The Crown of Wild Olive
the wisest of Englishmen. He, and with him the wisest of all other great
nations, have spoken always to men of this hope, and they would not
hear. Plato, in the dialogue of Critias, his last, broken off at his
death--Pindar, in passionate singing of the fortunate islands--Virgil,
in the prophetic tenth eclogue--Bacon, in his fable of the New
Atlantis--More, in the book which, too impatiently wise, became the
bye-word of fools--these, all, have told us with one voice what we
should strive to attain; _they_ not hopeless of it, but for our follies
forced, as it seems, by heaven, to tell us only partly and in parables,
lest we should hear them and obey.
Shall we never listen to the words of these wisest of men? Then listen
at least to the words of your children--let us in the lips of babes and
sucklings find our strength; and see that we do not make them mock
instead of pray, when we teach them, night and morning, to ask for what
we believe never can be granted;--that the will of the Father,--which
is, that His creatures may be righteous and happy--should be done, _on
earth_, as it is in Heaven.
FOOTNOTES:
[139] Compare _Time and Tide_, Sec. 169, _and Fors Clavigera_, Letter XIV,
page 9.
[140] See Appendix, "Modern Education," and compare Sec. 70 of _Time and
Tide_.
[141] [They were deserting, I am informed, in the early part of this
year, 1873, at the rate of a regiment a week.]
_NOTES ON THE POLITICAL ECONOMY OF PRUSSIA._
I am often accused of inconsistency; but believe myself defensible
against the charge with respect to what I have said on nearly every
subject except that of war. It is impossible for me to write
consistently of war, for the groups of facts I have gathered about it
lead me to two precisely opposite conclusions.
When I find this the case, in other matters, I am silent, till I can
choose my conclusion: but, with respect to war, I am forced to speak, by
the necessities of the time; and forced to act, one way or another. The
conviction on which I act is, that it causes an incalculable amount of
avoidable human suffering, and that it ought to cease among Christian
nations; and if therefore any of my boy-friends desire to be soldiers, I
try my utmost to bring them into what I conceive to be a better mind.
But, on the other hand, I know certainly that the most beautiful
characters yet developed among men have been formed in war;--that all
great nations have been warrior nations, and that the only kinds of
peace which we are likely to get in the present age are ruinous alike to
the intellect, and the heart.
The lecture on "War," in this volume, addressed to young soldiers, had
for its object to strengthen their trust in the virtue of their
profession. It is inconsistent with itself, in its closing appeal to
women, praying them to use their influence to bring wars to an end. And
I have been hindered from completing my long intended notes on the
economy of the Kings of Prussia by continually increasing doubt how far
the machinery and discipline of war, under which they learned the art
of government, was essential for such lesson; and what the honesty and
sagacity of the Friedrich who so nobly repaired his ruined Prussia,
might have done for the happiness of his Prussia, unruined.
In war, however, or in peace, the character which Carlyle chiefly loves
him for, and in which Carlyle has shown him to differ from all kings up
to this time succeeding him, is his constant purpose to use every power
entrusted to him for the good of his people; and be, not in name only,
but in heart and hand, their king.
Not in ambition, but in natural instinct of duty. Friedrich, born to
govern, determines to govern to the best of his faculty. That "best" may
sometimes be unwise; and self-will, or love of glory, may have their
oblique hold on his mind, and warp it this way or that; but they are
never principal with him. He believes that war is necessary, and
maintains it; sees that peace is necessary, and calmly persists in the
work of it to the day of his death, not claiming therein more praise
than the head of any ordinary household, who rules it simply because it
is his place, and he must not yield the mastery of it to another.
How far, in the future, it may be possible for men to gain the strength
necessary for kingship without either fronting death, or inflicting it,
seems to me not at present determinable. The historical facts are that,
broadly speaking, none but soldiers, or persons with a soldierly
faculty, have ever yet shown themselves fit to be kings; and that no
other men are so gentle, so just, or so clear-sighted. Wordsworth's
character of the happy warrior cannot be reached in the height of it
_but by_ a warrior; nay, so much is it beyond common strength that I had
supposed the entire meaning of it to be metaphorical, until one of the
best soldiers of England himself read me the poem,[142] and taught me,
what I might have known, had I enough watched his own life, that it was
entirely literal. There is nothing of so high reach distinctly
demonstrable in Friedrich: but I see more and more, as I grow older,
that the things which are the most worth, encumbered among the errors
and faults of every man's nature, are never clearly demonstrable; and
are often most forcible when they are scarcely distinct to his own
conscience,--how much less, clamorous for recognition by others!
Nothing can be more beautiful than Carlyle's showing of this, to any
careful reader of Friedrich. But careful readers are but one in the
thousand; and by the careless, the masses of detail with which the
historian must deal are insurmountable.
My own notes, made for the special purpose of hunting down the one point
of economy, though they cruelly spoil Carlyle's own current and method
of thought, may yet be useful in enabling readers, unaccustomed to books
involving so vast a range of conception, to discern what, on this one
subject only, may be gathered from that history. On any other subject of
importance, similar gatherings might be made of other passages. The
historian has to deal with all at once.
I therefore have determined to print here, as a sequel to the Essay on
War, my notes from the first volume of Friedrich, on the economies of
Brandenburg, up to the date of the establishment of the Prussian
monarchy. The economies of the first three Kings of Prussia I shall then
take up in _Fors Clavigera_, finding them fitter for examination in
connection with the subject of that book than of this.
I assume, that the reader will take down his first volume of Carlyle,
and read attentively the passages to which I refer him. I give the
reference first to the largest edition, in six volumes (1858-1865);
then, in parenthesis, to the smallest or "people's edition" (1872-1873).
The pieces which I have quoted in my own text are for the use of readers
who may not have ready access to the book; and are enough for the
explanation of the points to which I wish them to direct their thoughts
in reading such histories of soldiers or soldier-kingdoms.
I.
_Year_ 928 to 936.--_Dawn of Order in Christian Germany._
Book II. Chap. i. p. 67 (47).
Henry the Fowler, "the beginning of German kings," is a mighty soldier
_in the cause of peace_; his essential work the building and
organization of fortified towns for the protection of men.
Read page 72 with utmost care (51), "He fortified towns," to end of
small print. I have added some notes on the matter in my lecture on
Giovanni Pisano; but whether you can glance at them or not, fix in your
mind this institution of truly civil or civic building in Germany, as
distinct from the building of baronial castles for the security of
_robbers_: and of a standing army consisting of every ninth man, called
a "burgher" ("townsman")--a soldier, appointed to learn that profession
that he may guard the walls--the exact reverse of _our_ notion of a
burgher.
Frederick's final idea of his army is, indeed, only this.
Brannibor, a chief fortress of the Wends, is thus taken, and further
strengthened by Henry the Fowler; wardens appointed for it; and thus the
history of Brandenburg begins. On all frontiers, also, this "beginning
of German kings" has his "Markgraf." "Ancient of the marked place." Read
page 73, measuredly, learning it by heart, if it may be. (51-2.)
II.
936-1000.--_History of Nascent Brandenburg._
The passage I last desired you to read ends with this sentence: "The
sea-wall you build, and what main floodgates you establish in it, will
depend on the state of the outer sea."
From this time forward you have to keep clearly separate in your minds,
(A) the history of that outer sea, Pagan Scandinavia, Russia, and
Bor-Russia, or Prussia proper; (B) the history of Henry the Fowler's
Eastern and Western Marches; asserting themselves gradually as Austria
and the Netherlands; and (C) the history of this inconsiderable fortress
of Brandenburg, gradually becoming considerable, and the capital city of
increasing district between them. That last history, however, Carlyle is
obliged to leave vague and gray for two hundred years after Henry's
death. Absolutely dim for the first century, in which nothing is evident
but that its wardens or Markgraves had no peaceable possession of the
place. Read the second paragraph in page 74 (52-3), "in old books" to
"reader," and the first in page 83 (59) "meanwhile" to "substantial,"
consecutively. They bring the story of Brandenburg itself down, at any
rate, from 936 to 1000.
III.
936-1000.--_State of the Outer Sea._
Read now Chapter II. beginning at page 76 (54), wherein you will get
account of the beginning of vigorous missionary work on the outer sea,
in Prussia proper; of the death of St. Adalbert, and of the purchase of
his dead body by the Duke of Poland.
You will not easily understand Carlyle's laugh in this chapter, unless
you have learned yourself to laugh in sadness, and to laugh in love.
"No Czech blows his pipe in the woodlands without certain precautions
and preliminary fuglings of a devotional nature." (Imagine St. Adalbert,
in spirit, at the railway station in Birmingham!)
My own main point for notice in the chapter is the purchase of his body
for its "weight in gold." Swindling angels held it up in the scales; it
did not weigh so much as a web of gossamer. "Had such excellent odor,
too, and came for a mere nothing of gold," says Carlyle. It is one of
the first commercial transactions of Germany, but I regret the conduct
of the angels on the occasion. Evangelicalism has been proud of ceasing
to invest in relics, its swindling angels helping it to better things,
as it supposes. For my own part, I believe Christian Germany could not
have bought at this time any treasure more precious; nevertheless, the
missionary work itself you find is wholly vain. The difference of
opinion between St. Adalbert and the Wends, on Divine matters, does not
signify to the Fates. They will not have it disputed about; and end the
dispute adversely, to St. Adalbert--adversely, even, to Brandenburg and
its civilizing power, as you will immediately see.
IV.
1000-1030.--_History of Brandenburg in Trouble._
Book II. Chap. iii. p. 83 (59).
The adventures of Brandenburg in contest with Pagan Prussia, irritated,
rather than amended, by St. Adalbert. In 1023, roughly, a hundred years
after Henry the Fowler's death, Brandenburg is taken by the Wends, and
its first line of Markgraves ended; its population mostly butchered,
especially the priests; and the Wends' God, Triglaph, "something like
three whales' cubs combined by boiling," set up on the top of St. Mary's
Hill.
Here is an adverse "Doctrine of the Trinity" which has its supporters!
It is wonderful,--this Tripod and Triglyph--three-footed, three-cut