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"They meet but with unwholesome springs,
And summers which infectious are;
They hear but when the mermaid sings,
And only see the falling star
Who ever dare
Affirm no woman chaste and fair."
 

The very name of woman becomes soiled if we seek to be related to her by the coarse ties of appetite, instead of the tender threads of affection, the charm of ideas. There are pleasures for keeping as enjoying, – for using delicately, the zest lasting long, the more affluent when tasted with moderation and seldom.

 
"Who can to love more rich gift make
Than to love's self, for love's own sake?
Love, that imports in every sense delight,
Is fancied in the soul, not appetite:
Why love among the virtues is scarce known
Is that love is them all contract in one."
 

iii. – family

 
"How fruitful may the smallest circle grow
When we the secret of its culture know."
 

Here is room enough, however humble and unfurnished, for the most expansive friendships, the purest delights, the noblest labors; for where women are, there open forth all possibilities of culture.

 
Here high o'er head of spiteful fate,
Jove cradles safe the ideal state.
 

"A married life is most beautiful. For what other thing can be such an ornament to a family as the association of husband and wife? For it must not be said that sumptuous edifices, walls covered with pictures, and piazzas adorned with stones, – so admired by those who are ignorant of the Good; nor yet painted windows, myrtle walks; nor anything else which is the subject of astonishment to the stupid, – are the ornaments of a family. But the beauty of a household consists in the conjunction of man and wife who are united to each other by destiny, are consociated to the gods who preside over nuptials, births, and houses; and who accord, indeed, with each other, and have all things in common as far as to their bodies, or rather their souls themselves; – who exercise a becoming authority over their house and servants, are properly solicitous about the education of their children and pay an attention to the necessaries of life, which is neither expensive nor negligent, but moderate and appropriate. For what can be better and more excellent, as the most admirable Homer says,

 
'Than when at home the husband and the wife
Unanimously live.'"
 

THE GOBLET

 
I drank delights from every cup,
Arts, institutions, I drank up;
Athirst, I quaffed life's flowing bowls,
And sipped the flavors of all souls.
 
 
A sparkling cup remained for me,
The brimming fount of Family;
This I am still drinking,
Since, to my thinking,
Good wine beads here,
Flagons of cheer,
Nor laps the soul
In Lethe's bowl.
 
 
Wine of immortal power
Into my chalice now doth pour;
Prevailing wine,
Juice of the Nine,
Flavored of sods,
Vintage of gods;
Joyance benign
This wondrous wine
Ever at call; —
Wine maddening none,
Wine saddening none,
Wine gladdening all,
Makes love's cup ruddier glow,
Genius and grace its overflow.
 
 
I drained the drops of every cup,
Times, institutions I drank up:
Still Beauty pours the enlivening wine,
Fills high her glass to me and mine;
Her cup of sparkling youth,
Of love first found, and loyal truth:
I know, again I know,
Her fill of life and overflow.
 

When I find my friends are not of the same age as when I first knew them, I may conclude myself, not them, to be decaying and losing flavor. Still youth and innocency are the sole solvents of all doubts and infidelities; the faiths of women and children in friendship, ever fresh demonstrations of life's sufficiency and imperishableness. Families never die, since they trace their pedigree to Adam the First, who is of immortal ancestry. First suckled at our mother's breast our faiths survive all subsequent modifications; embrace the friendships we form, and color the whole of life. Our intellectual creed may change; temperament, calling, social position, fortune, sect, may phrase differently the delightful lay she sang to us – its tone still lingers in the memory of our affections, holding the heart loyal, and if trusted to the end takes us triumphantly through life. "Ever the feminine leadeth us on." Every prospect the mother gains is soon commanded by her children: our comforts and satisfactions life-long having the voice and countenance of woman.

iv. – children

 
"Heaven lies about us in our infancy."
 

Our notion of the perfect society embraces the family as its centre and ornament. Nor is there a paradise planted till the children appear in the foreground to animate and complete the picture. Without these, the world were a solitude, houses desolate, hearts homeless; there were neither perspectives, nor prospects; ourselves were not ourselves, nor were there a future for us:

 
In their good gifts we hopeful see
The fairer selves we fain would be.
 

Socrates comprised all objects of his search in

 
"Whate'er of good or ill can man befall
In his own house,"
 

rightly conceiving this to be the seminary of the virtues and foundation of states. There it stands, the ornament of the landscape, and for the human hospitalities: we cannot render it too attractive. Let it be the home of beauty, the haunt of affection, of ideas. Let its chambers open eastward admitting the sunshine for our own and children's sake. Do they not covet the clear sky, delighting in the blue they left so lately, nay cannot wholly leave in coming into nature, whereof they are ever asking news? These gay enthusiasts must run eagerly, and never have enough of it. How soon the clouds clear away from their faces! How sufficient they are to the day, and the joy it brings them! Their poise and plenitude rebuke us.

 
"Happy those early days when I
Shined in my angel infancy;
Before I taught my soul to wound
My conscience with a sinful sound,
Or taught my soul to fancy aught
But a white celestial thought,
Or had the black art to dispense
A several sin to every sense,
But felt through all this fleshly dress
Bright shoots of everlastingness."
 

Charming pictures these bright boys, confiding girls, as full of promise to themselves as we were at their age; are still, if faithful to the beautiful vision. Why else should the flame pale as we come up into life, we pleasing ourselves nor others more, perhaps despair of maintaining the virtues we espoused so eagerly in our youth? Must we

 
"When we've enjoyed our ends then lose them,
And all our appetites be but as dreams
To laugh at in our ages?"
 

If this fresh score of years did not deceive us, shall a life of threescore, with its deeper glances into the mystery, lead us to doubt the longevity of a sentiment of whose imperishableness that life itself is the best evidence we need ask? Are we to be left orphans when taken from nature's arms, robbed of all that made life desirable before? Nature cared for us; Persons failed us, and all unawares we lapsed out of our paradise, its gates barred against us.

 
"I cannot reach it; and my striving eye
Dazzles at it, as at eternity.
Were now that chronicle alive,
Those white designs which children drive,
And the thoughts of each harmless hour,
With their content too in my power,
Quickly would I make my path even,
And by mere playing go to heaven.
 
 
Dear harmless age, the short, swift span
Where weeping virtue parts with man;
Where love without lust dwells, and bends
What way we please, without self-ends:
An age of mysteries! which he
Must live twice that would God's face see;
Where angels guard, and with it play,
Angels, which foul men drive away."
 

'Tis sad to consider how long time is consumed in wiping away the stains which had been insinuated into the breast during these earlier years and up to coming manhood, – to what we call the maturity of our powers. Life is too much for most. So much of age, so little youth; living for the most part in the moment, and dating existence by the memory of its burdens. Men think they once were not, and fear the like fate may overtake them, as if time were older than their minds. 'Tis because we always were that we cannot trace our beginnings to the atheism of no-being and resolve ourselves into nothing. Children save us. Rather are we saved by remaining children, as Christ said.

Have we forgotten how things looked to us when we were young; how the dull world the old people lived in seemed to us? 'Twas not ours, nor their dry theism; and our fresh hearts whispered reverently:

"Is not your paradise an Inferno? Please never name it. While in Heaven I speak not of it: I hum that song to myself. Will you spoil my paradise too? Come with me, come, and I will show you Elysium; I know all about it; I am not deceived. I feel it to be solid, safe. It makes good its pledges always. I have a home of all delights – am admitted when I please, while you seem vagabonds and woebegones, bereft of friends, the Friend of friends. Am I to quit my present satisfactions for your promised joys. Unkind! this taking me from my paradise, unless you conduct me to a happier."

V
CULTURE

 
"O for the coming of that glorious time,
When, prizing knowledge as their noblest wealth
And best protection, liberal states shall own
An obligation on their part to teach
Them, who are born to serve her and obey;
Binding themselves by statute to secure
For all the children whom their soil maintains
The rudiments of letters; and to inform
The mind with moral and religious truth
Both understood and practised – so that none
However destitute, be left to drop
By timely culture unsustained, or run
Into a wild disorder; or be forced
To drudge through life without the aid
Of intellectual implements and tools;
A savage horde among the civilized,
A servile band among the lordly free."
 

Wordsworth.

CULTURE

i. – modern teaching

Saxon Alfred decreed that every man who had so much as two hides of land, should bring up his children to learning till they were fifteen years of age at least, that they might be religious and live happily; else, he said, they were but beasts and sots, dangerous to themselves and the state. And the state's true glory lies in its calling forth into fullest exercise and giving scope and right direction to the gifts of its children; seeking out especially and fostering the best born as they rise, and training these for educators of the coming generations. The Parent of parents, the guardian of all gifts born into it, society should neglect none, sequester none from places and honors to which they are entitled by birthright of genius or acquirement. Every child, the gifted by divine right, is sent to cherish and redeem the race; whom to neglect or divert from its aim were base oversight and abuse of the race itself. Far too noble, too precious be any to be used for ends merely secondary, secular, and thus spoiled for their own and God's intents.

Yet simple as this duty seems, society with all its aims and appliances, has not as yet attained the refinement of culture needful to the receiving of a child into its bosom, and of educating it to the full demands of its endowments. With the child comes the seed of states; the family being the nursery of the citizen, the measure of a people's civilization. As the homes, so the state; as the parents, so the children. Nor has society fathered its functions till all children, befriended from the first, are fashioned into the image each is capable of attaining. Other goods are but aids to this end; all are necessary for educating the human being, since the child is the summary of all gifts, and the most precious of all trusts committed to the state for trial and training.

Yet still the decease of gifts follows fast on their birth, and parents are oftener called beside the bier of these children of the sun than to their nuptials or coronation. They hold their jubilees in weeds rather; and the untimeliness of genius is the tragedy of life as of letters. Amidst the sickliness and wane of things, neither poet nor saint survives his laurel for more than a day. Far from treating the human being with anything like the subtlety and skill displayed by the ancient masters, we wait for the first hint of an institution for training youth into the fulness of their powers, by the genial touch of sensibility, the magnetism of thought. Left instead to the superficial culture of the sects, the traditions of the elders, the guidance of worldlings, they slide soon into vague conjectures, run adrift on the sea of doubt, the shoals of expediency, bereft of faith in themselves as in things unseen and ideal.

 
"See gifted youths rush out to feed on whims;
Fashion craves their hours, low hopes their aim,
To win not noble women for their brides,
But titled slaves, heirs to some teasing caste,
For beauty without culture seems mere show;
As if great nature laid not on her tints
With more contrivance than the brush of art;
Or schools where grammars hide the place of sense,
And shallow stammering drowns the native voice."
 

Not letters but life chiefly educate if we are educatable. But experience follows oftenest too late for most and too distant from the work to help us directly without an interpreter to assist in making timely use of it. Fortunate will it be, if by instinct and mother wit we take life at first hand, converting it forthwith into thought and habit. Character comes of temperament far more than of acquirement. And the most that culture performs is the drawing forth, fashioning and polishing the natural gifts. But we cannot create what is not inborn. A fine brain is a spiritual endowment, as from the head of Jove sprang Minerva. Centuries of culture pass into pure power; piety and genius are parents of piety and genius. But less discriminating than were the ancient carvers in wood and ivory, who, when they had an order for a head of Hermes, or any ordinary god even, searched carefully for substances adapted to receive the proper form, states attempt to fashion saints and rulers out of any materials that chance brings to hand. Omitting mind, or overriding it in our haste to come at immediate and superficial results, we ignore ideas and principles altogether. Aiming at little we attain little. For while our country opens the freest scope for the exercise of the higher gifts of genius and character, we cherish these but feebly in our public or private training. The highest prizes held forth to youth are not only beneath the aims of a noble ambition, but the stimulus for their attainment is wanting. Even in New England, culture is external, provincial; neglectful of the better parts of body and mind; behind the old countries, that of the ancient states. We cram the memory with the lore of foreign tongues, the understanding with a medley of learning, leaving fancy, imagination, the moral sentiment, mainly to shift for themselves – the forming of the manners, motives, aims and aspirations. Then what substitutes have we, for the falconry, archery, the hunting, fishing, of earlier and what we deem barbarous times? Yet these were sports, heroic and wholesome, giving a national coloring and strength of character: the wrestling too, throwing the quoit, and other manly games, horsemanship, boating, swimming, were a natural gymnastic for body and mind. War also had its advantages. So the plays and games were schools of genius and valor: the people were refined by contact with the refinements of the best citizens, the guardians of public taste and honor providing hereby a polite and manly culture suited to the needs of the state. Education extended into the age of ripe maturity. Nor was the disciple committed to himself till he became the master. And through life he was prompted by incentives of virtue and fame. The state was venerable, ennobled as it was by the genius and services of great men; great men earning honorably their renown by teaching.

 
'Tis noble minds who noble men create,
And they who have great manners form mankind.
 

Happy the man who wins the confidence of the rising youth of his time. He becomes priest and professor elect without degrees of synods or universities. He shapes the future of the next generation as of the succeeding. A noble artist he cherishes visions of excellence not easily impersonated or spoken. His life and teachings are studies for high ideals.

ii. – socratic dialectic

The highest end of instruction is to discipline and liberalize mind and character by familiarizing the thoughts with those of the learned and wise. Character is inspired by admiration of character, intellect by participating in intellect. The masters form masters. And had I the choice of my class, I would put Plato's works at once into its hands. And, for a beginning, – say the Alcibiades of the earlier Dialogues. I know of no discipline under the care of a thoughtful instructor so fitting for educating the reason, quickening the moral sense, refining the sensibilities, fashioning the manners, ennobling the character, as exercises in the Socratic dialectic: opening the whole armory of gifts, it sharpens and polishes these for the victories of life. The youth who masters Plato wins fairly his degree alike in humanity and divinity. He has the key to the mysteries, ancient and modern.³

Take the following as an example of the pure dialectic method as of metaphysic;

"In what way, asks Socrates, may we attain to know the soul itself with the greatest clearness? for when we know this, it seems we shall know ourselves. Now, in the name of the gods, whether are we not ignorant of the right meanings of that Delphic inscription just now mentioned, 'Know thyself?'"

Alcibiades. What meaning? what have you in your thoughts, Socrates, when you ask the question?

Socrates. I will tell you what I suspect this inscription means, and what particular thing it advises us to do. For a just resemblance of it is, I think, not to be found wherever one pleases, but in only one thing, the sight.

Alcibiades. How do you mean?

Socrates. Consider it jointly with me. Were a man to address himself to the outward human eye, as it were some other man; and were he to give it this counsel, "See yourself," what particular thing should we suppose that he advises the eye to do? Should we not suppose that it was to look at such a thing as that the eye by looking at it, might see itself?

Alcibiades. Certainly we should.

Socrates. What kind of thing then do we think of by looking at which we see things at which we look, and at the same time see ourselves?

Alcibiades. 'Tis evident, Socrates, that for this purpose we must look at mirrors and other things of like kind.

Socrates. You are right. And has not the eye itself, with which we see, something of the same kind belonging to it?

Alcibiades. Most certainly it has.

Socrates. You have observed then, that the face of the person who looks in the eye of another person, appears visible to himself in the eye of the person opposite to him, as in a mirror. And we therefore call this the pupil, because it exhibits the image of that person who examines it.

Alcibiades. What you say is true.

Socrates. The eye beholding an eye and looking in the most excellent part of it in that which it sees, may thus see itself?

Alcibiades. Apparently so.

Socrates. But if the eye look at any other part of the man, or at anything whatever, except what this part of the eye happens to be like, it will not see itself.

Alcibiades. It is true.

Socrates. If therefore the eye would see itself, it must look in an eye, and in that place of the eye, too, where the virtue of the eye is naturally seated; and the virtue of the eye is sight.

Alcibiades. I am aware that it is so.

Socrates. Whether then is it not true, my friend Alcibiades, that the soul if she know herself, must look at soul, and especially at that place in the soul in which wisdom, the virtue of the soul, is ingenerated, and also at whatsoever else this virtue of the soul resembles?

Alcibiades. To me, Socrates, it seems true.

Socrates. Do we know of any place in the soul more divine than that which is the seat of knowledge and intelligence?

Alcibiades. We do not.

Socrates. This, therefore, in the soul resembles the divine nature. And a man, looking at this, and realizing all that which is divine and God and wisdom, would gain the most knowledge of himself.

Alcibiades. It is apparent.

Socrates. And to know one's self we acknowledge to be wisdom.

Alcibiades. By all means.

Socrates. Shall we not say, therefore, that as mirrors are clearer, purer, and more splendid than that which is most analogous to a mirror in the eye, in like manner, God is purer and more splendid than that which is best in our soul?

Alcibiades. It is likely, Socrates.

Socrates. Looking therefore at God, we should make use of him as the most beautiful mirror, and among human concerns we should look at the virtue of the soul, and thus by so doing shall we especially see and know our very self.

Alcibiades. Yes.

And yet knowing the fascinations that beset gifted young men, one might say to them at parting, as Socrates did to the accomplished Alcibiades, when the latter intimated that he would begin thenceforward to cultivate the science of justice:

"I wish you may persevere. But I am terribly afraid for you; not that I in the least distrust the goodness of your disposition; but perceiving the torrent of the times, I fear you may be borne away with it, in spite of your own resistance and all my endeavors in your aid."

iii. – pythagorean discipline

Let us see, too, how wisely the great master Pythagoras went to his work.

"He prepared his disciples for learning by many trials; for he did not receive into the number of his associates any who came to him till he had subjected them to various examinations. In the first place, he inquired after what manner they associated with their parents and relations generally; next, he surveyed their unreasonable laughter, their silence, their speaking when it was not proper; and farther, still, what were their desires, their intimacies with their companions, their conversation; how they employed their leisure time, and what were the subjects of their joy and grief. He likewise surveyed their form, their gait, gestures and whole motion of their body, their voice, complexion and physiognomy, considering all these natural indications to be the manifest signs of the unapparent manners of the soul.

Having thus subjected them to this scrutiny, he next suffered them to pass a good while seemingly unobserved by him, that he might the better judge of each one how he was disposed towards stability and a love of learning, and whether he was sufficiently fortified against the flatteries of popularity and false honor and glory. After this, he advised such to maintain a long silence, that he might observe how far they were disposed towards continence in speech, and that most difficult of all victories – the victory over the tongue. Thus practically he made trial of their aptitudes to be educated, for he was as anxious that they should be modest and discreet, as that they should not speak unadvisedly. He likewise directed his attention to every other particular, such as whether they were astonished at the outbreaks of immoderate passion and desire. Nor did he superficially consider how they were affected by these; or whether they were contentious or ambitious, or how they were disposed as to friendship and strife. And if on his surveying all these particulars accurately, they appeared to him endued with worthy manners, he next directed his attention to their facility in learning and memory; first whether they were able to follow what was said with rapidity and perspicuity; and in the next place, whether a certain love and temperance attracted them to the disciplines by which they were taught; whether they loved to learn and to be governed; also how they were disposed as to gentleness, which he called elegance of manners; conceiving all ferocity of temper as hostile to his mode of education. For impudence, shamelessness, intemperance, slothfulness, slowness of learning, unrestrained licentiousness, disgrace and the like, are attendants of savage manners, but the contrary of these are gentleness and mildness.

Of food he held that whatsoever obstructs divination should be shunned. And that the juvenile age should make trial of temperance – this being alone of all the virtues alike adapted to youths and maidens, and comprehends the good both of body and mind, and also the desire for the most excellent studies and pursuits. Boys he thought were especially dear to divinity, and he exhorted women to use words of good omen through the whole of life, and to endeavor that others may predict good things of them. He paid great attention to the health of body and mind, using unction and the bath often, wrestling, leaping with weights in the hands, also pantomimes with a view to strengthening the body, selecting for this purpose opposite exercises.

Music he thought contributed greatly to health, as well as to purifying the heart and manners, and he called it a medicine when he so used it, conceiving that each faculty had its particular melody. He placed in the middle a player on the lyre, and seated around him were those who were able to sing. And when the person struck the lyre, they sang certain pæans, through which they were sure to be delighted, and to become orderly and graceful, and he had melodies devised as remedies against the passions, as anger, despondency, complaint, inordinate desire and the rest, which afforded the greatest relief to these distempers of the soul. He likewise used dancing, walking and conversation.

Rulers, who received their country from the multitude of citizens as a common deposit, were to transmit it faithfully to their posterity as a hereditary possession; their language was to be such as to render them worthy of belief without an oath. And as parents, they were so to manage their domestic affairs as to make the government of them the object of deliberate choice, being kindly disposed towards their offspring, as they were the only animals that were susceptible of moral obedience. And they were to associate with their wives as companions for life, being mindful that other compacts were engraved on tablets and pillars, but those with wives were inserted in children, and that they should endeavor to be beloved by them, not through nature alone, of which they were not the causes, but through choice; for this was voluntary beneficence; they remembering, also, that they received their wives from the vestal hearth with libations, and brought them home as if they were suppliants of the gods themselves.

By orderly conduct and temperance, they were to be examples both to their families and the city in which they lived, revering beautiful and worthy manners, expelling sluggishness from all their actions, opportunity being the chief good in all. Separation of parents and children from one another was the greatest of injuries both to themselves and the State. Youths and virgins were to be educated in labor and exercises conducing to health, using food convenient thereto, and in a temperate and tolerant life. Of things in human life, there were many in which to be late conversant was best. A boy was to be so educated and fed, as not to have the desires awakened till the nuptial hour. Parents benefited their children prior to their birth, and were the causes of their good conduct afterwards. Hence the children owed them as many thanks as a dead man would owe to him who should be able to restore him back to life. And they were to associate with one another in such a manner as not be in a state of hostility, and be easily reconciled after any disputes, exhibiting a modesty of behavior to their elders, benevolent dispositions towards parents and love and regard to all deserving these. All who aspired after true glory, were to be such in reality as they wished to appear to be to others. The most pure and unadulterated character was that of him who gave himself to the contemplation and practice of the most beautiful things, and was a lover as well as student of wisdom.

It was by disciplines and inventions like these that he sought to heal and purify the soul, to revive and save its divine part, and thus conduct to the intelligible One its divine Eye, which is better worth saving than ten thousand corporeal eyes: since by its sight alone when thus strengthened and clarified, the truth pertaining to all beings is clearly perceived."

iv. – mother tongue

 
"Let foreign nations of their language boast
What fine variety each tongue affords,
I like our language as our men and coast,
Who cannot dress it well want wit not words."
 

"Great, verily," says Camden, "was the glory of our tongue before the Norman conquest, in this, that the old English could express most aptly all the conceptions of the mind in their own speech without borrowing from any."

We still draw from the same wells of meaning as did Chaucer and Camden; the language, by additions from foreign sources, as by native growth, having now become the most composite of any; it is the one we speak, and affect to teach. If we have few masters, it is because we yet cultivate other tongues at its cost. Scholars praise the exceeding richness and beauty of the best writers of the age of Elizabeth, but fail to inform us by what happy chances, whether by force of genius altogether, or more natural methods of study, the language and literature came to its prime in that period. Meanwhile it were not amiss for us to listen to the great authors and teachers of those golden days when our tongue had the sweep and splendor, the force, depth, accuracy, the grace and flexibility proper to its genius and idiom, if we may learn from these authorities by what method they attained to their proficiency in its use; instructors of Princes, as they were, and inspirers of those who made the literature.

Roger Ascham – Queen Elizabeth's school-master – proposed after teaching the common rudiments of grammar to begin a course of double translation, first from Latin into English, and shortly after from English into Latin, correcting the mistakes of the student and leading to the formation of a classical style, by pointing out the differences between the re-translation and the original, and explaining their reasons. "His whole system is built upon the principle of dispensing as much as possible with the details of grammar, and he supports his theory by a triumphant reference to its practical effects, especially as displayed in the case of Queen Elizabeth, whose well known proficiency in Latin, he declares to have been obtained without grammatical rules, after the very simplest had been mastered."