CHAPTER XXIII. A THINKER OF THE YEAR OF GRACE, 1763.
Charles Waters sat down, and resting his elbow on the
table, leaned his head upon his hand; he seemed to be thinking;
but scarcely upon the subject they had adverted to, if
one might have formed any opinion from the compression
of the lips and the troubled expression of the eyes. The
man in the red cloak, whose keen eye nothing seemed to
escape, observed this expression, and determined to try the
effect of music. The reader will have already perceived,
that one of the peculiarities of this strange man, was great
curiosity as to the working of the human heart, and the
means of affecting men through their feelings. He took up
the violin, which was an old battered instrument of little
-- 128 --
[figure description] Page 128.[end figure description]
value, but not without much sweetness of tone, and drew
the bow across the strings.
“What shall I play?” he said. His companion raised
his head at the sound of the stranger's voice, and looked at
him inquiringly.
The man in the red cloak repeated his question with a
slight smile.
“Any thing,” said the other, relapsing into reverie again;
he was subject to these fits of thinking, and the stranger
seemed to understand the fact; for he commenced playing
without taking any notice of his auditor's preoccupation and
indifference. His bowing was firm and strong, and playing
evidently from his ear wholly, he executed a minuet with
great delicacy and force. His whole soul seemed to be absorbed
in the grand floating strain, which, with its crescendos
and cadences, sweeping onward in full flood, or dying
like sinking winds, filled the whole chamber with a gush of
harmony. But still his eye was fixed curiously upon his
companion, and he noted with great care every change of
expression in the lips, the brow, and the eyes veiled with
their long dusky lashes. He finished with a vigorous flourish,
and Charles Waters raised his head.
“Do you like it?” asked his companion.
“Yes; you are a fine player, sir,” he said indifferently.
“Perhaps you would prefer a Virginia reel?”
“No, I prefer the other, which is a minuet, I believe.”
“Yes; but listen to this.”
And, first tuning a rebellious string, the stranger struck
up, with a vigorous and masculine movement of the elbow,
one of those merry and enlivening tunes, which seem to fill
the air with joy and mirth. His fingers played upon the
strings like lightning, the bow rose, and fell, and darted
backward and forward; and, throwing his whole heart into
the piece, the stranger seemed to imagine himself in the
midst of some scene of festivity and laughter, to be surrounded
by a crowd of bright forms and merriest faces, running
through the dance, and moving in obedience to his
magical bow. He wound up with a tumultuous, deafening
roar, his eyes flashing, his crisp hair seeming to move with
the music:—and then, stopping suddenly, laid down the instrument.
Charles Waters raised his head, waked, so to
speak, by the silence.
-- 129 --
[figure description] Page 129.[end figure description]
“You play excellently well, sir,” he said; “but I am so
wholly ignorant of music, that my praise, doubtless, is of
little value.”
This seemed to afford the stranger much satisfaction:
he evidently prided himself upon his proficiency on the instrument.
“It is a very enviable accomplishment,” his companion
added, “for it affords you the means of easily contributing
to harmless enjoyment. Music is a great educator, too. Dancing
is one of the most healthful and innocent of pastimes, I
am convinced; and the violin is, I believe, the best instrument
to dance to.”
“Yes—yes: none other is comparable to it, and I confess
I do feel satisfaction in knowing that I perform tolerably
on this great instrument. There is but one other superior
to it.”
“What is that?”
“The human voice.”
“Yes—yes, I understand.”
“That is, after all, the great master-instrument, constructed
by the Deity. The violin is merry and joyous, or
mournful and sombre, but the voice is all this, and all else,
in a degree ten thousand times more powerful. To move,
to agitate, to sway, to bend; what is like it. Ah! my Livy,
there, upon the table, gives me the words; but who shall fill
my ear with the magical voices, dead and silent? Who
shall `speak the speech,' as Virginius did, when fronting the
tyrant Appius, he plunged the dagger into his child? Would
I had been there!” added the stranger, with one of those
brilliant flashes which seemed, at times, to convert his eyes
into flame. But before his companion could reply, this expression
had disappeared, and the man in the red cloak took
up the open volume of Livy, and, turning over the leaves,
carelessly, seemed to have forgotten Virginius and his misfortune,
in a moment.
“After all,” he said, with one of his adroit turns, and
apparently desiring to make the other talk, “after all, I
don't know whether Appius was so much worse than other
despots: and men have in all ages required to be ruled strongly,
and often tyrannically. Despots are disagreeable, but
necessary.”
-- 130 --
[figure description] Page 130.[end figure description]
Waters looked at his companion with astonishment: he
thought he must be jesting: but there was not the least indication
of any such thing: his countenance—that index of
the mind, ordinarily—betrayed nothing of the sort. Apparently
the stranger had spoken these words in perfect good
faith.
“Could I have understood you, sir,” said the thinker,
“and did you really mean that men required despotic rulers?”
“Yes: certainly.”
“This, from you?”
“Come, come—you may have taken up a wrong impression
in regard to my opinions; let us not break into exclamations,
companion; rather let us sift opinions and compare
ideas. Is it not undeniable that men in all ages have been
weak and faltering, preferring rather the bad and false to
the great and good? and if this is true, does it not follow that
despots are a necessity of the world's being?”
“Ah!” said his companion, “but that is not true—it is
false, permit me to say honestly, and with no desire to offend
you—”
“Not at all—not at all: go on.”
“I deny your maxim totally, sir—it is not true.”
“Have not the records of the world proved it? Are they
not darkened every where by deeds which prove the truth of
the Bible, saying, that mankind are prone to deceit and desperately
wicked?—have not the annals of all lands and governments
shown conclusively, that truth and grandeur and
purity have ever attracted to themselves envy and hatred,
malice, and all uncharitableness? Come! let me hear you
deny that men are radically hateful, false, unworthy of trust,
as they are of respect: come, let me hear you deny that they
are swine before whom it is the merest boyish folly to throw
that brilliant pearl called liberty. You cannot deny the
truth of this view:—men have always been radically false
and unworthy.”
“I do deny it, sir,” said Waters, his brow flushing and
his eyes suddenly growing brilliant with the fires of enthusiasm.
“Never was any philosophy so weak, so wholly based
on sand! It is a dreadful, an awful philosophy, that which
scoffs at and seeks to overthrow all that is pure and worthy
in our fellow-men—all that is brilliant and imposing for its
-- 131 --
[figure description] Page 131.[end figure description]
truth and beauty in the annals of the race! I cannot believe
that you speak seriously, for I have seen that in your eyes
and your spoken words which is opposed to this terrible philosophy
utterly. No, sir! men are not by nature destitute
of truth and love, nobility and purity—the annals of the
world show how untrue it is. Go back as far as you may,
penetrate the gloom which wraps the overthrown columns of
the Syrian desert, the Egyptian plains, and you will find in
the midst of crime and falsehood the light of heaven; among
those monsters whom God, for His own wise purposes, sent
upon the earth, flowers of majesty and honor; in the moral
desert those oases of verdure and pure limpid waters, which
prove that beneath this burning sand the eternal springs
exist, the germ remains. No; I do not deny that men have
in all ages fallen and sinned—yes, they have hated and
despised, blasphemed and cursed, dyed their right arms in
blood, and revelled in the foul, the false, the unnatural.
None can dispute it. I acknowledge it. But what is equally
true is this—that every where the instincts of humanity,
planted by God in it, have revolted against this abnormal
state; love has effaced hatred, justice the spirit of wrong;
heaven has opened and the abyss has closed!
“Go into this Golgotha of nations, this Jehosaphat of
extinct generations, and question those dry bones which once
supported living frames such as our own here now. They
will make you but one reply—a reply which embraces
the history of humanity—`I sinned, I repented; I was
human, I endeavored to grow divine.' Look at Greece,
Rome, Modern Europe—embrace at a glance the whole surface
of three distinct civilizations, three diverse ages, from
horizon to horizon, from their dawning in the East, fresh,
rosy, and pure, to their sad and sorrowful decline—sorrowful
and sad because the soul ever doubted—ever was afraid to
hope for the new dawn! In Greece, art overthrowing rudeness,
beauty driving away deformity—the good and beautiful
passionately yearned for by all classes of men—eternally
sought! The childlike and poetical nature filling the streams
with naiads, the woods with dryads, the mountains with the
oreads and the graces—every where the false, which is the
deformed, overthrown to make way for the true, which is the
beautiful. Arcadian temples glittering in the forests, altars
-- 132 --
[figure description] Page 132.[end figure description]
of white marble crowning the blue mountains. Phidias and
Apelles, famous in all countries for their incarnations of
grace and beauty, rather than their incarnation of the Grecian
idea! And not in sculpture and painting only did the
true and beautiful conquer the false and deformed. In literature,
Sophocles and Euripides purified the heart by pity
and terror—Aristophanes lashed with his satire the unworthy
and despicable—Homer embodied in his heroes grace
and strength, as in Achilles—nobility and tenderness, as in
Hector—in Ulysses, the dignity of suffering and misfortune.
Socrates taught immortality — Plato penetrated the mists
of prejudice and ignorance with that glance of lightning
given him by God. Every where mind overcame matter,
the moral conquered the brutal; and such was the force of
their teachings, the vitality of their dogmas, that all the
nations of the world turned their eyes to Greece as toward
the dawn of civilization.
“The cry, `Great Pan is dead!' was only heard when the
Roman Colossus had strangled in his arms this nascent civilization,
this pure ray of the dawn. Pan had taught men husbandry,
and tranquil country happiness, and that wars should
be no more. When he died, that cry told the nations that
the glory of Greece had disappeared, and with it the only
civilization which surpassed the ripe majesty of Rome. But
that civilization was not altogether lost; Juvenal was greater
than Aristophanes, as Cato and Cicero rose in moral height
above the statesmen of Athens. You know well the history
of that empire, stretching its vast roads through every land,
and drawing to the great centre, the imperial city, towards
which those vast highways converged the silks, and gold, and
pearls of every land—the captives of all nations.
“I know that you would say that human depravity culminated
in those emperors—and that they had fit subjects.
Yes; God had given that race dominion, permitted it to
conquer every land, and then cursed it with rottenness and
decay. Men felt the divine curse, and shook their clenched
hands at the gods in impotent wrath. See how every thing
reveals the despair which fell upon the men of Rome; see
how the race, blind, staggering, rioting in an eternal orgy,
still knew their foulness, gnashing their teeth with rage at
their own depravity; see how every thing became venal—
-- 133 --
[figure description] Page 133.[end figure description]
female honor, the arms of men, the suffrages of the legions.
The commander who could glut the revelling multitude with
the greatest shows was emperor—Messalina was queen. The
race was staggering, despairing; they saw the night coming,
and the lurid glare of burning cities lighting on their way
to Rome those `hammers of God,' Alaric and Genseric.
They felt that the impending fate was the just punishment
of the unspeakable corruption reigning in the land, and they
sought to drown conscience in those moral stimulants which
now horrify the world. They clamored for wild beast shows;
they rolled on the seats of the Amphitheatre in convulsive
laughter, when the slave was torn to pieces in the arena by
the lion or tiger; they intoxicated themselves with blood
to drown despair, and, drunk with horror, staggered and fell
into the welcome grave dug for them by war, or pestilence,
or famine.
“Then, on this worn-out world—this chaos of darkness
and corruption, rose the sun of Christianity, blessing and
healing. God took pity on the race, and would not overwhelm
it with a new deluge; and men cast off their foulness,
abjured their heathen gods, and and knelt like children at
the foot of the cross.
“But I weary you, sir. Every where the annals of the
world show the god-given instincts of the race, leading them
to seek the true and beautiful—to embrace love in place of
hatred. See how the northern nations worshipped their herosouls,
as the Anglo-Saxons almost did their brave King Arthur.
They still yearn for them, and say they will return to
bless the nations. The precursor of the returning god is still
looked for in the northern solitudes by the rude islanders—and
Arthur, the middle age believed, would come again, his sword
excalibur turned to the shepherd's crook, and with him peace,
love, and happiness. Look at all nations. In France, see how
the convulsions of a thousand years have proved the yearnings
of the race for something better, truer, nobler than
their effete royalty, their nobility, exhausted by Duguesclin
and Bayard. See England, grand and piteous spectacle!—
heart of the modern world, as she was the torch, whose light
glared on the crumbling props of old imperial Rome—the
star of the new era. See England, groaning through all her
history with the fatal incubus of a privileged class, sucking
-- 134 --
[figure description] Page 134.[end figure description]
up all offices of profit or distinction; a king, whose person is
sacred—who can do no wrong. See her still seeking for the
true, the pure, the just; see those men of England plunging into
war and blood to find the jewel—beheading the king in the
name of justice—embracing puritanism, because it clad itself
in the robes of truth and purity—returning to their king,
when puritanism became bigotry—love, hatred—justice, a
scoff—and only to find in that son of the man they had beheaded
a worse curse than any yet! For Charles II. cursed
the rising generation with corruption, unbelief, despair; no
longer levying tonnage like his father—only destroying the
honor of families; no longer holding down the nation with
a rod of iron—only inaugurating that horrible comedy of the
Restoration, which made all that is good contemptible—the
honor of men, the fidelity of wives, the faith of humanity in
God. The poor, struggling nation bargained for liberty and
toleration—they received bigotry and licentiousness. Yes,
yes, sir! this is the truth of that great revolution, and the
English people therein embodied the history of humanity in
all ages, every where. Yes, yes! if any thing is true, this
is true—that men are not false and hateful, black from the
cradle, foul from their first breath! On this conviction
alone do I base my hopes for the future of the race—in
Europe, America, every where. That this land we live in
will prove mankind able to think, to act, to rule, above all,
to love, I have a conviction which nothing can deprive me of.
The old world totters; she is diseased, and though this disease
may demand two hundred years to eat its way to the
heart, yet it will finally attack the vital part, and all will
crumble into dust. The new world lies bathed in the fresh
light of the new age: here will the heart of man vindicate
its purity; here the tiger will lie down, the serpent no
longer hiss; here, I feel that God will accomplish the political
regeneration of humanity, proving the eternal truth
of these poor words I have uttered!”
The thinker paused, and leaning his brows on his hand,
seemed to be buried in thought. The stranger was also
silent, either from conviction or in order that he might marshal
his thoughts for the struggle of intellects. But if
this last were the reason of his silence, he was doomed to disappointment.
-- 135 -- p520-140
[figure description] Page 135.[end figure description]
His companion rose and said:
“I fear I have wearied you, sir, and fear still more that
you will think it discourteous in me to leave you, after thus
taking up our whole interview in talking myself. But I
have just recalled a business engagement at this hour—the
clock has just struck.”
“Well, well,” said the man in the red cloak, who did
not seem greatly put out by these words, “I cannot think
hard of that. Your ideas, sir, have found in me an attentive
listener, and if I led you to suppose that I believed
nothing good could come out of human nature, I misconveyed
my meaning. Let us part, then, for the present—we
shall meet again, as my stay here will be prolonged for a
week or two longer, and I count upon seeing you again. I
do not fear a disappointment. We shall come together often
in the future, I feel a conviction.”
His companion bowed his head in token of willingness
and assent, and looking at the door, said:
“Your room is No. 7, is it not?”
“Yes—that one opposite is occupied by a young gentleman
from the neighborhood; and that one next to me by the
young actress, Beatrice Hallam, I believe. Mr. Effingham
seems to be her very good friend.”
“Effingham!” exclaimed his companion.
“Yes, he has been an inmate of this tavern for two or
three days—don't mistake and enter his room for mine.”
Charles Waters could only bow his head: and turning
away from the man in the red cloak, he went in silence down
the stairs. The house seemed to stifle him; and when he
reached the open air he seemed suddenly to revive, for his
face was suffused with blood.
Cooke, John Esten, 1830-1886 [1854], The Virginia comedians, or, Old days in the Old Dominion. Edited from the mss. of C. Effingham, Esq. [pseud] (D. Appleton and Co, New York) [word count] [eaf520v1T].
