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About Hesperian student / (Lincoln [Neb.]) 1872-1885 | View Entire Issue (March 1, 1876)
Hesperian Studen t VOL. It, University of .Yclnutska. NO 3. MAIM'" Qui non Prollcll-.Doflolt:. 1870. To Night. tloimt to nie, 'J NlK'it! Pule nnil fleet nro tliu steeds, mill lilt, That lice before thy darkening throng. Through gloomy -diailes In silence dread, A fur I hi'ur their dying tread, Ilrtrcathig from thy columns strong. Yes, doubtful long tho ImttU' waged, Anil death came met to tlmo engaged, Hut charge uncharge on charge ihy forces won, Ami routi'il fur the burtiliiu mm. Ami now tin- calm mid gallant slatn An- -catton-il oVr thu reeking plain; With pallorcd fliwk anil hollowed eyes, Tln' grin anil mock thu laughing skies, Ami "till ami strotchud they llu apicc, While cold ilark sweat now bathes each ram. A few it keep tin" rnnipurt heights, Where oft they tloo In coward lights. Ami there awatt thu lulling b'ows. Ami now each castled height they suom To crowd with burnished arms, that gleam, Ami on oah straying, glancing beam, Send challenges to pressing foe. Charge their strongholds, Night I None can stand to resist thy might, When once thy rolling thrusts they feel. Allow n In gorge- bottom ess, They Headlong plunge, where fathomless Tiny quiver tr.im thy cooling stool. Now larnnii.t they swarming dec, Where o'er lint hills u-west I hup Their gloaming s pours mid nnnor bright Defending tboie Ihu aw nulling Light, As westward on they crowd ihtdr way, Nor wait nor wish their tllght to may. Tiune tlmvicfiy. N'Uht! Cow 'img Day will now grant thee right To hold tin' sway from sea lo r-oa; icr I In- nut Unix, far and wldo. The it led land, from tide lo tide. Tliv empire now, alone, slmli bo. Then softly there Ihy darkened hall. Tin cutle's gloom and liimry walls. In ileiu d ep and dark. I'll gain, While oft some heavenly limiting strain 1 II loisefrnmofl' the burdunod wind. That tliere tho Midnight' couch will llnd, Ami wake tlio etilluu there alone, And King ..nil pniNo thy silent throno, While stars will eoom to catch the tunc, And laugh to rouse the droamy moon. .uard m then. O 'ighU Strange the cliarm.and tho fair delight. Alone I gain from wateh so rare. Though shawduwy cast thy martial rorm. Yet mill and calm and friendly warm Tliv anxious lend and uiiurdlng care. Tlien bonrmo on. alt I bear mo on To where the great utcrnul Dawn First lifts his banner o'er the sky, When all bin hunts draw nigh, draw nigh, Where brilliant corps come strong, como fining. With equal tread mi farilong, While lonesomely the weary life Plays well the last retreat of I.lfo. And bugles break eternal air. Then leave m there, ah I loavo mo there. I. Carlyio's BIeros and Hero AVorsliip." This work is n scries of lectures embrac ing, supposedly, Mr. Carlyio's rcprescnta live heroes. Either that, or ho has stooped to common subjects for the novelty to him of pleasing. They arc more evi dently milestones in his theory of the intellectual and moral dcvelopcmenl of the world: divinity, prophet, poet, priest, man of letters, King. Properly, wc should take them in tho order ho lias written, ami explain, and exclaim against each one in turn. But I shall prefer getting at tho truth of tho book, and of tho author's slyli' as best I may, taking the rhanci's of being disposed of myself. II hud always run in my mind (hat Car lylo and Emerson wore two cornels, us il were, of tho same quality, bill of unequal magnitude like two Messina oranges always ruling our American author us the lesser. This opinion came partly, I sup. poso, from the second-hand review-gossip of tho newspapers, but was settled into an imaginary fact by a sentence of Poo's, ar raigning Emerson us un imitator of Cur lyio's mysticism. Now although I could see none of -the mystic in Emerson, I rested for the time on this authority. Hut how dillerently experience settles tilings. The very essence of poetry, under Poe's definition, "that which exciles by eleva ting the soul," hangs like costly di apery upon tne arms of Emerson's philosphy Even thai ethereality is there which Poo reckoned was incarnate only in Ten- nyson. tint Emerson's poetry is uoneii cent in its moral grandeur, which moral sentiment Poo could only acknowledge as tho source of poetry, as the rose is of hon ey. Carlylo ho could never endure. In the hook bulb re us we can only byglimps. os catch the drift of Curly le's.gospel Ac tion. His preface prepares us somewhat for the incompleteness of the sketches, but thee is a lack that tliere is no apology for. He write, from pure deiiionism and insight, and not from any special phil osophical reductions. But 1 must not be gin attempted criticism here, lest I deserve Apollo's rebuke to Zoilus, who drought him a critic'sin upon a choice work of art. Apollo asked what were tho beauties ol tho work. Zoilus answered that he had only found the faults. Thereupon Apollo gave him a bushel of wheat, tellinghim to pick out the chaff as his reward. For Car- lylo was a terror to all critics. Ho will not bo disposed of by a curt page in thy host Review. 1-ct us acknowledge at onco thai his beatitudes are from the gods. Grand, epical, giauMuaking, prophet-seeing, all these at times. Uul there are weaknesses. Tliere are a thousand-and one "dog-cared proverbs" in his books, hat every mother's son of us uses on oc cusion; and yolhc must inoculate them with Carlyloism, that makes them more than ever mere mannerisms. "Virtue is its own reward" acquires no special sig nificance at this ago ot the world by Cur ly le's scaling it with his seal. Still we like his whirlwind of god-talk, whenever he approaches ono of these. Soul-thun- dera. How ho dandles tho Norseman's gods! Rut It is only to set us fairly on our feet to see original man more plainly. You can not help liking his dissertations on tho Jotun ; and Unit tree of Igdrasil. That oue picture Is a life lived before we aro half into it. "Is not every leaf of it a bi ography, every fibre tliere on act or word ? Tts boughs aro histories of nations." "Tho tree of existence." Ho has u rare faculty for hunting out all these beautiful symbols from tho far-hidden beliefs of the past. I rind his essay on this divinity as alto gctherbiautiful. By far tho most celes tial of all the essays. But his sketch of Mohamet is noticeably concise and bril liant. Rugged, too, as its author or the subject. Its chimes aie of the heart strings of Mohamet. And again, his nar ration of Luther's "turning point" between law and religion: "Alexis (his friend) and lie hut' been to see the old Luther people at Mansfeldt ; were got back again near Erfurt, when a thunder-storm came on; the bolt struck Alexis, he fell dead at Lu ther's feet. "What is this liTc of ours? gone in a moment, burnt up like a scroll, i.il.i llu. l.l.ii I.- l.'li.i'iiilv " Tlii-illinir lli.il I """ '"- " .....,.. (,i Is there any charlatanry there V Yes; but what thunderstrokes his empirical pills are! What a chasm in chaos he sets us blinking over, by tho suddenness of tho query : "What is this life of oursV" us if it had come with a lightning Hash from Lu ther's eyes. Cnrlylc's reverence for Chris tianity is generally rendered most proini. nent by his entire silence upon the sub- ject. He might cant about it but will not. Neither will ho deny it. There is too much of the prophet in him. Ho sees God. "The age of ln'raelos is lorever here." Luther is a symbol, Knox is a symbol; so are Republicanism and Liber, tv till symbols of the progress towards God's equality of souls. Even Napoleon aids it. All are necessary; all bearing a proportion of divinity; but not to be idol ized; for what are they more than mental symbols of a deity, while a heathen's sym bol is only one step lower, a mateiial one. a block. Literature, lie finds ever rolling on vn tho boundlessness of God's perfect ing, which plan we can hope only occa sionally to see as in a dream. Cromwell and "Washington are swollen streams driv lug frantically to the river of Reform. How he catches tho drift of the centimes! Trulli-dovelopement, ultimately. First, man as God; then as prophet; then pool; then priest; then writer; then King; and then Eternity. This is his progioss of the world. Not bad, either. Only, he plainly has not seen the world well rid of King as sovereign, and instead, govern ment as sovereign. But his King is no Nero, though his hero-kings are queer selections. But his Kingisinastorof him. self, under God. How he llings w ind-wido the corpulent dissertations of historians and Review writers upon his favorite Cromwell. Treats the matter in a wonder fully common-sense way. Will not allow that any man, much less a follower of the plough, plans and follows out twenty years of life ahead of time a plan so brilliant ly practical too. Even the staid old farm ers must make allowance ior the seasons. And the Man of Letters is after the Gorman Ficlito's ideal, "n priest, continu ally unfolding the God-like to men." And of this definition ho finds Burn's rollick- ing madness and inspiration tho incarna tion. Carlylo was evidently confined and cramped in his rendering of this volume, else ho would not go so far astray as to ac cept of either Rosseau or Burns in place of Goethe, of whom ho confesses ho will not speak, leal there should be no end." But let us see what his hero is: "He who lives in the inward sphere of things, in the True. Divine. Eternal: his being is in that; ho declares that abroad, by act or speech, as it may be, in declaring himself abroad." Still, Napoleon a hero! Like palming our best pen picture of Socrates' good-humor as being Unit of Diogenes with his surliness. How ho snail meta morphose his (Napoleon's) "little gleam of time between two eternities" so thai it shall appear of Jove's quality, not mock ery of Jove, should be entertainment enough. But ho cannot, nor can any man, make selfishness heroic. No more than magnanimity can bo make out of envy. Bonaparte was born selfish. Selfishness was born in him. His earliest days wero solitary and gloomy, always thinking, mid over pondering of Bonaparte Perhaps it is because he has somewhat of the world will of tho hero, that Carlylo stamps him so. somewhat that will not be con quered. Makes too much of bis silent ac tivity, of his non-querulousiiess. Now read Mr. Eu.erson's analysis of Napoleon, which 1 take on account of tho unhandL nc&s of Carlyle's own, and sec how it mates with tho hitter's idea of thu hero: "Bonaparte was singularly destitute of generous sentiments. He was a boundless liar. Like all Frenchmen he had a pas sion for stage effect. Every action that breathes of generosity is poisoned by this calculation. His star, his love of glory, his doctrine of the immortality of the soul, are all French. 'I must dazzle and astonish.' To make a great noise is his favorite design. His doctrine of immor tality is simply fame. His theory of in ilueneo is not Haltering interest and four. Love is a silly infatuation. Friendship is but a nnnie.' He was thoroughly unscru pulous. He would steal, slander, assassi nate, drown and poison, as interest dicta ted." This is by far the best picture of the man over written. And how lofty a conception of the heroic is Unit? Not up to Nr. Curly lye's standard, certainly "ho who lives in the inward sphere of things." Every man has a touch of heroism in him. But the world makes heroism where is on ly a largo individualism, Carlylo litis al lowed himself to err, so us to reach down to this ideal-hero-worship, for every man lias his hero, in a manner. We like particularly, the lectures in this book concerning divinity, priest, poet as to Dante, and king us lo Cromwell. At our first reading of Emerson's lecture on Shakspoare, ourhoart throbbed back part of our youthful-enthusiasm; but the mea groness of Carlyio's essay on the same made us heart-sick. Not that it was not a truthful insight into the man, but it waa not volumnious enough ; for Shakspcaro Is a second Nature to nil Saxons. "With all Mr. Carlyio's giant-making, there is some thing still unsatisfactory about him. In philosophy ho is almost a Cagliostro now reasonable, now prophetic, now stark mad ns any poet. Al ono of his. prophetic mo ments, you say, "now tlifs Cagliostro ia Grand Master of all the known metaphys ical and moral lodges," but the next turn ing of a paragraph ho sends you spinning nfci.iV ", JUUlJI -4 - rtrt-