The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 07, No. 40, February, 1861

Dr. Doddridge's famous Colonel Gardiner came to reside in Minister Carlyle's parish, and told the story of his remarkable conversion, with his own lips, to the clergyman. The hook which turned him from his wicked career was Gurnall's "Christian Armor," a volume placed many years before, by a mother's hand, in his trunk, and until then neglected. Young Carlyle hoard Gardiner tell the story of his change of life several times to different sets of people, and he thought Doddridge had marred the tale by introducing the incident of a blaze of light, which the Colonel himself never spoke of having seen, when he related his conversion.

When Alexander was eleven years old, he took a little journey with his father and another clergyman by the name of Jardine; and the two pious, elderly gentlemen, having a great turn for fun and buffoonery, made sport wherever they went. Turning their wigs hind-part foremost, and making faces, they delighted in diverting the children they encountered on the way.

Of many of the incidents of the Porteous Mob young Carlyle was a witness. He was in the Tolbooth Church, at Edinburgh, when Robertson, a condemned smuggler, who was brought in to listen to the discourse and prayers before execution, made his escape. The congregation were coming into church while all the bells were ringing, when the criminal, watching his opportunity, sprang suddenly over a pew, and was next heard of in Holland. When, a few weeks afterwards, Wilson, another smuggler, was executed, Carlyle, with some of his school-fellows, was in a window on the north side of the Grass-Market, and heard Porteous order his guard to fire on the people. A young lad, who had been killed by a slug entering his head, was brought into the house where the boys were on that occasion.

In the summer of 1737, young Carlyle might have been seen during the evening hours walking anxiously about the Prestonpans fields. That season he had lost one of his fellow-pupils and dearest friends, and they had often agreed together that whichever might die first should appear there to the other, and reveal the secrets beyond the barrier. And so the survivor paced the meadows, hoping to meet his old companion, who never appeared. In November of that year he was at college, and his acquaintance with Robertson, afterwards the eminent historian, then began. John Home, celebrated at a later period as the author of "Douglas," also became an intimate friend. He now decided to choose a profession, and had wellnigh concluded an agreement with two surgeons to study theirs, when he became disgusted with the meanness of the doctors, who had bought for dissection the body of a child of a poor tailor for six shillings, the price asked being six shillings and sixpence, from which they made the needy man abate the sixpence. Turning from the niggardly surgeons, he enrolled his name as a student of divinity, and was frequently in Edinburgh attending the lectures at Divinity Hall. Wonderfully cheap was the living in those days, when, at the Edinburgh ordinaries, a good dinner could be had for fourpence, small beer included. John Witherspoon, years after a member of the American Congress, then a frank, generous young fellow, was a companion of Carlyle at this period, and they often went fishing together in the streams near Gifford Hall.

The city of Glasgow, whither young Carlyle had gone to pursue his studies, was at this time far inferior in point of commerce to what it afterwards became. The tobacco-trade with the American colonies and the traffic in sugar and rum with the West Indies were the chief branches of business. Carlyle did not find the merchants of those days interesting or learned people, though they held a weekly club, where they discussed the nature and principle of trade, and invited Alexander to join it. But he found life in Glasgow very dull, and was constantly complaining that there was neither a teacher of French nor of music in the town. There was but one concert during the two winters he spent there. Post-chaises and hackney-coaches were unknown, their places being supplied by three or four old sedan-chairs, which did a brisk business in carrying midwives about in the night, and old ladies to church and the dancing-assemblies. The principal merchants began their business early in the morning, and took dinner about noon with their families at home. Afterwards they resorted to the coffee-house, to read the newspapers and enjoy a bowl of punch. Until an arch fellow from Dublin came to be master of the chief coffee-house, nine o'clock was the hour for these worthy mercantile gentlemen to be at home in the evening. The seductive Irish stranger began his wiles by placing a few nice cold relishing things on the table, and so gradually led the way to hot suppers and midnight symposia. Towards the end of his college-session, Carlyle was introduced to a club which gave him great satisfaction. The principal member was Robert Simson, the celebrated mathematician. Simson was a great humorist, and was particularly averse to the company of ladies. Matthew Stewart, afterwards Professor of Mathematics at Edinburgh, was a constant attendant at this club.

On the breaking out of the Rebellion of 1745, the young divinity-student, having returned to Edinburgh, joined the Volunteers, and entered warmly into all the bustle and business of those exciting days. In the Battle of Prestonpans he took part, and was active to the end. When Prince Charles Edward issued a proclamation of pardon to the Volunteers, Carlyle went down to the Abbey Court to see him. The Prince mounted his horse, while the young man stood by, and rode away to the east side of Arthur's Seat. Charles was at that time a good-looking gentleman, of about five feet ten inches, with dark red hair and black eyes.

One Monday morning in October, a hundred and fifteen years ago, young Carlyle set out for Rotterdam, on his way to Leyden, to join the British students there. Among them he found Charles Townshend and John Wilkes, names afterwards famous in English politics. With Wilkes he became intimate, and many a spirited talk they had together in their daily rambles.

But we cannot dwell upon the incidents of Carlyle's student-life on the Continent. Soon after his return to Scotland he made acquaintance with Smollett, whose lively, agreeable manners rendered him universally popular. Thomson, the author of "The Seasons," and Armstrong the poet, were also at this time among his friends. In 1746 he preached his first sermon before the Presbytery of Haddington, and got "universal approbation," especially from one young lady, to whom he had been long attached. Robertson the historian and Home the dramatist were now among his neighbors, and no doubt used their influence in getting the young clergyman a living. He finally settled at Inveresk, where his life was a very pleasant round of cares and duties. Hume, Adam Smith, Blair, Smollett, and Robertson now figure largely in his personal record, so that he had no lack of genial companions. Adam Smith he describes as "a very absent man in society, moving his lips, talking to himself, and smiling, in the midst of large companies." Robertson was a very different person, and held all the conversation-threads in his own fingers, forgetting, alas! sometimes, that he had not been present in many a scene which he described as an eye-witness.

Carlyle went some distance on the way toward London with Home, when he carried his tragedy of "Douglas" for examination to the critics. Six other clergymen, accompanied the precious manuscript on that expedition, and the fun was prodigious. Garrick read the play and pronounced it totally unfit for the stage! "Douglas" was afterwards brought out in Edinburgh with unbounded success. David Hume ran about crying it up as the first performance he world had seen for half a century.

Carlyle's visit to Shenstone is very graphically described in the "Autobiography." The poet was then "a large, heavy, fat man, dressed in white clothes and silver lace." One night in Edinburgh, Dr. Robertson gave a small supper-party to "the celebrated Dr. Franklin," and Carlyle met him that evening at table. They came together afterwards several times.

But we must refer our readers to the book itself, our limits not allowing more space for a glance at one of the most entertaining works in modern biography.

The Laws of Race, as connected with Slavery. By the Author of "The Law of the Territories," "Rustic Rhymes," etc. Philadelphia: W.P. Hazard. 1860. 8vo. pp. 70.

There is no lack of talk and writing among us on political topics; but there is great lack of independent and able thought concerning them. The disputes and the manoeuvres of parties interfere with the study and recognition of the active principles which silently mould the national character and history. The double-faced platforms of conventions, the loose manifestoes of itinerant candidates for the Presidency, the rhetorical misrepresentations of "campaign documents," form the staple of our political literature.

The writer of the pamphlet before us is one of the few men who not only think for themselves, nut whose thoughts deserve attention. His essay on "The Law of the Territories" was distinguished not more by its sound reasoning than by the candor of its statements and the calmness of its tone and temper. If his later essay, on "The Laws of Race, as connected with Slavery," be on the whole less satisfactory, this is to be attributed, not to any want in it of the same qualities of thought and style as were displayed in his earlier work, but to the greater complexify and difficulty of the subject itself. The question of Race, so far as it affects actual national conditions, is one of the deepest and most intricate which can be presented to the student of politics. It is impossible to investigate it without meeting with difficulties which in the present state of knowledge cannot be solved, or without opening paths of speculation which no human foresight can trace to their end. This is, indeed, no reason for not attempting its discussion; and Mr. Fisher, in treating it in its relation to Slavery, has done good work, and has brought forward important, though much neglected considerations. He endeavors to place the whole subject of the relations of the white and the black races in this country on philosophic grounds, and to deduce the principles which must govern them from the teachings of ethnological science, or, in other words, from natural laws which human device can neither abrogate nor alter.

From these teachings he derives the three following conclusions.

"The white race must of necessity, by reason of its superiority, govern the negro, wherever the two live together.

"The two races can never amalgamate, and form a new species of man, but must remain forever distinct,—though mulattoes and other grades always exist, because constantly renewed.

"Each race has a tendency to occupy exclusively that portion of the country suited to its nature."

If true, these conclusions are of the utmost importance. They are higher laws, which "must rule our politics and our destiny, either by the Constitution or over it, either with the Union or without it; and no wit or force of man is strong enough to resist them." It is to the exposition of the results which follow from these conclusions, assuming them to be true, that the larger part of the present essay is devoted.

That these propositions express, or at least point the way to essential truths, we are fully persuaded. But we are not ready to accept all the inferences which the author draws from them, or to admit that they afford sufficient basis for some of his minor assumptions.

Arguing from his first conclusion, the author draws the inference that "slavery is the necessary result" of the nature of the black and of the white man. "The negro is by nature indolent and improvident." "He is also ignorant." "He requires restraint and guidance"; "otherwise he would sink into helpless, hopeless vice, idleness, and misery." But in these words, and in others to the same purport, Mr. Fisher assumes that the nature of the black is incapable of such improvement as to make what he calls the necessary condition of servitude needless in the interest of either race. We are surprised that so good a reasoner should speak of the ignorance of the black as a natural disqualification for independence, and the more so, because, in another passage, Mr. Fisher says, with truth, "We darken his mind with ignorance." That some form of subjection of the negro may be necessary for a time that extends far into the future is a point we will not dispute; but that slavery, as that word is generally understood, is the necessary result of his nature and of our nature we believe to be utterly untrue. The whole history of American slavery, far from exhibiting the negro as incapable of improvement, shows him making a slow and irregular advance in the development of intellectual and moral qualities, under circumstances singularly unfavorable. It is the plea of the advocates of the slave-trade, that the black is civilized by contact with the white. The plea is not without truth. It is the universal testimony of slave-owners, and the common observation of travellers, that the city and house slaves, that is, those who are brought into most constant and close relations with the whites, show higher mental development than those who are confined to the fields. The experiment of education, continued for more than one generation, has never been tried. The black is in many of his endowments inferior to the white; but until he and his children and his children's children have shown an incapacity to be raised by a suitable training, honestly given, to an intellectual and moral condition that shall fit them for self-dependence, we have no right to assert that slavery is a necessary condition, if in the meaning of necessary we include the idea of permanence. It is not needful to present here other objections to this sweeping assertion. They are old, well-known, and unanswerable.

But leaving this and other points on which we find ourselves at issue with Mr. Fisher, we come to what we regard as the most important part of his pamphlet,—the results which he shows to follow from the law, that "each race has a tendency to occupy exclusively that portion of the country suited to its nature." In the States that lie on the Gulf of Mexico the negro "has found a congenial climate and obtained a permanent foothold." "The negro multiplies there; the white man dwindles and decays." We should be glad to quote at length the striking pages in which Mr. Fisher shows the prospect of the ultimate and not distant ascendency of the black race in this new Africa. The considerations he presents are of vital consequence to the South, of consequence only less than vital to the North. But by the side of "New-Africa" are States and Territories in which the black race has little or no foothold. Free, civilized, and prosperous communities are brought face to face, as it were, with the mixed and degenerating populations of the Slave country. In the Free States the white race is increasing in numbers and advancing in prosperity with unexampled rapidity. In the Slave States the black race is growing in far greater proportion than the white, the most important elements of prosperity are becoming exhausted, and the forces of civilization are incompetent to hold their own against the ever-increasing weight of barbarism. Shall this new Africa push its boundaries beyond their present limits? Shall more territory be yielded to the already wide-spread African, race? It is not the question, whether the unoccupied spaces of the South and West shall be settled by Northern white emigrants with their natural property, or by Southern white emigrants with their legal property,—and there an end; but it is the question, whether New England or New Africa shall extend her limits,—whether the country shall be occupied a century hence by a civilized or by a barbarous race. Every rood of ground yielded to the pretensions of the masters of slaves is so much of the heirloom of freedom and of civilization lost without hope of recovery. Slavery is transient.

As an institution, such as it has developed itself in our Southern States, it has already, given tokens of decay. But the qualities of race are so slowly affected by change as to admit of being called constant and permanent. The predominant influence of the blacks in the Cotton States is already (even putting aside the results of slavery) exhibiting itself in the lowering of the whites. These States are becoming uninhabitable for the whites,—not by reason of climate, or of slavery as an institution, but by reason of the operation of the inevitable increase of the slaves. They must have the land, and the stronger race will be driven out by the weaker, on account of the preponderance of their numbers and the vis inertice of their natures. There is no room in the United States, or in any of their unsettled territory, for the expansion of this transatlantic Africa. Where the black race is now settled it will stay, but it must be confined within its present limits.

We do not look upon the simple secession of the Slave States, or of any one of them, as dangerous, so far as the extension of slavery is concerned,—rather, on the contrary, as likely to end the great debate by securing all unoccupied territory to the North, to freedom, and to the white races. It is only, if an attempt should be made, for the sake of what is miscalled peace, and for the sake of the Union, to conciliate the misguided and unfortunate people of the South by compromise or concession, that we fear the consequences.

The responsibility under which we are to act is not for our own moral convictions alone, but also for the happiness of all future times. There is no room for concession, no space for compromise, in the settlement of the question of the prevalence of the black or of the white race on this continent,—in other words, the prevalence of liberty and Christianity and all their attendant blessings, or that of ignorance and barbarism with their train. "We will decide this question," says Mr. Fisher, whose words were written before the necessity for decision was so distinctly presented as at present, "we will decide it, if we can, as a united people; but if we cannot, if cotton and slavery and the negro have already weakened our Southern brethren by their spells and enchantments, so that the South cannot decide according to the traditions and impulses of our race, then we of the North will still decide it, as by right we may,—by right of reason, of race, and of law."

The Conduct of Life. By R.W. EMERSON Boston: Ticknor & Fields. 16mo. pp. 288.

It is a singular fact, that Mr. Emerson is the most steadily attractive lecturer in America. Into that somewhat cold-waterish region adventurers of the sensation kind come down now and then with a splash, to become disregarded King Logs before the next season. But Mr. Emerson always draws. A lecturer now for something like a quarter of a century, one of the pioneers of the lecturing system, the charm of his voice, his manner, and his matter has never lost its power over his earlier hearers, and continually winds new ones in its enchanting meshes. What they do not fully understand they take on trust, and listen, saying to themselves, as the old poet of Sir Philip Sidney,—

 
"A sweet, attractive, kind of grace,
A full assurance given by looks,
Continual comfort in a face,
The lineaments of gospel books."
 

We call it a singular fact, because we Yankees are thought to be fond of the spread-eagle style, and nothing can be more remote from that than his. We are reckoned a practical folk, who would rather hear about a new air-tight stove than about Plato; yet our favorite teacher's practicality is not in the least of the Poor Richard variety. If he have any Buncombe constituency, it is that unrealized commonwealth of philosophers which Plotinus proposed to establish; and if he were to make an almanac, his directions to farmers would be something like this:—"OCTOBER: Indian Summer; now is the time to get in your early Vedas." What, then, is his secret? Is it not that he out-Yankees us all? that his range includes us all? that he is equally at home with the potato-disease and original sin, with pegging shoes and the Over-soul? that, as we try all trades, so has he tried all cultures? and above all, that his mysticism gives us a counterpoise to our super-practicality?

There is no man living to whom, as a writer, so many of us feel and thankfully acknowledge so great an indebtedness for ennobling impulses,—none whom so many cannot abide. What does he mean? ask these last. Where is his system? What is the use of it all? What the deuse have we to do with Brahma? Well, we do not propose to write an essay on Emerson at the fag-end of a February "Atlantic," with Secession longing for somebody to hold it, and Chaos come again in the South Carolina teapot. We will only say that we have found grandeur and consolation in a starlit night without caring to ask what it meant, save grandeur and consolation; we have liked Montaigne, as some ten generations before us have done, without thinking him so systematic as some more eminently tedious (or shall we say tediously eminent?) authors; we have thought roses as good in their way as cabbages, though the latter would have made a better show in the witness-box, if cross-examined as to their usefulness; and as for Brahma, why, he can take care of himself, and won't bite us at any rate.

The bother with Mr. Emerson is, that, though he writes in prose, he is essentially a poet. If you undertake to paraphrase what he says, and to reduce it to words of one syllable for infant minds, you will make as sad work of it as the good monk with his analysis of Homer in the "Epistolae Obscurorum Virorum." We look upon him as one of the few men of genius whom our age has produced, and there needs no better proof of it than his masculine faculty of fecundating other minds. Search for his eloquence in his books and you will perchance miss it, but meanwhile you will find that it has kindled all your thoughts. For choice and pith of language he belongs to a better age than ours, and might rub shoulders with Fuller and Browne,—though he does use that abominable word, reliable. His eye for a fine, telling phrase that will carry true is like that of a backwoodsman for a rifle; and he will dredge you up a choice word from the ooze of Cotton Mather himself. A diction at once so rich and so homely as his we know not where to match in these days of writing by the page; it is like homespun cloth-of-gold. The many cannot miss his meaning, and only the few can find it. It is the open secret of all true genius. What does he mean, quotha? He means inspiring hints, a divining-rod to your deeper nature, "plain living and high thinking." We meant only to welcome this book, and not to review it. Doubtless we might pick our quarrel with it here and there; but all that our readers care to know is, that it contains essays on Fate, Power, Wealth, Culture, Behavior, Worship, Considerations by the Way, Beauty, and Illusions. They need no invitation to Emerson. "Would you know," says Goethe, "the ripest cherries? Ask the boys and the blackbirds." He does not advise you to inquire of the crows.