Saying these words, the stout gentleman rose and shook Flemming heartily by the hand. And Flemming returned the shake as heartily, recognising in this ruddy personage a former travelling companion, Mr. Berkley, whom he had left, a week or two previously, toiling up the Righi. Mr. Berkley was an Englishman of fortune; a good-humoured, humane, old bachelor, remarkable alike for his common sense and his eccentricity. This is to say, the basis of his character was good, sound common sense, trodden down and smoothed by education; but this level groundwork his strange and whimsical fancy used as a dancingfloor, whereon to exhibit her eccentric tricks. His ruling passion was cold bathing; and he usually ate his breakfast sitting in a tub of cold water, and reading a newspaper. He kissed every child he met, and to every old man said in passing, "God bless you!" with such an expression of voice and countenance, that no one could doubt his sincerity. He reminded one of Roger Bontemps, or the little man in gray, though with a difference. "The last time I had the pleasure of seeing you, Mr. Berkley," said Flemming, "was at Goldau, just as you were going up the Righi. I hope you were gratified with a fine sunrise of the mountain-top?" "No, I was not," replied Mr. Berkley. "It is all a humbug a confounded humbug! They made such a noise about their sunrise, that I determined I would not see it. So I lay snug in bed, and only peeped through the window-curtain. That was enough. Just above the house, on the top of the hill, stood some fifty half-dressed, romantic individuals, shivering in the wet grass, and, a short distance from them, a miserable wretch blowing a long wooden horn. That's your sunrise on the Righi, is it?' said I, and went to sleep again. * * * Take my word for it, the Righi is a great humbug!"-H. W. LONGFELLOW, Hyperion. R XXXIII. THE HISTORY OF A WORD. What a record of great social revolutions, revolutions in nations and in the feelings of nations, the one word 'frank' contains, which is used, as we all know, to express aught that is generous, straightforward, and free. The Franks, I need not remind you, were a powerful German tribe, or association of tribes, which at the breaking up of the Roman empire possessed themselves of Gaul, to which they gave their own name. They were the ruling conquering people, honourably distinguished from the Gauls and degenerate Romans, among whom they established themselves by their independence, their love of truth, their love of freedom, their hatred of a lie; they had, in short, the virtues which belong to a conquering and dominant race in the midst of an inferior and conquered. And thus it came to pass that by degrees the name 'frank,' which originally indicated a merely national, came to involve as well a moral distinction; and a ‘frank' man was synonymous not merely with a man of the conquering German race, but was an epithet applied to a person possessed of certain high moral qualities, which for the most part appertained to, and were found only in, men of that stock. And thus in men's daily discourse, when they speak of a person as being 'frank,' or when they use the words franchise,' enfranchisement,' to express civil liberties and immunities, their language here is the outgrowth, the record, and the result of great historic changes, and bears testimony to facts of history, whereof it may well happen that the speakers have never heard.-R. C. TRENCH, On the Study of Words. 1 The word frank is also used in the same sense in German, but the expression altsränkisch is employed to denote both persons 1 and things which are as good and sterling as they were with the old Franks, and also in the sense of antiquated, obsolete.' XXXIV. SHAKESPEARE'S BIOGRAPHY. Shakespeare is the only biographer of Shakespeare; and even he can tell nothing, except to the Shakespeare within uss—that is, to our most apprehensive and sympathetic hour. He cannot step from off his tripod, and give us anecdotes of his inspirations. Read the antique documents extricated, analyzed, and compared by the assiduous Dyce and Collier, and now read one of those skiey sentences-aerolites-which seem to have fallen out of heaven, and which not your experience, but the man within the breast, has accepted as words of fate, and tell me if they match, if the former account in any manner for the latter, or which gives the most historical insight into the man. Hence, though our external history is so meagre, yet with Shakespeare for biographer, instead of Aubrey and Rowe, we have really the information which is material, that which describes character and fortune, that which, if we were about to meet the man and deal with him, would most import us to know. We have his recorded convictions on those questions which knock for answer at every heart-on life and death, on love, on wealth and poverty, on the prizes of life, and the ways whereby we come at them; on the characters of men, and the influences, occult and open, which affect their fortunes; and on those mysterious and demoniacal powers which defy our science, and yet interweave their malice and their gift in our brightest hours. Who ever read the volume of the "Sonnets" without finding that the poet had there revealed, under masks that are no masks to the intelligent, the lore of friendship and of love; the confusion of sentiments in the most succeptible and, at the same time, the most intellectual of men? What trait of his private mind has he hidden in his dramas? One can discern, in his ample pictures of the gentleman and the king, what forms and humanities pleased him; his delight in troops of friends, in large hospitality, in cheerful giving. Let Timon, let Warwick, let Antonio the Merchant answer for his great heart. So far from Shakespeare's being the least known, he is the one person, in all modern history, known to us What point of morals, of manners, of economy, of philosophy, of religion, of taste, of the conduct of life, has he not settled? What mystery has he not signified his knowledge of? What office, or function, or district of nan's work has he not remembered? What king has e not taught state, as Talma taught Napoleon? What sage has he not outseen? What gentleman has he not instructed in the rudeness of his behaviour?-RALPH WALDO EMERSON, Representative Men. XXXV. DISTINCTIVE CHARACTER OF NATIONS. Be this as it may, it is at least clear that, during five successive centuries, the lowlands of our island were chiefly peopled, and were exclusively governed, by members of the great Teutonic family. In France, throughout the same period, there was a vast numerical preponderance of the Gallic, or Roman-Gallic, over the Teutonic element of society. What was the effect of the slow and imperfect fusion of the two races in that kingdom I have attempted in a former lecture to explain. What was the effect of the undisturbed development of the German habits of thought and action in our own land it remains for us to inquire. I have already avowed my belief that to each of the nations of the earth belongs, by a divine decree, a distinctive character adapted to the peculiar office assigned to each in the great and comprehensive system of human affairs. Thus to France was appointed, by the Supreme Ruler of mankind, the duty of civilizing and humanizing the European world. To England it has been given to guide all other States to excellence in the practical arts of life, to commercial wealth, to political wisdom, and to spiritual liberty. But to Germany was delegated the highest and the noblest trust which has been committed to any people since the Hebrews, the Greeks, and the Romans fulfilled their respective commission of imparting to our race the blessings of religion, of learning, and of law.*** Weakened as she has been in defensive as well as in aggressive war by the division of her territory into so many separate States, yet in that very weakness she has found her strength in the unambitious but benificent career which, by the prescient will of the Creator himself, she was destined to pursue. The fathers of some of the most aged amongst us witnessed her first assumption of her rank and proper station in the republic of letters, and we ourselves are witnesses how, in that comparatively new region of national prowess, she has exhibited the same indestructible character which, more than a thousand years ago, enabled her to lay in this island the basis of a government, of which (if our posterity be true to their trust) another thousand years will scarcely witness the subversion. That England has her patrimony on the seas, France on the land, and Germany in the clouds, is a sarcasm at which a German may well afford to smile. For reverence in the contemplation of whatever is elevated, and imagination in the embellishment of whatever is beautiful, and tenderness in cherishing whatever is lovely, and patience in the pursuit of the most recondite truths, and courage in the avowal of every deliberate conviction, and charity in tolerating every form of honest dissentthese are now, as they have ever been, the vital elements of the Teutonic mind.-SIR JAMES STEPHEN, Lectures on the History of France. |