prise-should be contemptuous towards com- an intellectual nature seeking pasture and ex merce. ercise for the intellect. I am far indeed from I may notice, in passing, a very curious desiring, by this comparison, to cast any disform of this narrowness. Trade is despised, paraging light on the young gentleman's but distinctions are established between one natural endowments, which appear to have trade and another. A man who sells wine is been valuable in their order and robust in considered more of a gentleman than a man their degree, nor do I question the wisdom of who sells figs and raisins; and I believe you his choice; all I mean to imply is, that will find, if you observe people carefully, that although he had chosen a fine large field for a woollen manufacturer is thought to be a simple energy, it was a poor and barren field shade less vulgar than a cotton manufacturer. for the intellect to pasture in. Consider for These distinctions are seldom based on rea-one moment the difference in this respect beson, for the work of commerce is generally tween the career which he had abandoned very much the same sort of work, mentally, and the trade he had embraced. As an whatever may be the materials it deals in. attaché he would have lived in capital cities, You may be heartily congratulated on the have had the best opportunities for perfecting strength of mind, firmness of resolution, and himself in modern languages, and for meeting superiority to prejudice, which have led you the most varied and the most interesting to choose the business of a cotton-spinner. It society. In every day there would have been is an excellent business, and, in itself, every precious hours of leisure, to be employed in whit as honorable as dealing in corn and cat- the increase of his culture, If an intellectual tle, which our nobles do habitually without man, having to choose between diplomacy reproach. But now that I have disclaimed and cotton-spinning, preferred cotton-spin any participation in the stupid narrowness ning it would be from the desire for wealth which despises trade in general, and the cot- or from the love of an English home. Th ton-trade in particular, let me add a few life of a cotton manufacturer, who personally words upon the effects of the cotton business attends to his business with that close super on the mind. vision which has generally conducted t There appeared in one of the newspapers a success, leaves scarcely any margin for intel little time since a most interesting and evi- lectual pleasure or spare energy for intellect dently genuine letter from an Etonian, who ual work. After ten hours in the mill had actually entered business in a cotton fac- it is difficult to sit down and study; an tory, and devoted himself to it so as to earn even if there were energy enough, the min the confidence of his employers and a salary would not readily cast off the burden of grea of 400l. a year as manager. He had waited practical anxieties and responsibilities so a some time uselessly for a diplomatic appoint-to attune itself to disinterested thinking ment which did not arrive, and so, rather The leaders of industry often display ment than lose the best years of early manhood, as power of as high an order as that which a more indolent fellow would have done very employed in the government of great empires willingly, in pure idleness, he took the resolu- they show the highest administrative abil tion of entering business, and carried out his ty, they have to deal continually with finar determination with admirable persistence.cial questions which on their smaller scale r At first nobody would believe that the "swell" could be serious; people thought that his idea of manufacturing was a mere freak, and expected him to abandon it when he had to face the tedium of the daily work; but the swell was serious-went to the mill at six in the morning and stayed there till six at night, from Monday till Saturday inclusive. After a year of this, his new companions believed in him. Now, all this is very admirable indeed as a manifestation of energy, and that truest independence which looks to fortune as the reward of its own manly effort, but it may be permitted to me to make a few observations on this young gentleman's resolve. What he did seems to me rather the act of an energetic nature seeking an outlet for energy, than of quire as much forethought and acumen those that concern the exchequer; but th ability they need is always strictly practica and there is the widest difference between th practical and the intellectual minds. A co stant and close pressure of practical consi erations develops the sort of power whic deals effectually with the present and its need but atrophies the higher mind. The tw minds which we call intelligence and intelle resemble the feet and wings of birds. Eagle and swallows walk badly or not at all, b they have a marvellous strength of fligh ostriches are great pedestrians, but the know nothing of the regions of the ai The best that can be hoped for men immerse in the details of business is that they may able, like partridges and pheasants, to take short flight on an emergency, and rise, if only for a few minutes, above the level of the stubble and the copse. PART XII. SURROUNDINGS. LETTER I. OF RESIDENCE. An unsettled class of English people-Effect of localities on Without, therefore, desiring to imply any prejudiced contempt for trade, I do desire to urge the consideration of its inevitable effects upon the mind. For men of great practical intelligence and abundant energy, trade is all- TO A FRIEND WHO OFTEN CHANGED HIS PLACE sufficing, but it could never entirely satisfy an intellectual nature. And although there is drudgery in every pursuit, for even literature and painting are full of it, still there are certain kinds of drudgery which intellectual natures find to be harder to endure than others. The drudgery which they bear least easily is an incessant attention to duties which have no intellectual interest, and yet which cannot be properly performed mechanically so as to leave the mind at liberty for its own speculations. Deep thinkers are notoriously absent, for thought requires abstraction from what surrounds us, and it is hard for them to be denied the liberty of dreaming. An intellectual person might be happy as a stone-breaker on the roadside, because the work would leave his mind at liberty; but he would certainly be miserable as an engine driver at a coal-pit shaft, where the abstraction of an instant would imperil the lives of others. In a recent address delivered by Mr. Gladstone at Liverpool, he acknowledged the neglect of culture which is one of the shortcomings of our trading community, and held out the hope (perhaps in some degree illusory) that the same persons might become eminent in commerce and in learning. No doubt there have been instances of this; and when a "concern" has been firmly established by the energy of a predecessor, the heir to it may be satisfied with a royal sort of supervision, leaving the drudgery of detail to his managers, and so secure for himself that sufficient leisure without which high culture is not possible. But the founders of great commercial fortunes have, I believe, in every instance thrown their whole energy into their trade, making wealth their aim, and leaving culture to be added in another generation. The founders of commercial families are in this country usually men of great mother-wit and plenty of determination-but illiterate. the mind-Reaction against surroundings-Landscapepainting a consequence of it-Crushing effect of too much natural magnificence-The mind takes color from its surroundings-Selection of a place of residenceCharles Dickens-Heinrich Heine-Dr. Arnold at RugbyHis house in the lake district-Tycho Brahe-His establishment on the island of Hween-The young Humboldts in the Castle of Tegel-Alexander Humboldt's appreciation of Paris-Dr. Johnson-Mr. Buckle-Cowper--Galileo. I FIND that there is a whole class of English subjects (you belong to that class) of whom it is utterly impossible to predict where they will be living in five years. Indeed, as you are the worst of correspondents, I only learned your present address, by sheer accident, from a perfect stranger, and he told me, of course, that you had plans for going somewhere else, but where that might be he knew not. The civilized English nomad is usually, like yourself, a person of independent means, rich enough to bear the expenses of frequent removals, but without the cares of property. His money is safely invested in the funds, or in railways; and so, wherever the postman can bring his dividends, he can live in freedom from material cares. When his wife is as unsettled as himself, the pair seem to live in a balloon, or in a sort of Noah's ark, which goes whither the wind lists, and takes ground in the most unexpected places. Either we Have you ever studied the effect of localities on the mind-on your own mind? That which we are is due in great part to the accident of our surroundings, which act upon us in one or two quite opposite ways. feel in harmony with them, in which case they produce a positive effect upon us, or else we are out of harmony, and then they drive us into the strangest reactions. A great ugly English town, like Manchester, for instance, makes some men such thorough townsmen that they cannot live without smoky chimneys; or it fills the souls of others with such a passionate longing for beautiful scenery and rustic retirement, that they find it absolutely necessary to bury themselves from time to time in the recesses of picturesque mountains. The development of modern landscape-painting has not been due to habits of rural existence, but to the growth of very big and hide ous modern cities, which made men long for | sights and sounds have their influence on our shady forests, and pure streams, and magnif- temper and on our thoughts, and our inmost icent spectacles of sunset, and dawn, and being is not the same in one place as in anmoonlight. It is by this time a trite observa- other. We are like blank paper that takes a tion that people who have always lived in tint by reflection from what is nearest, and beautiful scenery do not, and cannot, appre- changes it as its surroundings change. In a ciate it; that too much natural magnificence dull gray room, how gray and dull it looks! positively crushes the activity of the intellect, but it will be bathed in rose or amber if the and that its best effect is simply that of re- hangings are crimson or yellow. There are freshment for people who have not access to natures that go to the streams of life in great it every day. It happens too, in a converse cities as the heart goes to the water-brooks; way, that rustics and mountaineers have the there are other natures that need the solitude strongest appreciation of the advantages of of primæval forests and the silence of the great cities, and thrive in them often more Alps. The most popular of English novelists happily than citizens who are born in the sometimes went to write in the tranquillity of brick streets. Those who have great facilities beautiful scenery, taking his manuscript to for changing their place of residence ought the shore of some azure lake in Switzerland, always to bear in mind that every locality is in sight of the eternal snow; but all that like a dyer's vat, and that the residents take beauty and peace, all that sweetness of pure its color, or some other color, from it just as air and color, were not seductive enough to the clothes do that the dyer steeps in stain. overcome for many days the deep longing for If you look back upon your past life, you will the London streets. His genius needed the assuredly admit that every place has colored streets, as a bee needs the summer flowers, your mental habits; and that although other and languished when long separated from tints from other places have supervened, so them. Others have needed the wild heather, that it may be difficult to say precisely what or the murmur of the ocean, or the sound of remains of the place you lived in many years autumn winds that strip great forest-trees. ago, still something does remain, like the Who does not deeply pity poor Heine in his effect of the first painting on a picture, which last sad years, when he lay fixed on his couch tells on the whole work permanently, though of pain in that narrow Parisian lodging, and it may have been covered over and over again compared it to the sounding grave of Merlin by what painters call scumblings and glaz- the enchanter, "which is situated in the wood ings. of Brozeliande, in Brittany, under lofty oaks whose tops taper, like emerald flames, towards heaven. O brother Merlin," he exclaims, and with what touching pathos! "O brother Merlin, I envy thee those trees, with their fresh breezes, for never a green leaf rustles about this mattress-grave of mine in Paris, where from morning till night I hear nothing but the rattle of wheels, the clatter of hammers, street-brawls, and the jingling of pianofortes!" The selection of a place of residence, even though we only intend to pass a few short years in it, is from the intellectual point of view a matter so important that one can hardly exaggerate its consequences. We see this quite plainly in the case of authors, whose minds are more visible to us than the minds of other men, and therefore more easily and conveniently studied. We need no biographer to inform us that Dickens was a Londoner, that Browning had lived in Italy, that Ruskin had passed many seasons in Switzerland and Venice. Suppose for one moment that these three authors had been born in Ireland, and had never quitted it, is it not certain that their production would have been different? Let us carry our supposition farther still, and conceive, if we can, the difference to their literary performance if they had been born, not in Ireland, but in Iceland, and lived there all their lives! Is it not highly probable that in this case their production would have been so starved and impoverished from insufficiency of material and of suggestion, that they would have uttered nothing but some simple expression of sentiment and imagination, some homely song or tale? All In the biography of Dr. Arnold, his longing for natural beauty recurs as one of the peculiarities of his constitution. He did not need very grand scenery, though he enjoyed it deeply, but some wild natural loveliness was such a necessity for him that he pined for it unhappily in its absence. Rugby could offer him scarcely anything of this. "We have no hills," he lamented, "no plains-not a single wood, and but one single copse; no heath, no down, no rock, no river, no clear streamscarcely any flowers, for the lias is particularly poor in them-nothing but one endless monotony of enclosed fields and hedgerow trees. This is to me a daily privation; it robs me of what is naturally my anti-attrition; and as I grow older I begin to feel it. . . . The pos itive dulness of the country about Rugby | high-walled park. The land was fertile and makes it to me a mere working-place: I cannot expatiate there even in my walks." "The monotonous character of the midland scenery of Warwickshire," says Dr. Arnold's biographer, "was to him, with his strong love of natural beauty and variety, absolutely repulsive; there was something almost touching in the eagerness with which, amidst that 'endless succession of fields and hedgerows,' he would make the most of any features of a higher order; in the pleasure with which he would cherish the few places where the current of the Avon was perceptible, or where a glimpse of the horizon could be discerned; in the humorous despair with which he would gaze on the dull expanse of fields eastward from Rugby. It is no wonder we do not like looking that way, when one considers that there is nothing fine between us and the Ural mountains. Conceive what you look over, for you just miss Sweden, and look over Holland, the north of Germany, and the centre of Russia."* rich in game, so that the scientific Robinson Crusoe lived in material abundance; and as he was only about seven miles from Copenhagen, he could procure everything necessary to his convenience. He built a great house on the elevated land in the midst of the isle, about three-quarters of a mile from the sea, a palace of art and science, with statues and paintings and all the apparatus which the ingenuity of that age could contrive for the advancement of astronomical pursuits. Uniting the case of a rich nobleman's existence with every aid to science, including special erections for his instruments, and a printing establishment that worked under his own immediate direction, he lived far enough from the capital to enjoy the most perfect tranquillity, yet near enough to escape the consequences of too absolute isolation. Aided in all he undertook by a staff of assistants that he himself had trained, supported in his labor by the encouragement of his sovereign, and especially by his own unflagging interest in scientific inThis dreadful midland monotony impelled vestigation, he led in that peaceful island the Dr. Arnold to seek refreshment and compen-ideal intellectual life. Of that mansion where sation in a holiday home in the Lake district, he labored, of the observatory where he and there he found all that his eyes longed watched the celestial phenomena, surrounded for, streams, hills, woods, and wild-flowers. but not disturbed by the waves of a shallow Nor had his belief in the value of these sweet sea, there remains at this day literally not one natural surroundings been illusory; such in-stone upon another; but many a less fortustincts are not given for our betrayal, and the soul of a wise man knows its own needs, both before they are supplied, and after. Westmoreland gave him all he had hoped from it, and more. "Body and mind," he wrote, It was one of the many fortunate circum"alike seem to repose greedily in delicious stances in the position of the two Humboldts quiet, without dulness, which we enjoy in that they passed their youth in the quiet old Westmoreland." And again: "At Allan castle of Tegel, separated from Berlin by a Bank, in the summer, I worked on the Roman pine-wood, and surrounded by walks and garhistory, and hope to do so again in the winter. dens. They too, like Tycho Brahe, enjoyed It is very inspiring to write with such a view that happy combination of tranquillity with before one's eyes as that from our drawing-the neighborhood of a capital city which is so room at Allan Bank, where the trees of the shrubbery gradually run up into the trees of the cliff, and the mountain-side, with its infinite variety of rocky peaks and points upon which the cattle expatiate, rises over the tops of the trees." Of all happily-situated mental laborers who have worked since the days of Horace, surely Tycho Brahe was the happiest and most to be envied. King Frederick of Denmark gave him a delightful island for his habitation, large enough for him not to feel imprisoned (the circumference being about five miles), yet little enough for him to feel as snugly at home there as Mr. Waterton in his * How purely this is the misery of a man of culture! A peasant would not have gone so far. nate laborer in the same field, harassed by poverty, distracted by noise and interruption, has remembered with pardonable envy the splendid peace of Uranienborg. peculiarly favorable to culture. In later life, when Alexander Humboldt had collected those immense masses of material which were the result of his travels in South America, he warmly appreciated the unequalled advantages of Paris. He knew how to extract from the solitudes of primæval nature what he wanted for the enrichment of his mind; but he knew also how to avail himself of all the assistance and opportunities which are only to be had in great capitals. He was not attracted to town-life, like Dr. Johnson and Mr. Buckle, to the exclusion of wild nature; but neither, on the other hand, had he that horror of towns which was a morbid defect in Cowper, and which condemns those who suffer from it to rusticity. Even Galileo, who thought the country especially favorable to ered them one by one. It may be doubted, speculative intellects, and the walls of cities an imprisonment for them, declared that the best years of his life were those he had spent in Padua. LETTER II. TO A FRIEND WHO MAINTAINED THAT ENCE TO A THOROUGHLY OCCUPIED MIND. SUR however, whether he was more in danger ROUNDINGS WERE A MATTER OF INDIFFER- suggested by what was passing in the conflict around him, but by scientific considerations about the phenomena of colors. He noticed, Archimedes at the siege of Syracuse-Geoffroy St. Hilaire in in a passing observation, the bad effect of war the besieged city of Alexandria-Goethe at the bombardment of Verdun--Lullo, the Oriental missionary-Gior upon the mind, how it makes people destructdano Bruno-Unacknowledged effect of surroundings-ive one day and creative the next, how it acEffect of Frankfort on Goethe--Great capitals--Goethe-customs them to phases intended to excite His garden-house-What he said about Béranger and hope in desperate circumstances, thus pro Paris-Fortunate surroundings of Titian. ordano Bruno worked constantly also in the midst of political troubles and religious persecutions, and his biographer tells us that “il desiderio vivissimo della scienza aveva ben più efficacia sull' animo del Bruno, che non gli avvenimenti esterni." ducing a peculiar sort of hypocrisy different THERE are so many well-known instances of from the priestly and courtly kind. This is men who have been able to continue their in- the extent of his interest in the war; but tellectual labors under the most unfavorable when he finds some soldiers fishing he is atconditions, that your argument might be pow-tracted to the spot and profoundly occupied erfully supported by an appeal to actual ex--not with the soldiers, but with the optical perience. There is Archimedes, of course, to phenomena on the water. He was never very begin with, who certainly seems to have ab- much moved by external events, nor did he stracted himself sufficiently from the tumult take that intense interest in the politics of the of a great siege to forget it altogether when day which we often find in people less studioccupied with his mathematical problems. ous of literature and science. Raimond Lullo, The prevalent stories of his death, though not the Oriental missionary, continued to write identical, point evidently to a habit of abstrac- many volumes in the midst of the most contion which had been remarked as a peculiar- tinual difficulties and dangers, preserving as ity by those about him, and it is probable much mental energy and clearness as if he enough that a great inventor in engineering had been safe and tranquil in a library. Giwould follow his usual speculations under circumstances which, though dangerous, had lasted long enough to become habitual. Even modern warfare, which from the use of gunpowder is so much noisier than that which raged at Syracuse, does not hinder men from thinking and writing when they are used to These examples which have just occurred it. Geoffroy St. Hilaire never worked more to me, and many others that it would be easy steadily and regularly in his whole life than to collect, may be taken to prove at least so he did in the midst of the besieged city of much as this, that it is possible to be absorbed Alexandria. "Knowledge is so sweet," he in private studies when surrounded by the said long afterwards, in speaking of this ex- most disturbing influences; but even in these perience, "that it never entered my thoughts cases it would be a mistake to conclude that how a bombshell might in an instant have the surroundings had no effect whatever. cast into the abyss both me and my docu-There can be no doubt that Geoffroy St. Hilaire ments. By good luck two electric fish had was intensely excited by the siege of Alexbeen caught and given to him just then, so he andria, though he may not have attributed immediately began to make experiments, as his excitement to that cause. His mind was if he had been in his own cabinet in Paris, occupied with the electrical fishes, but his and for three weeks he thought of nothing nervous system was wrought upon by the else, utterly forgetting the fierce warfare that siege, and kept in that state of tension which filled the air with thunder and flame, and the at the same time enabled him to get through streets with victims. He had sixty-four hy- a gigantic piece of intellectual labor and made potheses to amuse him, and it was necessary him incapable of rest. Had this condition to review his whole scientific acquirement been prolonged it must have terminated with reference to each of these as he consid-either in exhaustion or in madness. Men have |