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CONVERSATION WITH WALT WHITMAN. 239

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her, as a photographer does your chin a little higher, please!""

The story is melancholy.

'Ah, when the Greeks treated of tragedy, how differently it was done. They did it in a lofty way, so that there seemed to be fulfilment in defeat; a tragedy as treated by the ancients inspires-fills one with hope.'

Of Henry James's essay upon George Sand :

"I like his cool, calm judgment, though I think the final summing up tone is too depreciatory."

That is a noticeable passage of James's "concerning the ardent forces of the heart. It is George Sand's merit that she has given us ideas upon them... Strange, loveless, seen in this light, are those large, comprehensive fictions Middlemarch' and C Daniel Deronda.'

They seem to foreign readers, probably, like vast, cold, commodious, respectable rooms, through whose windowpanes one sees a snow-covered landscape, and across whose acres of sober-hued carpet one looks in vain for a fireplace or a fire.

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One day, when looking at Bolswert's engraving after Rubens's bold portrait of Cæsar, Walt Whitman said: "What a pity that there is not such a portrait of Lincoln; the portraits of the President are lamentable, horrible, and the worst of it is they are so like!"... "I should like to poke about amongst the antiquities of Europe for two years-think I should appreciate the treasures there that they are for me."

The following gossip we enjoyed with the Good Gray Poet in the country, near a perfumed clover-field, within sound of

"The low and sulky murmur of the bee."

'I sometimes think that there never has been a life written of anybody.'

Plutarch's-?

"I think them of incalculable use; though probably they give us no idea of that which really happened. During the [Secession] War we would now and then read a special article in the newspapers on an important battle, and we used to shout with laughter-the mistakes and fabrications were so ludicrous. So-called lives are

little more than statistics.'

'... I remember well once seeing a man fall off a hay-rick; I ran miles away. But necessity drives off that qualm. There is an operation in camp-the thing must be done--hundreds dying for want of attendance.' .. The soldiers' time used to hang heavy on their hands during the winter; they would devise all sorts of things—make ingenious toys, little knick-knacks.'

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"The wild roving life of a soldier, not knowing whether you may die to-morrow or what may happen— the camaraderie, being thrown together in that way and under those conditions, is fascinating. I do not think that it has ever been expressed in literature, though the ancients understood it."

"To die,—to sleep ;

To sleep! perchance to dream ;-ay, there's the rub;" The Poet criticised the speech as having morbid tendencies; in short, that it showed the dividing line between the untroubled health of the ancients and uneasy consciousness of modern thought.

"I have sometimes felt a little vexed that the good

THE LIFE OF A SOLDIER.

241

William should have failed to see anything in the common people; for unless it be the faithful servant in As You Like It, there is not a single character, in his plays, of the people who is not a booby (Jack Cade, Bottom), and no doubt they were-only it shows how entirely Shakespeare was absorbed in the feudalism of his time."

When in the open and under the blue sky of America, the author of "Leaves of Grass" quoted freely.

"Well, honour is the subject of my story," was the commencement of a favourite speech with him. Whenever we hear an actor recite it, our mind reverts to the majestic presence and full sweet baritone of Walt Whitman,

"The torrent roar'd; and we did buffet it

With lusty sinews; throwing it aside

And stemming it with hearts of controversy."

A flexible voice, which could sink to the hoarse whisper necessary to the line :

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"Give me some drink, Titinius."

I see that a statue of Burns has been unveiled in Glasgow; Lord Houghton presided. Convivial Burns-fond of comrades, of talking and joking; I think that I-nay, that we should all have liked him. What a tragedy his life was, poor fellow !

"Walter Scott is a great favourite of mine; what happy days and nights I have had from his novels; the good I have had out of The Heart of MidLothian! ...

"You remember what I said about painting-?"

R

Yes, how pleasant it is to be advised to do just that which one is thinking of doing.

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“Well, I have never experienced it. When Leaves of Grass appeared, the first piece of advice concerning it was from an old fellow Yes, there is something in that which you have written, but why don't you study Addison? you ought to read Addison's

works!'"

Of travel :

"There come epochs in our lives, when the breaking up, the tearing oneself away from old scenes, is of incalculable benefit; and one finds upon looking back, that the years which were spent in roving, were the best, the most important of our life."

Two years of quiet life in Philadelphia terminated for the Gilchrists in the spring of 1878. The summer and autumn months were spent at Northampton, Chesterfield, Boston and Concord.

At Northampton Anne Gilchrist wrote Three Glimpses of a New England Village, an essay eventually published in Blackwood-November, 1884. She also resumed her prose translations from "La Légende Des Siècles."

When staying at Boston she sent a letter to the Daily Advertiser, 1878, the year that Jingoism was rampant in England :

COLONEL HIGGINSON'S ADDRESS AT THE CHESTNUTSTREET CLUB.

To the Editors of the Boston Daily Advertiser.

"I have not the making of a speaker in me, for I left out on Monday the very thing I would best like to have said in answer to Colonel Higginson's remarks on

LETTER TO A BOSTON PAPER.

243

the present and probable future status of England among the nations. He was, I know, only quoting what has been said before, and in England, too, when he observed that England's commercial supremacy was already doomed, and when that was gone she would sink to the rank of a third or fourth-rate power, like Holland. Is then England's commercial supremacy the cause of her greatness? Or is it only one effect, one manifestation and phase of it? What figure did she make among the nations of Europe when her coal was still unworked and her manufactures and export trade non-extant? Certainly not a third or fourth

rate one.

"If we are not degenerating in quality, nor dwindling in numbers; if in moral weight and fibre, in intellectual power, indomitable energy, and last not least, in physical vigour, we are what we were, surely we need not fear the future; need not fear but that we shall find good and ample scope for these qualities and keep the proud position we have now. And if I am told this is a vague, unpractical way of looking at things, I will make bold to answer that not more plastic is clay to the will and imagination of the sculptor than are practical affairs to the national strength, will, and insight underlying them. And that to be great in character and little in destiny does not happen to nations nor to individuals either, in the long run, spite of transient appearances. History repeats herself, says every one. Nations must decay as soon as they have culminated. History repeats herself; but not in such a way as to make prophesying a safe trade.

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