The Continental Monthly, Vol I, Issue I, January 1862 | Page 9

by sundry
and peculiar vices. And yet, bad as life then was, it is impossible for us
to guess at, or realize, all its foulness. We know it mostly from poets,
and the poet and historian, like the artist, have in every age lived quite

out of the actual, and with all the tact of repulsion avoided common
facts.
But it is with the multitude that truth and common sense and humanity
have to deal. And here, whether in Greece or in England, in Italy or in
France, lies in the past an abyss of horror whose greatest wonder is, that
we, who are only some three centuries distant, know so little of it.
There is a favorite compensative theory that man is miraculously
self-adaptive to all circumstances, and that deprived of modern
comforts and luxuries he would only become more vigorous and
independent--that in fact he was on the whole considerably happier
under a feudal baron than he has been since. I will believe in this when
I find that a man who has exchanged a stinging gout for a mere
rheumatism finds himself entirely free from pain. No, the serfs of the
Middle Ages were in no sense happy. Stifled moans of misery, a sense
of their unutterable agonies, steal up from proverb and by-corners of
history--we feel that they were more miserable than jail prisoners at the
present day--for then, as now, man groaned at being an inferior, and he
had much more than that to groan over in those days of strifes and dirt.
And yet every one of those serfs was God's child, as well as the baron
who enslaved him. To himself he was a world with an eternity, and of
as much importance as all other men. Through what strange heresies
and insurrections, based either on innate passion or religious conviction,
do we not find Republicanism bursting out in every age, from remote
Etruscan rebellions down to Peasants' wars, Anabaptist uprisings, and
Jack Cade out-flamings. It was always there, that sense of political
equality and right--it always goaded and tormented man, in the silent
darkness of ignorance as in the broad light of learning.
So long as European society consisted in a great measure of war
tempered by agriculture, there could be but little progress towards a
better state of things. But the germ of industry sprouted and grew,
though slowly. Merchants bought social privileges for money; even law
was grudgingly sold them, and they continued to buy. Against the old
idealism, against bugbears and mythology, fairy tales and astrology,
dreams, spells, charms, muttered exorcisms, commandments to obey
master, ship and serfdom, de jure divino, clouds, mists, and lies infinite;

slowly rose that stupendous power of truth and of Nature which had
hitherto in humanity only visited the world in broken gleams. We may
assume different eras for this dividing point between immutability and
progress, between slavery and freedom. In religion, Christianity
appears as first offering future happiness for the people and for all. The
revival of letters and the Reformation were glorious storms, battering
down thousands of old barriers. But in a temporal and worldly point of
view the name of Bacon, perhaps, since a name is still necessary, best
distinguishes between the old and the new. From him--or his age--dates
that grappling with facts, that classifying of all knowledge so soon as
obtained, that Wissenschaft or Science which never goes backward; in
fine, that information which by its dissemination continually equalizes
men and renders rank futile. With science, labor and the laboring man
began at once to rise. Comfort and cleanliness and health for the many
took the place of ancient deprivation and dirt--whether of body or of
soul. Humanity began to improve--for, with all the legends of the
bravery of the Middle Ages, it is apparent enough that their heroes or
soldiers were not so strong or large as the men of the present day. And
through all, amid struggles and strivings and subtle drawbacks and
deceits, worked and won its way the great power of Republicanism or
of Progress, destroying, one by one, illusions, and building up in their
stead fair and enduring realities.
It is but a few decades since the greater portion of all intellectual or
inventive effort was devoted to setting off rank, to exalting the exalted,
and, by contrast, still further degrading the lowly. What were the
glorious works of those mediæval artists in stone and canvas, in
orfevery and silver, in marble and bronze, nielloed salvers, golden
chasing, laces as from fairy-land, canopies, garments and gems? All
beautiful patents of rank, marks to honor wealthy rank--nothing more,
save that and the imperishable proof of genius, which is ever lovely, as
a slave or free. But where goes the inventive talent now? Beaumarchais
worked for a year