Part 19 (1/2)

And his life was spent as wine is poured upon the ground. Heine ended where the ascetics began, in pain, privation, mortification of the flesh; and it was a mortification that had not even the consolation of being the sufferer's own choice, for it was involuntary. Better for him would it have been had he gone out to dwell in the wilderness, as St.

Jerome left the Paris of his day, and retired into the desert of Chalcis. For a strange penalty was to be his--one of which the joyous apostle of pleasure could hardly have dreamed before the blow fell. A paralytic touch converted the man of pleasure into a man of pain, his bed a living tomb. No more for ever, for Heine, was there to be any reinstatement of the flesh.

This dark closing period of Heine's life has a fascination about it; it holds the attention like the background of a Rembrandt etching, with its dimly-seen forms that appear to stir in the gloom, ghostly, half-alive; such a contrast there is between his gloomy close and the bright projection of his earlier career. Shall we call his life a failure as regards himself, his personal success and happiness? Upon that point we may not p.r.o.nounce too confidently. He would have chosen it had the choice been offered him with full knowledge of the alternatives; he would have preferred it to any commonplace existence.

There will always be those who hold that such careers as Byron's or Heine's, such fitful careers, with their fierce tempests, their ecstatic suns.h.i.+ne, their ”awful brevity,” are preferable to any serener life, however long; and least of all may we pity Heine. With what scorn would he look down upon our pity!

Heine's life has a peculiar value for the student of modern life, in that it has what we may call an exemplary interest. For Heine made that costly sacrificial experiment of which the old examples never suffice us; the experiment which each new generation requires anew, in which nature in her wasteful way insists on consuming the finest geniuses. As Byron had attempted just before him, so Heine attempted to think and to live without reserves, to compa.s.s the round of sentiment and sensation, to touch the entire range of experience. Like Byron, he could not pa.s.s through the fire; he fell, the flame licked him up. And yet, far more truly than many a martyr, Byron and Heine gave their lives for us. Not, indeed, in the professed spirit of the martyr, not purposing the sacrifice, but for that very reason making it the more significant.

They experimented lavishly, daringly with life, and in their poems they give us real life as no other poets since have done. They are real pa.s.sion, real thought, the ruddy drops of the sad heart. Heine's ”Book of Songs” is his own body and blood. One feels of it what Whitman says of his ”Leaves of Gra.s.s”: ”This is no book; who touches this touches a man.”

And Heine and Byron, in giving their lives for us, did what the greatest poets and the strongest men have seldom done. Though they have always suffered, yet for us these have rather toiled than suffered.

Dante, Michelangelo, Shakespeare, Goethe--what exalted, what demiurgic creations have they bequeathed to us, what power to move, what beauty to ponder with unapproachable longing! But these creations have an awing beauty; they keep an unattainable distance and height. When we consider the lives of these greatest spirits, we find them walking apart in the fastnesses of the hills, pursuing arduous ways where few or none may bear them company. Their paths gain upward upon the heights; they gain so far and high that the tinge of that mountain remoteness falls upon them--an airy distance, a deterring shadow; and if ever their voices seem to say, ”Follow us,” they have not pointed out the way.

But though Byron and Heine were thus rapt up into the mountain in visions, their daily walk and life were in the world; its dust and soilure cling to them, we see them wavering and going astray. Their very wanderings bring them nearer to us, who sojourn; their desire, their aspiration, their failures make the wiser use of opportunity possible to any of us who may have been born away from home.

t.i.tUS MUNSON COAN.

THE HOME OF MY HEART.

Not here in the populous town, In the playhouse or mart, Not here in the ways gray and brown, But afar on the green-swelling down, Is the home of my heart.

There the hillside slopes down to a dell Whence a streamlet has start; There are woods and sweet gra.s.s on the swell, And the south winds and west know it well: 'Tis the home of my heart.

There's a cottage o'ershadowed by leaves Growing fairer than art, Where under the low sloping eaves No false hand the swallow bereaves: 'Tis the home of my heart.

And there as you gaze down the lea, Where the trees stand apart, Over gra.s.sland and woodland may be You will catch the faint gleam of the sea From the home of my heart.

And there in the rapturous spring, When the morning rays dart O'er the plain, and the morning birds sing, You may see the most beautiful thing In the home of my heart;

For there at the cas.e.m.e.nt above, Where the rosebushes part, Will blush the fair face of my love: Ah, yes! it is this that will prove 'Tis the home of my heart.

F. W BOURDILLON.

THE SOUTH, HER CONDITION AND NEEDS.

Sir Robert Peel, shortly before his death, said that what he had seen and heard in public life had left upon his mind a prevailing impression of gloom and grief. What impressed the mind of the English statesman so painfully in reference to his own country must be felt correspondingly by Americans who contemplate the South; for its present condition awakens the anxious solicitude of every thoughtful patriot. A brief mention of some of the evils that afflict her may help toward the ascertainment and application of adequate remedies. Let it be premised that this discussion proceeds in no degree from disloyalty to the Government, nor from unwillingness to accept the legitimate consequences of the war.

Betwixt the North and the South there lingers much estrangement. One serious cause of irritation at the South, which seems irremediable, is the distrust with which those who sustained the Confederate States are regarded by a large number of Northern people. Our motives are habitually misrepresented, our purposes misunderstood, our actions perverted, our character maligned. On our conduct have been placed constructions which seem to spring from direst hate or malice. By representative men Southern States are spoken of as outside the Union; and ”a solid South” has been the party appeal most efficacious for arousing sectional and vindictive pa.s.sion. Every Southern citizen who followed his convictions, and affiliated with the 1,640,000 Democrats of the North, is suspected of disloyalty or treason. No protestations of men or parties, no avowals of governors or legislatures, are accepted as sincere unless accompanied by a support of the Republican party. Party platforms, the support of an Abolitionist like Mr.

Greeley, organic laws, are regarded as deceptive because the s.h.i.+bboleth of disloyalty and patriotism is ”Republicanism.” These persistent efforts to brand us as inferiors, to make us unequals as citizens, to coerce the support of an administration and a party, are based upon our unfitness, morally or intellectually, to decide for ourselves what is best for the country's welfare and perpetuity. We are loyal, and patriotic, and honest only when we sing paeans to the Administration and its favorites. Practically the war has been prolonged, and this policy of disunion alienates, embitters, and prohibits the growth of fraternal sentiments. To prevent a complete and durable reconciliation seems the settled policy of a large party. This proscription and ostracism have helped to create a hopelessness as to the future. A nightmare paralyzes our energies.

The South, if conquered, and honestly accepting the results of the war, needed encouragement and material help instead of discriminating injuries. Her condition was deplorable. All wars are destructive of property and production. To the South the war between the States was exhausting to the utmost degree. Its destructiveness is not computable by figures. The numerical inferiority of the army made it necessary to put into the effective military force every available boy and man; and these were thus withdrawn from productive labor. Much of the labor that remained was applied, not to the production of wealth, but to such manufactures as were needful only in war. For four dreadful years, like the _triste noche_ described by Prescott, with ports closed, and under the imperious necessity of evoking and utilizing every possible warlike agency, this cessation of wealth-producing industry, this drain upon material resources, this decimation of our best men, this waste of capital and exhaustion of the country from the Rio Grande to the Chesapeake bay, continued remorselessly. Superadd the emanc.i.p.ation of 4,000,000 slaves, the sudden extinction of $1,600,000,000 of property, the disorganization of the labor system, the upheaval of society, the ”stupendous innovation” upon habits, modes of thought, allegiance, amounting almost to a change of civilization, and it will be easy to see that the South started upon her new career with nothing but genial climate, fertile soil, and brave hearts. Absence of capital, of concentrated wealth, made it necessary to begin _de novo_. Slavery and profitableness of crops had prevented diversity of pursuits.

Agriculture, applied to a few products, was almost our sole occupation.

Former habits had disinclined to mechanical pursuits or manual labor, and our towns, since 1865, have been crowded with young men, who have sought in clerks.h.i.+ps, agencies, and professions the means of support.

These employments, if furnis.h.i.+ng remunerative wages, are not wealth-producing, add nothing to capital, and have aggravated the general impoverishment.

These evils have been intensified by vicious legislation and bad government. Federal legislation has been much in the interest of stock-jobbers, speculators, monopolists, so that ”corners” have been fostered, and labor has paid heavy and depressing tribute to fatten greedy cormorants. The present system of banking violates the established principles of currency, and is in utter contradiction to what, for a decade, by consent of all parties and financiers, was the policy of the Government. Bad as the system is inherently by injurious legislation, its benefits are secured to a favored cla.s.s, and by combination with other corporations, notably railroad companies, the business of the country is largely in the control of a few monopolists, who rule and grow rich in spite of the laws of political economy.

Promissory notes, printed with pictures on fine paper, have been subst.i.tuted for the money of the Const.i.tution, and our young people are growing up with the notion that this rag currency is a legitimate measure of value and a legal solvent of debts.

So marked has been this cla.s.s legislation in the interest of capital, that a Senator of the United States, Mr. Wallace of Pennsylvania, says, ”From the beginning of the present Administration down to the adjournment of Congress in August, 1876, every financial statute has had but one purpose, and that purpose to increase the value of the bonded indebtedness of the Government.” Statistics show how insecure is business, on what vicious principles it is transacted, and how rapidly property is concentrating in the hands of a few. In 1874 there were 5,830 failures for a total of $155,000,000, and in 1875 the failures increased to 7,740, aggregating a loss of $201,000,000. In both North and South there has been a frightful increase of indebtedness by towns and cities, counties and States--thirty-eight States owe an aggregate of $382,000,000--so that taxpayers groan in purse and spirit, and are deeply concerned to find a way of honest payment.