Not a remarkable verse, I think. However, it at least presents a pleasant picture. But I remember well the enchantment which, when twelve years old, I felt in a verse by Mrs. Hemans, which I can now see presents an excessively disagreeable picture. I saw it not then; and when I used to repeat that verse, I know it was without the slightest perception of its meaning. You know the beautiful poem called the "Battle of Morgarten." At least I remember it as beautiful; and I am not going to spoil my recollection by reading it now. Here is the verse:—

"Oh! the sun in heaven fierce havoc viewed,
When the Austrian turned to fly:
And the brave, in the trampling multitude,
Had a fearful death to die!"

As I write that verse, (at which the critical reader will smile,) I am aware that Veal has its hold of me yet. I see nothing of the miserable scene the poet describes; but I hear the waves murmuring on a distant beach, and I see the hills across the sea, the first sea I ever beheld; I see the school to which I went daily; I see the class-room, and the place where I used to sit; I see the faces and hear the voices of my old companions, some dead, one sleeping in the middle of the great Atlantic, many scattered over distant parts of the world, almost all far away. Yes, I feel that I have not quite cast off the witchery of the "Battle of Morgarten." Early associations can give to verse a charm and a hold upon one's heart which no literary excellence, however high, ever could. Look at the first hymns you learned to repeat, and which you used to say at your mother's knee; look at the psalms and hymns you remember hearing sung at church when you were a child: you know how impossible it is for you to estimate these upon their literary merits. They may be almost doggerel; but not Mr. Tennyson can touch you like them! The most effective eloquence is that which is mainly done by the mind to which it is addressed: it is that which touches chords which of themselves yield matchless music; it is that which wakens up trains of old remembrance, and which wafts around you the fragrance of the hawthorn that blossomed and withered many long years since. An English stranger would not think much of the hymns we sing in our Scotch churches: he could not know what many of them are to us. There is a magic about the words. I can discern, indeed, that some of them are mawkish in sentiment, faulty in rhyme, and, on the whole, what you would call extremely unfitted to be sung in public worship, if you were judging of them as new things: but a crowd of associations which are beautiful and touching gathers round the lines which have no great beauty or pathos in themselves.

You were in an extremely Vealy condition, when, having attained the age of fourteen, you sent some verses to the county newspaper, and with simple-hearted elation read them in the corner devoted to what was termed "Original Poetry." It is a pity you did not preserve the newspapers in which you first saw yourself in print, and experienced the peculiar sensation which accompanies that sight. No doubt your verses expressed the gloomiest views of life, and told of the bitter disappointments you had met in your long intercourse with mankind, and especially with womankind. And though you were in a flutter of anxiety and excitement to see whether or not your verses would be printed, your verses probably declared that you had used up life and seen through it,—that your heart was no longer to be stirred by aught on earth,—and that, in short, you cared nothing for anything. You could see nothing fine then in being good, cheerful, and happy; but you thought it a grand thing to be a gloomy man, of a very dark complexion, with blood on your conscience, upwards of six feet high, and accustomed to wander from land to land, like Childe Harold. You were extremely Vealy when you used to fancy that you were sure to be a very great man, and to think how proud your relations would some day be of you, and how you would come back and excite a great commotion at the place where you used to be a school-boy. And it is because the world has still left some impressionable spot in your hearts, my readers, that you still have so many fond associations with "the school-boy spot we ne'er forget, though we are there forgot." They were Vealy days, though pleasant to remember, my old school-companions, in which you used to go to the dancing-school, (it was in a gloomy theatre, seldom entered by actors,) in which you fell in love with several young ladies about eleven years old, and (being permitted occasionally to select your own partners) made frantic rushes to obtain the hand of one of the beauties of that small society. Those were the days in which you thought, that, when you grew up, it would be a very fine thing to be a pirate, bandit, or corsair, rather than a clergyman, barrister, or the like; even a cheerful outlaw like Robin Hood did not come up to your views; you would rather have been a man like Captain Kyd, stained with various crimes of extreme atrocity, which would entirely preclude the possibility of returning to respectable society, and given to moody laughter in solitary moments. Oh, what truly asinine developments the human being must go through, before arriving at the stage of common sense! You were very Vealy, too, when you used to think it a fine thing to astonish people by expressing awful sentiments,—such as that you thought Mahometans better than Christians, that you would like to be dissected after death, that you did not care what you got for dinner, that you liked learning your lessons better than going out to play, that you would rather read Euclid than "Ivanhoe," and the like. It may be remarked, that this peculiar Vealiness is not confined to youth; I have seen it appearing very strongly in men with gray hair. Another manifestation of Vealiness, which appears both in age and youth, is the entertaining a strong belief that kings, noblemen, and baronets are always in a condition of ecstatic happiness. I have known people pretty far advanced in life, who not only believed that monarchs must be perfectly happy, but that all who were permitted to continue in their presence would catch a considerable degree of the mysterious bliss which was their portion. I have heard a sane man, rather acute and clever in many things, seriously say, "If a man cannot be happy in the presence of his Sovereign, where can he be happy?"

And yet, absurd and foolish as is Moral Vealiness, there is something fine about it. Many of the old and dear associations most cherished in human hearts are of the nature of Veal. It is sad to think that most of the romance of life is unquestionably so. All spooniness, all the preposterous idolization of some one who is just like anybody else, all love, (in the narrow sense in which the word is understood by novel-readers,) you feel, when you look back, are Veal. The young lad and the young girl, whom at a picnic party you have discerned stealing off under frivolous pretexts from the main body of guests, and sitting on the grass by the river-side, enraptured in the prosecution of a conversation which is intellectually of the emptiest, and fancying that they two make all the world, and investing that spot with remembrances which will continue till they are gray, are (it must in sober sadness be admitted) of the nature of calves. For it is beyond doubt that they are at a stage which they will outgrow, and on which they may possibly look back with something of shame. All these things, beautiful as they are, are no more than Veal. Yet they are fitting and excellent in their time. No, let us not call them Veal; they are rather like Lamb, which is excellent, though immature. No doubt, youth is immaturity; and as you outgrow it, you are growing better and wiser: still youth is a fine thing; and most people would be young again, if they could. How cheerful and light-hearted is immaturity! How cheerful and lively are the little children even of silent and gloomy men! It is sad, and it is unnatural, when they are not so. I remember yet, when I was at school, with what interest and wonder I used to look at two or three boys, about twelve or thirteen years old, who were always dull, sullen, and unhappy-looking. In those days, as a general rule, you are never sorrowful without knowing the reason why. You are never conscious of the dull atmosphere, of the gloomy spirits, of after-time. The youthful machine, bodily and mental, plays smoothly; the young being is cheery. Even a kitten is very different from a grave old cat, and a young colt from a horse sobered by the cares and toils of years. And you picture fine things to yourself in your youthful dreams. I remember a beautiful dwelling I used often to see, as if from the brow of a great hill. I see the rich valley below, with magnificent woods and glades, and a broad river reflecting the sunset; and in the midst of the valley, the vast Saracenic pile, with gilded minarets blazing in the golden light. I have since then seen many splendid habitations, but none in the least equal to that. I cannot even yet discard the idea that somewhere in this world there stands that noble palace, and that some day I shall find it out. You remember also the intense delight with which you read the books that charmed you then: how you carried off the poem or the tale to some solitary place,—how you sat up far into the night to read it,—how heartily you believed in all the story, and sympathized with the people it told of. I wish I could feel now the veneration for the man who has written a book which I used once to feel. Oh that one could read the old volumes with the old feeling! Perhaps you have some of them yet, and you remember the peculiar expression of the type in which they were printed: the pages look at you with the face of an old friend. If you were then of an observant nature, you will understand how much of the effect of any composition upon the human mind depends upon the printing, upon the placing of the points, even upon the position of the sentences on the page. A grand, high-flown, and sentimental climax ought always to conclude at the bottom of a page. It will look ridiculous, if it ends four or five lines down from the top of the next page. Somehow there is a feeling as of the difference between the night before and the next morning. It is as though the crushed ball-dress and the dishevelled locks of the close of the evening reappeared, the same, before breakfast. Let us have homely sense at the top of the page, pathos at the foot of it. What a force in the bad type of the shabby little "Childe Harold" you used to read so often! You turn it over in a grand illustrated edition, and it seems like another poem. Let it here be said, that occasionally you look with something like indignation on the volume which enchained you in your boyish days. For now you have burst the chain. And you have somewhat of the feeling of the prisoner towards the jailer who held him in unjust bondage. What right had that bombastic rubbish to touch and thrill you as it used to do? Well, remember that it suits successive generations at their enthusiastic stage. There are poets whose great admirers are for the most part under twenty years old; but probably almost every clever young person regards them at some period in his life as among the noblest of mortals. And it is no ignoble ambition to win the ardent appreciation of even immature tastes and hearts. Its brief endurance is compensated by its intensity. You sit by the fireside and read your leisurely "Times," and you feel a tranquil enjoyment. You like it better than the "Sorrows of Werter," but you do not like it a twentieth part as much as you once liked the "Sorrows of Werter." You would be interested in meeting the man who wrote that brilliant and slashing leader; but you would not regard him with speechless awe, as something more than human. Yet, remembering all the weaknesses out of which men grow, and on which they look back with a smile or sigh, who does not feel that there is a charm which will not depart about early youth? Longfellow knew that he would reach the hearts of most men, when he wrote such a verse as this:—

"The green trees whispered low and mild;
It was a sound of joy!
They were my playmates when a child,
And rocked me in their arms so wild;
Still they looked at me and smiled,
As if I were a boy!"

Such, readers as are young men will understand what has already been said as to the bitter indignation with which the writer, some years ago, listened to self-conceited elderly persons who put aside the arguments and the doings of younger men with the remark that these younger men were boys. There are few terms of reproach which I have heard uttered with looks of such deadly ferocity. And there are not many which excite feelings of greater wrath in the souls of clever young men. I remember how in those days I determined to write an essay which should scorch up and finally destroy all these carping and malicious critics. It was to be called "A Chapter on Boys." After an introduction of a sarcastic and magnificent character, setting out views substantially the same as those contained in the speech of Lord Chatham in reply to Walpole, which boys are taught to recite at school, that essay was to go on to show that a great part of English literature was written by very young men. Unfortunately, on proceeding to investigate the matter carefully, it appeared that the best part of English literature, even in the range of poetry, was in fact written by men of even more than middle age. So the essay was never finished, though a good deal of it was sketched out. Yesterday I took out the old manuscript; and after reading a bit of it, it appeared so remarkably Vealy, that I put it with indignation into the fire. Still I observed various facts of interest as to great things done by young men, and some by young men who never lived to be old. Beaumont the dramatist died at twenty-nine. Christopher Marlowe wrote "Faustus" at twenty-five, and died at thirty. Sir Philip Sidney wrote his "Arcadia" at twenty-six. Otway wrote "The Orphan" at twenty-eight, and "Venice Preserved" at thirty. Thomson wrote the "Seasons" at twenty-seven. Bishop Berkeley had devised his Ideal System at twenty-nine; and Clarke at the same age published his great work on "The Being and Attributes of God." Then there is Pitt, of course. But these cases are exceptional; and besides, men at twenty-eight and thirty are not in any way to be regarded as boys. What I wanted was proof of the great things that had been done by young fellows about two-and-twenty; and such proof was not to be found. A man is simply a boy grown up to his best; and of course what is done by men must be better than what is done by boys. Unless in very peculiar cases, a man at thirty will be every way superior to what he was at twenty; and at forty to what he was at thirty. Not, indeed, physically,—let that be granted; not always morally; but surely intellectually and aesthetically.

* * * * *

Yes, my readers, we have all been Calves. A great part of all our doings has been, what the writer, in figurative language, has described as Veal. We have not said, written, or done very much on which we can now look back with entire approval; and we have said, written, and done a very great deal on which we cannot look back but with burning shame and confusion. Very many things, which, when we did them, we thought remarkably good, and much better than the doings of ordinary men, we now discern, on calmly looking back, to have been extremely bad. That time, you know, my friend, when you talked in a very fluent and animated manner after dinner at a certain house, and thought you were making a great impression on the assembled guests, most of them entire strangers, you are now fully aware that you were only making a fool of yourself. And let this hint of one public manifestation of Vealiness suffice to suggest to each of us scores of similar cases. But though we feel, in our secret souls, what Calves we have been, and though it is well for us that we should feel it deeply, and thus learn humility and caution, we do not like to be reminded of it by anybody else. Some people have a wonderful memory for the Vealy sayings and doings of their friends. They may be very bad hands at remembering anything else; but they never forget the silly speeches and actions on which one would like to shut down the leaf. You may find people a great part of whose conversation consists of repeating and exaggerating their neighbors' Veal; and though that Veal may be immature enough and silly enough, it will go hard but your friend Mr. Snarling will represent it as a good deal worse than the fact. You will find men, who while at college were students of large ambition, but slender abilities, revenging themselves in this fashion upon the clever men who beat them. It is easy, very easy, to remember foolish things that were said and done even by the senior wrangler or the man who took a double first-class; and candid folk will think that such foolish things were not fair samples of the men,—and will remember, too, that the men have grown out of these, have grown mature and wise, and for many a year past would not have said or done such things. But if you were to judge from the conversation of Mr. Limejuice, (who wrote many prize essays, but, through the malice and stupidity of the judges, never got any prizes,) you would conclude that every word uttered by his successful rivals was one that stamped them as essential fools, and calves which would never grow into oxen. I do not think it is a pleasing or magnanimous feature in any man's character, that he is ever eager to rake up these early follies. I would not be ready to throw in the teeth of a pretty butterfly that it was an ugly caterpillar once, unless I understood that the butterfly liked to remember the fact. I would not suggest to this fair sheet of paper on which I am writing, that not long ago it was dusty rags and afterwards dirty pulp. You cannot be an ox without previously having been a calf; you acquire taste and sense gradually, and in acquiring them you pass through stages in which you have very little of either. It is a poor burden for the memory, to collect and shovel into it the silly sayings and doings in youth of people who have become great and eminent. I read with much disgust a biography of Mr. Disraeli which recorded, no doubt accurately, all the sore points in that statesman's history. I remember with great approval what Lord John Manners said in Parliament in reply to Mr. Bright, who had quoted a well-known and very silly passage from Lord John's early poetry. "I would rather," said Lord John, "have been the man who in his youth wrote those silly verses than the man who in mature years would rake them up." And with even greater indignation I regard the individual who, when a man is doing creditably and Christianly the work of life, is ever ready to relate and aggravate the moral delinquencies of his school-boy and student days, long since repented of and corrected. "Remember not," said a man who knew human nature well, "the sins of my youth." But there are men whose nature has a peculiar affinity for anything petty, mean, and bad. They fly upon it as a vulture on carrion. Their memory is of that cast, that you have only to make inquiry of them concerning any of their friends, to hear of something not at all to the friends' advantage. There are individuals, after listening to whom you think it would be a refreshing novelty, almost startling from its strangeness, to hear them say a word in favor of any human being whatsoever.

It is not a thing peculiar to immaturity; yet it may be remarked, that, though it is an unpleasant thing to look back and see that you have said or done something very foolish, it is a still more unpleasant thing to be well aware at the time that you are saying or doing something very foolish. If a man be a fool at all, it is much to be desired that he should be a very great fool; for then he will not know when he is making a fool of himself. But it is painful not to have sense enough to know what you should do in order to be right, but to have sense enough to know that you are doing wrong. To know that you are talking like an ass, yet to feel that you cannot help it,—that you must say something, and can think of nothing better to say,—this is a suffering that comes with advanced civilization. This is a phenomenon frequently to be seen at public dinners in country towns, also at the entertainment which succeeds a wedding. Men at other times rational seem to be stricken into idiocy when they rise to their feet on such occasions; and the painful fact is, that it is conscious idiocy. The man's words are asinine, and he knows they are asinine. His wits have entirely abandoned him: he is an idiot for the time. Have you sat next a man unused to speaking at a public dinner? have you seen him nervously rise and utter an incoherent, ungrammatical, and unintelligible sentence or two, and then sit down with a ghastly smile? Have you heard him say to his friend on the other side, in bitterness, "I have made a fool of myself"? And have you seen him sit moodily through the remainder of the feast, evidently ruminating on what he said, seeing now what he ought to have said, and trying to persuade himself that what he said was not so bad after all? Would you do a kindness to that miserable man? You have just heard his friend on the other side cordially agreeing with what he had said as to the badness of the appearance made by him. Enter into conversation with him; talk of his speech; congratulate him upon it; tell him you were extremely struck by the freshness and naturalness of what he said,—that there is something delightful in hearing an unhackneyed speaker,—that to speak with entire fluency looks professional,—it is like a barrister or a clergyman. Thus you may lighten the mortification of a disappointed man; and what you say will receive considerable credence. It is wonderful how readily people believe anything they would like to be true.

* * * * *

I was walking this afternoon along a certain street, coming home from visiting certain sick persons, and wondering how I should conclude this essay, when, standing on the pavement on one side of the street, I saw a little boy four years old crying in great distress. Various individuals, who appeared to be Priests and Levites, looked, as they passed, at the child's distress, and passed on without doing anything to relieve it. I spoke to the little man, who was in great fear at being spoken to, but told me he had come away from his home and lost himself, and could not find his way back. I told him I would take him home, if he could tell me where he lived; but he was frightened into utter helplessness, and could only tell that his name was Tom, and that he lived at the top of a stair. It was a poor neighborhood, in which many people live at the top of stairs, and the description was vague. I spoke to two humble decent-looking women who were passing, thinking they might gain the little thing's confidence better than I; but the poor little man's great wish was just to get away from us,—though, when he got two yards off, he could but stand and cry. You may be sure he was not left in his trouble, but that he was put safely into his father's hands. And as I was coming home, I thought that here was an illustration of something I have been thinking of all this afternoon. I thought I saw in the poor little child's desire to get away from those who wanted to help him, though not knowing where to go when left to himself, something analogous to what the immature human being is always disposed to. The whole teaching of our life is leading us away from our early delusions and follies, from all those things about us which have been spoken of under the similitude which need not be again repeated. Yet we push away the hand that would conduct us to soberer and better things, though, when left alone, we can but stand and vaguely gaze about us; and we speak hardly of the growing experience which makes us wiser, and which ought to make us happier too. Let us not forget that the teaching which takes something of the gloss from life is an instrument in the kindest Hand of all; and let us be humbly content, if that kindest Hand shall lead us, even by rough means, to calm and enduring wisdom,—wisdom by no means inconsistent with youthful freshness of feeling, and not necessarily fatal even to youthful gayety of mood,—and at last to that Happy Place where worn men regain the little child's heart, and old and young are blest together.

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The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 08, No. 46, August, 1861

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