MacMillan's Reading Books Part 20

And not to soldiers only, but to all who are engaged in the long warfare of life, is his conduct an example. To unite in our lives the two qualities expressed in his motto, "High spirit" and "reverent service,"

is to be, indeed, not only a true gentleman and a true soldier, but a true Christian also. To show to all who differ from us, not only in war but in peace, that delicate forbearance, that fear of hurting another's feelings, that happy art of saying the right thing to the right person, which he showed to the captive king, would indeed add a grace and a charm to the whole course of this troublesome world, such as none can afford to lose, whether high or low. Happy are they, who having this gift by birth and station, use it for its highest purposes; still more happy are they, who having it not by birth and station, have acquired it, as it may be acquired, by Christian gentleness and Christian charity.

And, lastly, to act in all the various difficulties of our every-day life, with that coolness, and calmness, and faith in a higher power than his own, which he showed when the appalling danger of his situation burst upon him at Poitiers, would smooth a hundred difficulties, and ensure a hundred victories. We often think that we have no power in ourselves, no advantages of position, to help us against our many temptations, to overcome the many obstacles we encounter. Let us take our stand by the Black Prince's tomb, and go back once more in thought to the distant fields of France. A slight rise in the wild upland plain, a steep lane through vineyards and underwood, this was all that he had, humanly speaking, on his side; but he turned it to the utmost use of which it could be made, and won the most glorious of battles. So, in like manner, our advantages may be slight--hardly perceptible to any but ourselves--let us turn them to account, and the results will be a hundredfold; we have only to adopt the Black Prince's bold and cheering words, when first he saw his enemies, "G.o.d is my help. I must fight them as best I can;" adding that lofty, yet resigned and humble prayer, which he uttered when the battle was announced to be inevitable, and which has since become a proverb, "G.o.d defend the right."

DEAN STANLEY'S _Memorials of Canterbury_.

[Notes: _The Black Prince_. Edward, the son of Edward III, and father of Richard II. He not only won for the English the renown of conquest, but befriended the early efforts after liberty. His untimely death plunged England into the evils of a long minority under his son. The one stain on his name is his ma.s.sacre of the townsfolk of Limoges.

"_Reverent service_," or "I serve" (Ich dien), the motto adopted by the Black Prince from the King of Bohemia, his defeated foe.

_Poitiers_. His victory won over the French king, John, whom he took prisoner (1356).]

THE a.s.sEMBLY OF URI.

Let me ask you to follow me in spirit to the very home and birth-place of freedom, to the land where we need not myth or fable to add aught to the fresh and gladdening feeling with which we for the first time tread the soil and drink the air of the immemorial democracy of Uri. It is one of the opening days of May: it is the morning of Sunday; for men then deem that the better the day the better the deed; they deem that the Creator cannot be more truly honoured than in using, in His fear and in His presence, the highest of the gifts which He has bestowed on man. But deem not that, because the day of Christian wors.h.i.+p is chosen for the great yearly a.s.sembly of a Christian commonwealth, the more direct sacred duties of the day are forgotten. Before we, in our luxurious island, have lifted ourselves from our beds, the men of the mountains, Catholic and Protestant alike, have already paid the morning's wors.h.i.+p in G.o.d's temple. They have heard the ma.s.s of the priest, or they have listened to the sermon of the pastor, before some of us have awakened to the fact that the morn of the holy day has come. And when I saw men thronging the crowded church, or kneeling, for want of s.p.a.ce within, on the bare ground beside the open door, and when I saw them marching thence to do the highest duties of men and citizens, I could hardly forbear thinking of the saying of Holy Writ, that "Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty." From the market-place of Altdorf, the little capital of the Canton, the procession makes its way to the place of meeting at Bozlingen. First marches the little army of the Canton, an army whose weapons can never be used save to drive back an invader from their land. Over their heads floats the banner, the bull's head of Uri, the ensign which led men to victory on the fields of Sempach and Morgarten. And before them all, on the shoulders of men clad in a garb of ages past, are borne the famous horns, the spoils of the wild bull of ancient days, the very horns whose blast struck such dread into the fearless heart of Charles of Burgundy. Then, with their lictors before them, come the magistrates of the commonwealth on horseback, the chief magistrate, the Landammann, with his sword by his side. The people follow the chiefs whom they have chosen to the place of meeting, a circle in a green meadow with a pine forest rising above their heads and a mighty spur of the mountain range facing them on the other side of the valley. The mult.i.tude of the freemen take their seats around the chief ruler of the commonwealth, whose term of office comes that day to an end. The a.s.sembly opens; a short s.p.a.ce is first given to prayer, silent prayer offered up by each man in the temple of G.o.d's own rearing. Then comes the business of the day. If changes in the law are demanded, they are then laid before the vote of the a.s.sembly, in which each citizen of full age has an equal vote and an equal right of speech. The yearly magistrates have now discharged all their duties; their term of office is at an end, the trust which has been placed in their hands falls back into the hands of those by whom it was given, into the hands of the sovereign people. The chief of the commonwealth, now such no longer, leaves his seat of office, and takes his place as a simple citizen in the ranks of his fellows. It rests with the freewill of the a.s.sembly to call him back to his chair of office, or to set another there in his stead. Men who have neither looked into the history of the past, nor yet troubled themselves to learn what happens year by year in their own age, are fond of declaiming against the caprice and ingrat.i.tude of the people, and of telling us that under a democratic government neither men nor measures can remain for an hour unchanged. The witness alike of the present and of the past is an answer to baseless theories like these.

The spirit which made democratic Athens year by year bestow her highest offices on the patrician Perikles and the reactionary Phokion, still lives in the democracies of Switzerland. The ministers of kings, whether despotic or const.i.tutional, may vainly envy the sure tenure of office which falls to the lot of those who are chosen to rule by the voice of the people. Alike in the whole Confederation and in the single Canton, re-election is the rule; the rejection of the outgoing magistrate is the rare exception. The Landammann of Uri, whom his countrymen have raised to the seat of honour, and who has done nothing to lose their confidence, need not fear that when he has gone to the place of meeting in the pomp of office, his place in the march homeward will be transferred to another against his will.

E. A. FREEMAN.

[Notes: _Uri._ A Swiss canton which, early in the 14th century, united with Unterwalden and Schwytz to form the Swiss Confederation.

_Sempach_ (1386) _and Morgarten_ (1315), both great victories won by the Swiss over the Austrians.

----_Charles the Bold of Burgundy_ was defeated by the Swiss in 1476 at Morat.

_ Perikles_. A great orator and statesman, who, in the middle of the 5th century, B.C., guided the policy of Athens, and made her the centre of literature, philosophy, and art.

_ Phokion _. An Athenian statesman of the 4th century B.C., who opposed Demosthenes in his efforts to resist Philip of Macedon. His reactionary policy was atoned for by the uprightness of his character.]

LIBERTY.

'Tis liberty alone that gives the flower Of fleeting life its l.u.s.tre and perfume; And we are weeds without it. All constraint, Except what wisdom lays on evil men, Is evil: hurts the faculties, impedes Their progress in the road of science: blinds The eyesight of Discovery; and begets, In those that suffer it, a sordid mind b.e.s.t.i.a.l, a meagre intellect, unfit To be the tenant of man's n.o.ble form.

Thee therefore still, blameworthy as thou art, With all thy loss of empire, and though squeez'd By public exigence, till annual food Fails for the craving hunger of the state, Thee I account still happy, and the chief Among the nations, seeing thou art free, My native nook of earth! Thy clime is rude, Replete with vapours, and disposes much All hearts to sadness, and none more than mine: Thine unadult'rate manners are less soft And plausible than social life requires, And thou hast need of discipline and art, To give thee what politer France receives From nature's bounty--that humane address And sweetness, without which no pleasure is In converse, either starv'd by cold reserve, Or flush'd with fierce dispute, a senseless brawl-- Yet being free, I love thee; for the sake Of that one feature can be well content, Disgrac'd as thou hast been, poor as thou art, To seek no sublunary rest beside.

But, once enslav'd, farewell! I could endure Chains nowhere patiently; and chains at home, Where I am free by birthright, not at all.

Then what were left of roughness in the grain Of British natures, wanting its excuse That it belongs to freemen, would disgust And shock me. I should then with double pain Feel all the rigour of thy fickle clime; And, if I must bewail the blessing lost, For which our Hampdens and our Sydneys bled, I would at least bewail it under skies Milder, among a people less austere; In scenes, which, having never known me free, Would not reproach me with the loss I felt.

Do I forebode impossible events, And tremble at vain dreams? Heaven grant I may!

But the age of virtuous politics is past, And we are deep in that of cold pretence.

Patriots are grown too shrewd to be sincere, And we too wise to trust them. He that takes Deep in his soft credulity the stamp Design'd by loud declaimers on the part Of liberty, themselves the slaves of l.u.s.t, Incurs derision for his easy faith, And lack of knowledge, and with cause enough: For when was public virtue to be found, Where private was not? Can he love the whole, Who loves no part? He be a nation's friend, Who is in truth the friend of no man there?

Can he be strenuous in his country's cause, Who slights the charities, for whose dear sake That country, if at all, must be beloved?

Cowper.

[Notes: _Hampden_--_Sydney_. (See previous note on them)

_He that takes deep in his soft credulity, &c., i.e.,_ he that credulously takes in the impression which demagogues, who claim to speak on behalf of liberty, intend that he should take.

_Delude_. A violent torrent, displacing earth in its course.

_Strid_. A yawning chasm between rocks.

_The Battle of Culloden_ (1746) closed the Jacobite rebellion of 1745 by the defeat of the Highlanders, and with it the last hopes of the Stuart cause. The Duke of c.u.mberland was the leader of the Hanoverian army.]

MY WINTER GARDEN.

No one is less inclined to depreciate that magnificent winter-garden at the Crystal Palace: yet let me, if I choose, prefer my own; I argue that, in the first place, it is far larger. You may drive, I hear, through the grand one at Chatsworth for a quarter of a mile. You may ride through mine for fifteen miles on end. I prefer, too, to any gla.s.s roof which Sir Joseph Paxton ever planned, that dome above my head some three miles high, of soft dappled grey and yellow cloud, through the vast lattice-work whereof the blue sky peeps, and sheds down tender gleams on yellow bogs, and softly rounded heather knolls, and pale chalk ranges gleaming far away. But, above all, I glory in my evergreens. What winter-garden can compare for them with mine? True, I have but four kinds--Scotch fir, holly, furze, and the heath; and by way of relief to them, only brows of brown fern, sheets of yellow bog-gra.s.s, and here and there a leafless birch, whose purple tresses are even more lovely to my eye than those fragrant green ones which she puts on in spring. Well: in painting as in music, what effects are more grand than those produced by the scientific combination, in endless new variety, of a few simple elements? Enough for me is the one purple birch; the bright hollies round its stem sparkling with scarlet beads; the furze-patch, rich with its lacework of interwoven light and shade, tipped here and there with a golden bud; the deep soft heather carpet, which invites you to lie down and dream for hours; and behind all, the wall of red fir-stems, and the dark fir-roof with its jagged edges a mile long, against the soft grey sky.

An ugly, straight-edged, monotonous fir-plantation? Well, I like it, outside and inside. I need no saw-edge of mountain peaks to stir up my imagination with the sense of the sublime, while I can watch the saw-edge of those fir peaks against the red sunset. They are my Alps; little ones, it may be: but after all, as I asked before, what is size?

A phantom of our brain; an optical delusion. Grandeur, if you will consider wisely, consists in form, and not in size: and to the eye of the philosopher, the curve drawn on a paper two inches long, is just as magnificent, just as symbolic of divine mysteries and melodies, as when embodied in the span of some cathedral roof. Have you eyes to see? Then lie down on the gra.s.s, and look near enough to see something more of what is to be seen; and you will find tropic jungles in every square foot of turf; mountain cliffs and debacles at the mouth of every rabbit burrow: dark strids, tremendous cataracts, "deep glooms and sudden glories," in every foot-broad rill which wanders through the turf. All is there for you to see, if you will but rid yourself of "that idol of s.p.a.ce;" and Nature, as everyone will tell you who has seen dissected an insect under the microscope, is as grand and graceful in her smallest as in her hugest forms.