumes, Turin 1836 at Sek, which has gone through forty editions and been translated into many languages. It brought the publisher Fortune and Cantu a modest independence. Up to the time of his death in 1895, Cantu wrote almost without intermission. Besides the books already mentioned, the most notable are the History of a Hundred Years, 1750 to 1850, 1864, and the Story of the Struggles for Italian Independence, 1873. His masterpiece is the universal history, the best of its kind in Italian and perhaps in any language, for lucidity and rapidity of narration, unity of plan, justness of proportion, and literary art. It is, however, written from the clerical point of view and is not based on a critical study of documentary sources. The political offences for which Cantu suffered persecution were his attempts to secure a federal union of the Italian states under the hegemony of Austria and the papacy. The Execution from Margarita Pusterla The beautiful sunshine which one sees in Lombardy only at a season of vintage spread its white light and gentle warmth upon the sombre facades of Proletto. The piazza was packed with people. The balconies and balevidaires were filled with motley groups. Even ladies were contending for the best places to see the horrible sight. One mother showed her little boy all this preparation for death and said to him, Do you see that man yonder with the long black beard and rough skin? He devours bad boys in two mouthfuls. If you cry, he will carry you off. The frightened child tightly clasped his mother's neck with his small arms and hit his face in her breast. Another half ashamed at being seen there asked, Who is the victim? It is, replied a neighbouring stranger, the wife of the man who was beheaded yesterday. Ah, ah, put in a third. Then it is the mother of the little boy who was executed yesterday with Signor Pusterla. How was that? resumed the first speaker. Did they beheaded child? It is only too true, said a woman joining in the conversation and such a pretty little boy. Two blue eyes bluered in the sky and a face as gentle and sweet as that of the Christ child and hair like threads of gold. I came here to show my boy how the wicked are punished and as I stood near the scaffold I heard and saw everything. Tell us, tell us, mother Radegonda. And Radegonda, enchanted at occupying the centre of attention, began. I will tell you, she said. She was there, but for the love of charity give me more room. Do you not wish to stifle my little tanuccio? Well, when he began to ascend the ladder. Ah, see, the child does not wish to go. He stamps his foot, he weeps, he cries. I believe you, interrupted a person named Pizzaparaza, for I heard all the way from the loger di Mercanti where I was being crushed, his cries of Papa, Mama. That was it, continued Radegonda and he recoiled with horror before that savage figure, she said, pointing with her forefinger to Mastro in Pica. His father sobbed and could not speak, but his confessor whispered in his ear. I saw also, interrupted Pizzaparaza, determined to show that he had been an eye witness and he continued, the golden hair of the child soon mingled with the black hair and beard of the father. One would have said they were yellow flames on a funeral pole. I also saw the child caress the priest who talked to him and the priest? Who is the priest? interrupted the first speaker. The question was passed from lip to lip until finally a man dressed somewhat after the ecclesiastical fashion and having a serene and devout face replied, he is the one who preached at Lent last year at Santa Maria del Sacco. He could have converted hair at himself. But the world is so wicked. He had no more success than if he had preached in the desert. His name? Frabuan Vincino of the Monastery della Ricetta de Brera. But the riches that he covets are not those which one acquires in sewing cloaks. Do you know him? Ah, what a man! Question him, talk to him. He knows everything and... But what did he say to the child? And what did the child say? And the child's father, what did he do? It was thus they interrupted the speaker without listening to his eulogy. Here Radegonda, regretting that she had been deposed from her throne, took occasion to resume her speech, for no one was able to give more details. She began again. Here, here, she said, who is to talk? You are I. There are some people who stick their noses everywhere and who... Now, do you want to know what the priest said? And how the poor condemned creature walked with courage? And how in one instant he was in heaven in the company of the angels? And what did the child say? The little child did not want to go along. He said, I know that it is beautiful in paradise, that the angels live there, at the kind God, and there lives the good Madonna, but I would rather stay here with Papa and Mama. I would rather stay with them. He repeated and cried. Sacred innocence exclaimed one of the listeners by an instinctive compassion and shed a few tears. But if anyone had questioned him regarding the justice from the child to death, he would have unhesitatingly answered in the affirmative. Our eloquence at Adegonda continued. But the priest! Is there anyone here who did not see his face? Well, you know how it looks when it rains and shrines at the same time when they say the devil beats his wife. That was the face of the good monk. Tears large as the beads of a rosary ran down his cheeks and at the same time he had a smile like an angel. He said to the boy, your father goes with you to paradise. The child looked at him with sad eyes and asked, but Mama, your mother, replied the priest, will come with us. If I stay on earth, said the child, I must then live without them. The monk answered, yes. And then the little one consented to Neil. Here Sobs checked the course of the narrative and the narrator was half ashamed at being affected by the fate of the condemned ones, just as a young lady is ashamed when she is caught weeping at the theatre. Pizzabrasa concluded the recital. The child dropped upon his knees and raised towards heaven his little hands that were whited in snow and then the executioner cut his hair and opened his great eyes to frighten him. How much I would have been willing to pay to have been present! exclaimed one of the group. Such affecting scenes delight me. Then why didn't you come? asked a neighbour. The other replied, what do you think? I had to take to St. Victor a sadland bridle which I had mended. And then with that indifference such compassionate souls have for the sorrows of others which have affected them and for a moment they turned the conversation on a thousand unrelated topics. On the balconies, on the platforms and in the magistrates halls conversation of another description was held. Ladies and gentlemen of high degree discussed arms and battles in constant favours of the court passage of birds and the scarcity of hairs they demanded and related news and read from the books of this one and that one. Signora Theodora, the young wife of Francesco dei Maghi, one of the most famous beauties asked in the most nonchalant way as she drew on her gloves, who is this one about to be executed? Margarita Visconti replied for Restino, one of the sons of the Duke who was playing the gallant with all the ladies present. Visconti exclaimed the young woman, she is then a relative of Signor Vicario. Yes, a distant relative, responded the young man. But the gesta gril in Cervello interposed. She might have been a nearer relative, but as she refused this you see what has happened. She must regret her action, said another, she is so young and beautiful. And then she is not accustomed to dying, put in the fool a reflection which caused peals of laughter around him. Then he turned towards for Restino and his brother Bruzio around whom all had gathered in homage. Serene Princess, it is my opinion that if you wish to render attentions to the lady of Signor Francesco dei Maghi she will not imitate Margarita. At this moment the clock struck again. There was silent silence. Then a second stroke. Then a third, vibrating with a moribund horror. She has arrived? No. Why she so late? was the universal question for the spectators were impatient and imbued with expectation and curiosity as if they were in a theatre waiting for the curtain to rise. Perhaps they have pardoned her? said one. Well for my part I should be glad. And the people seemed to find as much pleasure in imagining a pardon as in watching the execution. Either way it gave the material for applause, emotion, criticism and discussion. Soon all observations were interrupted. For upon the parlera which was covered with black cloth and velvet cushions they so appear the magistrates, the Podesta, his lieutenant and finally the captain Lucio. As I have told you Justice was then barbarous but honest and these men came to admire their work. Through all the narrow streets which terminated at this point ran a whisper and the murmurs grew more excited towards the large gate which gave entrance to the Pescheria Vecchia. Here was seen the winding funeral procession which made a long circuit to let the multitude profit by the lesson. Here she is! Here she is! They cried and exactly like a regiment of infantry in obedience to the commands of a sergeant the entire crowd stood on tiptoe, stretched their necks and turned heads and eyes to the scene. Then appeared a yellow standard bordered with gold lace upon which was painted a skeleton, erect. In one hand it held the skies and in the other an hourglass. At the right of the skeleton there was painted a man with a cord around his neck and to the left a man carrying his head in his hands. Behind this confalon advanced two by two the brothers of the consolation. This was a pious fraternity founded in the chapel of Santa Maria de Disciplini. This chapel was afterwards changed into a church which yielded to none other in Milan for its beauty of architecture. Today it is a common school. This fraternity which was transferred to San Giovanni alle Caserotti had for its one aim to succour the condemned and to prepare them for death. The brothers advanced. They were attired in white habits fitting tightly around their figures and their cowls were sewn around their heads. Instead of a face one saw a cross embroidered in red and at the arms of this cross tiny holes were made for the eyes to peer forth. On their breasts they wore a black medal representing the death of Christ and at the foot of the cross was engraved the head of Saint John the Baptist. With their long unbelted robes the chains on their wrists they resembled nocturnal phantoms. The last ones bore a coffin and sang in lugubrious tones the doleful miserere. Chanting a service and carrying the beer of a person still in the flesh breaking through the crowd they arrived near the scaffold and placed the beer upon the ground. Then they arranged themselves in two cordons around the block so that they could receive the victim among them and also to form a guard between the world and her who was to leave it. Now a car came moving slowly and drawn by two oxen comparison in black. In this car was our poor Margarita. In obedience to the curious sentiment which commands one to adorn oneself for all occasions, even the melancholy ones Margarita had dressed herself in a rich robe of sombre hue. With great pains she had arranged her black hair which set off to advantage the delicate pallor of the face revealing so much suffering. Upon her neck which had so often disputed whiteness with pearls she now wore her rosary and to outline the circle of the axe. In her hands she clasped the crucifix attached to the chapelet and from this she never removed her eyes eyes which had always beamed with kindness and sweetness but which were now full of sorrow. They could only look upon one object the cross, the one hope of salvation. By her side was seated one vicino even paler if possible than she. In his hand he held an image of the crucified God who has suffered for us. From time to time he spoke some consoling words to the young victim. A simple prayer such as our mothers have taught us in infancy and which come to us again in the most critical moments of life. Saviour unto thee I yield my spirit. Maria pray for me at the hour of death. Depart Christian soul from this world which is but a place of exile and return into that celestial country sanctified by thy suffering so that angels may bear thee to paradise. When Margarita appeared everyone exclaimed oh how beautiful she is she is so young. Then tears flowed many a silken handkerchief hid the eyes of fair ladies and many a hand accustomed to a sword tried to retard tears. Everyone looked towards Lucio to see if he would not wave a white handkerchief the signal of pardon. Translated through the French by Esther Singleton for the library of the world's best literature. End of section 13 Library of the world's best literature ancient and modern volume 8 This is a LibriVox recording all LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org Recording by Rita Butros Library of the world's best literature ancient and modern volume 8 Section 14 Biographical note on Giasu Carducci by Frank Sewell Rarely in the history of ancient or modern literature has a writer while living been so generally recognized by his countrymen as their national prophet as has the Italian poet and essayist, Carducci. In January 1896 he completed his 35th year as professor of ballet in the University of Bologna and the solemn and brilliant festivities with which the event was celebrated extending over three days and including congratulatory addresses from the king from the municipality from the students and graduates from foreign universities and from distinguished scholars at home and abroad. Testified to the remarkable hold this poet has gained on the affections and esteem of the Italian people and the deep impress his writing has made on the literature of our time. Born in northern Italy in the year 1836 and entering upon his literary career at a time coincident with the downfall of foreign power in Tuscany the history of his authorship is a fair reflection of the growth of the new Italy of today. In an autobiographical sketch with which he prefaces his volume of Poesie 1871 he depicts with the utmost sincerity and frankness the transition through which his own mind has passed in breaking from the old traditions in which he had been nursed at his mother's knee and in meeting the dazzling radiance of modern thought and feeling the thrill of national liberty and independence no longer a glory dreamed of as by Alfieri nor sung in tones of despair as by Leopardi but as a living experience of his own time. He felt the awakening to be at once a literary, political and religious one and following his deep Hellenic instincts the religious rebound in him was rather to the paganism of the ancient Latin forefathers than to the spiritual worship that had come in with the infusion of foreign blood. This paganism he says this cult of form was not else but the love of that noble nature from which the solitary Semitic estrangements had alienated hitherto the spirit of man of such bitter opposition. My sentiment of opposition at first feebly defined thus became confirmed conceit, reason, affirmation. The hymn to Apollo became the hymn to Satan. Oh, the beautiful years from 1861 to 1865 passed in peaceful solitude and quiet study in the midst of a home where the venerable mother instead of fostering superstition taught us to read Alfieri. But as I read the codices of the 14th century the ideas of the Renaissance began to appear to me in the gilded initial letters like the eyes of nymphs in the midst of flowers and between the lines of the spiritual lord I detected the Satanic strife. So long had Italy lived in passive dependence on the fame of her great writers of the times of Augustus and of the Medici and in the apathy of a long abandoned hope of political independence and achievement that it required a man of powerful instinct and genius to rouse the people to a sense of their actual possession of a national life and of a literature that is not alone of the past and so to throw off both the livery of the slave and the mask of the courtesan. Such was the mission of Carducci as howls in his modern Italian poets remarks of Leo Parti, he seems to have been the poet of the national mood. He was the final expression of that hopeless apathy in which Italy lay bound for 30 years after the fall of Napoleon and his governments. So it may be said of Carducci that in him speaks the hope and joy of a nation waking to new life and recalling her past glories no longer with shame but a purpose to prove herself worthy of such a heritage. A distinguished literary contemporary, Enrico Panzacchi, says of Carducci, I believe that I do not exaggerate the importance of Carducci when I say that to him and to his perseverance and steadfast work we owe in great part the poetic revival in Italy. Cesar Lambroso in the Paris Review de Revue says, Among the stars of first magnitude shines one of greatest brilliance, Carducci, the true representative of Italian literary genius. The poem that first attracted attention and caused no little flutter of ecclesiastical gowns was The Hymn to Satan, which appeared in 1865 in Pistoia over the signature Enotrio Romano and bore the date 2618 from the foundation of Rome. It is not indeed the sacrilegious invective that might be imagined from the title but rather a hymn to science and to free thought liberated from the ancient thralldom of dogma and superstition. It reveals the strong Hellenic instinct which still survives in the Italian people beneath the superimposed Christianity which here, as in many other of Carducci's poems, stands out in bold contrast with the subjective and spiritual elements in religion. It is this struggle of the pagan against the Christian instinct that accounts for the commingled sentiment of awe and of rebellion with which Carducci contemplates his great master Dante. For while he must revere him as the founder of Italian letters and the immortal poet of his race, he cannot but see both in the spirituality of Dante's conception of the church and in his absolute loyalty to the empire motives wholly foreign to the ancient national instinct, referring again to his transition years, he writes, Meanwhile the shadow of Dante looked down reproachfully upon me, but I might have answered, Father and Master, why did Thou bring learning from the cloister to the piazza, Latin to the vulgar tongue? Thou first, O great public accuser of the Middle Ages, gavest the signal for the rebound of thought that the alarm was sounded from the bells of a Gothic campanile, mattered but little. Without a formal coronation, Carducci may be regarded as the actual poet laureate of Italy. He is still, at 60 years of age, an active and hardworking professor at the University of Bologna, where his popularity with his students in the lecture room is equal to that which his writings have gained throughout the land. A favorite with the court and often invited to lecture before the queen, he is still a man of great simplicity, even to roughness of manners and of a genial and cordial nature. Not only do the Italians with one voice call him their greatest author, but many both in Italy and elsewhere are feigned to consider him the foremost living poet in Europe. The citations here given have been selected as illustrating the prominent features of Carducci's genius. His joy in mental emancipation from the thralldom of dogma and superstition is seen in the Roma and in the hymn to Satan. His paganism and his cult of form, as also his Homeric power of description and of color, are seen in the ox and in two aurora. His veneration for the great masters finds expression in the sonnets to Homer and Dante and the revulsion of the pagan before the spiritual religious feeling is shown in the lines in a Gothic church and in the sonnet, Dante. The poems of Carducci have appeared for the most part in the following editions only. Poesy, embracing the juvenilia, Levia Gravia, and the decennalli. Nuovo Poesy, Odi Barber, Nuovi Rim. Zanichelli in Bologna publishes a complete edition of his writings. His critical essays have appeared generally in the Nuova antolagia and embrace among the more recent a history and discussion of Tasso's Aminta and the ancient pastoral poetry, a preface to the translation by San Feliz of Shelley's Prometheus, the Torres Mondo of Tasso, Italian life in the 15th century, etc. Eight oads of Carducci have been translated into Latin by Adolfo Gandiglo of Ravenna and published by Calderini of that city in 1894. End of section 14. Section 15 of Library of the World's Best Literature Ancient and Modern, volume 8. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Sonja. Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, volume 8. Section 15. Poems by Josue Carducci. Roma from the Poesie. Give to the wind dialogues, all glittering thy sea blue eyes and thy white bosom bed. Mount to thy chariot while in speechless roaring terror and force before thee clear the way. The shadow of thy helmet, like the flashing of brazen star, strikes through the trembling air. The dust of broken empires, cloud-like rising, follows the awful rumbling of thy wheels. So once, O Rome, beheld the conquered nations, thy image, object of their ancient dread. Today, a mitre they would place upon thy head and fold a rosary between thy hands. O name, again to terror's old, awake the tired ages and the world. Homer from the Levia Gravia and from the savage Urals to the plain, a new barbarian folk shall send alarms. The coast of Agenorian Thebes again be waked with sound of chariots and of arms, and Rome shall fall and Tybur's current drain the nameless lands of long-deserted farms. But thou, like Hercules, shalt still remain untouched by fiery etna's deadly charms, and with thy youthful temples laurel crowned shalt rise to the eternal form's embrace whose unveiled smile all earliest was dine, until the Alps to gulfing sea give place by letting shore or on a cayen ground like heaven's sun, shalt thou, O Homer, shine. In a Gothic church from the Poesie they rise aloft, marching in awful file, the polished shafts of men's of marble gray, and in the sacred darkness seem to be an army of giants, who wage a war with the invisible. The silent arches soar and spring apart in distant flight, then re-embrace again and droop on high. So in the discord of unhappy men, from out their barbarous tumult there go up to God the size of solitary souls in him united. Of you I ask, no God, hear marble shafts, hear air evolves, I tremble, but I watch to hear a dainty well-known footstep waken the solemn echoes. This Lydia, and she turns and slowly turning her tresses full of light reveal themselves, and love is shining from a pale shy face behind the veil. On the sixth centenary of Dante, from the Levia Gravia I saw him from the uncovered tomb uplifting his mighty form, the imperial prophet stand. Then shook the Adrian shore, and all the land Italia trembled as at an earthquake drifting, like morning mist from purest ether sifting, it marched along the Eponinian strand, glancing down the veils on either hand, then vanished like the dawn to daylight shifting. Meanwhile, in earthly hearts a fear did rise, the awful presence of a God discerning to which no mortal dared to lift the eyes, but where beyond the gates of the evening the racist dead of war like a man and wise with joy saluted the great souls returning. The Ox from the Poesie I love thee, Pius Ox, a gentle feeling of vigor and of peace thou givest my heart, how solemn, like a monument thou art, over wide fertile fields calm gay stealing unto the yoke with grave contentment kneeling, to man's quick work thou dost thy strength impart. He shouts and goats and answering thy smart thou turns'd on him thy patient eyes appealing. From thy broad nostrils black and wet arise thy breast soft fumes and on the still air swells like happy hymn thy lowing's mellow strain. In the grave sweetness of thy tranquil eyes of emerald, broad and still reflected dwells all the divine green silence of the plain. Dante from the Levia Gravia O Dante, why is it that I, adoring still lift my songs and vows to thy stone face and sunset to the morning gray gives place to find me still thy restless verse exploring? Lucia prays not for my poor soul's resting for me Matilda tends no sacred found for me in vain the sacred lover's mound over star and star to the eternal soaring. I hate the holy empire and the crown and sword alike relentless would have riven from thy good Frederick on Olona's plains. Empire and church to ruin have gone down and yet for them thy songs did scale high heaven. Great Joe is dead, only the song remains. To Satan from the Poesie to thee my verses unbridled and daring shall mount O Satan, king of the banquet. Away with thy sprinkling O priest and thy droning for never shall Satan O priest stand behind thee. See how the rust is gnawing the mystical sword of St. Michael and how the faithful wind-plucked archangel falls into emptiness frozen the thunder in hand of Jehovah. Like to pale meteors or planets exhausted out of the firmament rain down the angels. Here in the matter which never sleeps king of phenomena king of all forms thou Satan, livest dinest the empire felt in the dark eyes tremulous flashing. Whether their languishing resist or glittering and tearful they call and invite. How shine the clusters with happy blood so that the furious joy may not perish so that the languishing love be restored and sorrow be banished and love be increased. Thy breath, O Satan, my verse inspires when from my bosom the angel of kings inhuman thine is the lightning that sets minds to shaking for thee, Arriman, Adonis, Astarti, for thee lived the marbles, the pictures, the parchments when the fair Venus and Adiomene blessed the Ionian heavens serene. For thee were roaring the forests of Lebanon the Cyprian lover reborn. For thee rose the chorus, for thee raved the dances, for thee the pure shining loves of the virgins under the sweet odoured palms of Idume where break in white foam the Cyprian waves. What if the barbarous Nazarene fury fed by the base rites of secret feastings lied sacred torches to burn down the temples scattering abroad the scrolls hieroglyphic. In thee find refuge the humble-roofed plebs who have not forgotten the guards of their household. Thence comes the power fervid and loving that filling the quick-throbbing bosom of woman turns to the sucker of nature enfeebled, a sorcerous pallid endless care laden. Thou to the trans-hold an eye of the alchemist thou to the view of the bigoted mago, show us the lightning-flash of the new time, shining behind the dark bars of the cloister. Seeking to fly from thee, here in the world-life hides him the gloomy monk in Theban desert. O soul that wanderest far from the straight way, Satan is merciful. See Eloisa, in vain you wear yourself thin in rough gown. I still murmur the verses of Maro and Flaccus amid the Davidic psalming and wailing, and Delphic figures close at thy side. Rosie amid the dark carols of the friars enters Lycorrida, enters Glycerra. Then other images of days more fair come to dwell with thee in thy secret cell. Lo, from the pages of Livy, the tribunes all ardent, the consuls, the crowds tumultuous, awake, and the fantastic pride of Italians drives them, O monk, up to the capital, and you whom the flaming fire never melted, conjuring voices Wycliffe and Huss send to the broad breeze the cry of the watchmen, the age renews itself, full is the time. Already tremble the miters and crowns, forth from the cloister moves the rebellion. Under his stole see fighting and preaching brother Girolamo Savonarola. Off goes the tunic of Martin Luther, off go the fetters that bound human thought. It flashes and lightens, girdled with flame, matter exalt thyself, Satan has so on. A fair and terrible monster unchained courses the ocean, courses the earth. Flushing and smoking, like the volcanoes, over mountains, ravages plains, skims the abysses, then he is lost in unknown caverns and ways profound. Till low, unconquered, from shore to shore, like to the whirlwind he sends forth his cry. Like to the whirlwind spreading his wings, he passes, oh people, Satan, the great. Hail to thee, Satan, hail the rebellion, hail of the reason, the great vindicator. Sacred to thee shall rise incense and vows. Thou hast the God of the priest disenthroned. To Aurora, from the Ordi Barbare, thou risest and kissest, oh goddess, with thy rosy breath, the clouds, kissest the dusky pinnacles of marble temples. The forests field thee and with a cool shiver awake, upsourced the falcon, fleshing in eager joy. Meanwhile, amid the wet leaves, mutter the garrulous nests and far off, the gray gull screams over the purple sea. First to delight in thee, down in the laborious plain, are the streams which glisten amid the rustling poplars. Daringly the sorrow-cold breaks away from his feeding, runs to the brooks with high-lifted mane, neighing in the wind. Wakeful answer from the huts, the great pact of the hounds, and the whole valley is filled with the noisy sound of their barking. But the man, wakest to life-consuming labor, he, o ancient youth, o youth eternal, still thoughtful admires thee, even as on the mountain the Aryan fathers adore thee, standing amid their white oxen. Again upon the wing of the fresh morning flies forth the hymn which to thee they sang over their heaped upspears. Shepherdess, from the stalls of thy jealous sister, thou looses the rosy kind, and leadest them back to the skies. Thou leadest the rosy kind, and the white herds, and the horses, with the blonde-flowing mains dear to the brothers as weenie. Like the youthful bride who goes from her bath to her spouse, reflecting in her eyes the love of him, her lover, so thus thou smiling let fall the light garments that veil thee, and serene to the heavens thy virgin figure reveal. Flushed thy cheeks with white breast panting, thou runners to the sovereign of worlds, to the fair flaming Surya, and he joins, and in a bow stretches around his mighty neck thy rosy arms, but at his terrible glances thou fleeest. To stand the Asvinian twins, the cavaliers of heaven welcome thee rosily trembling in thy chariot of gold, and thither thou turnest where, measured the road of glory, weary'd the god awaits thee in the dull gloaming of eve. Gracious thy flight be above us, so invoke thee the fathers, gracious the going of thy radiant car over our houses. Come from the coasts of the east with thy good fortune, come with thy flowering oats, and thy foaming milk, and in the midst of the calves, dancing with yellow locks, all offspring shall adored thee, O shepherdess of heaven. So sang the Aryans, but better please thee, high matters, fresh with the twenty brooks whose banks smell to heaven of time. Better please thee, on high matters, the nimble-limbed mortal huntsmen, who with the buskin'd foot press the first dews of the mourn. The heavens spent down, a sweet blush tinged the forest and the hills, when thou, O goddess, didst descend. But thou descendest not, rather didst saffollos, drawn by thy kiss, mount all alert through the air, fair as a beautiful god, mount on the amorous winds and amid the sweet odours, while all around were the nuptials of flowers and the marriage of streams. Wet lies upon his neck the heavy tress of gold, and the golden quiver reaches above his white shoulder, held by the belt of vermillion. O fragrant kisses of a goddess among the dews, O ambrosia of love in the world's youth-time. Thus thou also love, O goddess, but ours is a weary trace. Sad is thy face, O aurora, when thou risest over our towers. The dim street-lamps go out, and without even glancing at thee, a pale-faced troop go home, imagining they have been happy. Angrily at his door is pounding the ill-tempered labourer, cursing the dawn that only calls him back to his bondage. Only the lover, perhaps, fresh from the dreams of the loved one, his blood still warm from her kisses, salutes thee with joy, beholds with delight thy face, and feels thy cool breathing upon him. Then cries, O bear me, O aurora, upon thy swift coarser of flame, bear me up into the fields of the stars, that there, looking down, I may behold the earth beneath thy rosy light smiling. Behold my fair one, in the face of the rising day, let fall her black tresses down over her blushing bosom. Ruid aurora O green and silent solitudes, far from the rumours of men, hither come to meet us true friends divine, O Lydia, wine and love. O tell me, why the sea, far under the flaming hasperers, sends such mysterious moanings? And what songs are these, O Lydia, the pines are chanting? See with what longing the hills stretch their arms to the setting sun, the shadow lengthens and holds them. They seem to be asking a last kiss, O Lydia. The mother, a group by Adrienne Ciccioni, surely admired her the rosy day dawn when, summoning the farmers to the still grey fields, it saw her bare footed with quick step passing among the dewy odours of the hay. Her at midday the elm tree is white with dust, as with broad shoulders bend over the yellow winrows she challenges in cheery song the grasshoppers, whose horse chirping rings from the hot hillsides. And when from her toil she lifted her turgid bosom, her sun-browned face with glossy curls around it, how then thy vespers fires, O Tuscany, did witchly tinge with colour her bold figure. This then the strong mother plays at ball with her infant, the lusty child whom her naked breasts have just sated, tosses him on high and prattles sweetly with him, while he, with eye fixed on the shining eyes of his mother, his little body trembling all over with fear, holds out his tiny fingers imploring, then, loud laughs the mother, and into the one great embrace of love lets him fall, clasped close to her bosom. Around her smiles the scene of homely labour, tremulous nod the oats on the green hillsides, when he is the distant moving of the ox, and on the barn-roof the gay-plumed cock is crowing. Nature has her brave ones who for her despise the masks of glory dear to the vulgar throng. This thus, O Adrian, with holy visions thou comfortest the souls of fellow men. This thus, O artist, with thy blow severe, thou putst in stone the ages ancient hope, the lofty hope that cries, O when shall labour be happy and faithful love secure from harm. When shall a mighty nation of free men say in the face of the sun, shine no more on the idle ease and the selfish wars of tyrants, but on the pious justice of labour. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org Recording by Larry Wilson Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Volume 8, Section 16 Selected Poems by Thomas Carly 1598-1639 Thomas Carly, who is deservedly placed among the most brilliant representatives of a class of lyricists who were not only courtiers, but men of rank, who varied in accomplishments, possessing culture and taste, expressed their play of fancy with elegance and ease. The lyre of these aristocratic poets had, for its notes, only love and beauty, disdain, despair, and love's bounty, sometimes frivolous in sound and sometimes serious, and their work might be regarded as the ancestor of the Verdesillete, which has reached its perfection in Locker and Austin Dobson. To Carly's lyrics we may apply Isaac Walton's famous criticism. They were old-fashioned poetry, but choicely good. Thomas Carly, son of Sir Matthew Carly, was born in London about 1598. He left Corpus Christi Oxford without a degree and early fell into wild habits. In 1613 his father wrote to Sir Dudley Carleton that one of his sons was roving after hounds and hawks, and the other, Thomas, studying in the Middle Temple but doing little at law. The result was that Carleton made Thomas his secretary and took him to Venice and Turin, returning in 1615. Carle accompanied him to the Hague, also, but resigned his post and again returned to England. In 1619 he went with Lord Herbert to Cherbury to the French court. He became sore in ordinary to Charles I, and a gentleman of his privy chamber, and the king who was particularly fond of him gave him the royal domain of Sunninghill in Windsor Forest. Carle was an intimate friend of Ben Johnson, Sir John Suckling, John Selden, Sir Kenham Digby, Davinott, Charles Cotton and also of Lord Clarendon, who writes, Carle was a person of a pleasant and facetious wit, and made many poems, especially in the Amherst way, which for the sharpness of the fancy and the elegance of the language in which that fancy was spread, were at least equal, if not superior to any of that time. Four editions of Carle's poems appeared between 1640 and 1671, and four have been printed within the present century, the best being a Quattro published by Mr. W. C. Haslett in 1870. His longest work was a mass called Selen Britannica performed by Whitehall, February 18, 1633. Inigo Jones arranged the scenery, Henry Laws the music and the king, the Duke of Linux and other courteurs played the chief parts. Carle's death is supposed to have occurred in 1639. A song. Ask me no more where Job bestows when June has passed the fading rose, for in your seas orient deep these flowers as in their causes sleep. Ask me no more whither death stray the golden atoms of the day, for in pure love heaven did prepare these powders to enrich your hair. Ask me no more whither death haste the nightingale when May has passed, for in your sweet dividing throat she winters and keeps warm her note. Ask me no more where those stars light that downward fall in dead of night, for in your eyes they sit and there fix it become as in their sphere. Ask me no more if east or west the phoenix builds her spicy nest, for unto you at last she flies and in your fragrant bosom dies. The protestation. No more shall meads be decked with flowers nor sweetness well and rosy bowers nor greenest buds on branches spring nor warbling birds delight to sing, nor April's violets paint the grove if I forsake Mycelia's love. The fish shall in the ocean burn and fountains sweet shall bitter turn. The humble oak no flood shall know when flood shall highest hills or flow. Black lethy shall oblivion leave if ere Mycelia I deceive. Love shall bow and shaft lay by and venus's doves want wings to fly. The sun refuse to show his light and day shall then be turned to night and in that night no star appear if once I leave Mycelia dear. Love shall no more inhabit earth nor lovers more shall love for worth nor joy above the heaven dwell nor pain torment souls in hell. Grim death no more shall hoard prune if ere I leave Mycelia's love. Song. Would you know what soft white deer not bring you to the down or air nor to stars to show what's bright nor to snow to teach you white nor if you would music here call the orbs to take your ear nor to please your sense bring forth bruised nard or what's more worth or on food where your thoughts place bring you nectar for a taste. Would you have all these in one name my mistress and his done the spring. Now that the winter's gone the earth has lost her snow white robes and now no more the frost candies the grass or cast an icy cream upon the silver lake or crystal stream but the warm sun thaws the benumbed earth and makes it tender gives a sacred birth to the dead swallow wakes in hollow tree the drowsy cuckoo and the bumblebee now do a choir of tripping menstruals bring in triumph to the world the youthful spring the valleys hills and woods and rich array welcoming the coming of the longed for may now all things mild only my love death flower nor half the scalding noonday sun the power to melt that marble ice which still death hold her heart congealed and makes her pity cold the ox which lately did foreshelter fly into the stall death now slowly lie in open fields and love no more is made by the fireside but in the cooler shade a mentis now death with his florist sleep under sycamore and all things keep time with the season only she death carry tune in her eyes in her heart january the inquiry footnote attributed to herrick and drakes and atory hours in footnote amongst the myrtles as I walked love and my sighs together talked tell me said I in deep distress where I may find my shepherdess thou fool said love knows thou not this and everything this good she is in yonder tulip go and seek there thou may find her lip her cheek in yonder enamel pansy by there thou shall have her curious in bloom of peach and rosy bud there wave the streamers of her blood in brightest lilies that there stands the emblems of her whiter hands a yonder rising hill their swell such sweets as in her bosom dwells tis true said I and there upon I went to pluck them one by one to make a parts a union but on a sudden all was gone with that I stopped said have these beef on man resemblances of thee and in these flowers thy joy shall die even in the twinkling of an eye and all thy hopes of her shall wither like these short sweets thus knit together into section 16 section 17 of library of the world's best literature ancient and modern volume 8 this is the LibriVox recording all LibriVox recordings are available in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org recording by April 6.090 California United States of America library of the world's best literature ancient and modern volume 8 section 17 Amelia Flygar Karlin 1807-1892 Amelia Smith Flygar Karlin was born in Amsterdam, Sweden August 8, 1807 she was the daughter of Rutger Smith a merchant of that place and here her childhood was passed varied by frequent sea trips with her father and excursions to different parts of the coast it was probably these early maritime experiences that laid the foundation of her accurate knowledge of the character and habits of the Swedish and she was married to Dr. Flygar a physician of Grönbergsland but after his death in 1833 she returned to her native place as a child her talent for imaginative literature was known among her friends but nothing of any permanent value was developed until after her 30th year when her first novel Walt Marc Klein was published anonymously 1838 after this first successful literary attempt she went to Stockholm upon the advice of her father 1839 and shortly after she was married to a lawyer of that city Johan Gabrielle Karlin a Swedish poet and author her novels appeared in quick succession she at once became popular and her books were widely read her productivity was remarkable the period of her highest accomplishment was from 1838 to 1852 when a great affliction in the loss of her son suspended her activities for several years it was not until 1858 that she again resumed her writing she was honored by the gold medal of the Swedish Academy in 1862 and the success of her books was followed by abundant pecuniary reward as well as distinction her house in Stockholm was the center of the literary life of the capital until the death of her husband in 1875 when she completely retired from the world she established the Rutgersmith fund for poor fishermen and their widows made an endowment for students to the university of Uppsala in memory of her son and also founded in memory of her husband a fund for the assistance of teachers she died at Stockholm February 5th 1892 as a novelist she shares national honors as a countrywoman her range in fiction was not confined to a single field but embraces all classes and conditions of Swedish life her stories are full of action and rich in incident and her delineation of character is natural and shows her real experience of human nature she is most happy in depicting the humble fisherfolk and peasants the stirring incidents of the adventurous life of the smugglers were congenial and her graphic descriptions give typical pictures of the rough coast life among sailors fishers and revenue officers among her best and most characteristic works are Gustav Lindorm 1835 Rosenpa Tieselton the Rose of Disselton 1842 June Frutenort the Maiden's Tower 1848 and Slingin Pa Johannes Karate the Hermit of Johannes Rock 1846 her autobiography written in her later years is sprightly and interesting her collected works number more than 30 volumes the greater part of which have been translated into German French and English The Pursuit of the Smugglers by Emilia Flagar Karin from the merchant house among the islands he, Olegus thundered his command to his companions row, row as fast as you can to the open sea and as though it had invisible wings the boat turned and shot forward halt, halt! cried the lieutenant his blood was now up in the name of his majesty and of the crown down with the sails loud laughter from the smugglers boat sounded across the water the scornful laughter was answered from the yacht by the firing of the second cannon which was fully loaded the ball fell into the water close to the windward of the boat the answer was renewed laughter from the smugglers' boat whose crew urged by the two full desire to save their cargo and to make fools of the custom house officers continued to increase the distance between themselves and the yacht in spite of the more skillful guidance the two oars of the latter could not overtake the four men but the lieutenant's full strong voice could still be heard stop or I will shoot you to the bottom but he did not shoot for the smugglers' boat was already out of the reach of shot at this moment it would have been impossible to detect the least trace of the amiable, good-natured Goodmar Goldbrandson the favorite of all the ladies with his light yellow curls and his slightly arched forehead and the beautiful dark blue eyes which were not enlivened by the power of some passion sometimes revealed that half-dreamy expression that women so often admired. Majic ought to have seen her commander by now as he stood for a moment on the deck, leaning on his gun his glass in his hand row boys, row with all your might I will not allow the remainder of the sentence was lost in inarticulate tones once more he raised the glass to his eyes the chase lasted some time without any increase of the intervening distance or any hope of its diminution it was a grave a terrible chase meantime new and strange intentions had occurred to the commander of the smugglers' boat from what dark source could he have received the inspiration that dictated the command knock out the bung of the top brandy barrel and let us drink that will refresh our courage and rejoice our hearts we marry and drink as long as you like and now ensue a wild bacchanalia the men drank out of large mugs they drank out of cans and the result was not wanting while the boat was nearing the entrance to the sea now my men began oligous in his pale or penetrating tones as he stroked his reddish beard shall we allow one of those government fools to force us to go a different way from the one we ourselves wish to go oligous to ventured to interpose for to still possessed full consciousness as he had only made a pretense of drinking dear oligous let us be content if we can place the goods in safety I think I perceive that you mean something else something dangerous coward you ought to sit at home and help your father weave nets if you are afraid creep under the tarpaulin there are others here who do not get the cramp when they are to follow the Marco Bears for my part as he bent over his oar I should like to keep away from this hunt but who dares speak a word I feel as though I were already in the fortress the ship and crew in the service of the crown perhaps Ragnar thought so too but the great man was so much feared that when he commanded no contradiction was ever heard it was almost the first time that too had made an objection and his brother's scornful rebuke had roused his blood also but still he controlled himself what was resolved on meantime will be seen from what follows why what is that exclaimed the lieutenant of the yacht the oars are drawn in he is turning on my life he is turning he knew that we should catch him up said Sven delighted once more to be able to indulge in his usual humor fists and sinews like mine are worth as much as four of them and if we take Pell into account they might easily recognize that the best thing they can do is to surrender at once silence you conceited idiot commanded the lieutenant this is no matter of parlay he is making straight for us the wind is falling it is becoming calm what does the lieutenant think Pell can only guess have weapons on board and want to attack us it almost looks like it answered Pell shortly meantime the two boats approached one another with alarming speed whatever happens said the lieutenant with icy calm and the game looks suspicious you know my friends would that the coast guardsmen may not look behind him the flag of the crown may wave over living or dead men it is no matter so long as it does not wave over one who has not done his duty yes answered Pell Sven spread out his arms in a significant gesture they may be excited by drink their copper colored faces show that but here stands a man who will not forget that his name is Sven Dullavod there I have spoken but dear sir do take care of yourself they have torn up the boards and are fetching up stones and pieces yes I see and if they attack us take care of the oars do not lay to on the long side but row past and then turn if they throw watch their movements carefully in that way you can escape the danger the boats which were only a few fathoms apart glided gently towards one another the lieutenant's command was punctually executed by his people oligus esporgin exclaimed the commander of the custom house yacht I charge you once more in the king's name to surrender oh dear yes exclaimed the worthy descendant of the vikings I have come back just with that intention perhaps I also wanted to fulfill an old vow do you remember what I vowed that night by the Osterniz at the same moment a whole shower of pieces of iron whistled through the air and fell rattling to the yacht but the sharp pieces of iron thrown by oligus's own hand was aimed at the lieutenant himself he however darted aside so quickly that he was not wounded although it flew so close past him that it tore off his straw hat and dashed it into the sea oligus and you others sounded his voice in all its youthful power consider what you do consider the price of an attack on a royal boat and crew the responsibility may cost you dear I charge you to cease at once what are you frightened you crowned slaves Lord oligus whose sparkling eyes and fleshed face so different from his usual calm and peaceful circumstances lent increased wildness to his form and gestures come will this warm you and at the same moment another piece of iron flew past aimed with such certainty that it would have cut off the threat of life if he had not taken shelter behind the mast the iron was firmly fixed in the mast the yacht was now bombarded on all sides here hung a torn sail there an end of rope and the sideplanks had already received a good deal of injury so that the yacht was threatened with a leak but now was heard for the last time the young commanders warning stop oligus and tell your people to put aside their wretched arms for my life this gun is loaded with a ball and the first of you who throws another piece shall be shot down like a stag do it if you dare but there see miserable custom house dog how the morco bears respect your threats the third piece of iron was just about to be thrown but at the same moment the lieutenant took aim the shot was fired during the long chase and the attack which followed it the sun had been approaching the horizon and now might be seeing one of those beautiful sunsets which so often delight the eye on this blue-green sea they are the counterpart of the autumn apparitions during the dark fogs when the ships wonder about seeking their way among the cliffs then glimmering whitely and now shining red worthy the inspiration of poet and painter this warm divinely peaceful and lovely scene of nature operating new bitter contrast to the terrible picture which human passion and the claims of duty had conjured with lightning speed into these two spots in the sea the smugglers' boat and the custom house the shot was fired and the mighty giant of morco oligus is board johnson sank back into the tarpaulin the accursed devil has shot right into my heart painless death too spring forward and wanted to stay the blood panted oligus it is no use give my love to father and brooch she was a good wife you must be a father too my boy the business may cease the sub doing touch of death had already extinguished the wild light which the fire of hatred had kindled in these eyes and the last glance that sought his brother's gaze was gentle suddenly he was once more fired by the remembrance of the earthly light which was fast retreating from him quickly away with the cargo no one must know that oligus is board johnson fell from a shot out of the custom house yacht I I fell upon them they were his last words tooth's head fell sobbing on the man whom he had so completely honored as his superior tooth was now the first in morco and as though a stronger spirit had come over him he began to feel his duty in 18 1795 to 1881 by leslie steven the hundredth anniversary of the birth of thomas carlyle December 4th 1795 was lately commemorated the house in chain walk chelsea which he had occupied from 1834 till his death February 4th 1881 was handed over to trustees to be preserved as a public memorial no house in the british islands has more remarkable associations thither carlyle had come in his 38th year still hardly recognized by the general public though already regarded by a small circle as a man of extraordinary powers there he went through the concluding years of the long struggle which ended by a hard one and scarcely enjoyed victory there he had been visited by almost all the most conspicuous men of letters of his time by jeffrey southie and j.s. mill by tenison and browning the greatest poets and by thackeray and dickens the greatest novelists of his generation by the dearest friends of his youth erving and emerson and john sterling and by his last followers frude and ruskin there too had lived until 1866 the woman who had shared his struggles whom he loved and admired without stint and whom he was yet destined to remember with many bitter pangs of remorse their story laid bare with singular fullness has invested the scene of their joys and sorrows their alienation and reconciliations with extraordinary interest everyone who has read the reminiscences and the later mass of biographical matter must be glad to see the soundproof room and the garden haunted by the beam and fowls and the other dumb witnesses of a long, tragic comedy no one was so keenly sensitive as carlyle to the interest of the little gleams of light which reveal our ancestors not only stirred by the great passions but absorbed like ourselves by the trivialities of the day a similar interest will long attach to the scene of his own trials carlyle's life was a struggle and a warfare each of his books was wrenched from him like the tale of the ancient mariner by a spiritual agony the early books excited the wrath of his contemporaries when they were not ridiculed as the grotesque outpourings of an eccentric humorist his teaching was intended to oppose what most people take to be the general tendency of thought many who share that tendency gladly acknowledge that they owe to carlyle a more powerful intellectual stimulus than they can attribute even to their accepted teachers I shall try briefly to indicate the general nature of his message to mankind without attempting to consider the soundness or otherwise of particular views carlyle describes what kind of person people went to see in chain row the very sound of my voice he says has got something savage prophetic I am as a John the Baptist girt about with a leather girdle whose food is locusts and wild honey respectable literary society at aesthetic tea parties regarded him as the scribes and Pharisees regarded the Hebrew prophet he came among them to tear the mask from their hypocritical can't carlyle was not externally a diogenes though the son of peasants he had the appearance and manner of a thorough gentleman in spite of all his irritable outbreaks but he was not the less penetrated to the core with the idiosyncrasies of his class the father at David deans of real life had impressed the son profoundly carlyle had begun life on the same terms as innumerable young scots strict frugality had enabled him to get a college training and reach the threshold of the ministry his mother could look forward to the exquisite pleasure of seeing her own barren wag his head in a pulpit but at this point carlyle's individuality first asserted itself he could not step into any of the ordinary grooves his college teachers appeared to him to offer the sawdust instead of manna from heaven the sacred formulae of their ancestral creed had lost their savor words once expressive of the strongest faith were either used to utter the bigotry of narrow pedants or were adopted only to be explained away into insipid commonplace carlyle shared the intellectual movement of his time too much to profess any reverence for what he called he brew old clothes philosophers and critics had torn them to rags his quarrel however was with the accidental embodiment not with the spirit of the old creeds the old morality was ingrained in his very nature nor was he shocked like some of his fellows by the sternness of the calvinistic views of the universe and life the whole problem was with him precisely to save this living spirit the skeptics he thought were in the german phrase emptying out the baby with the bath they were at war with the spirit as well as with the letter trying to construct a godless universe to substitute a dead mechanism for the living organism and therefore to kill down at the root every noble aspiration which could stimulate the conscience to strengthen a man to bear the spectacle of the wrongs and sufferings of mankind the crisis of this struggle happened in 1821 after giving up the ministry carlyle had tried school mastering and found himself to be least fitted of mankind for a function which demands patience with stupidity he had just glanced at the legal profession only to be disgusted with its chicaneries the authorship was his only chance the dyspeptic disorder which tormented him through life was tormenting him a rat was gnawing at the pit of his stomach then he was embittered by the general distress of his own class men out of work were threatening riots and the humanry being called it to suppress them carlyle was asked by a friend why he too did not come out with a musket then yes he replied but I haven't quite settled on which side it was while thus distracted that after three weeks of sleeplessness he experienced what he called his conversion the universe had seemed to him void of life of purpose of volition even of hostility it was one huge and immeasurable steam engine rolling on in its dead indifference to grind me limb from limb oh the vast gloomy solitary golgotha and mill of death and then he suddenly resolved to resist why go on trembling like a coward as I so thought there rushed a stream of fire over my whole soul and I shook base fear away from me forever I was strong of unknown strength a spirit almost a god ever from that time the temper of my misery was changed not fear or whining sorrow was in it but indignation and grim phallide defiance these are the phrases of his imaginary hero in Sartre Rassartus in the reminiscences he repeats the statement in his own person he had won an immense victory he had escaped from the foul mud gods and soared into the eternal blue of ether where he had for the spiritual part ever since lived he could look down upon his fellow creatures still weltering in that fatal element pitying the religious part of them and indignant against the frivolous enjoying an inward and supreme happiness which still remained to him though often eclipsed in later years to understand this crisis to understand his whole attitude the change was not of the purely logical kind Carlisle was not converted by any philosophical system Coleridge not long before had found in Kant and Schelling an answer to similar perplexities Carlisle though he respected the German metaphysicians could never find their dogmas satisfactory to his shrewd Scottish sense his great helper he tells us in the straight was not Kant but Goethe the contrast between that serene prophet of culture and the rugged Scottish Puritan is so marked that one may be tempted to explain the influence partly by personal accident Carlisle drew up at a time when the British public was just awaking to the existence of Germany and not only promoted the awakening but was recognized by the great Goethe himself he may well have been inclined in later years to exaggerate a debt to to so welcome a recognition and yet it is intelligible that in Goethe Carlisle saw what he most required a man of the highest genius and a full representative of the most advanced thought could yet recognize what was elevating in the past as clearly as what was a sign of progress for us to pursue and while casting aside the dead trappings as decidedly as Carlisle could reach serene heights above the petty controversies where men wrangled over extinct issues Goethe had solved the problem which vexed Carlisle's soul and set an inspiring example of the true spirit and its great reward Carlisle however was not qualified by temperament or mental characteristics to follow Goethe's steps if not primarily a reasoner and to impatient perhaps for slow logical processes he was also not a poet some of the greatest English teachers of his period embodied their conceptions of the world in poetry Wordsworth and Shelley and Byron in particular were more effective representatives of the chief spiritual influences of the day than the few speculative writers Carlisle thought for a time that he could utter himself in verse or at least in prose fiction he tried only to feel his incompetence as Frude observes he had little ear for metrical composition there were other and perhaps greater obstacles a poet must be capable of detachment in the spiritual world in which he lives however profound his interest in its great problems he must be able to dwell with serif contemplation and stand aside from the actual contest to Carlisle such an attitude was partly impossible partly contemptible he had imbibed the Puritan aversion to aesthetic enjoyments he had been brought up in circles as a child to read the Arabian Nights and where Milton could only obtain a doubtful admission as a versifier of the scriptural narrative Carlisle retained the prejudice he always looked to scans at poetry which had no immediate bearing upon conduct and regarded aesthetic as equivalent to frivolous may the devil fly away with the fine arts is a sentiment which he quotes in his poetry this view was congenial to his inborn characteristics one striking peculiarity was his extraordinary receptivity of all outward impressions the strange irritability which he set down to the hag dyspepsia made him resemble a patient in whom disease has produced a morbidly excessive sensibility little annoyances were magnified into tragic the noises in a next door house affected him as an earthquake might affect others his memory was as retentive as his impressions were strong Frude testifies that his account of a little trip to Paris written forty years later without reference to memoranda is verified down to the minutest details by contemporary letters scenes instantaneously photographed on his memory never faded no one had a keener eye for country when he visited Germany he brought back pictures of the scenes of frederich's battles which enabled him to reproduce them with such startling veracity that after reading you seem to remember the reality not the book in history he seeks to place before us a series of visions as distinct as actual eyesight to show us Cromwell watching the descent of the Scottish army at Bunbar or the human whirlpool raging round the walls of the Bastille we, the commonplace spectators, should not it is true even at present see what was visible to Carlisle any more than we see a landscape as Turner saw it we may wish that we could at any rate we have the conviction truthfulness to the impression made on a powerful idiosyncrasy we perceive as by the help of a Rembrandt vast chaotic breaths of gloomy confusion with central figures thrown out by a light of extraordinary brilliancy Carlisle indeed always has it in mind that what we call reality is but a film on the surface of mysterious depths we are such stuff to repeat his favorite quotation as dreams are made of past history is a series of dreams the magic of memory may restore them for an instant to our present consciousness but the most vivid picture of whatever is not irrecoverably lost always brings to the pathetic sense that we are after all but ephemeral appearances in the midst of the eternities and infinities overwhelmed by this sense of the unsubstantiality even of the most real objects Carlisle clutches as it were with the energy of despair every fading image and tries to invest it with something of its old brightness Carlisle was so desirous to gain this distinctness of vision that he could not be happy in personal descriptions till if possible he had examined the portrait of his hero and satisfied himself that he could reproduce the actual bodily appearance the face he holds shows the soul and then his shrewd Scottish sagacity never deserts him if the hero sometimes becomes like most heroes a little too free from human infirmities the actors in his dramas never become mere walking gentlemen in dry as dust he gives us lay figures bedisoned at times with shallow paradoxes but Carlisle always deals in genuine human nature his judgment may not be impartial but at least it is not nougatari he sees the man from within and makes him a credible individual not a mere bit of machinery worked by colourless formulae with this eye for character goes a mean sense of grim humour which keeps him in touch with reality little incidents bring out the absurd side of even the heroic the most exciting scenes of his French Revolution are heightened by the vision of the shivering usher who accords the grand entries when the ferocious mob is rushing into the palace not finding it convenient as Carlisle observes to refuse them a gentleman who continues for an hour to demand the arrestment of naves and dastards a most comprehensive of all known petitions Carlisle's mannerism is one result of this strain to be graphic it has been attributed to readings of Jean-Paul and by Carlisle himself partly to Irving and partly to the early talk in his father's home it appears at any rate he gets confidence enough in himself to trust to his own modes of impression and if it may fairly be called a mannerism was not an affectation it was struck out in the attempt to give most effective utterance to his genuine thought and may be compared as Burke said of Johnson's conversation to the contortions of the Sibyl it is time however to try to say what was the prophetic message thus delivered Carlisle I have said had no logical system of philosophy and was too much of a realist in one sense to find poetry congenial he has to preach by pictures of the past by giving us history though history transfused with poetry an account of the external fact which shall reveal the real animating principle quietly omitted by statisticians and constitutional historians the doctrine so delivered appears to be vague what the ordinary believer may ask would be left of a religion if its historical statements should turn out to be mere figments and its framework of dogmas to be nonsense he would naturally reply nothing Carlisle replies the spirit may survive though its whole visible embodiment should be dissolved into fiction and fallacy but to define this spirit is obviously impossible it represents a tone of thought a mode of contemplating life and the world not any distinct set of definite propositions Carlisle was called a mystic and even as he says mystic school we may accept the phrase so far as mysticism means the substitution of a logic of the heart for a logic of the head an appeal to sentiment rather than to any definite reasoning process the mystic naturally recognizes the inner light as shining through many different and even apparently contradictory forms but most mystics retain in a new sense perhaps the ancient formulae Carlisle rejected them so markedly that he shocked many believers otherwise sympathetic his early friend Irving who tried to restore life to the old forms and many who accepted callerage as their spiritual guide were scandalized by his utterances he thought conversely still masquerading in Hebrew old clothes or were even like the apes who went on chattering by the banks of the dead sea till they ceased to be human he regards the Oxford movement with simple contempt his dictum that Newman had no more brain than a moderate sized rabbit must have been followed as no one will doubt who heard him talk by one of those gigantic explosions that were signals of humorous exaggeration but it meant in all seriousness that he held Newman to be reviving superstitions unworthy of the smallest allowance of brain yet Carlisle's untiring denunciation of shams and unrealities of this as of other varieties does not mean unqualified antipathy he feels that the attempt to link the living spirit to the dead externals is a fatal enterprise that may be now a stifling encumbrance which was once the only possible symbol of a living belief accordingly though Carlisle's insistence upon the value of absolute intellectual truthfulness is directed against this mode of thought his attack upon the opposite error is more passionate and characteristic Rossartis, his first complete book, 1833-4 announced and tried to explain his conversion to many readers it still seems his best work as it certainly contains some of his noblest passages it was unpopular in England and an Englishman must say it with regret seems to have been first appreciated in America it gave indeed many sharp blows at English society it expresses his contempt for the upper literary strata who like Geoffrey complained of him for being so desperately in earnest and for the authors who were not prophets but mere caterers to ephemeral amusement but the satire I cannot but think is not quite happy the humor of the clothes philosophy is a little strained to me I confess rather and the impressive passages just those where he forgets it his real power became obvious beyond all cattle on the publication of the French Revolution 1837 not for a hundred years he declared had the public received any book that came more direct and fleamingly from the heart of a living man that expresses as I think the truth the book is not to be read for imagination the facts would now require much restatement and moreover the narrative is too apt to over leap prosaic but necessary facts in order to fasten upon the picturesque passages but considered as what it is a prose epic a moving panorama drawn with astonishing force and perception of the tremendous tragic comedy involved it is equaled in English literature the doctrine inculcated is significant Carlisle's sympathies were in one sense with the revolution he felt he says that the radicals were gild brothers while the wigs were mere amateurs he was even more thoroughly convinced than the radicals that a thoroughgoing demolition of the old order was essential the revolution was but the first volcanic outburst of the great forces still active below the surface Europe he says chartism lay hag-ridden and quack-ridden the quack is the most hideous of hags he is a falsehood incarnate to blow him and his to the four wins was the first necessity the French Revolution was the inevitable stern end of much fearful but also wonderful indispensable and sternly beneficent beginning of much so far Carlisle was far more in agreement with pain than with Burke but what was to follow when the ground was cleared when you have cut off your king's head and confiscated the estates of the nobility and the church you have only begun a new period is to be born with death-throws and birth-throws and there are, he guesses French Revolution, Book 4, Chapter 4 some two centuries of fighting before democracy go through its dire most baleful stage of quack-hocracy the radicals represent this coming quack-hocracy what was their root error briefly I try to expound not to enlarge that they were materialists their aim was low they desired simply a multiplication of physical comforts or as he puts it a boundless supply of pig's-wash their means, too, were futile society on their showing was a selfish herd hungering for an equal distribution of pig's-wash they put unlimited faith in the mere mechanism of constitution mongering in ballot boxes and manipulation of votes and contrivances by which a number of mean and selfish passions might be somehow so directed as to balance each other it is not by any such devices that society can really be regenerated you must raise men's souls, not alter their conventions they must not simply abolish kings but learn to recognize the true king a man who has the really divine right of superior strength and wisdom, not the sham divine right of obsolete tradition you require not paper rules but a new spirit which spontaneously recognizes the voice of God the true secret of life must be to him, as to every mystic, that we should follow the dictates of the inner light which speaks in different dialects to all of us but this implies a difficulty Carlisle, spite of his emergence into Blue Ether was constitutionally gloomy he was more alive than any man since swift to the dark side of human nature the dullness of mankind weighed upon him like a nightmare mostly fools is his pithy verdict upon the race at large nothing then could be more idle than the dream of the revolutionists that the voice of the people could be itself the voice of God from millions of fools you can by no constitutional machinery extract anything but folly where then is the escape the millions, he says essay on Johnson roll hither and thither so ever they are led they seem all sightless and slavish with little but animal instincts the hope is that here and there are scattered the men of power and of insight the heaven sent leaders and it is upon loyalty to them and capacity for recognizing and obeying them that the future of the race really depends this was the moral of the lectures on hero worship 1840 Odin, Muhammad, Bante, Shakespeare, Luther, Cromwell and Napoleon are types of the great men who now and then visit the earth as prophets or rulers they are the brilliant centers of light in the midst of the surrounding darkness and in loyal recognition of their claims lies our security for all externalness by what signs do you ask can they be recognized there can be no sign you can see the light if you have eyes but no other faculty can supply the want of eyesight and hence arise some remarkable points both of difference from and coincidence with popular beliefs in the chartism past and present and latter day pamphlets 1839, 1843 and 1850 Carlisle applied his theories to the problems of the day they had the disadvantage which generally attaches to the writings of an outsider in politics they were said the average reader unpractical Carlisle could not recommend any definite measures an objection easy to bring which is rather a change of spirit than of particular measures yet it is noticeable that he recommends much that has since become popular much of his language might be used by modern socialists in past and present for example book 3 chapter 8 he gives the principle of land nationalization the great capitalist is to be turned into a captain of industry and government to undertake to organize labor to protect health and to enforce education Carlisle so far sympathizes with the socialist not only as agreeing that the great end of government is the raising of the poor but as denouncing the less a fair doctrine the old fashioned English radical had regarded all government as a necessary evil to be minimized as much as possible when it had armed the policemen it had fulfilled its whole duty but this according to Carlisle was to leave the dull multitude to drift into chaos government should rest upon the loyalty of the lower to the higher order is essential and good order means the spontaneous obedience to the heaven sent hero he when found must supply the guiding and stimulating force the socialist like Carlisle desires a strong government but not the government of the hero government of which the moving force comes from above instead of below will be he thinks a government of mere force and here occurs the awkward problem to which Carlisle is constantly referring he was generally accused of identifying right with might against this interpretation he always protested right and might he says often are in the long run identical that which is right and that alone is ultimately lasting your rights are the expression of the divine will and for that reason whatever endures must be right work lasts so far as it is based upon eternal foundations the might therefore is in the long run the expression of the right the Napoleonic empire according to a favorite illustration could not last because it was founded upon injustice the two tests then must coincide what is good proves itself by lasting and what lasts lasts because good but the test of endurance cannot be applied when it is wanted hence arises an ambiguity which often gives to Carlisle the air of a man worshiping mere success when if we take his own interpretation he takes the success to be the consequence not the cause of the rightness the hero is the man who sees the fact and disregards the conventional fiction but for the moment he looks very like the man who regards principles and attends to his own interest here again Carlisle approximates to a doctrine to which he was most averse the theory of the struggle for existence and the survival of the fittest the Darwinian answers in this way Carlisle's problem how it is to come to pass that the stupidity of the masses comes to blunder into a better order here and there as in his accounts the way in which the intensely stupid British public managed to blunder into the establishment of the great empire Carlisle seems to fall in with the Darwinian view that view shocked him because he thought it mechanical to him the essence of history was to be found not in the blind striving of the dull but in the lives of great men they represent the incarnate of the system which must guide all wholesome aspiration history is really the biography of the heroes all so-called philosophies of history attempts to discover general laws and to dispense with the agency of great men are tainted with materialism they would substitute blind laws for the living spirit which really guides the development of the race now your hero is to be known the only answer can be know him at your peril Carlisle's most elaborate books the Cromwell and the Frederick are designed to give an explicit answer to the right and might problem Carlisle in both cases seems to be toiling amidst the dust heaps of some ancient ruin painfully disinterring the shattered and defaced fragments of a noble statue to be hereafter placed in a worthy Valhalla Cromwell according to the vulgar legend was a mere hypocrite and Frederick a mere cynical conqueror the success of both that is his intended moral was in proportion to the clearness with which they recognized the eternal laws of the universe Cromwell probably used the more satisfactory hero as more sympathetic to his admirer but each requires an interpreter Cromwell's gifts did not lie in the direction of lucid utterance and Frederick if he could have read would certainly have scorned the doctrine of his eulogist Carlisle that is has to dig out in the actions of great men a true significance certainly not obvious to the actors themselves their recognition of the eternal laws was in one case embodied in obsolete formulae and in the other it might seem altogether unconscious the heroes recognition of divine purposes does not imply then that his own vision is purged from error or that his aim is distinctly realized he may like Muhammad or the Abbott Samson be full of superstition his veracity does not mean that his beliefs are true only that they are sincere and such a version of the truth as is possible in his dialect this is connected with Carlisle's constant insistence upon the superiority of silence to speech the divine light shines through many distracting media it enlightens many who do not consciously perceive it it may be recognized because it gives life because the work to which it prompts is lasting but even the hero who tries to utter himself is sure to interpolate much that is ephemeral confused and imperfect and speech in general represents the more perplexed gavel of men who take words for thought and raise a hopeless clamor which drowns the still small voice of true inspiration if men are mostly fools their talk is mostly folly forming a wild incoherent babble in which it is hard to pick out the few scattered words of real meaning Carlisle has been ridiculed for preaching silence in so many words but then Carlisle was speaking the truth and of that he fully admits we can never have too much the hero may be a prophet or a man of letters he is bound to speak seriously though not to be literally silent and his words must be judged not by the momentary pleasure but by their ultimate influence on life Carlisle's message to his fellows which I have tried imperfectly to summarize may be condemned on grounds of taste and of morality translated into logical formulae it becomes inconsistent and it embodies some narrow prejudices in exaggerated terms yet I think that it has been useful even by the shock it has given to commonplace optimism it has been far more useful because in his own dialect Carlisle as I think expresses some vital truths with surpassing force whatever our creeds religious or political he may stimulate our respect for veracity our respect for honest work or contempt for hypocritical conventions our loyalty to all great leaders in the worlds both of thought and action and our belief that to achieve any real progress something is required infinitely deeper than any mere change in the superficial arrangements of society these lessons are expressed too as the merely literary critic by a series of historical pictures so vivid and so unique in character that for many readers they are in the full sense fascinating they are revelations of new aspects of the world never when once observed to be forgotten and finally I may add that Carlisle's autobiographical writings in which we must include the delightful life of Sterling show the same qualities in a shape which if sometimes saddening is profoundly interesting no man was more reticent in his life though he has been made to deliver a posthumous confession of extraordinary fullness we hear all the groans once kept within the walls of chain row after making all allowance for the fits of temper the harshness of judgment and the willful exaggeration we see at last a man who under extraordinary difficulties was unflinchingly faithful to what he took to be his vocation and struggled through a long life full of anxieties and vexations to turn his genius to the best account end of section 18