Mosses from an old manse
earth to be any longer encumbered with their poor achievements in the
literary line. Accordingly a thorough and searching investigation had
swept the booksellers’ shops, hawkers’ stands, public and private
libraries, and even the little book-shelf by the country fireside, and
had brought the world’s entire mass of printed paper, bound or in
sheets, to swell the already mountain bulk of our illustrious bonfire.
Thick, heavy folios, containing the labors of lexicographers,
commentators, and encyclopedists, were flung in, and, falling among the
embers with a leaden thump, smouldered away to ashes like rotten wood.
The small, richly gilt French tomes of the last age, with the hundred
volumes of Voltaire among them, went off in a brilliant shower of
sparkles and little jets of flame; while the current literature of the
same nation burned red and blue, and threw an infernal light over the
visages of the spectators, converting them all to the aspect of
party-colored fiends. A collection of German stories emitted a scent of
brimstone. The English standard authors made excellent fuel, generally
exhibiting the properties of sound oak logs. Milton’s works, in
particular, sent up a powerful blaze, gradually reddening into a coal,
which promised to endure longer than almost any other material of the
pile. From Shakespeare there gushed a flame of such marvellous splendor
that men shaded their eyes as against the sun’s meridian glory; nor
even when the works of his own elucidators were flung upon him did he
cease to flash forth a dazzling radiance from beneath the ponderous
heap. It is my belief that he is still blazing as fervidly as ever.
“Could a poet but light a lamp at that glorious flame,” remarked I, “he
might then consume the midnight oil to some good purpose.”
“That is the very thing which modern poets have been too apt to do, or
at least to attempt,” answered a critic. “The chief benefit to be
expected from this conflagration of past literature undoubtedly is,
that writers will henceforth be compelled to light their lamps at the
sun or stars.”
“If they can reach so high,” said I; “but that task requires a giant,
who may afterwards distribute the light among inferior men. It is not
every one that can steal the fire from heaven like Prometheus; but,
when once he had done the deed, a thousand hearths were kindled by it.”
It amazed me much to observe how indefinite was the proportion between
the physical mass of any given author and the property of brilliant and
long-continued combustion. For instance, there was not a quarto volume
of the last century—nor, indeed, of the present—that could compete in
that particular with a child’s little gilt-covered book, containing
_Mother Goose’s Melodies_. _The Life and Death of Tom Thumb_ outlasted
the biography of Marlborough. An epic, indeed a dozen of them, was
converted to white ashes before the single sheet of an old ballad was
half consumed. In more than one case, too, when volumes of applauded
verse proved incapable of anything better than a stifling smoke, an
unregarded ditty of some nameless bard—perchance in the corner of a
newspaper—soared up among the stars with a flame as brilliant as their
own. Speaking of the properties of flame, methought Shelley’s poetry
emitted a purer light than almost any other productions of his day,
contrasting beautifully with the fitful and lurid gleams and gushes of
black vapor that flashed and eddied from the volumes of Lord Byron. As
for Tom Moore, some of his songs diffused an odor like a burning
pastil.
I felt particular interest in watching the combustion of American
authors, and scrupulously noted by my watch the precise number of
moments that changed most of them from shabbily printed books to
indistinguishable ashes. It would be invidious, however, if not
perilous, to betray these awful secrets; so that I shall content myself
with observing that it was not invariably the writer most frequent in
the public mouth that made the most splendid appearance in the bonfire.
I especially remember that a great deal of excellent inflammability was
exhibited in a thin volume of poems by Ellery Channing; although, to
speak the truth, there were certain portions that hissed and spluttered
in a very disagreeable fashion. A curious phenomenon occurred in
reference to several writers, native as well as foreign. Their books,
though of highly respectable figure, instead of bursting into a blaze
or even smouldering out their substance in smoke, suddenly melted away
in a manner that proved them to be ice.
If it be no lack of modesty to mention my own works, it must here be
confessed that I looked for them with fatherly interest, but in vain.
Too probably they were changed to vapor by the first action of the
heat; at best, I can only hope that, in their quiet way, they
contributed a glimmering spark or two to the splendor of the evening.
“Alas! and woe is me!” thus bemoaned himself a heavy-looking gentleman
in green spectacles. “The world is utterly ruined, and there is nothing
to live for any longer. The business of my life is snatched from me.
Not a volume to be had for love or money!”
“This,” remarked the sedate observer beside me, “is a bookworm,—one of
those men who are born to gnaw dead thoughts. His clothes, you see, are
covered with the dust of libraries. He has no inward fountain of ideas;
and, in good earnest, now that the old stock is abolished, I do not see
what is to become of the poor fellow. Have you no word of comfort for
him?”
“My dear sir,” said I to the desperate bookworm, “is not nature better
than a book? Is not the human heart deeper than any system of
philosophy? Is not life replete with more instruction than past
observers have found it possible to write down in maxims? Be of good
cheer. The great book of Time is still spread wide open before us; and,
if we read it aright, it will be to us a volume of eternal truth.”
“O, my books, my books, my precious printed books!” reiterated the
forlorn bookworm. “My only reality was a bound volume; and now they
will not leave me even a shadowy pamphlet!”
In fact, the last remnant of the literature of all the ages was now
descending upon the blazing heap in the shape of a cloud of pamphlets
from the press of the New World. These likewise were consumed in the
twinkling of an eye, leaving the earth, for the first time since the
days of Cadmus, free from the plague of letters,—an enviable field for
the authors of the next generation.
“Well, and does anything remain to be done?” inquired I, somewhat
anxiously. “Unless we set fire to the earth itself, and then leap
boldly off into infinite space, I know not that we can carry reform to
any farther point.”
“You are vastly mistaken, my good friend,” said the observer. “Believe
me, the fire will not be allowed to settle down without the addition of
fuel that will startle many persons who have lent a willing hand thus
far.”
Nevertheless there appeared to be a relaxation of effort for a little
time, during which, probably, the leaders of the movement were
considering what should be done next. In the interval, a philosopher
threw his theory into the flames,—a sacrifice which, by those who knew
how to estimate it, was pronounced the most remarkable that had yet
been made. The combustion, however, was by no means brilliant. Some
indefatigable people, scorning to take a moment’s ease, now employed
themselves in collecting all the withered leaves and fallen boughs of
the forest, and thereby recruited the bonfire to a greater height than
ever. But this was mere by-play.
“Here comes the fresh fuel that I spoke of,” said my companion.
To my astonishment the persons who now advanced into the vacant space
around the mountain fire bore surplices and other priestly garments,
mitres, crosiers, and a confusion of Popish and Protestant emblems with
which it seemed their purpose to consummate the great act of faith.
Crosses from the spires of old cathedrals were cast upon the heap with
as little remorse as if the reverence of centuries passing in long
array beneath the lofty towers had not looked up to them as the holiest
of symbols. The font in which infants were consecrated to God, the
sacramental vessels whence piety received the hallowed draught, were
given to the same destruction. Perhaps it most nearly touched my heart
to see among these devoted relics fragments of the humble
communion-tables and undecorated pulpits which I recognized as having
been torn from the meeting-houses of New England. Those simple edifices
might have been permitted to retain all of sacred embellishment that
their Puritan founders had bestowed, even though the mighty structure
of St. Peter’s had sent its spoils to the fire of this terrible
sacrifice. Yet I felt that these were but the externals of religion,
and might most safely be relinquished by spirits that best knew their
deep significance.
“All is well,” said I, cheerfully. “The wood-paths shall be the aisles
of our cathedral, the firmament itself shall be its ceiling. What needs
an earthly roof between the Deity and his worshippers? Our faith can
well afford to lose all the drapery that even the holiest men have
thrown around it, and be only the more sublime in its simplicity.”
“True,” said my companion; “but will they pause here?”
The doubt implied in his question was well founded. In the general
destruction of books already described, a holy volume, that stood apart
from the catalogue of human literature, and yet, in one sense, was at
its head, had been spared. But the Titan of innovation,—angel or fiend,
double in his nature, and capable of deeds befitting both
characters,—at first shaking down only the old and rotten shapes of
things, had now, as it appeared, laid his terrible hand upon the main
pillars which supported the whole edifice of our moral and spiritual
state. The inhabitants of the earth had grown too enlightened to define
their faith within a form of words, or to limit the spiritual by any
analogy to our material existence. Truths which the heavens trembled at
were now but a fable of the world’s infancy. Therefore, as the final
sacrifice of human error, what else remained to be thrown upon the
embers of that awful pile, except the book which, though a celestial
revelation to past ages, was but a voice from a lower sphere as
regarded the present race of man? It was done! Upon the blazing heap of
falsehood and worn-out truth—things that the earth had never needed, or
had ceased to need, or had grown childishly weary of—fell the ponderous
church Bible, the great old volume that had lain so long on the cushion
of the pulpit, and whence the pastor’s solemn voice had given holy
utterance on so many a Sabbath day. There, likewise, fell the family
Bible, which the long-buried patriarch had read to his children,—in
prosperity or sorrow, by the fireside and in the summer shade of
trees,—and had bequeathed downward as the heirloom of generations.
There fell the bosom Bible, the little volume that had been the soul’s
friend of some sorely tried child of dust, who thence took courage,
whether his trial were for life or death, steadfastly confronting both
in the strong assurance of immortality.
All these were flung into the fierce and riotous blaze; and then a
mighty wind came roaring across the plain with a desolate howl, as if
it were the angry lamentation of the earth for the loss of heaven’s
sunshine; and it shook the gigantic pyramid of flame and scattered the
cinders of half-consumed abominations around upon the spectators.
“This is terrible!” said I, feeling that my check grew pale, and seeing
a like change in the visages about me.
“Be of good courage yet,” answered the man with whom I had so often