The action of the Elector was as wise and as successful a bit of legal procedure as ever mortal lawyer worked: that it was all done without the advice, consent or connivance of the prisoner makes it doubly admirable.

Luther set himself to work as never before, writing and preaching. He kept close to Wittenberg and from there sent forth his thunders of revolt. Outside of Saxony, at regular intervals, edicts were read from pulpits ordering any and all copies of Luther's writings to be brought forward that they might be burned. This advertised the work, and made it prized—it was read throughout all Christendom.

That gentle and ascetic Henry the Eighth of England issued a book denouncing Luther and telling what he would do with him if he came to England. Luther replied, a trifle too much in kind. Henry put in a pious rejoinder to the effect that the Devil would not have Luther in hell. In their opinion of Luther the Pope and King Henry were of one mind.

So lived Martin Luther, execrated and beloved. At first he sought to serve the Church, and later he worked to destroy it. After three hundred years, the Catholic Church still lives, with more communicants than it had in the days of Luther. The fact that it still exists proves its usefulness. It will still live, and it will change as men change. The Church and the Pope are not the detestable things that Martin Luther pictured them; and Protestantism is not the sweet and lovely object that he would have us believe. All formal and organized religions will be what they are, as long as man is what he is—labels count for little.

In Fifteen Hundred Twenty-five Martin Luther married "Catharine the Nun," a most excellent woman, and one whom rumor says had long encouraged and upheld him in his works. Children came to bless them, and the picture of the great heretic sitting at his wooden table with little Johnny Luther on his knee, his loving wife by his side, and kind neighbors entering for a friendly chat, shows the great reformer at his best.

He was the son of a peasant, all his ancestors were peasants, as he so often told, and he lived like a peasant to the last. For himself he wanted little. He sided with the people, the toilers, with those who struggled in the bonds of slavery and fear—for them he was an Eye, an Ear, a trumpet Voice.

There never lived a braver man—there never lived one more earnest and sincere. He fought freedom's fight with all the weapons God had given him; and for the liberty we now enjoy, in great degree, we are debtors to Martin Luther.



EDMUND BURKE

I was not, like His Grace of Bedford, swaddled and rocked and dandled into a legislator; "nitor in adversum" is the motto for a man like me. I possessed not one of the qualities, nor cultivated one of the arts, that recommend men to the favor and protection of the great. I was not made for a minion or a tool. As little did I follow the trade of winning the hearts, by imposing on the understandings of the people.

At every step of my progress in life, for in every step I was traversed and opposed, and at every turnpike I met, I was obliged to show my passport, and again and again to prove my sole title to the honor of being useful to my country, by a proof that I was not wholly unacquainted with its laws and the whole system of its interests both abroad and at home; otherwise no rank, no toleration even, for me.

—Edmund Burke



In the "American Encyclopedia," a work I cheerfully recommend, will be found a statement to the effect that Edmund Burke was one of the fifteen children of his parents. Aside from the natural curiosity to know what became of the fourteen, the matter is of small moment, and that its truth or falsity should divide men is most absurd.

Of this, however, we know: the parents of Burke were plain people, rescued from oblivion only through the excellence of this one son. The father was a lawyer, and fees being scarce, he became chief clerk for another barrister, and so lived his life and did his work.

When Edmund Burke was born at Dublin in the year Seventeen Hundred Twenty-nine, that famous city was at its flood-tide of prosperity. It was a metropolis of commerce, art, wit, oratory and literary culture. The one name that looms large to us out of that time is that of Dean Swift, but then there were dozens just as great as he—so-said.

Edmund must have been a bright, fine, attractive boy, for we hear that certain friends of his parents combined with his father and they bent themselves to the task of sending the lad to Trinity College. Before this, however, he had spent some time at a private school kept by one Abraham Shackleton, an Englishman and a member of the Society of Friends. Shackleton was a rare, sweet soul and a most excellent teacher, endowed with a grave, tranquil nature, constant and austere. Between his son Richard and young Mr. Burke there sprang up a close and affectionate friendship which neither time nor circumstance was able to dim.

Now, the elder Burke was a lawyer, but not a great lawyer.

What more natural, therefore, than that the boy Edmund should follow in his father's footsteps and reap the fame and high honors which an unkind Fate had withheld from his worthy parent?

There was another boy destined for fame at Trinity College while Burke was there, but they did not get acquainted then. Some years later they met in London, though, and talked it over.

In countenance these two young men had a certain marked resemblance. Reynolds painted pictures of both Burke and Goldsmith, and when I looked at these portraits this morning, side by side, I said, "Sir Joshua hadn't quite got the Burke out of his brush before he painted the Goldsmith." Burke is Goldsmith grown big.

Each had a weak chin, which was redeemed by the fine, full forehead and brilliant eye.

In face and features, taken as a whole, Burke had a countenance of surpassing beauty. Note the full sensuous lips, the clear, steady, lustrous, beaming eye, the splendid head! There is nothing small, selfish, mean or trifling about the man—he is open, frank, sympathetic, gentle, generous and wise.

He is a manly man.

No wonder that even the staid and chilly Hannah More loved him; and little Miss Burney worshiped at his shrine even in spite of "his friendship for those detested rebels, the Americans; and the other grievous sin of persecuting that good man, Warren Hastings."

Goldsmith was small in stature, apologetic in manner, hesitating, and at times there was a lisp in speech, which might have been an artistic and carefully acquired adjunct of wit, but it was not. Burke was commanding in stature, dignified, suave, and in speech direct, copious and elegant. Goldsmith overworked the minor key, but Burke merely suggests that it had not been omitted.

At college young Burke did not prove a brilliant student—his intellect and aptitude it seems were a modest mouse-color that escaped attention.

His reading was desultory and pretty general, with spasms of passion for this study or that, this author or the other. And he has remarked, most regretfully, that these passions were all short-lived, none lasting more than six weeks.

It is a splendid sign to find a youth with a passion for any branch of work, or study, or for any author. No matter how brief the love, it adds a ring of growth to character; and if you have loved a book once it is easy to go back to it. In all these varying moods of likes and dislikes, Burke was gathering up material for use in after-years.

But his teachers did not regard it so, neither did his father.

He got through college after a five-years' course, aged twenty, by the grace of his tutors. He knew everything except what was in the curriculum.

Tall, handsome, with hair black as the raven's wing, and eyes that looked away off into space, dreamy and unconcerned, was Edmund Burke at twenty.

His father was a business lawyer, with a sharp nose for technicalities, quirks and quillets, but the son studied law as a literary curiosity. Occasionally there were quick chidings, answered with irony needlessly calm: then the good wife and mother would intervene with her tears, and the result was that Burke the elder would withdraw to the open air to cool his coppers. Be it known that no man can stand out against his wife and son when they in love combine.

Finally it was proposed that Edmund go to London and take a course of Law at the Middle Temple. The plan was accepted with ill-concealed alacrity. Father and son parted with relief, but the good-by between mother and son tore the hearts of both—they were parting forever, and Something told them so.

It evidently was the intention of Burke the elder, who was a clear-headed, practical person, competent in all petty plans, that if the son settled down to law and got his "call," then he would be summoned back to Dublin and put in a way to achieve distinction. But if the young man still pursued his desultory reading and scribbling on irrelevant themes, why then the remittances were to be withdrawn and Edmund Burke, being twenty-one years of age, could sink or swim. Burke pater would wash his hands in innocency, having fully complied with all legal requirements, and God knows that is all any man can do—there!

* * * * *

In London town since time began, no embryo Coke ever rapped at the bar for admittance—lawyers are "summoned" just as clergymen are "called," while other men find a job. In England this pretty little illusion of receiving a "call" to practise law still obtains.

Burke never received the call, for the reason that he failed to fit himself for it. He read everything but law-books. He might have assisted a young man by the name of Blackstone in compiling his "Commentaries," as their lodgings were not far apart, but he did not. They met occasionally, and when they did they always discussed Spenser or Milton, and waxed warm over Shakespeare.

Burke gave Old Father Antic the Law as lavish a letter of recommendation as the Legal Profession ever received, and he gave it for the very natural reason that he had no use for the Law himself.

The remittances from Dublin were always small, but they grew smaller, less frequent and finally ceased. It was sink or swim—and the young man simply paddled to keep afloat upon the tide of the times.

He dawdled at Dodsley's, visited with the callers and browsed among the books. There was only one thing the young man liked better to do than read, and that was to talk. Once he had read a volume nearly through, when Dodsley up and sold it to a customer—"a rather ungentlemanly trick to play on an honest man," says Burke.

It was at Dodsley's that he first met his countryman Goldsmith, also Garrick, Boswell and Johnson. It was then that Johnson received that lasting impression of Burke, of whom he said, "Sir, if you met Edmund Burke under a gateway, where you had taken shelter for five minutes to escape a shower, you would be so impressed by his conversation that you would say, 'This is a most extraordinary man.'"

If one knows how, or has to, he can live in a large city at a small expense. For nine years Burke's London life is a tale of a garret, with the details almost lost in the fog. Of this time, in after-years, he seldom spoke, not because he was ashamed of all the straits and shifts he had to endure, but because he was endowed with that fine dignity of mind which does not dwell on hardships gone and troubles past, but rather fixes itself on blessings now at hand and other blessings yet to come. Then, better still, there came a time when work and important business filled every moment of the fast-flying hours. And so he himself once said, "The sure cure for all private griefs is a hearty interest in public affairs."

The best searchlight through the mist of those early days comes to us through Burke's letters to his friend Richard, the son of his old Quaker teacher. Shackleton had the insight to perceive his friend was no common man, and so preserved every scrap of Burke's writing that came his way.

About that time there seems to have been a sort of meteoric shower of chipmunk magazines, following in the luminous pathway of the "Spectator" and the "Tatler." Burke was passing through his poetic period, and supplied various stanzas of alleged poetry to these magazines for a modest consideration. For one poem he received eighteen pence, as tearfully told by Shackleton, but we have Hawkins for it that this was a trifle more than the poem was worth.

Of this poetry we know little, happily, but glimpses of it are seen in the Shackleton letters; for instance, when he asks his friend's criticism of such lines as these:

"The nymphs that haunt the dusky wood, Which hangs recumbent o'er the crystal flood."

He speaks of his delight in ambient sunsets, when gilded oceans, ghostly ships, and the dull, dark city vanish for the night. Of course, such things never happen except in books, but the practise of writing about them is a fine drill, in that it enables the writer to get a grasp on his vocabulary. Poetry is for the poet.

And if Burke wrote poetry in bed, having to remain there in the daytime, while his landlady was doing up his single ruffled shirt for an evening party, whose business was it?

When he was invited out to dinner he did the meal such justice that he needed nothing the following day; and the welcome discovery was also made that fasting produced an exaltation of the "spiritual essence that was extremely favorable to writing good poetry."

Burke had wit, and what Johnson called a "mighty affluence of conversation"; so his presence was welcome at the Turk's Head. Burke and Johnson were so thoroughly well matched as talkers that they respected each other's prowess and never with each other clinched in wordy warfare. Johnson was an arch Tory, Burke the leader of the Whigs; but Ursa was wise enough to say, "I'll talk with him on any subject but politics." This led Goldsmith to remark, "Doctor Johnson browbeats us little men, but makes quick peace with those he can not down." Then there were debating societies, from one of which he resigned because the limit of a speech was seven minutes; but finally the time was extended to fifteen minutes in order to get the Irish orator back.

During these nine years, once referred to by Burke as the "Dark Ages," he had four occupations: book-browsing at Dodsley's, debating in the clubs, attending the theater on tickets probably supplied by Garrick, who had taken a great fancy to him, and his writing.

No writing man could wish a better environment than this: the friction of mind with strong men, books and the drama stirred his emotions to the printing-point.

Burke's personality made a swirl in the social sea that brought the best straight to him.

One of the writers that Burke most admired was Bolingbroke, that man of masterly mind and mighty tread. His paragraphs move like a phalanx, and in every sentence there is an argument. No man in England influenced his time more than Bolingbroke. He was the inspirer of writers. Burke devoured Bolingbroke, and when he took up his pen, wrote with the same magnificent, stately minuet step. Finally he was full of the essence of Bolingbroke to the point of saturation, and then he began to criticize him. Had Bolingbroke been alive Burke would have quarreled with him—they were so much alike. As it was, Burke contented himself by writing a book after the style of Bolingbroke, carrying the great man's arguments one step further with intent to show their fallacy. The paraphrase is always a complement, and is never well done except by a man who loves the original and is a bit jealous of him.

If Burke began his "Vindication of Natural Society," with intent to produce a burlesque, he missed his aim, and came very near convincing himself of the truth of his proposition. And in fact, the book was hailed by the rationalists as a vindication of Rousseau's philosophy.

Burke was a conservative rationalist, which is something like an altruistic pessimist. In the society of rationalists Burke was a conservative, and when with the conservatives he was a rationalist. That he was absolutely honest and sincere there is not a particle of doubt, and we will have to leave it to the psychologists to tell us why men hate the thing they love.

"The Vindication of Natural Society" is a great book, and the fact that in the second edition Burke had to explain that it was an ironical paraphrase does not convince us it was. The things prophesied have come about and the morning stars still sing together. Wise men are more and more learning by inclining their hearts toward Nature. Not only is this true in pedagogics, but in law, medicine and theology as well. Dogma has less place now in religion than ever before; many deeply religious men eschew the creed entirely; and in all pulpits may be heard that the sublime truths of simple honesty and kindness are quite enough basis for a useful career. That is good which serves. Religions are many and diverse, but reason and goodness are one.

Burke's attempt to prove that without "revealed religion" mankind would sit in eternal darkness makes us think of the fable of the man who planted potatoes, hoed them, and finally harvested the crop. Every day while this man toiled, there was another man who sat on the fence, chewed a straw and looked on. And the author of the story says that if it were not for the Bible, no one would have ever known to whom the potatoes belonged.

Burke wrote and talked as all good men do, just to clear the matter up in his own mind. Our wisest moves are accidents. Burke's first book was of a sort so striking that both sides claimed it. Men stopped other men on the street and asked if they had read the "Vindication"; at the coffeehouses they wrangled and jangled over it; and all the time Dodsley smiled and rubbed his hands in glee.

Burke soon blossomed out in clean ruffled shirt every morning, and shortly moved to a suite of rooms, where before he had received his mail and his friends at a coffeehouse.

Then came William Burke, a distant cousin, and together they tramped off through rural England, loitering along flowering hedgerows, and stopping at quaint inns, where the villagers made guesses as to whether the two were gentlemen out for a lark, smugglers or Jesuits in disguise.

One of these trips took our friends to Bath, and there we hear they were lodged at the house of a Doctor Nugent, an excellent and scholarly man. William Burke went back to London and left Edmund at Bath deep in the pursuit of the Sublime. Doctor Nugent had a daughter, aged twenty, beautiful, gentle and gracious. The reader can guess the rest.

That Burke's wife was a most amiable and excellent woman there is no doubt. She loved her lord, believed in him and had no other gods before him. But that she influenced his career directly or through antithesis, there is no trace. Her health was too frail to follow him—his stride was terrific—so she remained at home, and after every success he came back and told her of it, and rested his great, shaggy head in her lap.

Only one child was born to them, and this boy closely resembled his mother in intellect and physique. This son passed out early in life, and so with Edmund died the name.

* * * * *

The next book Burke launched was the one we know best, "On the Sublime." The original bore the terrifying title, "A Philosophical Inquiry Into the Origin of Our Ideas Concerning the Sublime and Beautiful." This book consists of one hundred seventeen chapters, each chapter dealing with some special phase of the subject.

It is the most searching and complete analysis of an abstract theme of which I know. It sums the subject up like an essay by Herbert Spencer, and disposes of the case once and forever. It is so learned that only a sophomore could have written it, and we quite forgive the author when we are told that it was composed when he was nineteen.

The book proved Burke's power to follow an idea to its lair, and its launching also launched the author upon the full tide of polite society. Goldsmith said, "We will lose him now," but Burke still stuck by his coffeehouse companions and used them as a pontoon to bridge the gulf 'twixt Bohemia and Piccadilly.

In the meantime he had written a book for Dodsley on "English Settlements in North America," and this did Burke more good than any one else, as it caused him to focus his inquiring mind on the New World. After this man began to write on a subject, his intellect became luminous on the theme, and it was his forevermore.

At routs and fetes and four-o'-clocks, Burke was sought as an authority on America. He had never been there—he had but promised himself that he would go—for a sick wife held him back. In the meantime he had seen every man of worth who had been to America, and had sucked the orange dry. Macaulay gives the idea when he describes Burke's speech at the Warren Hastings trial. Burke had never been to India; Macaulay had, but that is nothing.

Says Macaulay:

When Burke spoke, the burning sun, the strange vegetation of the palm and cocoa-tree, the rice-field, the tank, the huge trees, older than the Mogul Empire, under which the village crowds assemble, the thatched roof of the peasant's hut, the rich tracery of the mosque where the Imam prays with his face to Mecca, the drums, the banners and gaudy idols, the devotee swinging in the air, the graceful maiden with the pitcher on her head, descending the steps to the riverside, the black faces, the long beards, the yellow streaks of sect, the turbans and the flowing robes, the spears and silver maces, the elephants with their canopies of state, the gorgeous palanquin of the prince, and the close litter of the noble lady—all these things were to him as familiar as the subjects which lay on the road between Beaconsfield and Saint James Street. All India was present to the eye of his mind, from the halls where suitors laid gold and perfumes at the feet of the sovereign, to the wild moor where the gipsy camp was pitched; from the bazar, humming like a beehive with the crowd of buyers and sellers, to the jungle where the lonely courier shakes his bunch of iron rings to scare away the hyenas. He had just as lively an idea of the insurrection at Benares as of Lord George Gordon's riots, and of the execution of Numcomar as of Doctor Dodd. Oppression in Bengal was to him the same thing as oppression in the streets of London.

The wide encompassing quality of Burke's mind made him a man among men. Just how much he lent his power in those early days to assist those in high places who needed him, we do not know. Such services were sacred to him—done in friendship and in confidence, and held as steadfast as a good lawyer holds the secrets of his client.

No doubt, though, that the one speech which gave glory and a nickname to Single-Speech Hamilton was written by Burke. It was wise, witty and profound—and never again did Hamilton do a thing that rose above the dull and deadly mediocre.

It was a rival of Burke's who said, "He is the only man since Cicero who is a great orator, and who can write as well as he can talk."

That Burke wrote the lectures of Sir Joshua Reynolds is now pretty generally believed; in fact, that he received the goodly sum of four thousand pounds for writing these lectures has been proved to the satisfaction of a jury. Burke never said he wrote the Reynolds lectures, and Sir Joshua left it to his valet to deny it. But read the lectures now and you will see the stately step of Bolingbroke, and the insight, wit and gravity of the man who said: "Mr. Speaker, I rise to a question of privilege. If it is the pleasure of the House that all the heaviest folios known to us should be here read aloud, I am in honor bound to graciously submit, but only this I ask, that proceedings shall be suspended long enough for me to send home for my nightcap."

* * * * *

Presently Burke graduated from doing hack-work for William Gerard Hamilton to the position of his private secretary—Hamilton had been appointed Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, and so highly did he prize Burke's services that he had the Government vote him a pension of three hundred pounds a year. This was the first settled income Burke had ever received, and he was then well past thirty years of age. But though he was in sore straits financially, when he perceived that the intent of the income was to bind him into the exclusive service of his patron, he resigned his office and refused the pension.

Without knowing how wisely he was acting, Burke, by declining the pension and affronting Lord Hamilton, had done the very thing that it was most expedient to do.

When Hamilton could not buy his man, he foolishly sought to crush him, and this brought Burke for the first time into the white light of publicity.

I suppose it is fully understood that the nobility of England are not necessarily either cultured or well-read. Literature to most of the titled gentry is a blank, my lord—it is so now and always has been so. Burke's brilliant books were not sufficient to make him famous except among the Elect Few; but the episode with Lord Hamilton set the gossips by the ears, and all who had never read Burke's books now pretended they had.

Burke was a national character—such a man merely needs to be known to be wanted—strong men are always needed. The House of Commons opened its doors to him—several boroughs competing with each other for the favor of being represented by him.

A political break-up with opportunity came along, and we find the Marquis of Rockingham made Premier, and Edmund Burke his secretary. It was Fitzherbert who recommended Burke to Rockingham, and Fitzherbert is immortal for this and for the fact that Johnson used him to point a moral. Said Doctor Johnson: "A man is popular more through negative qualities than positive ones. Fitzherbert is the most acceptable man in London because he never overpowers any one by the superiority of his talents, makes no man think worse of himself by being his rival, seems always ready to listen, does not oblige you to hear much from him, and never opposes what you say."

With Rockingham and Burke it was a case of the tail wagging the dog, but Burke and Rockingham understood each other, and always remained firm friends.

I believe it was John J. Ingalls who said America had never elected but one first-class man for President, and he was chosen only because he was unknown.

Rockingham could neither make a speech nor write a readable article; but he was kindly disposed, honest and intelligent and had a gracious and winning presence. He lives in history today chiefly because Edmund Burke was associated with him.

Burke was too big a man for Premier—such men have to be kept in subjection—the popular will is wise. Men like Burke make enemies—common folks can not follow them in their flight, and in their presence we feel "like a farmer in the presence of a sleight-of-hand man."

To have life, and life in abundance, is the prayer of every strong and valiant soul. But men are forever running away from life—getting into "positions," monasteries, communities, and now and again cutting the cable of existence by suicide. The man who commits suicide usually leaves a letter giving a reason—almost any reason is sufficient—he was looking for a reason and when he thought he had found it, he seized upon it.

Life to Edmund Burke was the gracious gift of the gods, and he was grateful for it. He ripened slowly. Arrested development never caught him—all the days of his life his mind was expanding and reaching out, touching every phase of human existence. Nothing was foreign to him; nothing that related to human existence was small or insignificant. When the home-thrust was made that Ireland had not suffered more through the absenteeism of her landlords than through the absenteeism of her men of genius, Burke made the reply that Ireland needed friends in the House of Commons more than at home.

Burke loved Ireland to the last, and his fine loyalty for her people doubtless cost him a seat in the Cabinet. In moments of passion his tongue took on a touch of the old sod, which gave Fox an opportunity of introducing a swell bull, "Burke's brogue is worth going miles to see." And once when Burke was speaking of America he referred to the wondrous forests "where the hand of man had never trod," Fox arose to a point of order. And this was a good deal easier on the part of Fox than to try to meet his man in serious debate.

Burke's was not the primrose path of dalliance. He fought his way inch by inch. Often it was a dozen to one against him. In one speech he said: "The minister comes down in state attended by beasts clean and unclean. He opens his budget and edifies us with a speech—one-half the house goes away. A second gentleman gets up and another half goes, and a third gentleman launches a speech that rids the house of another half."

A loud laugh here came in, and Burke stopped and said he was most happy if a small dehorned Irish bull of his could put the House in such good humor, and went on with his speech. Soon, however, there were cries of "Shame!" from the Tories, who thought Burke was speaking disrespectfully of the King.

Burke paused and said: "Mr. Speaker, I have not spoken of the King except in high esteem—I prize my head too well for that. But I do not think it necessary that I should bow down to his manservant, nor his maidservant, nor his ox nor his ass"—and he fixed his intrepid gaze upon the chief offender.

Nature's best use for genius is to make other men think; to stir things up so sedimentation does not take place; to break the ankylosis of self-complacency; and start the stream of public opinion running so it will purify itself.

Burke was an agitator—not a leader. He had the great gift of exaggeration, without which no man can be a great orator. He painted the picture large, and put the matter in a way that compelled attention. For thirty years he was a most prominent figure in English politics—no great measure could be passed without counting on him. His influence held dishonesty in check, and made oppression pause.

History is usually written from one of three points of view—political, literary or economic. Macaulay stands for the first, Taine the second, Buckle the third. Each writer considers his subject supreme. When we speak of the history of a country we usually refer to its statesmen.

Politicians live the lives of moths as compared with the lasting influence of commerce that feeds, houses and clothes, says Buckle.

Rulers govern, but it is literature that enlightens, says Taine.

Literature and commerce are made possible only through the wisdom of statesmen, says Macaulay.

Edmund Burke's business was statecraft; his play was letters; but he lives for us through letters.

He had two sets of ardent friends: his political associates, and that other little group of literary cronies made up of Johnson, Goldsmith, Boswell, Reynolds and Garrick.

With these his soul was free—his sense of sublimity then found wings: the vocabulary of Johnson, the purling poetry of Goldsmith, the grace of Garrick's mimicry, the miracle of Reynolds' pencil and brush—these ministered to his hungry heart.

They were forms of expression.

All life is an expression of spirit.

Burke's life was dedicated to expression.

He expressed through speech, personal presence and written words. Who ever expressed in this way so well? And—stay!—who ever had so much that was worth while to express?



WILLIAM PITT

Time was when slaves were exported like cattle from the British Coast and exposed for sale in the Roman market. These men and women who were thus sold were supposed to be guilty of witchcraft, debt, blasphemy or theft. Or else they were prisoners taken in war—they had forfeited their right to freedom, and we sold them. We said they were incapable of self-government and so must be looked after. Later we quit selling British slaves, but began to buy and trade in African humanity. We silenced conscience by saying, "It's all right—they are incapable of self-government." We were once as obscure, as debased, as ignorant, as barbaric, as the African is now. I trust that the time will come when we are willing to give to Africa the opportunity, the hope, the right to attain to the same blessings that we ourselves enjoy.

—William Pitt, on "Abolition of Slavery in England"



The Law of Heredity has been described as that law of our nature which provides that a man shall resemble his grandmother—or not, as the case may be.

What traits are inherited and what acquired—who shall say? Married folks who resort to the happy expedient of procuring their children at orphan-asylums can testify to the many times they have been complimented on the striking resemblance of father to daughter, or son to mother.

Possibly that is all there is of it—we resemble those with whom we associate. Far be it from me to say the final word on this theme—I would not, if I could, deprive men of a problem they can never solve. When all questions are answered, it will be time to telephone the undertaker.

That men of genius do not reproduce themselves after the flesh is an axiom; but that William Pitt, Earl of Chatham, did, is brought forth as an exception, incident, accident or circumstance, just according to one's mood at the moment.

"Great men do have great sons!" we cry. "Just look at the Pitts, the Adamses, the Walpoles, the Beechers, the Booths, the Bellinis, the Disraelis!" and here we begin to falter. And then the opposition takes it up and rattles off a list of great men whose sons were spendthrifts, gamblers, ne'er-do-wells and jackanapes.

When Pitt the Younger made his first speech in the House of Commons, he struck thirteen. The members of the House were amazed.

"He's a chip off the old block," they said.

"He's the block itself," said Burke.

Lord Rosebery, who had the felicity to own a Derby winner, once said of Pitt, "He was bred for speed, but not for endurance."

* * * * *

Since the subject of heredity always seems to come up when the Pitts are mentioned, it may be proper for us to go back and trace pedigree a bit, to see if we have here the formula for producing a genius.

The grandfather of William Pitt the Elder was Thomas Pitt, a sea-captain, trader and gentleman adventurer. In fact, he was a bold buccaneer, but not too bold, for he gave large sums to church and charity, and showed his zeal for virtue by once hanging three smugglers in chains, high up on a gibbet overlooking the coast of Cornwall, and there the bodies were left until the birds of prey and the elements had bleached their bones.

Thomas Pitt was known as "Diamond Tom" through bringing from India and selling to the Regent Orleans the largest diamond, I believe, ever owned in England. For this diamond, Tom received one hundred thirty-five thousand pounds—a sum equal to one million dollars. That Diamond Tom received this money there is no doubt, but where and how he got the diamond nobody seems to know, and in his own time it was deemed indelicate to inquire.

Tom might have wasted that money right shortly—there are several ways of dissipating a fortune—but he wisely decided to found a house. That is to say, he bought a borough—the borough of Old Sarum, the locality that was to become famous as the "rotten borough" of the Reform Bill.

He bought this borough and all the tenants outright from the Government, just as we bought the Filipinos at two dollars a head. All the people who lived in the borough had to pay tribute, taxes or rent to Tom, for Tom owned the tenures. They had to pay, hike or have their heads cut off. Most of them paid.

If the time were at our disposal, it might be worth while to let this story extend itself into a picture of how all the land in England once belonged to the Crown, and how this land was transferred at will to Thomas, Richard and Henry for cash or as reward for services rendered. It was much the same in America—the Government once owned all the land, and then this land was sold, given out to soldiers, or to homesteaders who would clear the land of trees; and later we reversed the proposition and gave the land to those who would plant trees.

There was this similarity, too, between English and American land-laws: the Indians on the land in America had to pay, move or be perforated. For them to pay rent or work out a road-tax was quite out of the question. Indians, like the Irish, will not pay rent, so we were compelled to evict them.

But there was this difference in America: the owner of the land could sell it; in England he could not. The law of entail has been much modified, but as a general proposition the landowner in England has the privilege of collecting the rent, and warning off poachers, but he can not mortgage the land and eat it up. This keeps the big estates intact, and is a very good scheme. Under a similar law in the United States, Uncle Billy Bushnell or Ali Baba might live in Hot Springs, Arkansas, and own every foot of East Aurora, and all of us would then vote as Baron Bushnell or Sir Ali dictated, thus avoiding much personal animus at Town-Meetin' time.

But no tenure can be made with death—he can neither be bought, bribed, cajoled nor intimidated. Diamond Tom died and his eldest son Robert came into possession of the estate.

Now, Robert was commonplace and beautifully mediocre. It is one of Nature's little ironies at the expense of the Law of Entail that she will occasionally send out of the spirit-realm, into a place of worldly importance, a man who is a regular chibot, chitterling and chump. Robert Pitt, son of Diamond Tom, escaped all censure and unkind criticism by doing nothing, saying nothing and being nothing.

But he proved procreant and reared a goodly brood of sons and daughters—all much like himself, save one, the youngest son.

This son, by name William Pitt, very much resembled Diamond Tom, his illustrious grandfather—Nature bred back. William was strong in body, firm in will, active, alert, intelligent. Times had changed or he might have been a bold buccaneer, too. He was all his grandfather was, only sandpapered, buffed and polished by civilization.

He was sent to Eton, and then to Trinity College, Oxford, where buccaneer instincts broke out and he left without a degree. Two careers were open to him, as to all aspiring sons of Noble Beef-eaters—he could enter the Church or the Army.

He chose the Army, and became in due course the first cornet of his company.

His elder brother Thomas was very naturally a member of the House of Commons for Old Sarum, and later sat for Oakhampton. Another of Nature's little ironies here outcrops: Thomas, who was named for his illustrious grandfather—he of the crystallized carbon—didn't resemble his grandfather nearly so much as did his younger brother William. So Thomas with surprising good sense named his brother for a seat in the House of Commons from Old Sarum.

William was but twenty-seven years of age when he began his official career, but he seemed one who had leaped into life full-armed. He absorbed knowledge on every hand. Demosthenes was his idol, and he, too, declaimed by the seashore with his mouth full of pebbles. His splendid command of language was acquired by the practise of translation and retranslation. Whether Greek or Latin ever helped any man to become a better thinker is a mooted question, but the practise of talking off in your own tongue a page of a foreign language is a mighty good way to lubricate your English.

William Pitt had all the graces of a great orator—he was deliberate, self-possessed, positive. In form he was rather small, but he had a way of carrying himself that gave an impression of size. He was one of the world's big little men—the type of Aaron Burr, Alexander Hamilton, Benjamin Harrison and John D. Long. In the House of Commons he lost no time in making his presence felt. He was assertive, theatrical, declamatory—still, he usually knew what he was talking about. His criticisms of the Government so exasperated Sir Robert Walpole that Walpole used to refer to him as "that terrible cornet of horse." Finally, Walpole had him dismissed from the Army. This, instead of silencing the young man, really made matters worse, and George the Second, who patronized the Opposition when he could not down it, made him groom of the bedchamber to the Prince of Wales. This was an office lined with adipose, with no work to speak of.

The feeling is that Pitt revealed his common clay by accepting the favor. He was large enough to get along without such things.

In most of the good old "School Speakers" was an extract from a speech supposed to have been delivered by Pitt on the occasion of his being taunted by Horace Walpole on account of his youth. Pitt replied in language something like this: "It is true that I am young, yet I'll get over that; but the man who is a fool will probably remain one all his days."

The speech was reported by a lout of a countryman, Samuel Johnson by name, who had come up to London to make his fortune, and found his first work in reporting speeches in the House of Commons. Pitt did not write out his speeches for the press, weeks in advance, according to latter-day methods; the man who reported them had to have a style of his own—and certainly Johnson had. Pitt was much pleased with Johnson's reports of his speeches, but on one occasion mildly said, "Ah, Mr. Johnson—you know—I do not exactly remember using that expression!"

And Samuel Johnson said, "Sir, it is barely possible that you did not use the language as I have written it out; but you should." Just how much Johnson we get in Pitt's printed speeches, is still a topic for debate.

Pitt could think on his feet, while Samuel Johnson never made but one speech and broke down in that. But Johnson could write, and the best of Pitt's speeches are those reported by Ursa Major in a style superbly Johnsonese. The member from Old Sarum once sent Johnson two butts of Canary and a barrel of whitebait, as a token of appreciation for his skill in accurate reporting.

Pitt followed the usual course of successful reformers, and in due time lined up on the side of the conservatives, and gradually succumbed to a strictly aristocratic disease, gout. Whether genius is transmissible or not is a question, but all authorities agree as to gout.

Pitt's opposition to the Walpoles was so very firmly rooted that it continued for life, and for this he was rewarded by the Duchess of Marlborough with a legacy of ten thousand pounds. Her Grace was the mother of the lady who had the felicity to have her picture painted by Gainsborough, which picture was brought to America and secreted here for many years and finally was purchased for sixty-five thousand dollars by Pierpont Morgan, through the kind offices of my friend Patricius Sheedy, Philistine-at-Large.

The Duchess in her will said she gave the money to Pitt as "an acknowledgment of the noble defense he had made for the support of the laws of England." But the belief is that it was her hatred for Walpole that prompted her admiration for Pitt. And her detestation of Walpole was not so much political as sentimental—a woman's love-affairs being much more to her than patriotism—but the Duchess being a woman deceived herself as to reasons. Our acts are right, but our reasons seldom are. I leave this Marlborough matter with those who are interested in the psychology of the heart—merely calling attention to the fact that although the Duchess was ninety when she passed out, the warm experiences of her early womanhood were very vivid in her memory. If you wish to know when love dies out of a woman's brain, you will have to ask some one who is older than was the Duchess of Marlborough.

When George the Second died, and his grandson George the Third came into power, Pitt resigned his office in the Cabinet and abandoned politics.

At last he found time to get married. He was then forty-six years of age.

Men retire from active life, but seldom remain upon the shelf—either life or death takes them down. In five years' time we find the King offering Pitt anything in sight, and Mr. Pitt, the Great Commoner, became Viscount Pitt, Earl of Chatham.

By this move Pitt lost in popularity more than he had gained in dignity—there was a complete revulsion of feeling toward him by the people, and he never again attained the influence and power he had once known.

Burke once referred to a certain proposed bill as "insignificant, irrelevant, pompous, creeping, explanatory and ambiguous—done in the true Chathamic style."

But the disdain of Burke was really complimentary—it took a worthy foe to draw his fire. Chatham's faults were mostly on the surface, and were more a matter of manner than of head or heart. America has cause to treasure the memory of Chatham. He opposed the Stamp Act with all the vigor of his tremendous intellect, and in the last speech of his life he prophesied that the Americans would never submit to taxation without representation, and that all the power of England was not great enough to subdue men who were fighting for their country. Yet his appeal to George the Third and his minions was like bombarding a fog. But all he said proved true.

On the occasion of this last great speech Chatham was attended by his favorite son William, then nineteen years old. Proud as was this father of his son, he did not guess that in four short years this boy would, through his brilliancy, cast his own splendid efforts into the shadow; and that Burke, the querulous, would give the son a measure of approbation he never vouchsafed to the father.

William Pitt, the Younger, is known as the "Great Pitt," to distinguish him from his father, who in his day was known as the greatest man in England.

* * * * *

William Pitt, the second son of the Earl of Chatham, was born of poor but honest parents, in the year Seventeen Hundred Fifty-nine. That was the year that gave us Robert Burns—between whom and Pitt, in some respects, averages were held good. The same year was born William Wilberforce, philanthropist and emancipator, father of Canon Wilberforce.

At this time the fortunes of William Pitt the Elder were at full flood. England was in a fever of exultation—drunk with success. Just where the thought got abroad that the average Englishman is moderate in success and in defeat not cast down, I do not know. But this I have seen: all London mad, howling, exultant, savage drunk, because of the report that the Redcoats had subjugated this colony or that. To subdue, crush, slay and defeat, has caused shrieking shouts of joy in London since London began—unless the slain were Englishmen.

This is patriotism, concerning which Samuel Johnson, reporter in the House of Commons, once made a remark slightly touched with acerbity.

In the years Seventeen Hundred Fifty-eight and Seventeen Hundred Fifty-nine not a month passed but bonfires burned bright from Cornwall to Scotland in honor of English victories on land and sea. In Westphalia, British Infantry defeated the armies of Louis the Fifteenth; Boscawen had sunk a French fleet; Hawke put to flight another; Amherst took Ticonderoga; Clive destroyed a Dutch armament; Wolfe achieved victory and a glorious death at Quebec. English arms had marched triumphant through India and secured for the tight little island an empire, while another had been gained on the shores of Ontario.

For all this the Great Commoner received most of the glory; and that this tremendous popularity was too great to last is but a truism.

But in such a year it was that William Pitt was born. His father was fifty years old, his mother about thirty. This mother was a woman of rare grace, intellect and beauty, the only sister of two remarkable brothers—George Grenville, the obstinate adviser of George the Third, the man who did the most to make America free—unintentionally—and the other brother was Richard Earl Temple, almost equally potent for right or wrong.

That the child of a sensitive mother, born amid such a crash of excitement, should be feeble was to be expected. No one at first expected the baby to survive.

But tenderness and care brought him through, and he grew into a tall, spindling boy whose intellect far outmatched his body. He was too weak to be sent to take his place at a common school, and so his father and mother taught him.

Between the father and the son there grew up a fine bond of affection. Whenever the father made a public address the boy was there to admire and applaud.

The father's declining fortunes drove him back to his family for repose, and all of his own ambitions became centered in his son. With a younger man this might not have been the case, but the baby boy of an old man means much more to him than a brood coming early.

Daily, this boy of twelve or fourteen would go to his father's study to recite. Oratory was his aim, and the intent was that he should become the greatest parliamentarian of his time.

This little mutual-admiration society, composed of father and son, speaks volumes for both. Boys reaching out toward manhood, when they are neither men nor boys, often have little respect for their fathers—they consider the pater to be both old-fashioned and tyrannical. And the father, expecting too much of the son, often fails in faith and patience. But there was no such failure here. Chatham personally superintended the matter of offhand translation, and this practise was kept up daily from the time the boy was eight years old until he was nineteen, when his father died.

Then there was the tutor Pretyman who must not be left out. He was a combination valet and teacher, and the most pedantic and idolatrous person that ever moused through dusty tomes. With a trifle more adipose and a little less intellect, he would have made a most successful and awful butler. He seemed a type of the English waiter who by some chance had acquired a college education, and never said a wrong thing, nor did a right one, during his whole life.

Pretyman wrote a life of Pitt, and according to Macaulay it enjoys the distinction of being the worst biography ever written. Lord Rosebery, however, declares the book is not so bad as it might be. I believe there are two other biographies equally stupid: Weems' "Life of Washington," and the book on Gainsborough, by Thicknesse. Weems' book was written to elevate his man into a demigod; Thicknesse was intent on lowering his subject and exalting himself; while Pretyman extols himself and his subject equally, revealing how William Pitt could never have been William Pitt were it not for his tutor. Pretyman emphasizes trifles, slights important matters, and waxes learned concerning the irrelevant.

A legacy coming to Pretyman, he changed his name to Tomline, as women change their names when they marry or enter a convent.

Religion to Pitt was quite a perfunctory affair, necessary, of course; but a bishop in England was one who could do little good and, fortunately, not much harm. With an irony too subtle to be seen by but very few, Pitt when twenty-seven years of age made his old tutor Bishop of Winchester. Tomline proved an excellent and praiseworthy bishop; and his obsequious loyalty to Pitt led to the promise that if the Primacy should become vacant, Tomline was to be made Archbishop of Canterbury.

This promise was told by the unthinking Tomline, and reached the ears of George the Third, a man who at times was very much alert.

There came a day when the Primacy was vacant, and to head off the nomination by Pitt, the King one morning at eight o'clock walked over to the residence of Bishop Manners Somers and plied the knocker.

The servant who answered the summons explained that the Bishop was taking his bath and could not be seen until he had had breakfast.

But the visitor was importunate.

The servant went back to his master and explained that the stout man at the door would neither go away nor tell his name, but must see his lordship at once.

When the Bishop appeared in his dressing-gown and saw the King, he nearly had apoplexy. But the King quickly told his errand and made his friend Primate on the doorstep, with the butler and the housemaid for witnesses.

Later in the day when Pitt appeared at the palace he was told that a Primate had been appointed—the King was very sorry, but the present incumbent could not be removed unless charges were preferred. Pitt smilingly congratulated the King on the wisdom of his choice, but afterward referred to the transaction as "a rather scurvy trick."

At twenty-three years of age, William Pitt entered the House of Commons from the same borough that his father had represented at twenty-seven. His elder brother made way, just as had the elder brother of his father.

The first speech he made in Parliament fixed his place in that body. His fame had preceded him, and when he arose every seat was taken to hear the favorite son of the Earl of Chatham, the greatest orator England had ever seen.

The subject was simply a plan of finance, and lacked all excuse for fine phrasing or flavor of sentiment. And what should a boy of twenty-three know about a nation's financial policy?

Yet this boy knew all about it. Figures, statistics, results, conclusions, were shown in a steady, flowing, accurate, lucid manner. The young man knew his theme—every byway, highway and tracing of it. By that speech he proved his mathematical genius, and blazed the way straight to the office of Chancellor of the Exchequer.

Not only did he know his theme, but he had the ability to explain it. He spoke without hesitation or embarrassment, and revealed the same splendid dignity that his father had shown, all flavored by the same dash of indifference for the auditor. But the discerning ones saw that he surpassed his father, in that he carried more reserve and showed a suavity that was not the habit of Chatham.

And the man was there—mighty and self-reliant.

The voice is the index of the soul. The voice of the two Pitts was the same voice, we have been told—a deep, rich, cultivated lyric-barytone. It was a trained voice, a voice that came from a full column of air, that never broke into a screech, rasping the throat of the speaker and the ear of the listener. It was the natural voice carefully developed by right use. The power of Pitt lay in his cold, calculating intellect, but the instrument that made manifest this intellect was his deep, resonant, perfectly controlled voice.

Pitt never married, and according to the biting phrase of Fox, all he knew of love was a description of it he got from the Iliad. That is to say, he was separated from it about three thousand years. This is a trifle too severe, for when twenty-one years of age he met the daughter of Necker at Paris—she who was to give the world of society a thrill as Madame de Stael. And if the gossips are right it was not the fault of Pitt that a love-match did not follow. But the woman gauged the man, and she saw that love to him would be merely an incident, not a consuming passion, and she was not the woman to write a book on Farthest North. She dallied with the young man a day, and then sent him about his business, exasperated and perplexed. He could strike fire with men as flint strikes on steel, but women were outside his realm.

Yet he followed the career of Madame de Stael, and never managed to quite get her out of his life. Once, in his later years, he referred to her as that "cold and trifling daughter of France's greatest financier." He admired the father more than he loved the daughter.

For twenty-four years Pitt piloted England's Ship of State. There were constant head-winds, and now and again shifting gales of fierce opposition, and all the time a fat captain to pacify and appease. This captain was stupid, sly, obstinate and insane by turns, and to run the ship and still allow the captain to believe that he was in command was the problem that confronted Pitt. And that he succeeded as well as any living man could, there is no doubt.

During the reign of Pitt, England lost the American Colonies. This was not a defeat for England: it was Destiny. England preserved her independence by cutting the cable that bound her to us.

The life of Pitt was a search for power—to love, wealth and fame he was indifferent.

He was able to manage successfully the finances of a nation, but his own were left in a sorry muddle: at his death it took forty thousand pounds to cause him to be worth nothing. His debts were paid by the nation. And this indifference to his own affairs was put forth at the time as proof of his probity and excellence. We think now that it marked his limitations. His income for twenty years preceding his death was about fifty thousand dollars a year. One hour a day in auditing accounts with his butler would have made all secure. He had neither wife, child nor dependent kinsmen, yet it was found that his household consumed nine hundred pounds of meat a week and enough beer to float a ship. For a man to waste his own funds in riotous living is only a trifle worse than to allow others to do the same.

Literature, music and art owe little to Pitt: only lovers care for beauty—the sensuous was not for him. He knew the Classics, spoke French like a Parisian, reveled in history, had no confidants, and loved one friend—Wilberforce.

Pictures of Pitt by Reynolds and Gainsborough reveal a face commonplace in feature save for the eye—"the most brilliant eye ever seen in a human face." In describing the man, one word always seems to creep in, the word "haughty." That the man was gentle, kind and even playful among the few who knew him best, there is no doubt. The austerity of his manner was the inevitable result of an ambition the sole aim of which was to dictate the policy of a great nation. All save honor was sacrificed to this end, and that the man was successful in his ambition, there is no dispute.

When he died, aged forty-seven, he was by popular acclaim the greatest Englishman of his time, and the passing years have not shaken that proud position.



JEAN PAUL MARAT

Citizens: You see before you the widow of Marat. I do not come here to ask your favors, such as cupidity would covet, or even such as would relieve indigence—Marat's widow needs no more than a tomb. Before arriving at that happy termination to my existence, however, I come to ask that justice may be done in respect to the reports recently put forth in this body against the memory of at once the most intrepid and the most outraged defender of the people.

—Simonne Evrard Marat, to the Convention



The French Revolution traces a lineal descent direct from Voltaire and Jean Jacques Rousseau. These men were contemporaries; they came to the same conclusions, expressing the same thought, each in his own way, absolutely independent of the other. And as genius seldom recognizes genius, neither knew the greatness of the other.

Voltaire was an aristocrat—the friend of kings and courtiers, the brilliant cynic, the pet of the salons and the center of the culture and brains of his time.

Rousseau was a man of the people, plain and unpretentious—a man without ambition—a dreamer. His first writings were mere debating-society monologs, done for his own amusement and the half-dozen or so cronies who cared to listen.

But, as he wrote, things came to him; the significance of his words became to him apparent. Opposition made it necessary to define his position, and threat made it wise to amplify and explain. He grew through exercise, as all men do who grow at all; the spirit of the times acted upon him, and knowledge unrolled as a scroll.

The sum of Rousseau's political philosophy found embodiment in his book, "The Social Contract," and his ideas on education in "Emile." "The Social Contract" became the Bible of the Revolution, and as Emerson says all of our philosophy will be found in Plato, so in a more exact sense can every argument of the men of the Revolution be found in "The Social Contract." But Rousseau did not know what firebrands he was supplying. He was essentially a man of peace—he launched these children of his brain, indifferently, like his children of the flesh, upon the world and left their fate to the god of Chance.

* * * * *

Out of the dust and din of the French Revolution, now seen by us on the horizon of time, there emerge four names: Robespierre, Mirabeau, Danton and Marat.

Undaunted men all, hated and loved, feared and idolized, despised and deified—even yet we find it hard to gauge their worth, and give due credit for the good that was in each.

Oratory played a most important part in bringing about the explosion. Oratory arouses passion—fear, vengeance, hate—and draws a beautiful picture of peace and plenty just beyond.

Without oratory there would have been no political revolution in France, nor elsewhere.

Politics, more than any other function of human affairs, turns on oratory. Orators make and unmake kings, but kings are seldom orators, and orators never secure thrones. Orators are made to die—the cross, the torch, the noose, the guillotine, the dagger, awaits them. They die through the passion that they fan to flame—the fear they generate turns upon themselves, and they are no more.

But they have their reward. Their names are not writ in water; rather are they traced in blood on history's page. We know them, while the ensconced smug and successful have sunk into oblivion; and if now and then a name like that of Pilate or Caiaphas or Judas comes to us, it is only because Fate has linked the man to his victim, like unto that Roman soldier who thrust his spear into the side of the Unselfish Man.

In the qualities that mark the four chief orators of the French Revolution, there is much alloy—much that seems like clay. Each had undergone an apprenticeship to Fate—each had been preparing for his work; and in this preparation who shall say what lessons could have been omitted and what not! Explosions require time to prepare: revolutions, political and domestic, are a long time getting ready. Orators, like artists, must go as did Dante, down into the nether regions and get a glimpse of hell.

Jean Paul Marat was exactly five feet high, and his weight when at his best was one hundred twenty pounds—just the weight of Shakespeare. Jean Paul had a nose like the beak of a hawk, an eye like an eagle, a mouth that matched his nose, and a chin that argued trouble. Not only did he have red hair, but Carlyle refers to him as "red-headed."

His parents were poor and obscure people, and his relationship with them seems a pure matter of accident. He was born at the village of Boudry, Switzerland, in Seventeen Hundred Forty-three. His childhood and boyhood were that of any other peasant boy born into a family where poverty held grim sway, and toil and hardship never relaxed their chilling grasp.

His education was of the chance kind—but education anyway depends upon yourself—colleges only supply a few opportunities, and it lies with the student whether he will improve them or not.

The ignorance of his parents and the squalor of his surroundings acted upon Jean Paul Marat as a spur, and from his fourteenth year the idea of cultivating his mental estate was strong upon him.

Switzerland has ever been the refuge of the man who dares to think. It was there John Calvin lived, demanding the right to his own belief, but occasionally denying others that precious privilege; a few miles away, at beautiful Coppet, resided Madame de Stael, the daughter of Necker; at Geneva, Rousseau wrote, and to name that beautiful little island in the Rhone after him was not necessary to make his fame endure; but a little way from Boudry lived Voltaire, pointing his bony finger at every hypocrite in Christendom.

But as in Greece, in her days of glory, the thinkers were few; so in Switzerland, the land of freedom, the many have been, and are, chained to superstition. Jean Paul Marat saw their pride was centered in a silver crucifix, "that keeps a man from harm"; their conscience committed to a priest; their labors for the rich; their days the same, from the rising of the sun to its going down. They did not love, and their hate was but a peevish dislike. They followed their dull routine and died the death, hopeful that they would get the reward in another world which was denied them in this.

And Jean Paul Marat grew to scorn the few who would thus enslave the many. For priest and publican he had only aversion.

Jean Paul Marat, the bantam, read Voltaire and steeped himself in Rousseau, and the desire grew strong upon him to do, to dare and to become.

Tourists had told him of England, and like all hopeful and childlike minds, he imagined the excellent to be far off, and the splendid at a distance: Great Britain was to him the Land of Promise.

In the countenance of young Marat was a strange mixture of the ludicrous and the terrible. This, with his insignificant size, and a bodily strength that was a miracle of surprise, won the admiration of an English gentleman; and when the tourist started back for Albion, the lusty dwarf rode on the box, duly articled, without consent of his parents, as a valet.

As a servant he was active, alert, intelligent, attentive. He might have held his position indefinitely, and been handed down to the next generation with the family plate, had he kept a civil tongue in his red head and not quoted Descartes and Jean Jacques.

He had ideas, and he expressed them. He was the central sun below stairs, and passed judgment upon the social order without stint, even occasionally to argufying economics with his master, the Baron, as he brushed his breech.

This Baron is known to history through two facts: first, that Jean Paul Marat brushed his breeches, and second, that he evolved a new breed of fices.

Now, the master was rich, with an entail of six thousand acres and an income of five thousand pounds, and very naturally he was surprised—amazed—to hear that any one should question the divine origin of the social order.

Religion and government being at that time not merely second cousins, but Siamese twins, Jean Paul had expressed himself on things churchly as well as secular.

And now, behold, one fine day he found himself confronted with a charge of blasphemy, not to mention another damning count of contumacy and contravention.

In fact, he was commanded not to think, and was cautioned as to the sin of having ideas. The penalties were pointed out to Jean Paul, and in all kindness he was asked to make choice between immediate punishment and future silence.

Thus was the wee philosopher raised at once to the dignity of a martyr; and the sweet satisfaction of being persecuted for what he believed, was his.

The city of Edinburgh was not far away, and thither by night the victim of persecution made his way. There is a serio-comic touch to this incident that Marat was never quite able to appreciate—the man was not a humorist. In fact, men headed for the noose, the block, or destined for immortality by the assassin's dagger, very seldom are jokers—John Brown and his like do not jest. Of all the emancipators of men, Lincoln alone stands out as one who was perfectly sane. An ability to see the ridiculous side of things marks the man of perfect balance.

The martyr type, whose blood is not only the seed of the church, but also of heresy, is touched with madness. To get the thing done, Nature sacrifices the man.

Arriving in Edinburgh, Marat thought it necessary for a time to live in hiding, but finally he came out and was duly installed as barkeep at a tavern, and a student in the medical department of the University of Saint Andrews—a rather peculiar combination.

Marat's sister and biographer, Albertine, tells us that Jean Paul was never given to the use of stimulants, and in fact, for the greater part of his career, was a total abstainer. And the man who knows somewhat of the eternal paradox of things can readily understand how this little tapster, proud and defiant, had a supreme contempt for the patrons who gulped down the stuff that he handed out over the bar. He dealt in that for which he had no use; and the American bartender today who wears his kohinoor and draws the pay of a bank cashier is one who "never touches a drop of anything." The security with which he holds his position is on that very account.

Marat was hungry for knowledge and thirsty for truth, and in his daily life he was as abstemious as was Benjamin Franklin, whom he was to meet, know, and reverence shortly afterward.

Jean Paul was studying medicine at the same place where Oliver Goldsmith, another exile, studied some years before. Each got his doctor's degree—just how we do not know. No one ever saw Goldsmith's diploma—Doctor Johnson once hinted that it was an astral one—but Marat's is still with us, yellow with age, but plain and legible with all of its signatures and the big seal with a ribbon that surely might impress the chance sufferers waiting in an outer room to see the doctor, who is busy enjoying his siesta on the other side of the partition.

* * * * *

If it is ever your sweet privilege to clap eyes upon a diploma issued by the ancient and honorable University of Saint Andrews, Edinburgh, you will see that it reads thus:

"Whereas: Since it is just and reasonable that one who has diligently attained a high degree of knowledge in some great and useful science, should be distinguished from the ignorant-vulgar," etc., etc.

The intent of the document, it will be observed, is to certify that the holder is not one of the "ignorant-vulgar," and the inference is that those who are not possessed of like certificates probably are.

A copy of the diploma issued to Doctor Jean Paul Marat is before me, wherein, in most flattering phrase, is set forth the attainments of the holder, in the science of medicine. And even before the ink was dry upon that diploma, the "science" of which it boasted had been discarded as inept and puerile, and a new one inaugurated. And in our day, within the last twenty-five years, the entire science of healing has shifted ground and the materia medica of the "Centennial" is now considered obsolete.

In view of these things, how vain is a college degree that certifies, as the diplomas of Saint Andrews still certify, that the holder is not one of the "ignorant-vulgar"! Isn't a man who prides himself on not belonging to the "ignorant-vulgar" apt to be atrociously ignorant and outrageously vulgar?

Wisdom is a point of view, and knowledge, for the most part, is a shifting product depending upon environment, atmosphere and condition. The eternal verities are plain and simple, known to babes and sucklings, but often unseen by men of learning, who focus on the difficult, soar high and dive deep, but seldom pay cash. In the sky of truth the fixed stars are few, and the shepherds who tend their flocks by night are quite as apt to know them as are the professed and professional Wise Men of the East—and Edinburgh.

But never mind our little digression—the value of study lies in study. The reward of thinking is the ability to think—whether one comes to right conclusions or wrong matters little, says John Stuart Mill in his essay, "On Liberty."

Thinking is a form of exercise, and growth comes only through exercise—that is to say, expression.

We learn things only to throw them away: no man ever wrote well until he had forgotten every rule of rhetoric, and no orator ever spake straight to the hearts of men until he had tumbled his elocution into the Irish Sea.

To hold on to things is to lose them. To clutch is to act the part of the late Mullah Bah, the Turkish wrestler, who came to America and secured through his prowess a pot of gold. Going back to his native country, the steamer upon which he had taken passage collided in mid-ocean with a sunken derelict. Mullah Bah, hearing the alarm, jumped from his berth and strapped to his person a belt containing five thousand dollars in gold. He rushed to the side of the sinking ship, leaped over the rail, and went to Davy Jones' Locker like a plummet, while all about frail women and weak men in life-preservers bobbed on the surface and were soon picked up by the boats. The fate of Mullah Bah is only another proof that athletes die young, and that it is harder to withstand prosperity than its opposite.

But knowledge did not turn the head of Marat. His restless spirit was reaching out for expression, and we find him drifting to London for a wider field.

England was then, as now, the refuge of the exile. There is today just as much liberty, and a little more free speech, in England than in America. We have hanged witches and burned men at the stake since England has, and she emancipated her slaves long before we did ours. Over against the home-thrust that respectable women drink at public bars from John O'Groat's to Land's End, can be placed the damning count that in the United States more men are lynched every year than Great Britain legally executes in double the time.

A too-ready expression of the Rousseau philosophy had made things a bit unpleasant for Marat in Edinburgh, but in London he found ready listeners, and the coffeehouses echoed back his radical sentiments.

These underground debating-clubs of London started more than one man off on the oratorical transverse. Swift, Johnson, Reynolds, Goldsmith, Garrick, Burke—all sharpened their wits at the coffeehouses. I see the same idea is now being revived in New York and Chicago: little clubs of a dozen or so will rent a room in some restaurant, and fitting it up for themselves, will dine daily and discuss great themes, or small, according to the mental caliber of the members.

During the latter part of the Eighteenth Century, these clubs were very popular in London. Men who could talk or speak were made welcome, and if the new member generated caloric, so much the better—excitement was at a premium.

Marat was now able to speak English with precision, and his slight French accent only added a charm to his words. He was fiery, direct, impetuous. He was a fighter by disposition, and care was taken never to cross him beyond a point where the sparks began to fly. The man was immensely diverting, and his size was to his advantage—orators should be very big or very little—anything but commonplace. The Duke of Mantua would have gloried in Jean Paul, and later might have cut off his head as a precautionary measure.

Among the visitors at one of the coffeehouse clubs was one B. Franklin, big, patient, kind. He weighed twice as much as Marat: and his years were sixty, while Marat's were thirty.

Franklin listened with amused smiles at the little man, and the little man grew to have an idolatrous regard for the big 'un. Franklin carried copies of a pamphlet called "Common Sense," written by one T. Paine. Paine was born in England, but was always pleased to be spoken of as an American, yet he called himself "A Citizen of the World."

Paine's pamphlet, "The Crisis," was known by heart to Marat, and the success of Franklin and Paine as writers had fired him to write as well as to orate. As a result, we have "The Chains of Slavery." The work today has no interest to us except as a literary curiosity. It is a composite of Rousseau and Paine, done by a sophomore in a mood of exaltation, and might serve acceptably well as a graduation essay, done in F major. It lacks the poise of Paine and the reserve of Rousseau, and all the fine indifference of Franklin is noticeable by its absence.

They say that Marat's name was "Mara" and his ancestors came from County Down. But never mind that—his heart was right. Of all the inane imbecilities and stupid untruths of history, none is worse than the statement that Jean Paul Marat was a demagog, hotly intent on the main chance.

In this man's character there was nothing subtle, secret nor untrue. He was simplicity itself, and his undiplomatic bluntness bears witness to his honesty.

In London, he lived as the Mayor of Boston said William Lloyd Garrison lived—in a hole in the ground. His services as a physician were free to all—if they could pay, all right; if not, it made no difference. He looked after the wants of political refugees, and head, heart and pocketbook were at the disposal of those who needed them. His lodging-place was a garret, a cellar—anywhere: he was homeless, and his public appearances were only at the coffeehouse clubs, or in the parks, where he would stand on a barrel and speak to the crowd on his one theme of liberty, fraternity and equality. His plea was for the individual. In order to have a strong and excellent society, we must have strong and excellent men and women. That phrase of Paine's, "The world is my country: to do good is my religion," he repeated over and over again.

* * * * *

In the year Seventeen Hundred Seventy-nine, Marat moved to Paris. He was then thirty-six years old. In Paris he lived very much the same life that he had in London. He established himself as a physician, and might have made a decided success had he put all his eggs in one basket and then watched the basket.

But he didn't. Franklin had inspired him with a passion for invention: he rubbed amber with wool, made a battery and applied the scheme in a crude way to the healing art. He wrote articles on electricity and even foreshadowed the latter-day announcement that electricity is life. And all the time he discussed economics, and gave out through speech and written word his views as to the rights of the people. He saw the needs of the poor—he perceived how through lack of nourishment there developed a craving for stimulants, and observed how disease and death fasten themselves upon the ill-fed and the ill-taught. To alleviate the suffering of the poor, he opened a dispensary as he had done in London, and gave free medical attendance to all who applied. At this dispensary, he gave lectures on certain days upon hygiene, at which times he never failed to introduce his essence of Rousseau and Voltaire.

Some one called him "the people's friend." The name stuck—he liked it.

In August, Seventeen Hundred Eighty-nine, this "terrible dwarf" was standing on his barrel in Paris haranguing crowds with an oratory that was tremendous in its impassioned quality. Men stopped to laugh and remained to applaud.

Not only did he denounce the nobility, but he saw danger in the liberal leaders, and among others, Mirabeau came in for scathing scorn. Of all the insane paradoxes this one is the most paradoxical—that men will hate those who are most like themselves. Family feuds, and the wrangles of denominations that, to outsiders, hold the same faith, are common. When churches are locked in America, it is done to keep Christians out. Christians fight Christians much more than they fight the devil.

Marat had grown to be a power among the lower classes—he was their friend, their physician, their advocate. He had no fear of interruption and never sought to pacify. At his belt, within easy reach, and in open sight, he carried a dagger.

The crowds that hung upon his words were swayed to rank unreason by his impassioned eloquence.

Marat fell a victim to his own eloquence, and the madness of the mob reacted upon him. Like the dyer's hand, he became subdued to that in which he worked. Suspicion and rebellion filled his soul. Wealth to him was an offense—he had not the prophetic vision to see the rise of capitalism and all the splendid industrial evolution which the world is today working out. Society to him was all founded on wrong premises, and he would uproot it.

In bitter words he denounced the Assembly and declared that all of its members, including Mirabeau, should be hanged for their inaction in not giving the people relief from their oppressors.

Mirabeau was very much like Marat. He, too, was working for the people, only he occupied a public office, while Marat was a private citizen. Mirabeau and his friends became alarmed at the influence Marat was gaining over the people, and he was ordered to cease public speaking. As he failed to comply, a price was put upon his head.

Then it was that he began putting out a daily address in the form of a tiny pamphlet. This was at first called "The Publiciste," but was soon changed to "The People's Friend."

Marat was now in hiding, but still his words were making their impress.

In Seventeen Hundred Ninety-one, Mirabeau, the terrible, died—died peacefully in his bed.

Paris went into universal mourning, and the sky of Marat's popularity was darkened.

Marat lived in hiding until August of Seventeen Hundred Ninety-two, when he again publicly appeared and led the riots. The people hailed him as their deliverer. The insignificant size of the man made him conspicuous. His proud defiance, the haughtiness of his countenance, his stinging words, formed a personality that made him the pet of the people.

Danton, the Minister of Justice, dared not kill him, and so he did the next best thing—he took him to his heart and made him his right-hand man. It was a great diplomatic move, and the people applauded. Danton was tall, powerful, athletic and commanding, just past his thirtieth year. Marat was approaching fifty, and his sufferings while in hiding in the sewers had told severely on his health, but he was still the fearless agitator. When Marat and Danton appeared upon the balcony of the Hotel de Ville, the hearts of the people were with the little man.

But behold, another man had forged to the front, and this was Robespierre. And so it was that Danton, Marat and Robespierre formed a triumvirate, and ruled Paris with hands of iron. Coming in the name of the people, proclaiming peace, they held their place only through a violence that argued its own death.

Marat was still full of the desire to educate—to make men think. Deprivation and disease had wrecked his frame until public speaking was out of the question—the first requisite of oratory is health. But he could write, and so his little paper, "The People's Friend," went fluttering forth with its daily message.

So scrupulous was Marat in money matters that he would accept no help from the Government. He neither drew a salary nor would he allow any but private citizens to help issue his paper. He lived in absolute poverty with his beloved wife, Simonne Evrard.

They had met about Seventeen Hundred Eighty-eight, and between them had grown up a very firm and tender bond. He was twenty years older than she, but Danton said of her, "She has the mind of a man."

Simonne had some property and was descended from a family of note. When she became the wife of Marat, her kinsmen denounced her, refused to mention her name, but she was loyal to the man she loved.

The Psalmist speaks of something "that passeth the love of woman," but the Psalmist was wrong—nothing does.

Simonne Evrard gave her good name, her family position, her money, her life—her soul into the keeping of Jean Paul Marat. That his love and gratitude to her was great and profound, there is abundant proof. She was his only servant, his secretary, his comrade, his friend, his wife. Not only did she attend him in sickness, but in banishment and disgrace she never faltered. She even set the type, and at times her arm pulled the lever of the press that printed the daily message.

Let it stand to the eternal discredit of Thomas Carlyle that he contemptuously disposes of Simonne Evrard, who represents undying love and unflinching loyalty, by calling her a "washerwoman." Carlyle, with a savage strain of Scotch Calvinism in his cold blood, never knew the sacredness of the love of man and woman—to him sex was a mistake on the part of God. Even for the sainted Mary of Galilee he has only a grim and patronizing smile, removing his clay pipe long enough to say to Milburn, the blind Preacher, "Oh, yes; a country lass elevated by Catholics into a wooden image and worshiped as a deity!"

Carlyle never held in his arms a child of his own and saw the light of love reflected in a baby's eyes; and nowhere in his forty-odd volumes does he recognize the truth that love, art and religion are one. And this limitation gives Taine excuse for saying, "He writes splendidly, but it is neither truth nor poetry."

When Charlotte Corday, that poor, deluded rustic, reached the rooms of Marat, under a friendly pretense, and thrust her murderous dagger to the sick man's heart, his last breath was a cry freighted with love, "A moi, chere amie!"

And death-choked, that proud head drooped, and Simonne, seeing the terrible deed was done, blocked the way and held the murderess at bay until help arrived.

Hardly had Marat's tired body been laid to rest in the Pantheon, before Charlotte Corday's spirit had gone across the Border to meet his—gone to her death by the guillotine that was so soon to embrace both Danton and Robespierre, the men who had inaugurated and popularized it.

All Paris went into mourning for Marat—the public buildings were draped with black, and his portrait was displayed in the Pantheon with the great ones gone. A pension for life was bestowed upon his widow, and lavish resolutions of gratitude were laid at her feet in loving token of what she had done in upholding the hands of this strong man.

But Paris, the fickle, in two short years repudiated the pension, the portrait of Marat was removed from the Pantheon, and his body taken by night to another resting-place.

Simonne the widow, and Albertine the sister, sisters now in sorrow, uniting in a mutual love for the dead, lived but in memory of him.

But Carlyle was right—this was a "washerwoman." She spent all of her patrimony in aiding her husband to publish and distribute his writings, and after his death, when friends proved false and even the obdurate kinsmen still considered her name pollution, she took in washing to earn money that she might defend the memory of the man she loved.

She was a washerwoman.

I uncover in her presence, and stand with bowed head in admiration of the woman who gave her life for liberty and love, and who chose a life of honest toil rather than accept charity or all that selfishness and soft luxury had to offer. She was a washerwoman, but she was more—she was a Woman.

Let Carlyle have the credit of using the word "washerwoman" as a term of contempt, as though to do laundry-work were not quite as necessary as to produce literature.

The sister and the widow wrote his life, republished very much that he had written, and lived but to keep alive the name and fame of Jean Paul Marat, whose sole crime seemed to be that he was a sincere and honest man, and was, throughout his life—often unwisely—the People's Friend.



ROBERT INGERSOLL

Love is the only bow on life's dark cloud. It is the morning and the evening star. It shines upon the babe, and sheds its radiance on the quiet tomb. It is the Mother of Art, inspirer of poet, patriot and philosopher. It is the air and light to tired souls—builder of every home, kindler of every fire on every hearth. It was the first to dream of immortality. It fills the world with melody—for music is the voice of love. Love is the magician, the enchanter that changes worthless things to joy, and makes right-royal kings and queens of common clay. It is the perfume of that wondrous flower, the heart, and without that sacred passion, that divine swoon, we are less than beasts; but with it, earth is heaven and we are gods.

—Robert G. Ingersoll



He was three years old, was Robert Ingersoll. There was a baby boy one year old, Ebon by name; then there were John, five years, and two elder sisters.

Little Robert wore a red linsey-woolsey dress, and was a restless, active youngster with a big head, a round face and a pug-nose. No one ever asked. "What is it?"—there was "boy" written large in every baby action and every feature from chubby bare feet to the two crowns of his close-cropped tow-head.

It was a morning in January, and the snow lay smooth and white over all those York State hills. The winter sun sent long gleams of light through the frost-covered panes upon which the children were trying to draw pictures. Visitors began to arrive—visitors in stiff Sunday clothes, although it wasn't Sunday. There were aunts, and uncles, and cousins, and then just neighbors. They filled the little house full. Some of the men went out and split wood and brought in big armfuls and piled it in the corner. They moved on tiptoe and talked in whispers. And now and then they would walk softly into the little parlor by twos and threes and close the door after them.

This parlor was always a forbidden place to the children; on Sunday afternoons only were they allowed to go in there, or on prayer-meeting night.

In this parlor were six haircloth chairs and a sofa to match. In the center was a little marble-top table, and on it were two red books and a blue one. On the mantel was a plaster-of-Paris cat at one end and a bunch of crystallized flowers at the other. There was a "what-not" in the corner covered with little shells and filled with strange and wonderful things. There was a "store" carpet, bright red. It was a very beautiful room, and to look into it was a great privilege.

Little Robert had tried several times to enter the parlor this cold winter morning, but each time he had been thrust back. Finally he clung to the leg of a tall man, and was safely inside. It was very cold—one of the windows was open! He looked about with wondering baby eyes to see what the people wanted to go in there for!

On two of the haircloth chairs rested a coffin. The baby hands clutched the side—he drew himself up on tiptoe and looked down at the still, white face—the face of his mother. Her hands were crossed just so, and in her fingers was a spray of flowers—he recognized them as the flowers she had always worn on her Sunday bonnet—a rusty black bonnet—not real flowers, just "made" flowers.

But why was she so quiet? He had never seen her hands that way before: those hands were always busy—knitting, sewing, cooking, weaving, scrubbing, washing!

"Mamma! Mamma!" called the boy.

"Hush, little boy, hush! Your Mamma is dead," said the tall man, and he lifted the boy in his arms and carried him from the room.

Out in the kitchen, in a crib in the corner, lay the "Other Baby," and thither little Robert made his way. He patted the sleeping baby brother, and called aloud in lisping words, "Wake up, Baby, your Mamma is dead!"

And the baby in the crib knew quite as much about it as the toddler in the linsey-woolsey dress, and the toddler knew as much about death as we do today. This wee youngster kept thinking how good it was that Mamma could have such a nice rest—the first rest she had ever known—and just lie there in the beautiful room and hold her flowers!

* * * * *

Fifty years pass. These children, grown to manhood, are again together. One, his work done, is at rest. Standing by his bier, the other voices these deathless words:

"Life is a narrow vale between the cold and barren peaks of two eternities. We strive in vain to look beyond the heights. We call aloud, and the only answer is the echo of our wailing cry. From the voiceless lips of the unreplying dead there comes no word; but in the night of death, hope sees a star and listening love can hear the rustle of a wing.

"He who sleeps here, when dying, mistaking the approach of death for the return of health, whispered with his latest breath, 'I am better now.' Let us believe, in spite of doubts and dogmas, of fears and tears, that these dear words are true of all the countless dead."

* * * * *

The mother of Ingersoll was a Livingston—a Livingston of right-royal lineage, tracing to that famous family of Revolutionary fame. To a great degree she gave up family and social position to become the wife of the Reverend John Ingersoll, of Vermont, a theolog from the Academy at Bennington.

He was young and full of zeal—he was called "a powerful preacher." That he was a man of much strength of intellect, there is ample proof. He did his duty, said his say, called sinners to repentance, and told what would be their fate if they did not accept salvation. His desire was to do good, and therefore he warned men against the wrath to come. He was an educated man, and all of his beliefs and most of his ideas were gathered and gleaned from his college professors and Jonathan Edwards.

He loved his beautiful wife and she loved him. She loved him just as all good women love, with a complete abandon—with heart, mind and strength. He at first had periods of such abandon, too, but his conscience soon made him recoil from an affection of which God might be jealous. He believed that a man should forsake father, mother, wife and child in order to follow duty—and duty to him was the thing we didn't want to do. That which was pleasant was not wholly good. And so he strove to thrust from him all earthly affections, and to love God alone. Not only this, but he strove to make others love God. He warned his family against the pride and pomp of the world, and the family income being something under four hundred dollars, they observed his edict.