McGuffey's Sixth Eclectic Reader Part 42

They that have done this deed are honorable: What private griefs they have, alas, I know not, That made them do it; they are wise and honorable, And will, no doubt, with reasons answer you.

I come not, friends, to steal away your hearts: I am no orator, as Brutus is; But, as you know me all, a plain, blunt man, That love my friend; and that they know full well That gave me public leave to speak of him: For I have neither wit, nor words, nor worth, Action, nor utterance, nor the power of speech, To stir men's blood: I only speak right on: I tell you that which you yourselves do know; Show you sweet Caesar's wounds, poor, poor, dumb mouths, And bid them speak for me: but were I Brutus, And Brutus Antony, there were an Antony Would ruffle up your spirits, and put a tongue In every wound of Caesar, that should move The stones of Rome to rise and mutiny.

Shakespeare.--Julius Caesar, Act iii, Scene ii.

NOTES.--Gaius Julius Caesar (b. 102, d. 44 B. C.) was the most remarkable genius of the ancient world, Caesar ruled Rome as imperator five years and a half, and, in the intervals of seven campaigns during that time, spent only fifteen months in Rome. Under his rule Rome was probably at her best, and his murder at once produced a state of anarchy.

The conspirators against Caesar--among whom were Brutus, Ca.s.sius and Casca--professed to be moved by honest zeal for the good of Rome; but their own ambition was no doubt the true motive, except with Brutus.

Mark Antony was a strong friend of Julius Caesar. Upon the latter's death, Antony, by his funeral oration, incited the people and drove the conspirators from Rome.

The Lupercal was a festival of purification and expiation held in Rome on the 15th of February. Antony was officiating as priest at this festival when he offered the crown to Caesar.

In his will Caesar left to every citizen of Rome a sum of money, and bequeathed his private gardens to the public.

The Nervii were one of the most warlike tribes of Celtic Gaul. Caesar almost annihilated them in 57 B. C.

Pompey, once a.s.sociated with Caesar in the government of Rome, was afterwards at war with him. He was murdered by those who thought to propitiate Caesar, but the latter wept when Pompey's head was sent to him, and had the murderers put to death.

Statua is the Latin form of statue, in common use in Shakespeare's time; this form is required here by the meter.

LXXVIII. THE ENGLISH CHARACTER. (286)

William Hickling Prescott, 1796-1859, the historian, was the son of William Prescott, an eminent jurist, and the grandson of Col. William Prescott, who commanded the Americans at the battle of Bunker Hill. He was born in Salem, Ma.s.sachusetts, graduated at Harvard University in 1814, and died in Boston. Just as he was completing his college course, the careless sport of a fellow-student injured one of his eyes so seriously that he never recovered from it. He had intended to adopt law as his profession; but, from his detective eyesight, he was obliged to choose work in which he could regulate his hours of labor, and could employ the aid of a secretary. He chose to be a historian; and followed his choice with wonderful system, perseverance, and success till the close of his life.

His works are: "The Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella," "The Conquest of Mexico," "The Conquest of Peru," "The Reign of Philip II," and a volume of "Miscellanies." He had not completed the history of Philip at the time of his death. As a writer of history, Mr. Prescott ranks with the first for accuracy, precision, clearness, and beauty of style. As a man, he was genial, kind-hearted and even-tempered.

On the whole, what I have seen raises my preconceived estimate of the English character. It is full of generous, true, and manly qualities; and I doubt if there ever was so high a standard of morality in an aristocracy which has such means for self-indulgence at its command, and which occupies a position that secures it so much deference. In general, they do not seem to abuse their great advantages. The respect for religion--at least for the forms of it--is universal, and there are few, I imagine, of the great proprietors who are not more or less occupied with improving their estates, and with providing for the comfort of their tenantry, while many take a leading part in the great political movements of the time.

There never was an aristocracy which combined so much practical knowledge and industry with the advantages of exalted rank.

The Englishman is seen to most advantage in his country home. For he is const.i.tutionally both domestic and rural in his habits. His fireside and his farm--these are the places in which one sees his simple and warm- hearted nature more freely unfolded. There is a shyness in an Englishman, --a natural reserve, which makes him cold to strangers, and difficult to approach. But once corner him in his own house, a frank and full expansion will be given to his feelings that we should look for in vain in the colder Yankee, and a depth not to be found in the light and superficial Frenchman,--speaking of nationalities, not of individualities.

The Englishman is the most truly rural in his tastes and habits of any people in the world. I am speaking of the higher cla.s.ses. The aristocracy of other countries affect the camp and the city. But the English love their old castles and country seats with a patriotic love. They are fond of country sports. Every man shoots or hunts. No man is too old to be in the saddle some part of the day, and men of seventy years and more follow the hounds, and, take a five-barred gate at a leap. The women are good whips, are fond of horses and dogs, and other animals. d.u.c.h.esses have their cows, their poultry, their pigs,--all watched over and provided with accommodations of Dutch-like neatness. All this is characteristic of the people. It may be thought to detract something from the feminine graces which in other lands make a woman so amiably dependent as to be nearly imbecile. But it produces a healthy and blooming race of women to match the hardy Englishman,--the finest development of the physical and moral nature which the world has witnessed. For we are not to look on the English gentleman as a mere Nimrod. With all his relish for field sports and country usages, he has his house filled with collections of art and with extensive libraries. The tables of the drawing-rooms are covered with the latest works, sent down by the London publisher. Every guest is provided with an apparatus for writing, and often a little library of books for his own amus.e.m.e.nt. The English country gentleman of the present day is anything but a Squire Western, though he does retain all his relish for field sports.

The character of an Englishman, under its most refined aspect, has some disagreeable points which jar unpleasantly on the foreigner not accustomed to them. The consciousness of national superiority, combined with natural feelings of independence, gives him an air of arrogance, though it must be owned that this is never betrayed in his own house,--I may almost say in his own country. But abroad, when he seems to inst.i.tute a comparison between himself and the people he is thrown with, it becomes so obvious that he is the most unpopular, not to say odious, person in the world.

Even the open hand with which he dispenses his bounty will not atone for the violence he offers to national vanity.

There are other defects, which are visible even in his most favored circ.u.mstances. Such is his bigotry, surpa.s.sing everything in a quiet pa.s.sive form, that has been witnessed since the more active bigotry of the times of the Spanish Philips. Such, too, is the exclusive, limited range of his knowledge and conceptions of all political and social topics and relations. The Englishman, the cultivated Englishman, has no standard of excellence borrowed from mankind. His speculation never travels beyond his own little--great little--island. That is the world to him. True, he travels, shoots lions among the Hottentots, chases the grizzly bear over the Rocky Mountains, kills elephants in India and salmon on the coast of Labrador, comes home, and very likely makes a book. But the scope of his ideas does not seem to be enlarged by all this. The body travels, not the mind. And, however he may abuse his own land, he returns home as hearty a John Bull, with all his prejudices and national tastes as rooted, as before. The English--the men of fortune--all travel. Yet how little sympathy they show for other people or inst.i.tutions, and how slight is the interest they take in them! They are islanders, cut off from the great world. But their island is, indeed, a world of its own. With all their faults, never has the sun shone--if one may use the expression in reference to England--all a more n.o.ble race, or one that has done more for the great interests of humanity.

NOTES.--Nimrod is spoken of in Genesis (x. 9) as "a mighty hunter." Thus the name came to be applied to any one devoted to hunting.

Squire Western is a character in Fielding's "Tom Jones." He is represented as an ignorant, prejudiced, irascible, but, withal, a jolly, good-humored English country gentleman.

LXXIX. THE SONG OF THE POTTER. (290)

Turn, turn, my wheel! Turn round and round, Without a pause, without a sound: So spins the flying world away!

This clay, well mixed with marl and sand, Follows the motion of my hand; For some must follow, and some command, Though all are made of clay!

Turn, turn, my wheel! All things must change To something new, to something strange; Nothing that is can pause or stay; The moon will wax, the moon will wane, The mist and cloud will turn to rain, The rain to mist and cloud again, To-morrow be to-day.

Turn, turn, my wheel! All life is brief; What now is bud will soon be leaf, What now is leaf will soon decay; The wind blows east, the wind blows west; The blue eggs in the robin's nest Will soon have wings and beak and breast, And flutter and fly away.

Turn, turn, my wheel! This earthen jar A touch can make, a touch can mar; And shall it to the Potter say, What makest thou? Thou hast no hand?

As men who think to understand A world by their Creator planned, Who wiser is than they.

Turn, turn, my wheel! 'Tis nature's plan The child should grow into the man, The man grow wrinkled, old, and gray; In youth the heart exults and sings, The pulses leap, the feet have wings; In age the cricket chirps, and brings The harvest home of day.

Turn, turn, my wheel! The human race, Of every tongue, of every place, Caucasian, Coptic, or Malay, All that inhabit this great earth, Whatever be their rank or worth, Are kindred and allied by birth, And made of the same clay.

Turn, turn, my wheel! What is begun At daybreak must at dark be done, To-morrow will be another day; To-morrow the hot furnace flame Will search the heart and try the frame, And stamp with honor or with shame These vessels made of clay.

Stop, stop, my wheel! Too soon, too soon The noon will be the afternoon, Too soon to-day be yesterday; Behind us in our path we cast The broken potsherds of the past, And all are ground to dust at last, And trodden into clay.

--Longfellow.

NOTE.--Coptic was formerly the language of Egypt. and is preserved in the inscriptions of the ancient monuments found there; it has now given place entirely to Arabic.

Lx.x.x. A HOT DAY IN NEW YORK. (292)

William Dean Howells, 1837--, was born in Belmont County. Ohio. In boyhood he learned the printer's trade, at which he worked for several years. He published a volume of poems in 1860, in connection with John J. Piatt.

From 1861 to 1865 he was United States Consul at Venice. On his return he resided for a time in New York City, and was one of the editors of the "Nation." In 1871 he was appointed editor in chief of the "Atlantic Monthly." He held the position ten years, and then retired in order to devote himself to his own writings. Since then, he has been connected with other literary magazines. Mr. Howells has written several books: novels and sketches: his writings are marked by an artistic finish, and a keen but subtile humor. The following selection is an extract from "Their Wedding Journey."

When they alighted, they took their way up through one of the streets of the great wholesale businesses, to Broadway. On this street was a throng of trucks and wagons, lading and unlading; bales and boxes rose and sank by pulleys overhead; the footway was a labyrinth of packages of every shape and size; there was no flagging of the pitiless energy that moved all forward, no sign of how heavy a weight lay on it, save in the reeking faces of its helpless instruments.

It was four o'clock, the deadliest hour of the deadly summer day. The spiritless air seemed to have a quality of blackness in it, as if filled with the gloom of low-hovering wings. One half the street lay in shadow, and one half in sun; but the sunshine itself was dim, as if a heat greater than its own had smitten it with languor. Little gusts of sick, warm wind blew across the great avenue at the corners of the intersecting streets.

In the upward distance, at which the journeyers looked, the loftier roofs and steeples lifted themselves dim out of the livid atmosphere, and far up and down the length of the street swept a stream of tormented life.

All sorts of wheeled things thronged it, conspicuous among which rolled and jarred the gaudily painted stages, with quivering horses driven each by a man who sat in the shade of a branching, white umbrella, and suffered with a moody truculence of aspect, and as if he harbored the bitterness of death in his heart for the crowding pa.s.sengers within, when one of them pulled the strap about his legs, and summoned him to halt.

Most of the foot pa.s.sengers kept to the shady side, and to the unaccustomed eyes of the strangers they were not less in number than at any other time, though there were fewer women among them. Indomitably resolute of soul, they held their course with the swift pace of custom, and only here and there they showed the effect of the heat.

One man, collarless, with waistcoat unb.u.t.toned, and hat set far back from his forehead, waved a fan before his death-white, flabby face, and set down one foot after the other with the heaviness of a somnambulist.

Another, as they pa.s.sed him, was saying huskily to the friend at his side, "I can't stand this much longer. My hands tingle as if they had gone to sleep; my heart--" But still the mult.i.tude hurried on, pa.s.sing, repa.s.sing, encountering, evading, vanishing into shop doors, and emerging from them, dispersing down the side streets, and swarming out of them.

It was a scene that possessed the beholder with singular fascination, and in its effect of universal lunacy, it might well have seemed the last phase of a world presently to be destroyed. They who were in it, but not of it, as they fancied--though there was no reason for this--looked on it amazed, and at last their own errands being accomplished, and themselves so far cured of the madness of purpose, they cried with one voice that it was a hideous sight, and strove to take refuge from it in the nearest place where the soda fountain sparkled.

It was a vain desire. At the front door of the apothecary's hung a thermometer, and as they entered they heard the next comer cry out with a maniacal pride in the affliction laid upon mankind, "Ninety-seven degrees!" Behind them, at the door, there poured in a ceaseless stream of people, each pausing at the shrine of heat, before he tossed off the hissing draught that two pale, close-clipped boys served them from either side of the fountain. Then, in the order of their coming, they issued through another door upon the side street, each, as he disappeared, turning his face half round, and casting a casual glance upon a little group near another counter.

The group was of a very patient, half-frightened, half-puzzled looking gentleman who sat perfectly still on a stool, and of a lady who stood beside him, rubbing all over his head a handkerchief full of pounded ice, and easing one hand with the other when the first became tired. Basil drank his soda, and paused to look upon this group, which he felt would commend itself to realistic sculpture as eminently characteristic of the local life, and, as "The Sunstroke," would sell enormously in the hot season.