Lessons in Life Part 11

LESSON XXII.

THE POETIC TEST.

"I walked on, musing with myself On life and art, and whether, after all, A larger metaphysics might not help Our physics--a completer poetry Adjust our daily life and vulgar wants More fully than the special outside plans, Phalansteries, material inst.i.tutes, The civil conscriptions and lay monasteries, Preferred by modern thinkers." MRS. BROWNING.

The highest poetry is the purest truth. To learn whether any thing is as it ought to be, we have only to learn whether it is truly poetical. It is a popular fallacy to suppose that poetical things are necessarily fanciful, or imaginative, or sentimental in other words, that poetry resides in that which is both baseless and valueless. In the popular thought, poetry is shut out of the realm of truth and reality. The reason, I suppose, is, that poetry demands more of truth and harmony and beauty than is commonly found in the actualities of human life.

Let us suppose that in a country journey we arrive at the summit of a hill, at whose foot lies a charming village imbosomed in trees from the midst of which, rises the white spire of the village church. If we are in a poetical mood, we say: "How beautiful is this retirement! This quiet retreat, away from the world's distractions and great temptations, must be the abode of domestic and social virtue--the home of contentment, of peace, and of an unquestioning Christian faith. Fortunate are they whose lot it is to be born and to pa.s.s their days here, and to be buried at last in the little graveyard behind the church." As we see the children playing upon the gra.s.s, and the tidy matrons sitting in their doorways, and the farmers at work in the fields, and the quiet inn, with its brooding piazzas like wings waiting for the shelter of its guests, the scene fills us with a rare poetic delight. In the midst of our little rapture, however, a communicative villager comes along, and we question him. We are shocked to learn that the inn is a very bad place, with a drunken landlord, that there is a quarrel in the church which is about to drive the old pastor away, that there is not a man in the village who would not leave it if he could sell his property, that the women give a free rein to their propensity for scandal, and that half of the children of the place are down with the measles.

The true poet sees things not always as they are, but as they ought to be. He insists upon congruity and consistency. Such a life should be in such a spot, under such circ.u.mstances; and no unwarped and unpolluted mind can fail to see that the poet's ideal is the embodiment of G.o.d's will. The poet's Indian is very different from the real native American who has been exposed to the corrupting influences-of the white man's civilization. The poet insists on seeing in the American Indian a n.o.ble manhood, simple tastes, freedom from all conventionality, heroic fort.i.tude, and all those romantic qualities which a free forest life seems so well calculated to engender. He looks upon the deep, mysterious woods, traversed by nameless streams; the majestic mountains, haunted by shadows; the broad lakes, swept only by the wind and the wild man's oar, and he says: "it is fitting, and only fitting, that out of such a realm should come such a life." Which is the better and the more truthful Indian--that of the poet, or he who drank the rum of our fathers and then scalped them? The poet's village is the model village, and the poet's Indian is the model Indian. Both are built of the best and truest materials that G.o.d furnishes, and we see that when the actual village and the real Indian are tried by the poetic standard, they are tried by the severest standard that can be applied to them. The poet's ideal embodies G.o.d's ideal of a village and an Indian.

The grand, basilar idea of American inst.i.tutions is human equality--the idea embodied in the American Declaration of Independence, that men are created free and equal, each with an independent, and all with a co-ordinate, right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. There is in this idea the highest poetry, because it is the transcendent truth; and there is no true poetry this side of the highest truth. Poetry follows the universal law, and is dependent for its quality upon its materials. In the degree in which its materials are fict.i.tious and artificial, is it poor and false. The Pilgrim's Progress is essentially better poetry than the Paradise Lost, because it contains more of the truth as it is in the divine life of man.

The poetic test, then, is practically a very valuable one, in all the important matters that relate to our life. Much of that which is miscalled poetry has been based upon arbitrary and artificial distinctions in human society and human lot. The poet has often sung of thrones and palaces, of kings and queens, of men and women of gentle blood, of barons and knights and squires, of retainers and dependents, of patricians and plebeians, and thus drawn his grand interest from distinctions in which G.o.d and Nature have had no hand. There may be romance, fancy, imagination, sentiment, and even instruction in such compositions as these, but there is no poetry. They have not in them the immortal life and the motive power of truth. We have only to carry distinctions thus attempted to be glorified to their logical results to land in the slavery of the ma.s.ses to the over-mastering few. Now there never was, and there never can be, any poetry in slavery. Since time began no true poet has undertaken to write a line in praise of slavery.

Poets have always been, and they must necessarily forever be, the prophets and priests of freedom. Mult.i.tudes of men have undertaken to justify slavery by the Bible, by expediency, by history, by necessity, by philosophy, by the const.i.tution of the country; but no man ever undertook to justify it by poetry. The most brilliant prize offered by a national committee for the best poem in praise of human slavery, would not be able to draw forth a single stanza from any man capable of writing a line of true poetry.

Philosophical defences of slavery can be purchased, political justifications can be had at the small price of a small office, and Christian apologies to order, but, thank G.o.d! not one line in praise of slavery could be written by a true poet, if the wealth of the world were to be his reward.

We have in the present age a sickly, sentimental humanity which is busily endeavoring to pervert the sense and love of justice in mankind. It regards the disposition to do wrong as a disease, to be treated with appropriate emollients applied over the heart, or some gentle opiate or alterative taken through the ears. It pities the murderer, and aims to give the impression to him and to the world that he is a victim to the barbarous instincts of society in the degree by which his punishment is made severe. It aims to transform prisons into comfortable asylums, where those who have been so unfortunate as to burn somebody's house, or steal somebody's horse, or insert a dirk under somebody's waistcoat, may retire and repent of their little follies, and in the mean time get better food and lodging than they were ever able to steal.

Punishment--retribution--these are words which make them shudder.

Nothing in their view is proper but such treatment of the criminal, be it soft or severe, as will contribute to his reformation. The criminal has forfeited no rights, and society has no claims upon him, if he only repents; and all punishment inflicted beyond the measure necessary to secure repentance is cruel. We have a great deal of this; and more or less it is modifying theological systems and vitiating public policy. It is carried to such an extent, often, as to make of the greatest criminals notable martyrs. Society and the victim of wrong-doing are both forgotten in sympathy for the wrong-doer.

Now these sentimental sympathizers with criminals, call themselves Christians, and are not willing to believe that any man can, in a truly Christian spirit, oppose their theories and their influence. They have been able to blind almost every sense in a man except the poetic sense; but to this they appeal in vain.

"Poetic justice" maintains its purity. The reader of a novel, no matter how good or how bad he may be, demands that the villain of the book shall be punished as a matter of justice alike to him.

and to those who have been his victims. Nothing but justice-- nothing but a fitting retribution--will satisfy. The poetic instinct demands a perfect system of rewards and punishments, and is as little satisfied when a hero succeeds indifferently, as when a scoundrel fails to be punished according to his deserts. There is no poetic fitness without justice--retribution, pound for pound, and measure for measure. Set any audience that can be gathered to watching a play in which criminal and crafty art is made to meet and master a guileless spirit and pollute a spotless womanhood, and the sympathies of the vilest will follow the victim, and, in the end, demand the punishment of the victor.

Nothing will seem to any audience so entirely out of place as kind and gentle treatment toward the artful brute, and nothing more outrageously unjust than the idea that repentance is the princ.i.p.al end of his punishment. The poetic instinct of fitness once thoroughly roused, as it is in a story, a poem, or a play, will be satisfied with nothing but full suffering for every sin. Now I would trust this poetic instinct of fitness further than I would all the sympathies of the humanitarians, all the sophistries of the philosophers, all the subtleties of the theologians, and all the milder virtues of Christianity itself. To me, it is as authoritative as a direct revelation from G.o.d, and is equivalent to it.

Again, nothing is more apparent in American character and American life than a growing lack of reverence. It begins in the family, and runs out through all the relations of society. The parent may be loved, but he is much less revered than in the olden time.

Parental authority is cast off early, and age and gray hairs do not command that tender regard and that careful respect that they did in the times of the fathers. In politics, it is the habit to speak in light and disrespectful terms of those whose experience gives them the right to counsel and command. Young men talk flippantly of "fossils," and "old fogies," and wonder why men who have been buried once will not remain quietly in their graves. Of course, when such a spirit as this prevails, there can be no reverence for authority, no respect for place and position, and no genuine and hearty loyalty. We nickname our Presidents; and "old Buck" and "old Abe" are spoken of as familiarly as if they were a pair of old oxen we were in the habit of driving. Every man considers himself good enough for any place, and great enough to judge every other man. If a pastor does not happen to suit a parishioner, the parishioner has no feeling of reverence for him that would hinder him from telling him so to his face. Every man considers himself not only as good and as great as any other man, but a little better and a little greater. No being but G.o.d is revered, and He, I fear, not overmuch. What we call "Young America" is made up of about equal parts of irreverence, conceit, and that popular moral quality familiarly known as "bra.s.s."

It is the habit to applaud Young America--to magnify the superior wisdom and efficiency of young men, to treat old age familiarly, and to compel those of superior years to ignore the honors with which G.o.d has crowned them. "Every dog has his day," we say, and we are impatient of a man who declines to step into retirement the moment that his hair turns gray, to make room for some specimen of Young America with a snub nose and a smart shirt-collar. Now, however this irreverence may be justified--and it is not only justified but shamelessly gloried in--it is not poetical. Poetry cannot be woven of improprieties. A people bowing with reverence to those in authority, and regarding with profound respect high official station; a family of children clinging, even through a long manhood and womanhood, around the form of an aged parent with a.s.siduous attentions and tender reverence; a community or a nation of young men looking to age for wisdom and for counsel; universal respect for years on the part of the young--these are, and must forever remain, poetical. Out of reverence can be woven the most beautiful pictures which the poet's brain can conceive; but Young America can no more excite poetic sentiment, or inspire poetic imaginations, than the sham Havana it smokes, or the mongrel horse it drives. There is no poetry in an irreverent character, or in an irreverent community. Irreverence in any form will not stand the poetic test.

Americans boast habitually of their country, and their boastings always a.s.sume the poetic form. The ballot-box that they talk about is the ballot-box that ought to be and not the ballot-box that is.

One would think, to hear what is said of the ballot-box, that it literally shines with glory, so that every American freeman who marches up to it to deposit the paper embodiment of his will, glows like a G.o.d in its light, and grows G.o.dlike by his act. If we are to believe Mr. Whittier, the poor voter sings on election day:

"The proudest now is but my peer, The highest not more high; To-day, of all the weary year, A king of men am I.

To-day, alike are great and small, The nameless and the known; My palace is the people's hall, The ballot-box my throne!"

This is a very splendid sort of a ballot-box, and he is a very fine sort of an American who sings about it; but what are the facts? There are a good many chances that the box stands in a corner grocery, and that the poor voter is led up to deposit his priceless ballot so drunk that he cannot walk without help. Mr.

Whittier would have us believe that the poor voter sings:

"To-day shall simple manhood try The strength of gold and land; The wide world has not wealth to buy The power in my right hand."

The truth is that gold and land try the very "simple manhood" as a rule, and very much less than the wide world is sufficient to buy the power in a great mult.i.tude of poor voters' hands. The poet sees what the ballot-box may be, ought to be, and, in some rare instances, really is. He unerringly seizes upon the dignity and majesty of self-government, the equal rights and privileges of manhood, and the dissipation of all distinctions in the exercise of the political franchise among freemen. The great truth of human equality inspires him, and he uses the ideal and possible ballot-box to ill.u.s.trate it, and thus furnishes the standard by which the real ballot-box is to be judged.

The poetical view of our American system of government is that all men have a voice in the government; that we choose our own rulers and make our own laws; that no man has a hereditary right to rule, and that men are selected for the service of the people, in the construction and the execution of the laws, because of their fitness for office. Outside of this view, the American system of government has no beauty and no foundation in truth and justice.

If we undertake to argue with a monarchist, we never bring forward any other. It has in it the essential element of poetry, because it does justice to the nature and character of man, and describes a perfect political society. The poetical view of the American system of government, is, then, the highest view. It covers the sovereignty of the citizen, and the wisdom of the popular voice.

Around this idea the poets have woven their n.o.blest songs; but again we ask what are the facts? The people are led by the nose by politicians; and not one officer of the government in one hundred is chosen to his place because of his fitness for it. The people do not nominate those who shall rule them, or those who shall make laws for them. Those whom the politicians do not nominate for office, nominate themselves. The political machinery of America practically takes the choice of rulers and officers out of the hands of the people, and puts it into the hands of a set of self-appointed leaders, whose patriotism is partisanship, and whose princ.i.p.al aim is to serve themselves and their friends, and use the people for accomplishing their purposes. No greater fiction was ever conceived than the pleasant one that the people of America govern America. The people of America, except in certain political revolutions, have always been governed by a company of self-appointed and irresponsible men, whose princ.i.p.al work was to grind axes for themselves. The poetry of American politics is then the severest standard by which to judge the reality of American politics.

Religious freedom is another poetical idea in which the American glories. It is essentially a poetical thought that every man is free to worship G.o.d according to the dictates of his own conscience--that there is no Church to domineer over the State, and no State to domineer over the Church, that the Bible is free, and that each individual soul is responsible only to its Maker.

This great and beautiful liberty stirs us when we think of it as music would stir us, breathed from heaven itself. It is grand, G.o.d-begotten, belonging in the eternal system of things, full of inspiration. This religious freedom we claim as Americans. Some of us enjoy it; but the number is not large. The freedom of the sect is not greatly circ.u.mscribed, but the freedom of the individual is hardly greater in America than it is in those countries where an established church lays its finger upon every man. I would as soon be the slave of the Pope or the Archbishop as the slave of a sect. I would as readily put my neck under the yoke of a national church as under the yoke of a sect. It does not mend the matter that the mult.i.tude are willing slaves, and it certainly mars the matter that the sects themselves do what they can, in too many instances, to circ.u.mscribe each the other's liberty. Sects are religiously and socially proscribed by sects. Take any town in America that contains half a dozen churches, representing the same number of religious denominations, and it will be found that, with one, and that probably the dominant sect, it will be all that a man's reputation and position are worth to belong to another sect.

Perfect religious freedom in America there undoubtedly is; but it is the possession of only here and there an individual. Prevalent uncharitableness and bigotry are incompatible with the existence of religious liberty anywhere.

It is thus that the poetic instinct grasps at truth and beauty, and fitness and harmony, wherever it sees it, and it is thus that it furnishes us (subordinate only to special, divine revelation) with the most delicate tests of human inst.i.tutions, customs, and actions. Litmus-paper does not more faithfully detect the presence of an acid than the poetic instinct detects the false and foul in all that makes up human life. All that is grand and good, all that is heroic and unselfish, all that is pure and true, all that is firm and strong, all that is beautiful and harmonious, is essentially poetical, and the opposite of all these is at once rejected by the unsophisticated poetic instinct.

Verily the poets of the world are the prophets of humanity! They forever reach after and foresee the ultimate good. They are evermore building the paradise that is to be, painting the millennium that is to come, restoring the lost image of G.o.d in the human soul. When the world shall reach the poet's ideal, it will arrive at perfection; and much good will it do the world to measure itself by this ideal, and struggle to lift the real to its lofty level.

LESSON XXIII.

THE FOOD OF LIFE.

"To the soul time doth perfection give, And adds fresh l.u.s.tre to her beauty still; And makes her in eternal youth to live Like her which nectar to the G.o.ds doth fill.

The more she lives, the more she feeds on truth; The more she feeds, the strength doth more increase; And what is strength, but an effect in youth Which, if time nurse, how can it ever cease?"

SIR J. DAVIES.

A horse can live, and do a good deal of dull work, on hay; but spirit and speed require grain. There is no self-supplied, perennial fountain within the animal that enables him to expend more in the way of muscular power than he receives in the way of muscular stimulus and nourishment. Food, in its quality and amount, up to the limit of healthful digestion, is set over against, and exactly measures, under ordinary circ.u.mstances, the quality and amount of labor of which a horse is capable. So, a cow can live on straw and corn-stalks; but it would not be reasonable to suppose that she would give any considerable amount of milk upon so slender a diet. We do not expect rich milk, in large quant.i.ties, to be yielded by a cow that is not bountifully fed with the most nutricious food. The same fact attaches to land.

We cannot get out of land more than there is in it; and having once exhausted it, we are obliged to put into it, in fertilizers, all we wish to take from it in the form of vegetable growths.

Wherever there is an outgo, there must be an equal income, or exhaustion will be the inevitable consequence.

The principle which these familiar facts so forcibly ill.u.s.trate is a very important one, in its connection with human life. We cannot get any more out of human life than we put into it. All civilization is an ill.u.s.tration of what can be accomplished by feeding the human mind. All barbaric and savage life is an ill.u.s.tration of mental and moral starvation. The differences among mankind are the results of differences in the nourishment upon which their minds are fed.

Eunice Williams, who was taken captive by the savages of Canada a hundred and fifty years ago, was the daughter of a most G.o.dly minister, of the old Puritan stamp; but a very few years of savage feeding made her a savage. Her mind was cut off from all other varieties of nourishment, and could only tend to savage issues. She kept a knowledge of her history, and many years after her capture revisited her home, accompanied by her tawny husband; but no persuasions could call her from her savage life and companionship.

The conversion of men from heathenism to Christianity and Christian civilization is accomplished by introducing new food into their moral and mental diet. "A change of pastures makes fat calves," we are told; and any one who has noticed the effect upon an active mind of its translation from one variety of social and moral influences to another, will recognize the truth of the proverb.

If a man will call up his acquaintances, one by one, and mentally measure the results of their lives, he will be astonished to see how small those results are. He will also see that they are, under ordinary circ.u.mstances, in the exact proportion to the amount, and in correspondence with the variety, of the food they take in. It is astonishing to see how little it takes to keep some people, and how very little such people become on their diet. A man who shuts himself away from all social life, and lays by his reading, and declines all food that addresses itself to his sensational and emotional nature, and refuses that bread of life which comes down from heaven, and feeds himself only with relation to the accomplishment of some petty work, will become as thin and scrawny, mentally and morally, as the body of a half-starved Hottentot. It is the one curse of rural life that it does not have a sufficiency and a sufficient variety of food. The same scenes, the same faces, the same limited range of books, the same dull friends, exhausted long ago--no new nourishment for powers cloyed with their never-varying food--these are what make rural life, as it is usually lived, unattractive and most unfruitful. The fruits--the issues--of this life cannot be greater than the food it gets, and the food is very scanty. It is not necessary that it should be so, and sometimes it is not so; but the rule of common rural life is insufficiency of mental food, and consequent poverty of manifestation.

The utilitarian habits of New England, originating in necessity, and far outliving the circ.u.mstances in which they had their birth, have tended more than any other cause to make New England character unlovable. The saving of half-pence to add to one's store, and the denial to one's self and children of that which will delight the famished senses, and stir the thin emotions, and enlarge the range of experience, is the direct way of arriving at meanness of life.

There are those who will not allow their families to cultivate flowers, because flowers are not useful, and they involve a waste of time and land. They will not have an instrument of music in their houses, because music is not useful, and it involves an expenditure of money, and the throwing away of a great deal of time. They will not buy pictures, because pictures are not useful, and because they cost money; so that many a rich man's parlor is as bare of ornament as a tomb would be. They will not attend a lecture, because, though it might furnish them with mental food for a month, it would not bring their shillings back to them. They will not attend a concert, because a concert is not useful. They will not hire a minister who possesses fine gifts--gifts that would enrich them mentally, morally, and socially--because they cannot afford it. So they take up with ministerial dry nursing, and one another's dry experiences, as spiritual food, in order to save a few more dollars.

There are a few of the severer virtues that will live upon a diet of this kind. Endurance, industry, a negative purity, thrift, integrity--these can live, and do live, after a sort, on a plain and scanty diet, and these, as we know, abound in New England. But generosity, hospitality, charity, liberality--all those qualities that enrich the character, and all those virtues that enlarge it and give it fulness and beauty and attractiveness, are always wanting among the cla.s.s that sacrifices every thing for use. More cannot be got out of any life than is put into it. Modern chemistry a.n.a.lyzes soils, and ascertains exactly what they need to make them produce bountifully of any kind of grains and fruits. Wheat cannot be grown on land that does not contain the const.i.tuents of wheat; and if it be desirable to grow wheat, those const.i.tuents must be added to the soil. If any mental soil does not produce those vital manifestations and results which characterize a large, rich, and attractive life, then the const.i.tuents of that life must be introduced as nutriment.

One of the common experiences in the world of authorship is the writing of a single successful book, and the failure of all that follow it from the same pen. The explanation is, that the first book is the result of a life of feeding, and those that follow it come from an exhausted mind. There are many writers who, as soon as they begin to write, stop feeding, and in a very short time write themselves out. The temptation of the writer is to seclusion. His labors in a measure unfit him for social life, and for mingling in the every-day affairs of men. He is apt to become warped in his sentiments, and morbid in his feelings, and to grow small and weak as his works increase. The greatest possible blessing to an author is compulsory contact with the world--every-day necessity to meet and mingle with men and women--social responsibilities and business cares, and the consequent necessity of keeping up with the events and the literature of his time. An author in this position not only keeps a healthy mind, but he takes in food every day which his individuality a.s.similates to itself, and utters as the expression of its life. I have no belief that Shakspeare would ever have given us his immortal plays, but for the necessities which brought him so much into contact with men. Outside of his authorship, he lived an active, practical life--trod the boards of a theatre, managed men, looked after his money, rubbed against society in multiplied ways-- and kept himself strong, healthy, and abundantly fed with that food which was necessary to him.

Shakspeare had genius, it is true, but genius without food is quite as helpless as a barren acre. All great geniuses are immense feeders. All true and healthy geniuses fasten for food upon every thing and every body. Their antennas are always out for the apprehension of ideas, and their mouths always open for their reception. Walter Scott was engaged in the active duties of the legal profession when writing his novels, and there was not a legend of Scotland, nor a bit of history or gossip, nor an old story-teller that lived within fifty miles of him, that he did not lay under tribute for mental food. It is declared, to the everlasting disgrace of Goethe, that he practiced upon the affections of women, even to old age, that he might gather food for poetry. Byron traversed Europe in search of adventure, and rummaged the scenes of legend and story for food for his voracious senses and sensibilities. His Childe Harold is nothing but the record of his tireless foraging.

All men who have produced much have fed bountifully.

The writers are few in whom we do not notice something painfully wanting. We do not always understand what it is, but we know that, while we may accord to them good sense, and even genius, they fail to satisfy us. There is some good thing which they lack--something unbalanced and partial and one-sided about them. We presume that this is often the result of a const.i.tutional defect, but in most instances it is attributable to insufficient nourishment in some department of their nature. "All but," is the appropriate epitaph for the tombstone of many an author; and if we look carefully into his history we shall find an answer to the question: "All but what?"

We shall find, perhaps, that he is a recluse, that his social nature is not fed at all, and that be is, of course, unsympathetic. This is a very frequent cause of dissatisfaction with an author, as it always gives a morbid tinge to his writings. d.i.c.kens is eminently a social man, and eminently healthy and sympathetic. Possibly an author may starve his senses and become purely reflective, yielding up his points of contact with the outside world, and shutting the channels by which the qualities of things find their way to his mind. Not unfrequently a man's domestic affections may be starved, or ill fed, and if so, the fact is sure to be betrayed in his writings. And if a writer's religious nature be starved, it invariably vitiates all his characteristic works. No man who shuts out G.o.d and heaven from his life can write without betraying the poverty of his diet. If an author would write satisfactorily, touching all kinds of human nature and all sides of human nature, he must feed every department of his own nature, for he has nothing to give that he does not receive.

As in animal, so in mental life, there are gormandizing and gluttony, tending always to paralysis of voluntary effort. The devouring of facts, as they are found both in nature and in books, indulgence in social pleasures immoderately and constantly, pietism that feeds exclusively upon the things of religion, the feasting of the imagination upon the creations of fiction--all these are debilitating; and a blessed thing to the world is it that they unfit the mind for writing at all, as the overfeeding of the body unfits its organs for labor. Plethoric minds do not trouble the world with books, or with conversation, or with preaching. Activity simply demands food enough, and in sufficient variety, to feed its powers while operative, from day to day. This is the reason why immensely learned men have rarely done much for the world. Many of them have won reputations, like remarkably fat steers, for breadth of back and depth of brisket, but they are never known to move more than their own enormous bulks. Beyond a certain point of mental feeding, over and above the necessities of labor, the mind gets sleepy and clumsy.

I have alluded to authors, particularly, because, unlike the world in general, they give form and record to their life. The ma.s.ses of men live as authors live, but their lives are not put down in books, so that the public may read and measure them. We will suppose that two men are fed upon the same diet. Each shall have sufficient food for his religious, social, esthetic, domestic, sensational, and emotional natures, yet only one of them shall embody in books the life which he draws from these varieties of nourishment. The other lives essentially the same life, but it fails of record. It may be as rich, and characteristic, in every particular, as that of the author, but it fails of artistic form because, perhaps, he lacks the peculiar mental gift required for its construction. So the real life of the author and the life of his reader may be the same, the one having advantage over the other in no particular, and the fact that one is embodied in artistic forms conferring upon it no essential excellence. What I have said about authors, therefore, applies to all mankind, engaged in whatever calling or profession. If any portion of any man's nature be not well fed, he will betray the fact in his life. Poverty of food in any particular will surely bring poverty of manifestation in that department of life which is deprived of its natural nourishment.

A familiar ill.u.s.tration of the failure of a life to secure its appropriate food, will be found in men and women who live unmarried.

An old bachelor will sooner or later betray the fact that his finer affections are starved. It is next to impossible for him to hide from the world the wrong to which he is subjecting himself. His character will invariably show that it is warped and weak and lame, and his life will be barren of all those manifestations which flow from domestic affections abundantly fed. Here and there, one like Washington Irving will nourish a love transplanted to Heaven, and bring around him the sweet faces and delicate natures of women, to minister to a thirsting heart, and preserve, as he did, his geniality and tenderness to the last; but such as he are comparatively few. An old bachelor, voluntarily single, always betrays a nature badly fed in one of its important departments. So, too, those who marry, but who are not blest with children, betray the lack of food. Many of these hunger through life for children to feed their affections, and take on peculiarities that betray the fact that something is wrong with them. Some adopt children in order to supply a want which seems imperative, and others take pets of different kinds to their bosoms, ranging through the scale from birds to bull-dogs. It is a familiar trick of starved faculties and affections to take on a morbid appet.i.te, and feed themselves on the strangest of supplies.