Cluninstaridysarchides, like the general in Plautus; and they must commend the taste of Tertullian, who substituted for the too common name of Hercules that of Scytalosagittipelliger. It is said that Fagon, the head physician of Louis XIV., who could name and explain perfectly all the plants of the royal garden, was so ignorant in the fields, that he could distinguish nothing there, or tell what any wild thing was. So it is with some persons in regard to humanity. They are familiar with every shade in the genera of the distinguished circles; but of the common people, excepting what they read of in the police reports, they know, and wish to know, no more than of the inhabitants of another planet. “I have often observed,” says a French writer," the perfect ignorance in which each class lives with regard to the others, neither seeing nor caring to see. We, for instance, men of cultivated minds,”—does not such a boast sound funny here ?_"how difficult is it for us to discern what there is of good in the common people!" Bating this peeping out of a little vanity, it is a just remark. Indeed I believe that there is no point on which books of philosophy relating to manners require correction more than on this one; for even the most humane writers formerly seem, like Charron, to have taken for granted, without examination, all that had passed current among the learned in Pagan times respecting the vices of the common people, from the days of Tacitus down to the fall of the Roman empire, though in many instances, in their own generation, the exact contrary to their assertions was the fact, as any one would have known who had had personal and familiar intercourse with common persons. Men of genius, however, in Christian ages have never been slow to remark the excellence of what is common in persons and in the undistinguished human character. There have never been wanting those who felt that man was by nature formed for all mankind. So one of our poets says,

"No Muse I ask before my view to bring
The humble actions of the poor I sing;

How passed the youthful, how the old their days;
Who sunk in sloth and who aspired to praise;

Their tempers, manners, morals, customs, arts,

What parts they had, and how they 'mployed their parts;

By what elated, soothed, seduced, deprest,

Full well I know,-these records give the rest."

And another, ascribing this desire even to the majority, says,

"What wonder, therefore, since the endearing ties

Of passion link the universal kind

Of man so close, what wonder if to search

This common nature through the various change
Of sex, and age, and fortune, and the frame

Of each peculiar, draw the busy mind

With unresisted charms?"

Though the taste of poets generally in the abstract may not be for the common people-though they prefer Dryads and Naiads

"Fair forms, that glance amid the green of woods,

Or from the waters give their sidelong shapes,
Half swelling;"

yet, like Hazlitt, even they may have lain awake sometimes in a street in town, after hearing the cry of the milkman or the rap of the washerwoman, and pleased themselves with reflecting how virtues are diffused, and what a pleasure there is in the mere contemplation of any set of one's fellow-creatures and their humours, when our knowledge has acquired humility enough to look at them steadily. "It is a happy consideration," as an eminent observer says, "that the humanity, the wide-ranging and healthy sympathies, and especially the recognition of the virtues which obtain among the poor and humble, so observable in the works of Dickens, are in a great degree characteristic of the present age. It is exceedingly difficult for a man to be as narrow as he could have been had he lived a century ago. No matter how bigoted may be the tendencies of his nature; no matter how strong may be his desire to dwell in a sulky isolation from his race, he cannot breathe the atmosphere of his time without feeling occasionally a generous sentiment springing to his lips, without perceiving occasionally a liberal opinion stealing into his understanding *." If however the theme which is to be maintained in this chapter were proposed in some circles, there would still be no want of clamorous opposition from those who would reply, like Coriolanus, when told he had not loved the common people, "you should account me the more virtuous

* Whipple, Literature and Life.

that I have not been common in my love." Perhaps, indeed, it is in this chapter that our courage will most be required; as it was a sense of the danger to be incurred by writing it that determined its author to give his name to those who would resent his words. If noticed at a distance from the Lover's Seat, we should quickly hear voices like those of Lysander, in The Widow's Tears, exclaiming,

"What of the vulgar? Who hates not the vulgar
Deserves not the love of the virtuous."

It may be all very well to extol in theory "the plebeian minds of the Decii," and prefer them to Heliogabalus or Caligula. But the idea of the common classes as existing around us being worthy of imitation in any respect, or that the upper ranks can learn any thing practically from those low people who live in garrets, work in back shops, or earn their bread in the yards or streets, would never enter into some of our gravest heads. In many ranks of life there can be found characters like Miss Monflathers, the boarding-school mistress, of whom we before heard, who, when one of her pupils picked up the handkerchief of poor Nell and presented it to her, said aloud, "Is it not a most remarkable thing, Miss Edwards, that you have an attachment to the lower classes which always draws you to their sides, or, rather, is it not a most extraordinary thing, that all I say and do will not wean you from such propensities, you extremely vulgar-minded girl?" In graver moods it is difficult not to feel indignation at persons capable of adopting such views. What an infatuation to be insensible to the beauty and virtue that exist in the obscure population, and to confine all one's admiration to some extraordinary spectacle presented by the distinguished classes! There are persons aping elevation who will wait to see pass the noble and eminent few, but when these have gone by, who will say, like Pandarus, of the common crowd, whatever good-looking and beautiful faces may appear among those wearing a fustian jacket or a cheap straw bonnet, "Ne'er look, ne'er look; the eagles are gone; crows and daws, crows and daws!"

Thus the one great original error denounced at the beginning can be traced in every direction. Men of pretensions, thinking to raise themselves to notice by what is extraordinary, overlook

the excellence of what is common. But as the green fields and their grasses are no less admirable than parterres of exquisite flowers to those who study them, as if seeing them for the first time, so would the multitude appear as worthy of admiration as the cultivated classes, if we were to watch near and with

"The

equitable eyes the individuals that compose it. "When I consider," says a great author, "how small a portion of human virtue is recorded by history; how superior in dignity as well as in number are the unnoticed, unhonoured saints and heroes of domestic and humble life, I see a light thrown over the present state which more than reconciles me to all its evils." members of an unnoticed family," he observes elsewhere, "who in their obscurity awaken the mind of one child or brother to the idea and love of goodness, exert an influence equal to the greatest. The distinctions of society vanish before the light of these truths. I attach myself to the multitude, not because they are voters and have political power, but because they are men, and have within their reach the most glorious prizes of humanity.I have expressed," he continues, "my strong interest in the mass of the people; and this is founded not on their usefulness to the community so much as on what they are in themselves. They make little noise and draw little notice in their narrow sphere of action; but still they have their full proportion of personal worth and even of greatness. Through the vulgar error of undervaluing what is common, we are apt indeed to pass these by as of little worth. But as in the outward creation, so in the soul, the common is the most precious *.” "We see ignorant and simple people," says Charron, "lead better and happier lives, and meet indigence, grief, and death with more cheerful gaiety than men of extraordinary talents and learning. If we attend carefully we shall find among peasants, workmen, and other poor persons finer examples of virtue than all those that the school teaches, though they do not sound trumpets, or mount their high horse, or keep themselves in constant agitation." No men perhaps see more of the common people than those who minister the rites of religion. Well, if you interrogate them, and if they think by your face that they can trust you with their secret thoughts, and that you will not betray them by

* Channing.

blaring it all out in presence of great ladies and high grandees, they will generally, with certain reserves which do not diminish the importance of their evidence, admit the justice of all that we advance in regard to the virtues of the common population.

However, as general eulogies will not serve our purpose, let us proceed to an actual investigation; not like dignified officials delegated to examine the poor-there is no great danger of that in the case of us who are seated here, but as common friends and even lovers,

Who, when they come

To the low roof see there a kind of home;

A social people whom they've ever known,

With their own thoughts and manners like their own."

Yes, even in the most familiar, most dear relation, let us visit them, and, as we approach them, sing,—

"Come where the cowslip bloweth,

Come where the primrose lies;
Where the gentle violet groweth,
And the green turf never dies.
I'll haste, my love, to greet thee,
Where roses and lilies blow;
I'll ever wish to meet thee

Where the common flow'rets grow

We must proceed therefore now to sound, as we have often done before, perhaps what some would term the very base string of humility. We must fancy that we are sworn brothers to common people. The Germans style postilions brothers-in-law; we must imagine such relations for ourselves, and learn to call them by their names of Will and Fred. "From a prince to a 'prentice, a low transformation! That shall be mine," said a king's son, adding, "for in every thing the purpose must weigh with the folly." We who are not the children of princes, whatever blood we may have heard flows in our veins, need not even talk much about the descent. If it were only for our own pleasure, unless very unfortunate in our excursion, we shall find perhaps at times that we would be rather with common people, as if their cousins, uncles, and brothers, living in garrets through which the wind whistles,—

* Fam. Her.