UNCROWNED KINGS. 119 Caina; but, day by day, your body shall be dressed more gayly, and set in higher chariots, and have more orders on its breast crowns on its head, if you will. Men shall bow before it, stare and shout round it; crowd after it up and down the streets; build palaces for it; feast with it at their tables' heads all the night long; your soul shall stay enough within it to know what they do, and to feel the weight of the golden dress on its shoulders, and the furrow of the crownedge on the skull no more. Would you take the offer verbally made by the death-angel? Would the meanest among us take it, think you? Yet practically and verily we grasp at it, every one of us, in a measure; many of us grasp at it in its fulness of horror. Every man accepts it, who desires to advance in life without knowing what life is; who means only that he is to get more horses, and more servants, and more fortune, and more public honor, ́and — not more personal soul. IIe only is advancing in life whose heart is getting softer, whose blood warmer, whose brain quicker, whose spirit is entering into Living peace. And the men who have this life in them are the true lords or kings of the earth they, and they only. 55. UNCROWNED KINGS. YE uncrowned but kingly kings! Made royal by the brain and heart; Of all earth's wealth the noblest part, Yet reckoned nothing in the mart All hail to you, most kingly kings! UNCROWNED kingS. O ye uncrowned but kingly kings! Whose breath and words of living flame Swift as the curved bow backward springs, O ye uncrowned but kingly kings! O ye uncrowned but kingly kings! O ye uncrowned bnt kingly kings! O ye uncrowned but kingly kings! NATIONAL DURATION. 121 56. COMMERCE NOT THE BASIS OF NATIONAL DURATION. THE experience of merely commercial nations presents no allurements to me. I do not disparage the importance of commerce; but prosperity based on foreign trade alone is hollow, and it is transient. Venice once exchanged the products of the world, and her palaces were as numerous as her homes. The base of the Alps gave her scanty crops; her manufactures were curious, but they were not diversified, nor useful for common life. Now, the winged lions of St. Mark watch silent over the desolate bride of the Adriatic. So commerce, starting from Tyre and Sidon, touched as with a comet's glare both shores of the Mediterranean and its classic isles, and swept upward on the west coast of Europe. Do you lust for the brief splendors of Spain and Portugal? Holland held the sceptre longer, for she had her own wares to trade with. It has passed to the chief western isle of Europe; and we envy the possession. Is it accident, tell me, that ruin rests on Tyre? that brigands bring terror to the Piræus? that Genoa sends no ships to the continent her son discovered? that Spain and Portugal forget the energy of Ferdinaud and Isabella? that Holland has no successor to Van Tromp? Does the wail of fate mingle with the proud boast that "Britannia rules the wave?" Nations exist which were venerable and grand in power before Greek triremes met the Persians at Salamis, or Roman galleys crossed to Carthage, or bolder 122 NATIONAL DURATION. navigators passed the Pillars of Hercules. Criticise Oriental civilization as you please, China and Japan have endured, and duration is one quality of grandeur. Both nations have cultivated agriculture and manufactures at home. They have been narrow in views; that we should not be. They have been selfsupporting and independent in resources; that we may easily become. In the pride of youth our civilization forgets the best lessons of the far-distant past. Recent experience in Europe warns us to beware of coming change. Look beyond, and we may learn the secret of long life. We are too proud to learn of China and Japan. Well! the Pyramids do not bow before our arrogance; and the glories of Egypt may well awe the self-assertion of young America. Forty centuries of national life is grandeur itself. The huge statues of the kings who were contemporary with Abraham remain to tell us of the mighty force of that empire. Its architecture was titanic; its arts include many lost to us. Concede that our life has much superior to its own, I would purchase the secret of duration. May we not from the mysterious depths of Egyptian history, its hieroglyphics and its tombs, learn the weird method of long national life? Let the student ponder well whether it was not in its self-supporting industry, in agriculture, that fed all its own people, in manufactures that needed no foreign aid. The sphinx may refuse an answer, but the inquiry continually returns. That nation will endure which has the roots of its prosperity in its own soil. Strength on the ocean is WAR BETTER THAN DECAY. 123 as unstable as the element itself. That resource which is far away is by so much uncertain and transient. Let us plant our wealth and our power on our own domain. Let them spread broad as they will, and graft them with all pleasant fruits. Let all singing birds rest in their branches, and all birds of passage come and go in their genial shade. Build up a self-supporting nation. Construct a Republic, which, if worse comes to worst, can live without a nail or a shoe, a coat or a book, brought from outside of its boundaries; so independent, it can dictate its own trade. Then commerce will wait upon its wealth, and will do homage to its power. 57. WAR BETTER THAN MORAL DECAY. THROUGHI poetic imagination, war became chiv alry. The practice of arms ceased to be “a conflict of kites and crows; it was guarded by a refined courtesy from every rude and ungenerous abuse of superior strength. Upon this point there is much sophistry prevalent ; therefore it is worth while to see how the matter really stands. A truly great man the American Channing has said, I remember, somewhere in his works, that if armies were dressed in a hangman's or a butcher's garb, the false glare of military enthusiasm would be destroyed, and war would be seen in its true aspect, as butchery. It is wonderful how the generous enthusiasm of Dr. Channing has led him into such a sophism. Take away honor, and imagination, and poetry from war, |