How To Observe Part 4

Meantime, it is the traveller's business to learn what is the species of Moral Sentiment which lies deepest in the hearts of the majority of the people.

He will find no better place of study than the Cemetery,--no more instructive teaching than Monumental Inscriptions. The brief language of the dead will teach him more than the longest discourses of the living.

He will learn what are the prevalent views of death; and when he knows what is the common view of death, he knows also what is the aspect of life to no small number;--that is, he will have penetrated into the interior of their morals.--If it should ever be fully determined that the pyramids of Egypt were designed solely as places of sepulture, they will cease to be the mute witness they have been for ages. They will tell at least that death was not regarded as the great leveller,--that kings and peasants were not to sleep side by side in death, any more than in life. How they contrast with the Moravian burial-grounds, where all are laid in rows as they happen to be brought to the grave, and where memorial is forbidden!--The dead of Constantinople are cast out from among the living in waste, stillness, and solitude. The cemeteries lie beyond the walls, where no hum from the city is heard, and where the dark cypresses overhanging the white marble tombs give an air of mourning and desolation to the scene. In contrast with these are the church-yards of English cities, whose dead thus lie in full view of the living; the school-boy trundles his hoop among them, and the news of the day is discussed above their place of rest. This fact of where the dead are laid is an important one. If out of sight, death and religion may or may not be connected in the general sentiment; if within or near the places of wors.h.i.+p, they certainly are so connected. In the cemeteries of Persia, the ashes of the dead are ranged in niches of the walls: in Egypt we have the most striking example of affection to the body, shown in the extraordinary care to preserve it; while some half-civilized people seem to be satisfied with putting their dead out of sight, by summarily sinking them in water, or hiding them in the sand; and the Caffres throw their dead to the hyenas,--impelled to this, however, not so much by disregard of the dead, as by a superst.i.tious fear of death taking place in their habitations, which causes them to remove the dying, and expose them in this state to beasts of prey. The burial of the dead by the road-side by some of the ancients, seems to have brought death into the closest relation with life; and when the place chosen is taken in connexion with the inscriptions on the tombs,--words addressed to the wayfarer as from him who lies within,--from the pilgrim now at rest to the pilgrim still on his way, they give plain indications of the views of death and life entertained by those who placed them.

Much may be learned from the monumental inscriptions of all nations. The first epitaph is supposed to be traced back to the year of the world 2700, when the scholars of Linus, the Theban poet, bewailed their master in verses which were inscribed upon his tomb. From that day to this, wherever there have been letters, there have been epitaphs; and, where letters have been wanting, there have been symbols. Mysterious symbolic arrangements are traced in the monumental mounds in the interior of the American continent, where a race of whom we know nothing else flourished before the Red man opened his eyes upon the light. One common rule, drawn from a universal sentiment, has presided at the framing of all epitaphs for some thousands of years. "De mortuis nil nisi bonum" is the universal agreement of mourners.[G] It follows that epitaphs must everywhere indicate what is there considered good.

The observer must give his attention to this. Among a people "whose merchants are princes," the praise of the departed will be in a different strain from that which will be found among a warlike nation, or a community of agriculturists. Here one may find monumental homage to public spirit, in the form of active citizens.h.i.+p; there to domestic virtue as the highest honour. The glory of eminent station, of ancient family, of warlike deeds, and of courtly privileges may be conspicuously exhibited in one district; while in another the dead are honoured in proportion to their contempt of human greatness, even when won by achievements; to their having lived with a sole regard "to things unseen and eternal." An inscription which breathes the pride of a n.o.ble family in telling that "all the sons were brave, and all the daughters chaste,"

presents a summary of the morals of the age and cla.s.s to which it belongs. It tells that the supreme honour of men was to be brave, and of women to be chaste; excluding the supposition of each sharing the virtue of the other: whereas, when courage and purity shall be understood in their full signification, it will have become essential to the honour of a n.o.ble family that all the sons should be also pure, and all the daughters brave. Then bravery will signify moral rather than physical courage, and purity of mind will be considered no attribute of s.e.x.

Even the nature of the public services commemorated, where public service is considered the highest praise, may indicate much. It is a fact of no small significance whether a man is honoured after death for having made a road, or for having founded a monastery, or endowed a school; whether he introduced a new commodity, or erected a church; whether he marched adventurously in the pursuit of conquest, or fought bravely among his native mountains to guard the homes of his countrymen from aggression. The German, the French, the Swiss monuments of the present century all tell the common tale that men have lived and died: but with what various objects did they live! and in what a variety of hope and heroism did they die! All were proud of their respective differences while they lived; and, now that their contests are at an end, they afford materials of speculation to the stranger who ponders upon their tombs.

A variety, perhaps a contrariety of praise, may be found in the epitaphs of a country, a city, or a single cemetery. Where this diversity is found, it testifies to the diversity of views held, and therefore to the freedom of the prevailing religious sentiment. Everywhere, however, there is an affection and esteem for certain virtues. Disinterestedness, fidelity, and love are themes of praise everywhere. Some may have no sympathy for the deeds of the warrior, and others for the discoveries of the philosopher and the adventurer; but the honoured parent, the devoted child, the philanthropic citizen, are sure of their tribute from all hearts.

Even if there were a variety of praise proportioned to the diversity of hearts and minds that utter it, the inscriptions of a cemetery cannot but breathe a spirit which must animate, more or less, the morals of the society. For instance, the cemetery of Pere la Chaise utters, from end to end, one wail. It is all mourning, and no hope. Every expression of grief, from tender regret to blank despair, is to be found there; but not a hint of consolation, except from memory. All is over, and the future is vacant. A remarkable contrast to this is seen in the cemetery of Mount Auburn, Ma.s.sachusetts. The religious spirit of New England is that which has hope for one of its largest elements, and which was believed by the Puritan fathers to forbid the expression of sorrow. One of those fathers made an entry in his journal, in the early days of the colony, that it had pleased G.o.d to take from him by an accident his beloved son Henry, whom he committed to the Lord's mercy;--and this was all. In a similar spirit are the epitaphs at Mount Auburn framed. There is a religious silence about the sorrows of the living, and every expression of joy, thanksgiving, and hope for the dead. One who had never heard of death, might take this for the seed-field of life; for the oratory of the happy; for the heaven of the hopeful. Parents invite their children from the grave to follow them. Children remind their parents that the term of separation will be short; and all repose their hopes together on an authority which is to them as stable and comprehensive as the blue sky which is over all.--What a contrast is here! and how eloquent as to the moral views of the respective nations!

There is not a domestic attachment or social relation which is not necessarily modified, elevated, or depressed by the conviction of its being transient or immortal,--an end or means to a higher end. Though human hearts are so far alike as that there must be a hope of reunion, more or less defined and a.s.sured, in all who love, and a practical falling below the elevation of this hope in those even who enjoy the strongest a.s.surance,--yet the moral notions of any society must be very different where the ground of hope is taken for granted, and where it is kept wholly out of sight.

The observer may obtain further light upon the moral ideas of a people by noting the degree of their Attachment to Kindred and Birth-place.

This species of attachment is so natural, that none are absolutely without it; but it varies in degree, according as the moral taste of the people goes to enhance or to subdue it. The Swiss and the American parent both send their children abroad; but with what different feelings and views! The Swiss father dismisses his daughter to teach in a school at Paris or London, and his sons to commerce or war. He resigns himself to a hard necessity, and supports them with suggestions of the honour of virtuous independence, and of the delight of returning when it is achieved. They, in their exile, can never see a purple shade upon a mountain side, a gleaming sheet of water, or a nestling village, without a throb of the heart, and a sickening longing for home.--The New England mother, with her tribe of children around her on her hill-side farm, nourishes them with tales of the n.o.ble extent of their country,--how its boundary is ever s.h.i.+fting westwards, and what a wild life it is there in the forest, with the Red men for neighbours, and inexhaustible wealth in the soil, ready for the hand which shall have enterprise to work for it. She tells of one and another, but lately boys like her children, who are now judges and legislators,--founders of towns, or having counties named after them. As her young people grow up, they part off eagerly from the old farm,--one into a southern city, another into the western forest, a third to a prairie in a new territory; and the daughters marry, and go over the mountains too. The mother may have sighs to conceal, but she does conceal them; and the sons, so far from lingering,--are impatient till they are gone. Their idea of national honour,--both their patriotic and their personal ambition,--is concerned; and they welcome the hour of dispersion as the first step towards the great objects of their life. Some return to the old neighbourhood to take a wife; but they do not think of pa.s.sing their second childhood where they spent their first,--any more than the Greek colonists who swarmed from their narrow native districts. The settlers of the west go there, not to obtain a certain amount of personal property, but land, station, and power.--How different again are the Scotch--the people of the strongest family attachments! In the modified and elevated feudalism of clans.h.i.+p, pride and love of kindred const.i.tute the animating social principle. Their clan-music is to them what the Ranz de Vaches is to the Swiss: the one echoing the harmonics of social intercourses, as the other revives the melodies of mountain life.

Through the love of kindred, the love of birth-place flourishes among the Scotch. The Highland emigrants in Canada not only clasp hands when they hear played the march of their clan, but wept when they found that heather would not grow in their newly-adopted soil.

The traveller must talk with Old People, and see what is the character of the garrulity of age. He must talk with Children, and mark the character of the aspirations of childhood. He will thus learn what is good in the eyes of those who have pa.s.sed through the society he studies, and in the hopes of those who have yet to enter upon it. Is it the aged mother's pride that her sons are all unstained in honour, and her daughters safe in happy homes? or does she boast that one is a priest, and another a peeress? Does the grandmother relate that all her descendants who are of age are "received church-members"? or that her favourite grandchild has been noticed by the emperor? Do the old men prose of a single happy love, or of exploits of gallantry? or of commercial success, or of political failure? What is the section of life to which the greatest number of ancient memories cling? Is it to struggles for a prince in disguise, or to a revolutionary conflict? Is it to the removal of a social oppression, or to a season of domestic trial, or to an accession of personal consequence? Is it the having acquired an office or a t.i.tle? or the having a.s.sisted in the abolition of slavery? or the having conversed with a great author? or the having received a nod from a prince, or a curtsey from a queen? or have you to listen to details of the year of the scarcity, or the season of the plague?--What are the children's minds full of? The little West Indian will not talk of choosing a profession, any more than the infant Portuguese will ask for books. One nation of children will tell of the last saint's day, and another will refer every thing to the emperor.

Elsewhere you will be treated with legends without end; or you will be instructed about bargains and wages; or the boys will ask you why a king's son should be king whether the people like him or not; and the girls will whisper something to you about their brother being President some day. As the minds of the young are formed, generally speaking, to an adaptation to the objects presented to them, their preference of warlike to commercial, or literary to political honour, is an eloquent circ.u.mstance: and so of their sense of greatness in any direction,--whether it be of the physical order, or the intellectual, or the spiritual.

From this, the transition is natural to the study of the character of the Pride of each nation. Learn what people glory in, and you learn much of both the theory and practice of their morals. All nations, like all individuals, have pride, sooner or later, in one thing or another. It is a stage through which they have to pa.s.s in their moral progression, and out of which the most civilized have not yet advanced, nor discerned that they will have to advance, though the pa.s.sion becomes moderated at each remove from barbarism. It is by no means clear that the essential absurdity of each is relieved by its dilution. Hereafter, the most modern pride of the most civilized people may appear as ridiculous in its nature as the grossest conceit of utter barbarians now appears to us; but, still, the direction taken by the general pride must show what cla.s.s of objects is held in most esteem.

The Chinese have no doubt that all other countries are created for the benefit of theirs; they call their own "the central empire," as certain philosophers once called our earth the centre round which everything else was to revolve. They call it the Celestial Empire, of which their ruler is the Sun: "they profess to rule barbarians by misrule, like beasts, and not like native subjects." Here we have the extreme of national pride, which must involve various moral qualities;--all the bad ones which are the consequence of ignorance, subservience to domestic despotism, and contempt of the race of man; and the good ones which are the consequence of national seclusion,--cheerful industry, social complacency, quietness, and order.--The Arab pride bears a resemblance to the Chinese, but is somewhat refined and spiritualized. The Arabs believe that the earth, "spread out like a bed," and upheld by a gigantic angel (the angel standing upon a rock, and the rock upon a bull, and the bull upon a fish, and the fish floating upon water, and the water upon darkness,)--that the earth, thus upheld, is surrounded by the Circ.u.mambient Ocean; that the inhabited part of the earth is to the rest but as a tent in the desert; and that in the very centre of this inhabited part is--Mecca. Their exclusive faith makes a part of their nationality, and their insolence shows itself eminently in their devotions. Their spiritual supremacy is their strong point; and they can afford to be somewhat less outwardly contemptuous to the race at large, from the certainty they have that all will be made plain and indisputable at last, when the followers of the Prophet alone will be admitted to bliss, and the punishments of the future world will be eternal to all but wicked Mahomedans. There will be found among the Arabs, in accordance with this pride, a strong mutual fidelity; and, among the best cla.s.s of believers, a real devotion and a kindly compa.s.sion towards outcasts; while, among lower orders of minds, we may expect to witness the extreme exasperation of vindictiveness, insult, and rapacity.--We may pa.s.s over the pride of caste in India, of royal race in Africa, and the wild notions of Caribbean and Esquimaux dignity, which are almost as painful to contemplate as the freaks of pride in Bedlam. There is quite enough to look upon in the most civilized parts of the earth.--The whole national character of the Spaniards might be inferred from their particularly notorious pride; the quarterings of German barons are a popular joke; the French pride of military glory is an index to the national morals of France; while, in the United States, the pride of Was.h.i.+ngton and of territory is oddly combined and contrasted. Nothing can be more indicative of the true moral state of the Americans; they hang between the past and the future, with many of the feudal prepossessions of the past, mingled with the democratic aspirations which relate to the future. The ambition and pride of territory belong to the first, and their pride in the leader of their revolution to the last: he is their personification of that moral power to which they profess allegiance. The consequences of this arbitrary union of two kinds of national pride may be foreseen. The Americans unite some of the low qualities of feudalism with some of the highest of a more equal social organization. Without the first, slavery, cupidity, and ostentation could not exist to any great extent; without the others, there could not be the splendid moral conflict which we now see going on in opposition to slavery, nor the reverence for man which is the loveliest feature of American morals and manners.

From the aristocratic pride of the English the stranger might draw inferences no less correct. If it is found that there is scarcely a gamekeeper or a tradesman among us who is not stiffened with prejudices about rank; that gossips can tell what n.o.blemen pay, and which do not pay, their tradesmen's bills; that persons who have never seen a lord can furnish all information about the genealogy and intermarriages of n.o.ble families; that every cla.s.s is emulating the manners of the one above it; and that democratic principles are held chiefly in the manufacturing districts, or, if in country regions, among the tenantry of landlords of liberal politics;--the moral condition of such a people lies, as it were, mapped out beneath the eye of the observer. They must be orderly, eminently industrious, munificent in their grants to rulers, and mechanically oppressive to the lowest cla.s.s of the ruled; nationally complacent, while wanting in individual self-respect; reverentially inclined towards the lofty minority, and contemptuously disposed towards the lowly majority of their race; a generous devotion being advantageously mingled, however, with the select reverence, and a kindly spirit of protection with the gross contempt. Such, to the eye of an observer, are the qualities involved in English pride. Upon this moral material, everywhere diffused, should the traveller observe and reflect.

Man-wors.h.i.+p is as universal a practice as that of the higher sort of religion. As men everywhere adore some supposed agents of unseen things, they are, in like manner, disposed to do homage to what is venerable when it is presented to their eyes in the actions of a living man. This man-wors.h.i.+p is one of the most honourable and one of the most hopeful circ.u.mstances in the mind of the race. An individual here and there may scoff at the credulity of others, and profess unbelief in human virtue; but no society has ever yet wanted faith in man. Every community has its saints, its heroes, its sages,--whose tombs are visited, whose deeds are celebrated, whose words have become the rules by which men live.

Now, the moral taste of a people is nowhere more clearly shown than in its choice of idols. Of these idols there are two kinds;--those whose divinity is confirmed by the lapse of time, like Gustavus Adolphus among the Swedes, Tell in Switzerland, Henri IV. among the French, and Was.h.i.+ngton among the Americans; and those who are still living, and upon whose daily doings a mult.i.tude of eyes are fixed.

Those of the first cla.s.s reign singly; their uncontested sway is over national character, as well as the affections of individual minds; and from their character may that of the whole people be, in certain respects, inferred. Who supposes that the Swiss would have been the same as they are, if Tell's character and deeds could have been hidden in oblivion from the moment those deeds were done? What would the Americans have been now if every impression of Was.h.i.+ngton could have been effaced from their minds fifty years ago? This is not the place in which to enlarge on the power--the greatest power we know of--which man exercises over men through their affections; but it is a fact which the observer should keep ever in view. The existence of a great man is one of those gigantic circ.u.mstances,--one of those national influences,--which have before been mentioned as modifying the conscience--the feelings about right and wrong--in a whole people. The pursuits of a nation for ever may be determined by the fact of the great man of five centuries being a poet, a warrior, a statesman, or a maritime adventurer. The morals of a nation are influenced to all eternity by the great man's being ambitious or moderate, pa.s.sionate or philosophical, licentious or self-governed.

Certain lofty qualities he must have, or he could not have attained greatness,--energy, perseverance, faith, and consequently earnestness.

These are essential to his immortality; upon the others depends the quality of his influence; and upon these must the observer of the present generation reflect.

It is not by dogmas that Christianity has permanently influenced the mind of Christendom. No creeds are answerable for the moral revolution by which physical has been made to succ.u.mb to moral force; by which unfortunates are cherished by virtue of their misfortunes; by which the pursuit of speculative truth has become an object worthy of self-sacrifice. It is the character of Jesus of Nazareth which has wrought to these purposes. Notwithstanding all the obscuration and defilement which that character has sustained from superst.i.tion and other corruption, it has availed to these purposes, and must prevail more and more now that it is no longer possible to misrepresent his sayings and conceal his deeds, as was done in the dark ages. In all advancing time, as corruption is surmounted, there are more and more who vividly feel that life does not consist in the abundance that a man possesses, but in energy of spirit, and in a power and habit of self-sacrifice: there are perpetually more and more who discern and live by the persuasion that the pursuit of worldly power and ease is a matter totally apart from the function of Christianity; and this persuasion has not been wrought into activity by declarations of doctrine in any form, but by the spectacle, vivid before the eye of the mind, of the Holy One who declined the sword and the crown, lived without property, and devoted himself to die by violence, in an unparalleled simplicity of duty. The being himself is the mover here; and every great man is, in a similar manner, however inferior may be the degree, a spring by which spirits are moved. By the study of them may much of the consequent movement be understood. The observer of British morals should gather up the names of their idols; he will hear of Hampden, Bacon, Shakspeare, Newton, Howard, and Wesley. In Scotland, he will hear of Bruce and Knox. What a flood of light do these names shed on our _morale_! It is the same with the Englishman abroad when his attention is referred in France to Henri IV, Richelieu, Turenne, and Napoleon, to Bossuet and Fenelon, to Voltaire, and their glorious list of natural philosophers: in Italy, to Lorenzo de' Medici, Galileo, and their constellations of poets and artists: in Germany, to Charles V, Luther, Schwartz, Gothe, Copernicus, Handel, and Mozart. There is in every nation a succession of throned G.o.ds, each of whom is the creator of some region of the national mind, and has formed men into more or less of his own likeness.

The other kind of idols are those who are still living, and whose influence upon morals and manners is strong, but may or may not be distinguishably permanent. These afford a less faithful evidence,--but yet an evidence which is not to be neglected. The spirit of the times is seen in the character of the idols of the day, however the nation may be divided in its choice of idols, and however many sects there may be in the man-wors.h.i.+p of the generation. In our own day, for instance, how plainly is the movement of society discerned, from the fact of the eminence of philanthropists in many countries! Whether they presently sink, or continue to rise, they testify to a prevailing feeling in society. Pere Enfantin in France, Wilberforce in England, Garrison in America,--these are watchmen set on a pinnacle (whoever may object to their being there) who can tell us "what of the night," and how a new morning is breaking. Whether they may be most cause or effect, whether they have more or less decidedly originated the interest of which they are the head, it is clear that there is a certain adaptation between themselves and the general mind, without which they could not have risen to be what they are.--Every society has always its idols. If there are none by merit, at any moment, station is received as a qualification.

Large numbers are always wors.h.i.+pping the heads of the aristocracy, of whatever kind they may be; and there is rarely a long interval in which there is not some warrior, some poet, artist, or philanthropist on whom the mult.i.tude are flinging crowns and incense. The popularity of Byron testified to the existence of a gloomy discontent in a mult.i.tude of minds, as the adoration of De Beranger discloses the political feelings of the French. Statesmen rarely command an overwhelming majority of wors.h.i.+ppers, because interest enters much more than sentiment into politics: but every author, or other artist who can reach the general mind,--every preacher, philanthropist, soldier, or discoverer, who has risen into an atmosphere of wors.h.i.+p in pursuit of a purpose, is a fresh Peter the Hermit, meeting and stimulating the spirit of his time, and exhibiting its temper to the observer,--foreign as to either clime or century. The physical observer of a new region might as well shut his eyes to the mountains, and omit to note which way the streams run, as the moral observer pa.s.s by the idols of a nation with a heedless gaze.

Side by side with this lies the inquiry into the great Epochs of the society visited. Find out what individuals and nations date from, and you discover what events are most interesting to them. A child reckons from his first journey, or his entrance upon school: a man from his marriage, his beginning practice in his profession, or forming a fresh partners.h.i.+p in trade; if he be a farmer, from the year of a good or bad crop; if he be a merchant, from the season of a currency pressure; if he be an operative, from the winter of the Strike: a matron dates from the birth of her children; her nursemaid from her change of place. Nations, too, date from what interests them most. It is important to learn what this is. The major date of American citizens is the Revolution; their minor dates are elections, and new admissions into the Union. The people at Amsterdam date from the completion of the Stadt Huis; the Spaniards from the achievement of Columbus; the Germans from the deed of Luther; the Haytians from the abduction of Toussaint L'Ouverture; the Cherokees from treaties with the Whites; the people of Pitcairn's Island from the mutiny of the Bounty; the Turks, at present, from the ma.s.sacre of the Janissaries; the Russians from the founding of St. Petersburgh and the deaths of its monarchs; the Irish (for nearer times than the battle of the Boyne) by the year of the fever, the year of the rebellion, the year of the famine. There is a world of instruction in this kind of fact; and if a new species of epoch, of which there is a promise, should arise,--if the highest works of men should come to be looked upon as the clearest operations of Providence,--if Germany or Europe should date from Gothe as the civilized world does from Columbus,--this sole test might reveal almost the entire moral state of society.

The treatment of the Guilty is all-important as an index to the moral notions of a society. This cla.s.s of facts will hereafter yield infallible inferences as to the principles and views of governments and people upon vice, its causes and remedies. At present, such facts must be used with great caution, because the societies of civilized countries are in a state of transition from the old vindictiveness to a purer moral philosophy. The ancient methods, utterly disgraceful as they are, must subsist till society has fully agreed upon and prepared for better ones; and it would be harsh to p.r.o.nounce upon the humanity of the English from their prisons, or the justice of the French from their galley system. The degrees of reliance upon brute force and upon public opinion are yet by no means proportioned to the civilization of respective societies, as at first sight might be expected, and as must be before punishments and prisons can be taken as indications of morals and manners.

The treatment of the guilty in savage lands, and also in countries under a despotism, indicates the morals of rulers only,--except in so far as it points out the political subservience of the people. It is true that the Burmese must needs be in a deplorable social state, if their king can "spread out" his prime minister in the sun, as formerly described: but the mercy or cruelty of his subjects can be inferred only from the liberty they may have and may use to treat one another in the same manner. In their case, we see that such a power is possessed and put to use. The creditor exposes his debtor's wife, children, and slaves, to the same noon-day sun which broils the prime minister. In Austria, it would be harsh to suppose that subjects have any desire to treat one another as the Emperor and his minister treat political offenders within the walls of the castle of Spielburg. The Russians at large are not to be made answerable for the transportation of coffles of n.o.bles and gentlemen to the silver mines of Siberia, and the regiments on the frontier. It is only under a representative government that prisons, and the treatment of criminals under the law, can be fairly considered a test of the feelings of the majority.

It is too true, however, that punishments are almost everywhere vindictive in their character; and have more relation to some supposed principle of "not letting vice go unpunished," than either to the security of society, or the reformation of the offender. The few exceptions that exist are a far more conclusive testimony to an advancing state of morals than the old methods are to the vindictiveness of the mind of the society which they corrupt and deform. The Philadelphia penitentiary is a proof of the thoughtful and laborious humanity of those who inst.i.tuted it; but Newgate cannot be regarded as the expressed decision of the English people as to how criminals should be guarded. Such a prison would not now be inst.i.tuted by any civilized nation. Its existence is to be interpreted, not as a token of the cruelty and profligacy of the mind of society, but of its ignorance of the case, or of its bigoted adherence to ancient methods, or of its apathy in regard to improvements to which there is no peremptory call of self-interest. Any one of these is enough, Heaven knows, for any society to have to answer for; enough to yield, by contrast, surpa.s.sing honour to the philanthropy which has pulled down the pillory, and is labouring to supersede the hangman, and to convert every prison in the civilized world into an hospital for the cure of moral disease. But the reform has begun; the spirit of Howard is on its pilgrimage; and barbarous as is still our treatment of the guilty, better days are in prospect.

What the traveller has to observe then is, first, whether there has been any amelioration of the treatment of criminals in countries where the people have a voice upon it: and, in countries despotically ruled, whether public sentiment is moved about the condition of state criminals, and whether men treat one another vindictively in their appeals to the laws of citizens.h.i.+p: whether there is a Burmese cruelty in the exercise of the legal rights of the creditor; whether there is a reluctance to plunge others into the woes of legal penalties; or whether offenders are considered as beyond the pale of sympathy. It may thus appear whether the people entertain the pernicious notion that there is a line drawn for human conduct, on one side of which all is virtue, and on the other all vice; or whether they are approximating to the more philosophical and genial belief that all wickedness is weakness and woe, and that therefore the guilty need more care and tenderness in the arrangement of the circ.u.mstances under which they live than those who enjoy greater strength against temptation, and an ease of mind which criminals can never know. In some parts of the United States this general persuasion is remarkably evident, and is an incontestable proof of the advanced state of morals there. In some prisons of the United States, as much care is bestowed on the arrangements by which the guilty are preserved from contaminating one another, are exposed to good influences and precluded from bad, as in any infirmary on the ventilation of the wards, and the diet and nursing of the sick. In such a region, vindictiveness in social punishments must be going out, and Christ-like views of human guilt and infirmity beginning to prevail.

The same conclusions may be drawn from an observation of the methods of legal punishment. Recklessness of human life is one of the surest symptoms of barbarism, whether life is taken by law or by a.s.sa.s.sination.

As men grow civilized, and learn to rate the spiritual higher and higher above the physical life, human life grows sacred. The Turk orders off the head of a slave almost without a serious thought. The New Zealanders have murdered men by scores, to supply their dried and grinning heads to English purchasers, who little imagined the cost at which they were obtained. This is the way in which life is squandered in savage societies. Up to a comparatively high point of civilization, the law makes free with life, long after the private expenditure of it has been checked or has ceased. Duels, brawls, a.s.sa.s.sinations, have nearly been discontinued, and even war in some measure discountenanced, before the law duly recognises the sacredness of human life. But the time comes.

One generation after another grows up with a still improving sense of the majesty of life,--of the mystery of the existence of such a being as man,--of the infinity of ideas and emotions in the mind of each, and of the boundlessness of his social relations. These recognitions may not be express; but they are sufficiently real to hold back the hand from quenching life. The reluctance to destroy such a creation is found to be on the increase. Men prefer suffering wrong to being accessary to so fearful an act as what now appears a judicial murder: the law is left unused,--is evaded,--and it becomes necessary to alter it. Capital punishments are restricted,--are further restricted,--are abolished.

Such is the process. It is now all but completed in the United States: it is advancing rapidly in England. During its progress further light is thrown on the moral notions of a represented people by a change in the character of other (called inferior) punishments. Bodily torments and disfigurements go out. Torture and mutilation are discontinued, and after a while the grosser mental inflictions. The pillory (as mere ignominious exposure) was a great advance upon the maiming with which it was once connected; but it is now discontinued as barbarous. All ignominious exposure will ere long be considered equally barbarous,--including capital punishment, of which such exposure is the recommendatory principle. To refer once more to the Pennsylvania case,--these notions of ignominious exposure are there so far outgrown, that avoidance of it is the main principle of the management. Seclusion, under the guardians.h.i.+p of the law, is there the method,--on the principle of consideration to the weak, and of supreme regard to the feeling of self-respect in the offender,--the feeling in which he is necessarily most deficient. When we consider the brutalizing methods of punishment in use in former times, and now in some foreign countries, in contrast with the latest inst.i.tuted and most successful, we cannot avoid perceiving that such are indications of the moral notions of those at whose will they exist, be they a council of despots, or an a.s.sociation of nations. We cannot avoid perceiving from them what barbarism is held to be justice in some ages and countries; and how that which would then and there be condemned as culpable leniency, comes elsewhere to be considered less than justice. The treatment of the guilty is one of the strongest evidences as to the general moral notions of society, when it is evidence at all; that is, when the guilty are in the hands of society.

There is another species of evidence of which travellers are not in the habit of making use, but which is well worth their attention,--the Conversation of convicted Criminals. There are not many places in the world where it is possible to obtain this, without a greater sacrifice of comfort than the ordinary tourist is disposed to make. There is little temptation to enter prisons where squalid wretches are crowded together in dirt, noise, and utter profligacy; where no one of them could speak seriously for fear of the ridicule of his comrades; where the father sees his young son corrupted before his eyes, and the mother utters cruel jests upon the frightened child that hides its face in her ap.r.o.n. In scenes like these, there is nothing for the stranger to do and to learn. The whole is one great falsehood, where the people are acting falsely under false circ.u.mstances. It affords an enterprise for the philanthropist, but no real knowledge for the observer. He may pa.s.s by such places, knowing that they are pretty much alike in all countries where they exist. Criminals herded together in virtue of their criminality, and outraged into a diabolical hardihood, must present one uniform aspect of disgust. What variety should there be in them? About as much as in the leper settlements in the wildernesses of the world two thousand years ago.

The traveller will not be permitted to see the state prisoners of any despotic government; but wherever the subject of prison reform has been entertained, (and Howard's spirit is at work in many countries of the world,) there will probably be opportunity to converse with offenders in a better way than by singling them out from the crowd, in a spirit of condescension, and asking them a few questions, in the answers to which you can place no confidence. If you can converse face to face with a convict, as man with man, you can hardly fail to be instructed. If he has been long deprived of equal conversation, his heart will be full; his disposition will be to trust you; his impulse will be to confide to you his offence, and all the details connected with it. By thus conversing with a variety of offenders, you will be put in possession of the causes of crime, of the views of society upon the relative gravity of offences, and of the condition of hope or despair in which those are left who have broken the laws, and are delivered over to shame.

Much light will also be thrown upon the seat of the disorders of society. Putting political offences aside, as varying in number in proportion to the nature of the government, almost all the rest are offences against property. Nine out of ten convicts, perhaps, are punished for taking the money or money's worth of another. Here is a hint as to the respects in which society is most mistaken in its principles, and weakest in its organization. Of the offences against the person, some are occasioned by the bad habits which attend the practice of depredation on property; thieves are drunkards, and drunkards are brawlers:--but the greater number arise out of domestic miseries. Where there are fewest a.s.saults occasioned by conjugal injuries and domestic troubles, the state of morals is the purest. Where they abound, it is clear that the course of love does not run smooth; and that, from the workings of some bad principles, domestic morals are in a low state. In Austria and Prussia, state criminals abound; while in America such a thing is rarely heard of. In America, a youthful and thriving country, offences against property for the most part arise out of bad personal habits, which again are occasioned by domestic misery of some kind; this domestic misery, however, being itself less common than in an older state of society. In England almost all the offences are against property, and are so mult.i.tudinous as to warrant a stranger's conclusion that the distribution of property among us must be extremely faulty, the oppression of certain cla.s.ses by others very severe, and our political morals very low; in short, that the aristocratic spirit rules in England. From the tales of convicts,--how they were reared, what was the nature of the snares into which they fell, what opportunity of retrieving themselves remained, and what was the character of the influences which sank them into misery,--much cannot but be learned of the moral atmosphere in which they were reared. From their present state of mind,--whether they revert in affection to their homes, or to the society from which they have been s.n.a.t.c.hed,--whether they look forward with hope or fear, or are incapable of looking forward at all,--it will appear whether the justice and benevolence of the community have secured the commonest blessings of moral life to these its lowest members, or whether they have been utterly crushed by the selfishness of the society into which they were born. To have criminals at all may in time come to be a disgrace to a community; meantime, their number and quality are an evidence as to its prevalent moral notions, which the intelligent observer will not disregard.

[H]"The SONGS of every nation must always be the most familiar and truly popular part of its poetry. They are uniformly the first fruits of the fancy and feeling of rude societies; and, even in the most civilized times, are _the only_ poetry of the great body of the people. Their influence, therefore, upon the character of a country has been universally felt and acknowledged. Among rude tribes, it is evident that their songs must, at first, take their tone from the prevailing character of the people. But, even among them, it is to be observed that, though generally expressive of the fiercest pa.s.sions, they yet represent them with some tincture of generosity and good feeling, and may be regarded as the first lessons and memorials of savage virtue. An Indian warrior, at the stake of torture, exults, in wild numbers, over the enemies who have fallen by his tomahawk, and rejoices in the antic.i.p.ated vengeance of his tribe. But it is chiefly by giving expression to the loftiest sentiments of invincible courage and fort.i.tude, that he seeks to support himself in the midst of his torments. 'I am brave and intrepid!' he exclaims,--'I do not fear death nor any kind of torture! He who fears them is a coward--he is less than a woman. Death is nothing to him who has courage!' As it is thus the very best parts of their actual character that are dwelt upon even in the barbarous songs of savages, these songs must contribute essentially to the progress of refinement, by fostering and cheris.h.i.+ng every germ of good feeling that is successively developed during the advancement of society. When selfishness begins to give way to generosity,--when mere animal courage is in some degree enn.o.bled by feelings of patriotic self-devotion,--and, above all, when sensual appet.i.te begins to be purified into love,--it is then that the popular songs, by acquiring a higher character themselves, come to produce a still more powerful reaction upon the character of the people. These songs, produced by the most highly-gifted of the tribe,--by those who feel most strongly, and express their feelings most happily,--convey ideas of greater elevation and refinement than are as yet familiar; but not so far removed from the ordinary habits of thinking as to be unintelligible. The hero who devotes himself to death for the safety of his country, with a firmness as yet almost without example in the actual history of the race,--and the lover, who follows his mistress through every danger, and perhaps dies for her sake,--become objects on which every one delights to dwell, and models which the braver and n.o.bler spirits are thus incited to emulate. The songs of rude nations, accordingly, and those in which they take most pleasure, are filled with the most romantic instances of courage, fidelity, and generosity; and it cannot be supposed that such delightful and elevating pictures of human nature can be constantly before the eyes of any people, without producing a great effect on their character. The same considerations are applicable to the effects of popular ballads upon the most numerous cla.s.ses of society, even in civilized nations."

It appears that popular songs are both the cause and effect of general morals: that they are first formed, and then react. In both points of view they serve as an index of popular morals. The ballads of a people present us, not only with vivid pictures of the common objects which are before their eyes,--given with more familiarity than would suit any other style of composition,--but they present also the most prevalent feelings on subjects of the highest popular interest. If it were not so, they would not have been popular songs. The traveller cannot be wrong in concluding that he sees a faithful reflection of the mind of a people in their ballads. When he possesses the popular songs of former centuries, he holds the means of transporting himself back to the scenes of the ancient world, and finds himself a spectator of its most active proceedings. Wars are waged beneath his eye, and the events of the chase grow to a grandeur which is not dreamed of now. Love, the pa.s.sion of all times, and the staple of all songs, varies in its expression among every people and in every age, and appears still another and yet the same. The lady of ballads is always worthy of love and song; but there are instructive differences in the treatment she receives. Sometimes she is oppressed by a harsh parent; sometimes wrongfully accused by a wicked servant, or a false knight; sometimes her soft nature is exasperated into revenge; sometimes she is represented as fallen, but always, in that case, as enduring retribution. Upon the whole, the testimony is strong in favour of bravery in men, and purity in women, and constancy in both;--and this in the whole range of popular poetry, from ancient Arabic effusions, through centuries of European song, up to the Indian chants which may yet be heard on the sh.o.r.es of the wide western lakes.

The distinguis.h.i.+ng attributes of great men bear a strong resemblance, from the days when all Greece rang with the musical celebration of Harmodius and Aristogiton, through the age of Charlemagne, up to the triumphs of Bolivar: and women have been adored for the same qualities, however variously set forth, from the virgin with gazelle eyes of three thousand years ago, to the dames who witnessed the conflicts of the Holy Land, and onwards to the squaw who calls upon her husband not to forget her in the world of spirits, and to our Burns' Highland Mary.

What the traveller has to look to is, that he does not take one aspect of the popular mind for the whole, or a temporary state of the popular mind for a permanent one,--though, from the powerful action of national song, this temporary state is likely to become a permanent one by its means. As an instance of the first, the observer would be mistaken in judging of more than a cla.s.s of English from some of the best songs they have,--Dibdin's sea songs. They are too fair a representation of the single cla.s.s to which they pertain, though they have done much to foster and extend the spirit of generosity, simplicity, activity, gaiety, and constant love, which they breathe. They have undoubtedly raised the character of the British navy, and are to a great degree indicative of the naval spirit with us: but they present only one aspect of the national mind. In Spain, again, the songs with which the mountains are ringing, and whose origin is too remote to be traced, are no picture of the conventional mind of the aristocratic cla.s.ses. As an instance of the false conclusions which might be drawn from the popular songs of a brief period, we may look to the revolutionary poetry of France. It would be unfair to judge of the French people by their _ca ira_ or the _Carmagnole_, however true an expression such songs may be of the spirit of the hour. The nation had lived before under "une monarchie absolue temperee par des chansons;" the absolutism grew too galling; and then the songs took the tone of fury which protracted oppression had bred. It was not long before the tone was again changed. Napoleon was hara.s.sed on his imperial throne by tokens of a secret understanding, unfriendly to his interests: those tokens were songs ambiguously worded, or set to airs which were used as signs; and treason, which he could not reach, was perpetually spoken and acted within ear-shot and before his eyes.

When the royal family returned, the songs of De Beranger pa.s.sed in like manner from lip to lip, and the restored throne trembled to the echo. In France, morals have for many years found their chief expression in politics; and from the songs of Paris may the traveller learn the political feelings of the time. Under representative governments, where politics are the chief expression of morals, the songs of the people cannot but be an instructive study to the observer; and scarcely less so in countries where, politics being forbidden, the domestic and friendly relations must be the topics through which the most general ideas and feelings will flow out.

The rudest and the most advanced nations abound in songs. They are heard under the plantain throughout Africa, as in the streets of Paris. The boatmen on the Nile, and the children of Cairo on their way to school, cheer the time with chants; as do the Germans in their vineyards, and in the leisure hours of the university. The Negro sings of what he sees and feels,--the storm coming over the woods, the smile of his wife, and the coolness of the drink she gives him. The Frenchman sings the woes of the state prisoner, and the shrewd self-cautionings of the citizen. The songs of the Egyptian are amatory, and of the German varied as the accomplishments of the nation,--but in their moral tone earnest and pure. The more this mode of expression is looked into, the more serviceable it will be found to the traveller's purposes of observation.

The subject of the Literature of nations, as a means of becoming familiar with their moral ideas, is too vast to be enlarged on here. The considerations connected with it are so obvious, too, that the traveller to whom they would not occur can be but little qualified for the work of observing.

It is clear that we cannot know the mind of a nation, any more than of an individual, by merely looking at it, without hearing any speech.

National literature is national speech. By this are its prevalent ideas and feelings uttered. It is necessarily so; for books which do not meet sympathy from numbers die immediately, and books which strike upon the sympathies of all never die. Between the two extremes, of books which command the sympathies of a cla.s.s, and those which are the delight of all, there is an extensive gradation, from which the careful observer may almost frame for himself a scale of popular morals and manners. I mean, of course, in countries where there is a copious cla.s.sical, or a growing modern literature. A people which happens to be without a literature,--the Americans, for instance,--must be judged of, as cautiously as may be, by such other means of utterance as they may have,--the political inst.i.tutions which the present generation has formed or a.s.sented to,--their preferences in selection from the literature of other countries; and so on. But there is a far greater danger of their being misunderstood than there can ever be with regard to a nation which speaks for itself through books. "A country which has no national literature," writes a student of man, "or a literature too insignificant to force its way abroad, must always be to its neighbours, at least in every important spiritual respect, an unknown and misestimated country. Its towns may figure on our maps; its revenues, population, manufactures, political connexions, may be recorded in statistical books: but the character of the people has no symbol and no voice; we cannot know them by speech and discourse, but only by mere sight and outward observation of their habits and procedure."[I]