For instance, assuming to myself the power of marshalling theaforesaid procession, I direct a trumpeter to send forth a blastloud enough to be heard from hence to China; and a herald, withworld-pervading voice, to make proclamation for a certain classof mortals to take their places. What shall be their principle ofunion? After all, an external one, in comparison with many thatmight be found, yet far more real than those which the world hasselected for a similar purpose. Let all who are afflicted withlike physical diseases form themselves into ranks.
Our first attempt at classification is not very successful. Itmay gratify the pride of aristocracy to reflect that disease,more than any other circumstance of human life, pays dueobservance to the distinctions which rank and wealth, and povertyand lowliness, have established among mankind. Some maladies arerich and precious, and only to be acquired by the right ofinheritance or purchased with gold. Of this kind is the gout,which serves as a bond of brotherhood to the purple-visagedgentry, who obey the herald's voice, and painfully hobble fromall civilized regions of the globe to take their post in thegrand procession. In mercy to their toes, let us hope that themarch may not be long. The Dyspeptics, too, are people of goodstanding in the world. For them the earliest salmon is caught inour eastern rivers, and the shy woodcock stains the dry leaveswith his blood in his remotest haunts, and the turtle comes fromthe far Pacific Islands to be gobbled up in soup. They can affordto flavor all their dishes with indolence, which, in spite of thegeneral opinion, is a sauce more exquisitely piquant thanappetite won by exercise. Apoplexy is another highly respectabledisease. We will rank together all who have the symptom ofdizziness in the brain, and as fast as any drop by the way supplytheir places with new members of the board of aldermen.
On the other hand, here come whole tribes of people whosephysical lives are but a deteriorated variety of life, andthemselves a meaner species of mankind; so sad an effect has beenwrought by the tainted breath of cities, scanty and unwholesomefood, destructive modes of labor, and the lack of those moralsupports that might partially have counteracted such badinfluences. Behold here a train of house painters, all afflictedwith a peculiar sort of colic. Next in place we will marshalthose workmen in cutlery, who have breathed a fatal disorder intotheir lungs with the impalpable dust of steel. Tailors andshoemakers, being sedentary men, will chiefly congregate into onepart of the procession and march under similar banners ofdisease; but among them we may observe here and there a sicklystudent, who has left his health between the leaves of classicvolumes; and clerks, likewise, who have caught their deaths onhigh official stools; and men of genius too, who have writtensheet after sheet with pens dipped in their heart's blood. Theseare a wretched quaking, short-breathed set. But what is thiscloud of pale-cheeked, slender girls, who disturb the ear withthe multiplicity of their short, dry coughs? They areseamstresses, who have plied the daily and nightly needle in theservice of master tailors and close-fisted contractors, until nowit is almost time for each to hem the borders of her own shroud.Consumption points their place in the procession. With their sadsisterhood are intermingled many youthful maidens who havesickened in aristocratic mansions, and for whose aid science hasunavailingly searched its volumes, and whom breathless love haswatched. In our ranks the rich maiden and the poor seamstress maywalk arm in arm. We might find innumerable other instances, wherethe bond of mutual disease--not to speak of nation-sweepingpestilence--embraces high and low, and makes the king a brotherof the clown. But it is not hard to own that disease is thenatural aristocrat. Let him keep his state, and have hisestablished orders of rank, and wear his royal mantle of thecolor of a fever flush and let the noble and wealthy boast theirown physical infirmities, and display their symptoms as thebadges of high station. All things considered, these are asproper subjects of human pride as any relations of human rankthat men can fix upon.
Sound again, thou deep-breathed trumpeter! and herald, with thyvoice of might, shout forth another summons that shall reach theold baronial castles of Europe, and the rudest cabin of ourwestern wilderness! What class is next to take its place in theprocession of mortal life? Let it be those whom the gifts ofintellect have united in a noble brotherhood.
Ay, this is a reality, before which the conventional distinctionsof society melt away like a vapor when we would grasp it with thehand. Were Byron now alive, and Burns, the first would come fromhis ancestral abbey, flinging aside, although unwillingly, theinherited honors of a thousand years, to take the arm of themighty peasant who grew immortal while he stooped behind hisplough. These are gone; but the hall, the farmer's fireside, thehut, perhaps the palace, the counting-room, the workshop, thevillage, the city, life's high places and low ones, may allproduce their poets, whom a common temperament pervades like anelectric sympathy. Peer or ploughman, we will muster them pair bypair and shoulder to shoulder. Even society, in its mostartificial state, consents to this arrangement. These factorygirls from Lowell shall mate themselves with the pride ofdrawing-rooms and literary circles, the bluebells in fashion'snosegay, the Sapphos, and Montagues, and Nortons of the age.Other modes of intellect bring together as strange companies.Silk-gowned professor of languages, give your arm to this sturdyblacksmith, and deem yourself honored by the conjunction, thoughyou behold him grimy from the anvil. All varieties of humanspeech are like his mother tongue to this rare man.Indiscriminately let those take their places, of whatever rankthey come, who possess the kingly gifts to lead armies or to swaya people--Nature's generals, her lawgivers, her kings, and withthem also the deep philosophers who think the thought in onegeneration that is to revolutionize society in the next. With thehereditary legislator in whom eloquence is a far-descendedattainment--a rich echo repeated by powerful voices from Cicerodownward--we will match some wondrous backwoodsman, who hascaught a wild power of language from the breeze among his nativeforest boughs. But we may safely leave these brethren andsisterhood to settle their own congenialities. Our ordinarydistinctions become so trifling, so impalpable, so ridiculouslyvisionary, in comparison with a classification founded on truth,that all talk about the matter is immediately a common place.
Yet the longer I reflect the less am I satisfied with the idea offorming a separate class of mankind on the basis of highintellectual power. At best it is but a higher development ofinnate gifts common to all. Perhaps, moreover, he whose geniusappears deepest and truest excels his fellows in nothing save theknack of expression; he throws out occasionally a lucky hint attruths of which every human soul is profoundly, thoughunutterably, conscious. Therefore, though we suffer thebrotherhood of intellect to march onward together, it may bedoubted whether their peculiar relation will not begin to vanishas soon as the procession shall have passed beyond the circle ofthis present world. But we do not classify for eternity.
And next, let the trumpet pour forth a funereal wail, and theherald's voice give breath in one vast cry to all the groans andgrievous utterances that are audible throughout the earth. Weappeal now to the sacred bond of sorrow, and summon the greatmultitude who labor under similar afflictions to take theirplaces in the march.
How many a heart that would have been insensible to any othercall has responded to the doleful accents of that voice! It hasgone far and wide, and high and low, and left scarcely a mortalroof unvisited. Indeed, the principle is only too universal forour purpose, and, unless we limit it, will quite break up ourclassification of mankind, and convert the whole procession intoa funeral train. We will therefore be at some pains todiscriminate. Here comes a lonely rich man: he has built a noblefabric for his dwelling-house, with a front of statelyarchitecture and marble floors and doors of precious woods; thewhole structure is as beautiful as a dream and as substantial asthe native rock. But the visionary shapes of a long posterity,for whose home this mansion was intended, have faded intonothingness since the death of the founder's only son. The richman gives a glance at his sable garb in one of the splendidmirrors of his drawing-room, and descending a flight of loftysteps instinctively offers his arm to yonder poverty strickenwidow in the rusty black bonnet, and with a check apron over herpatched gown. The sailor boy, who was her sole earthly stay, waswashed overboard in a late tempest. This couple from the palaceand the almshouse are but the types of thousands more whorepresent the dark tragedy of life and seldom quarrel for theupper parts. Grief is such a leveller, with its own dignity andits own humility, that the noble and the peasant, the beggar andthe monarch, will waive their pretensions to external rankwithout the officiousness of interference on our part. Ifpride--the influence of the world's false distinctions--remain inthe heart, then sorrow lacks the earnestness which makes it holyand reverend. It loses its reality and becomes a miserableshadow. On this ground we have an opportunity to assign overmultitudes who would willingly claim places here to other partsof the procession. If the mourner have anything dearer than hisgrief he must seek his true position elsewhere. There are so manyunsubstantial sorrows which the necessity of our mortal statebegets on idleness, that an observer, casting aside sentiment, issometimes led to question whether there be any real woe, exceptabsolute physical suffering and the loss of closest friends. Acrowd who exhibit what they deem to be broken hearts--and amongthem many lovelorn maids and bachelors, and men of disappointedambition in arts or politics, and the poor who were once rich, orwho have sought to be rich in vain--the great majority of thesemay ask admittance into some other fraternity. There is no roomhere. Perhaps we may institute a separate class where suchunfortunates will naturally fall into the procession. Meanwhilelet them stand aside and patiently await their time.
If our trumpeter can borrow a note from the doomsday trumpetblast, let him sound it now. The dread alarum should make theearth quake to its centre, for the herald is about to addressmankind with a summons to which even the purest mortal may besensible of some faint responding echo in his breast. In manybosoms it will awaken a still small voice more terrible than itsown reverberating uproar.
The hideous appeal has swept around the globe. Come, all yeguilty ones, and rank yourselves in accordance with thebrotherhood of crime. This, indeed, is an awful summons. I almosttremble to look at the strange partnerships that begin to beformed, reluctantly, but by the in vincible necessity of like tolike in this part of the procession. A forger from the stateprison seizes the arm of a distinguished financier. Howindignantly does the latter plead his fair reputation upon'Change, and insist that his operations, by their magnificence ofscope, were removed into quite another sphere of morality thanthose of his pitiful companion! But let him cut the connection ifhe can. Here comes a murderer with his clanking chains, and pairshimself--horrible to tell--with as pure and upright a man, in allobservable respects, as ever partook of the consecrated bread andwine. He is one of those, perchance the most hopeless of allsinners, who practise such an exemplary system of outward duties,that even a deadly crime may be hidden from their own sight andremembrance, under this unreal frostwork. Yet he now finds hisplace. Why do that pair of flaunting girls, with the pert,affected laugh and the sly leer at the by-standers, intrudethemselves into the same rank with yonder decorous matron, andthat somewhat prudish maiden? Surely these poor creatures, bornto vice as their sole and natural inheritance, can be no fitassociates for women who have been guarded round about by all theproprieties of domestic life, and who could not err unless theyfirst created the opportunity. Oh no; it must be merely theimpertinence of those unblushing hussies; and we can only wonderhow such respectable ladies should have responded to a summonsthat was not meant for them.
We shall make short work of this miserable class, each member ofwhich is entitled to grasp any other member's hand, by that viledegradation wherein guilty error has buried all alike. The foulfiend to whom it properly belongs must relieve us of ourloathsome task. Let the bond servants of sin pass on. But neitherman nor woman, in whom good predominates, will smile or sneer,nor bid the Rogues' March be played, in derision of their array.Feeling within their breasts a shuddering sympathy, which atleast gives token of the sin that might have been, they willthank God for any place in the grand procession of humanexistence, save among those most wretched ones. Many, however,will be astonished at the fatal impulse that drags themthitherward. Nothing is more remarkable than the variousdeceptions by which guilt conceals itself from the perpetrator'sconscience, and oftenest, perhaps, by the splendor of itsgarments. Statesmen, rulers, generals, and all men who act overan extensive sphere, are most liable to be deluded in this way;they commit wrong, devastation, and murder, on so grand a scale,that it impresses them as speculative rather than actual; but inour procession we find them linked in detestable conjunction withthe meanest criminals whose deeds have the vulgarity of pettydetails. Here the effect of circumstance and accident is doneaway, and a man finds his rank according to the spirit of hiscrime, in whatever shape it may have been developed.
We have called the Evil; now let us call the Good. The trumpet'sbrazen throat should pour heavenly music over the earth, and theherald's voice go forth with the sweetness of an angel's accents,as if to summon each upright man to his reward. But how is this?Does none answer to the call? Not one: for the just, the pure,the true, and an who might most worthily obey it, shrink sadlyback, as most conscious of error and imperfection. Then let thesummons be to those whose pervading principle is Love. Thisclassification will embrace all the truly good, and none in whosesouls there exists not something that may expand itself into aheaven, both of well-doing and felicity.
The first that presents himself is a man of wealth, who hasbequeathed the bulk of his property to a hospital; his ghost,methinks, would have a better right here than his living body.But here they come, the genuine benefactors of their race. Somehave wandered about the earth with pictures of bliss in theirimagination, and with hearts that shrank sensitively from theidea of pain and woe, yet have studied all varieties of miserythat human nature can endure. The prison, the insane asylum, thesqualid chamber of the almshouse, the manufactory where the demonof machinery annihilates the human soul, and the cotton fieldwhere God's image becomes a beast of burden; to these and everyother scene where man wrongs or neglects his brother, theapostles of humanity have penetrated. This missionary, black withIndia's burning sunshine, shall give his arm to a pale-facedbrother who has made himself familiar with the infected alleysand loathsome haunts of vice in one of our own cities. Thegenerous founder of a college shall be the partner of a maidenlady of narrow substance, one of whose good deeds it has been togather a little school of orphan children. If the mighty merchantwhose benefactions are reckoned by thousands of dollars deemhimself worthy, let him join the procession with her whose lovehas proved itself by watchings at the sick-bed, and all thoselowly offices which bring her into actual contact with diseaseand wretchedness. And with those whose impulses have guided themto benevolent actions, we will rank others to whom Providence hasassigned a different tendency and different powers. Men who havespent their lives in generous and holy contemplation for thehuman race; those who, by a certain heavenliness of spirit, havepurified the atmosphere around them, and thus supplied a mediumin which good and high things may be projected andperformed--give to these a lofty place among the benefactors ofmankind, although no deed, such as the world calls deeds, may berecorded of them. There are some individuals of whom we cannotconceive it proper that they should apply their hands to anyearthly instrument, or work out any definite act; and others,perhaps not less high, to whom it is an essential attribute tolabor in body as well as spirit for the welfare of theirbrethren. Thus, if we find a spiritual sage whose unseen,inestimable influence has exalted the moral standard of mankind,we will choose for his companion some poor laborer who haswrought for love in the potato field of a neighbor poorer thanhimself.
We have summoned this various multitude--and, to the credit ofour nature, it is a large one--on the principle of Love. It issingular, nevertheless, to remark the shyness that exists amongmany members of the present class, all of whom we might expect torecognize one another by the freemasonry of mutual goodness, andto embrace like brethren, giving God thanks for such variousspecimens of human excellence. But it is far otherwise. Each sectsurrounds its own righteousness with a hedge of thorns. It isdifficult for the good Christian to acknowledge the good Pagan;almost impossible for the good Orthodox to grasp the hand of thegood Unitarian, leaving to their Creator to settle the matters indispute, and giving their mutual efforts strongly and trustinglyto whatever right thing is too evident to be mistaken. Thenagain, though the heart be large, yet the mind is often of suchmoderate dimensions as to be exclusively filled up with one idea.When a good man has long devoted himself to a particular kind ofbeneficence--to one species of reform--he is apt to becomenarrowed into the limits of the path wherein he treads, and tofancy that there is no other good to be done on earth but thatself-same good to which he has put his hand, and in the very modethat best suits his own conceptions. All else is worthless. Hisscheme must be wrought out by the united strength of the wholeworld's stock of love, or the world is no longer worthy of aposition in the universe. Moreover, powerful Truth, being therich grape juice expressed from the vineyard of the ages, has anintoxicating quality, when imbibed by any save a powerfulintellect, and often, as it were, impels the quaffer to quarrelin his cups. For such reasons, strange to say, it is harder tocontrive a friendly arrangement of these brethren of love andrighteousness, in the procession of life. than to unite even thewicked, who, indeed, are chained together by their crimes. Thefact is too preposterous for tears, too lugubrious for laughter.
But, let good men push and elbow one another as they may duringtheir earthly march, all will be peace among them when thehonorable array or their procession shall tread on heavenlyground. There they will doubtless find that they have beenworking each for the other's cause, and that every well-deliveredstroke, which, with an honest purpose any mortal struck, even fora narrow object, was indeed stricken for the universal cause ofgood. Their own view may be bounded by country, creed,profession, the diversities of individual character--but abovethem all is the breadth of Providence. How many who have deemedthemselves antagonists will smile hereafter, when they look backupon the world's wide harvest field, and perceive that, inunconscious brotherhood, they were helping to bind the selfsamesheaf!
But, come! The sun is hastening westward, while the march ofhuman life, that never paused before, is delayed by our attemptto rearrange its order. It is desirable to find somecomprehensive principle, that shall render our task easier bybringing thousands into the ranks where hitherto we have broughtone. Therefore let the trumpet, if possible, split its brazenthroat with a louder note than ever, and the herald summon allmortals, who, from whatever cause, have lost, or never found,their proper places in the wold.
Obedient to this call, a great multitude come together, most ofthem with a listless gait, betokening weariness of soul, yet witha gleam of satisfaction in their faces, at a prospect of atlength reaching those positions which, hitherto, they have vainlysought. But here will be another disappointment; for we canattempt no more than merely to associate in one fraternity allwho are afflicted with the same vague trouble. Some great mistakein life is the chief condition of admittance into this class.Here are members of the learned professions, whom Providenceendowed with special gifts for the plough, the forge, and thewheelbarrow, or for the routine of unintellectual business. Wewill assign to them, as partners in the march, those lowlylaborers and handicraftsmen, who have pined, as with a dyingthirst, after the unattainable fountains of knowledge. The latterhave lost less than their companions; yet more, because they deemit infinite. Perchance the two species of unfortunates maycomfort one another. Here are Quakers with the instinct of battlein them; and men of war who should have worn the broad brim.Authors shall be ranked here whom some freak of Nature, makinggame of her poor children, had imbued with the confidence ofgenius and strong desire of fame, but has favored with nocorresponding power; and others, whose lofty gifts wereunaccompanied with the faculty of expression, or any of thatearthly machinery by which ethereal endowments must be manifestedto mankind. All these, therefore, are melancholy laughing-stocks.Next, here are honest and well intentioned persons, who by a wantof tact--by inaccurate perceptions--by a distortingimagination--have been kept continually at cross purposes withthe world and bewildered upon the path of life. Let us see ifthey can confine themselves within the line of our procession. Inthis class, likewise, we must assign places to those who haveencountered that worst of ill success, a higher fortune thantheir abilities could vindicate; writers, actors, painters, thepets of a day, but whose laurels wither unrenewed amid theirhoary hair; politicians, whom some malicious contingency ofaffairs has thrust into conspicuous station, where, while theworld stands gazing at them, the dreary consciousness ofimbecility makes them curse their birth hour. To such men, wegive for a companion him whose rare talents, which perhapsrequire a Revolution for their exercise, are buried in the tombof sluggish circumstances.
Not far from these, we must find room for one whose success hasbeen of the wrong kind; the man who should have lingered in thecloisters of a university, digging new treasures out of theHerculaneum of antique lore, diffusing depth and accuracy ofliterature throughout his country, and thus making for himself agreat and quiet fame. But the outward tendencies around him haveproved too powerful for his inward nature, and have drawn himinto the arena of political tumult, there to contend atdisadvantage, whether front to front, or side by side, with thebrawny giants of actual life. He becomes, it may be, a name forbrawling parties to bandy to and fro, a legislator of the Union;a governor of his native state; an ambassador to the courts ofkings or queens; and the world may deem him a man of happy stars.But not so the wise; and not so himself, when he looks throughhis experience, and sighs to miss that fitness, the oneinvaluable touch which makes all things true and real. So muchachieved, yet how abortive is his life! Whom shall we choose forhis companion? Some weak framed blacksmith, perhaps, whosedelicacy of muscle might have suited a tailor's shopboard betterthan the anvil.
Shall we bid the trumpet sound again? It is hardly worth thewhile. There remain a few idle men of fortune, tavern andgrog-shop loungers, lazzaroni, old bachelors, decaying maidens,and people of crooked intellect or temper, all of whom may findtheir like, or some tolerable approach to it, in the plentifuldiversity of our latter class. There too, as his ultimatedestiny, must we rank the dreamer, who, all his life long, hascherished the idea that he was peculiarly apt for something, butnever could determine what it was; and there the most unfortunateof men, whose purpose it has been to enjoy life's pleasures, butto avoid a manful struggle with its toil and sorrow. Theremainder, if any, may connect themselves with whatever rank ofthe procession they shall find best adapted to their tastes andconsciences. The worst possible fate would be to remain behind,shivering in the solitude of time, while all the world is on themove towards eternity. Our attempt to classify society is nowcomplete. The result may be anything but perfect; yet better--togive it the very lowest praise--than the antique rule of theherald's office, or the modern one of the tax-gatherer, wherebythe accidents and superficial attributes with which the realnature of individuals has least to do, are acted upon as thedeepest characteristics of mankind. Our task is done! Now let thegrand procession move!
Yet pause a while! We had forgotten the Chief Marshal.
Hark! That world-wide swell of solemn music, with the clang of amighty bell breaking forth through its regulated uproar,announces his approach. He comes; a severe, sedate, immovable,dark rider, waving his truncheon of universal sway, as he passesalong the lengthened line, on the pale horse of the Revelation.It is Death! Who else could assume the guidance of a processionthat comprehends all humanity? And if some, among these manymillions, should deem themselves classed amiss, yet let them taketo their hearts the comfortable truth that Death levels us allinto one great brotherhood, and that another state of being willsurely rectify the wrong of this. Then breathe thy wail upon theearth's wailing wind, thou band of melancholy music, made up ofevery sigh that the human heart, unsatisfied, has uttered! Thereis yet triumph in thy tones. And now we move! Beggars in theirrags, and Kings trailing the regal purple in the dust; theWarrior's gleaming helmet; the Priest in his sable robe; thehoary Grandsire, who has run life's circle and come back tochildhood; the ruddy School-boy with his golden curls, friskingalong the march; the Artisan's stuff jacket; the Noble'sstar-decorated coat;--the whole presenting a motley spectacle,yet with a dusky grandeur brooding over it. Onward, onward, intothat dimness where the lights of Time which have blazed along theprocession, are flickering in their sockets! And whither! We knownot; and Death, hitherto our leader, deserts us by the wayside,as the tramp of our innumerable footsteps echoes beyond hissphere. He knows not, more than we, our destined goal. But God,who made us, knows, and will not leave us on our toilsome anddoubtful march, either to wander in infinite uncertainty, orperish by the way!
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