and felicity. The nations that it animated were overflowing with delights. Venice was "Of joy the sojourn, and of wealth the mart, The pleasant place of all festivity, The revel of the earth, the masque of Italy." When we refer to our own country in former times we cannot but observe that manners, however defective, bore at least the universal, indelible impress of humanity. "The middle ages,” says a French historian, "promised, and sincerely wished to establish, love; and this fact must secure for them our eternal sympathy." They did not, indeed, fully verify the promise; but it was, after all, under the influence of their genius that our old popular customs so essentially human, like the poetry of Chaucer, grew up and flourished. Names like that of Sweetheart Abbey in the north, and usages like those related by Strutt were allowed, which argued not alone the humanity, but the simplicity and comparative innocence of manners, which rendered them possible without an infringement of virtue or of order. It was then that quartern loaves used to be hurled on Easter Monday from the steeple of Paddington church to an expectant crowd below; and that on the same day, in the streets of the city of Durham, the young men used to be permitted to take off the shoes of the maiden passengers and retain them until redeemed; and, as the narrator adds parenthetically, all know what that means." When you repair to nations still under that influence you meet the union of religion and graceful, joyous humanity in the persons of greatest holiness. Lord Byron was shown in the cemetery of Bologna the skull of a Capuchin. 'This," said the custode, "was brother Desiderio Berro, who died at forty. He was the merriest, cleverest man I ever knew. Wherever he went he brought joy; and whenever any one was melancholy, the sight of him was enough to make him cheerful again. He walked so actively you might have taken him for a dancer; he joked, he laughed." If you open the little volume by Mac Farlane on the popular customs, sports, and recollections of the south of Italy, you will see similar instances. For, not to speak of what appears in its ordinary domestic circles, even those persons who most prominently and formally represented religion seem intent upon the culture of every thing 66 VOL. I. I "we human. "The good-natured old Roman priest who dabbled in antiquarianism and in poetry while holding a crook among the Arcadian shepherds-tracing ancient and classical reasons for modern usages; that Abbate Meli, whose verses are more honied than his name, composing pastoral, piscatory, and love songs for the humble life he saw around him; that Capuchin friar who rests, after begging for his convent, at the well-side, and communes with the matrons and damsels clustering round the fountain:" all the scenes of popular life so beautifully and simply told by this amiable author can show how that "awful” religion, as professed by intelligent nations, makes no preposterous war with the common things belonging to our nature in any form. And accordingly be it said, without our being suspected of having a double object in view, we find in general that all great humanists have sooner or later felt a secret tie which bound them, though perhaps unconsciously, to something emanating from it; as in the instance of Sir Walter Scott, who, when dying, after desiring to hear read a chapter from the Gospel, and then saying, "Read me some amusing thing, read me a bit of Crabbe," at the last was heard murmuring some of the hymns of the old Ritual—“in which," says his biographer, "he always delighted, but which probably hung on his memory now in connexion with the Church services he had attended while in Italy," the dies iræ, and with almost his last breath-the stanza that was a still greater favourite "Stabat Mater dolorosa, Juxta crucem lachrymosa All which exponents of the old religious thought assuredly breathe the very atmosphere of the deepest and tenderest humanity, allied with devotion of the loftiest and purest kind. But having now considered the excellence of that common thing called humanity in its aggregate character, before proceeding to hear what may be said of its component parts, or of the familiar virtues which constitute it, viewing them separately, let us attend to what may be advanced in favour of all these common things in general which belong to the moral order or to virtue. CHAPTER V. We have all heard of heroes and saints-of persons eminently, and to a degree that seems superhuman, great and good; but if we were to engage a competent person to analyze the virtues of brightest lustre ascribed to them, either as commemorated in history or casting a halo of light around contemporary events, it would be found in every instance that what entered most into their composition was something as common as the daily action that in general passes amongst us unnoticed and unhonoured. Heroism in any order, martyrdom itself, would be found to form no exception. The rest, to speak, of course, only in a human way, without adverting to supernatural principlesthe colour, the sparkle as it were, the effervescence, if you will, which produce the illumination and the sense of the extraordinary, is but the result of very small and delicate ingredients, almost accidents, arising out of a peculiar combination of circumstances; though it is these which to the eye cause the whole to assume this unusual character, and to present itself as the phenominal and sublime. We are all, in this respect, like the natives of those districts in which the clay is gold, and the pebbles diamonds, and the rocks marble. "The grandeur of man's nature,” says a distinguished writer, “turns to insignificance all outward distinctions. His powers of intellect, of conscience, of love, of knowing God, of perceiving the beautiful, of acting on his own mind, on outward nature, and on his fellowcreatures—these are glorious prerogatives. Through the vulgar error of undervaluing what is common, we are apt, indeed, to pass these by as of but little worth. But as in the outward creation, so in the soul, the common is the most precious. Science and art may invent splendid modes of illuminating the apartments of the opulent; but these are all poor and worthless compared with the light which the sun sends into our windows, which he pours freely, impartially, over hill and valley, which kindles daily the eastern and western sky; and so the common lights of reason, and conscience, and love are of more worth and dignity than the rare endowments which give celebrity to a few *." Common virtues have professedly their heroes too, as well as fame and fortune; but it is their own intrinsic worth with which we are here concerned. We have already seen how the "error of undervaluing what is common has been contracted by many transcendentalists in religion, and we must observe here that it is found no less among those who seek to pass for the best guides in morality, while speaking against the nature of things, against the custom of men, against the opinions of all. Indeed, the thoughts of these guides in some instances would be incredible, if we did not hear them openly avowed. One eminent professor, for instance, speaks as follows: "What do I want? I will answer you. I want to put aside such words as right, reason, and justice, to which various significations are given according to the humour of the time." He reminds one of Firmilian, in the old play, saying, Pity, remorse, or any other thrill That sways the actions of ungifted men, One ought not to be surprised if such teachers should have a disciple, to whom the reproof of the old dramatist might be thought applicable: "I have but little more to say, sir, of his honesty; he has every thing that an honest man should not have; what an honest man should have, he has nothing." As in the ladder of St. Augustin, we are taught to ascend by treading beneath our feet each deed of shame "The low desire-the base design That makes another's virtues less; The revel of the giddy wine, And all occasions of excess. The longing for ignoble things, The strife for triumph more than truth, * Channing. So, by a like process, in seizing the familiar occasions of good ness "All common things-each day's events, That with the hour begin and end; Are rounds by which we may ascend *." You ask perhaps, admitting that they have a certain value, why we are so greatly, so immoderately delighted with common things? Because they supply us with matters in which our mind is refreshed amidst the combats of life, and our wearied ears find rest, and our often wounded hearts peace. Remark that other things, however excellent, are neither for all times, all ages, or all places; whereas these, as Cicero said of the humanities, "become youth, delight old age, adorn prosperity, afford a refuge and consolation in misfortune, enchant us at home, form no impediment to us abroad, pass the night with us, travel with us, accompany us every where." "Men seem resolved," says the Abbé de Bellegarde, writing to instruct a young prince, "on admiring only extraordinary actions, and they hardly pay any attention to a common life; but as for me, I am of the opinion of one who said that more strength and virtue are required for common things than for great things which sustain themselves. To gain a battle, conduct an embassy, govern a kingdom, are actions of renown; but to sell, to pay, to love, to laugh, to correct, and live honourably is more difficult, though less remarkable +." Charron expresses the same opinion, saying, "It is a vice not to esteem what grows up within us, and regard only what we purchase from without and what costs dear; preferring art to nature, and shutting our windows at noon to light candles; to count for nothing the goodness which consists in an easy almost instinctive conformity to a happy natural disposition, and to admire only what is foreign, artificial, laborious, and ostentatious: for these grand and extravagant productions are often rather maladies and febrile attacks, far removed from wisdom t." What is it that secures the order of society, the peace of families, the happiness of individuals? Is it the wonderful, the transcendental, the artificial? Les Règles de la Vie civile. * Longfellow. De la Sagesse, ii. 3. |