MR. HIGGINSON'S "CHEERFUL YESTERDAYS." THE "yesterdays" of which Mr. Higginson

writes may be "cheerful" in the memory, but some of them must have been far from cheerful when they were passing. They cover the stormful period prior to the American Civil War, when the arrogant Slave Power was rushing, with ever increasing insolence, to its overthrow, and the period of the war itself. In both these movements Mr. Higginson was an energetic

• Cheerful Yesterdays, By Thomas Wentworth Higgiason. London: Gay and Bird. [7s. 6d.1

worker. With Lowell, he belonged to that younger generation of literary pioneers who came under the influence first of Emerson and afterwards of Wendell Phillips and William Lloyd Garrison. Emerson, of whom it has been said that "he sent ten thousand sons to the war," taught them that love of justice which Phillips and Garrison showed them how to apply. Mr. Higginson himself does not rank among the leaders in the anti-slavery struggle. Thorough-going though he was, he was not destined for that. Speaking of his literary work, he con-

fesses he never aimed to become a specialist in any depart- ment, just because he had an eager desire to "fill all parts." As with literature, so, more or less, with public affairs. There is a measure of truth in the simile he applies to him- self, of a horse which had never won a race, but was prized because it had se often come in second. In his many undertakings actual failure was rare ; but there was, on the other hand, often a falling short of complete success. Efforts in which he shared, to rescue fugitive slaves or kidnapped negroes from the authorities were heroic but unsuccessful. He went to Kansas in the wake of John Brown, but too late for any effectual action. He was keenly interested in Brown's subsequent schemes, but while he was waiting to assist in them they culminated, prematurely as it proved, at Harper's Ferry. Even in the war he might have done greater things had not a wound and the illness which followed compelled him to retire. Yet he was neither vague of purpose nor timid. He was ready if called, and could be relied on to do his part. Was it that circumstances were always unpro- pitious, or was there something in his temperament which deterred him from originating any action, so that, waiting for a sign from others, the opportunity too often passed away ? Be this as it may, Mr. Higginson's services must not be underrated merely because in great part they were hidden and unrecorded. His literary work, too, has un- doubtedly done much to help the causes which to him seemed righteous. He is a lucid and fearless writer, and must have set many persons (to use Berke's phrase) "on thinking."

At the time of the Abolitionist agitation, Mr. Higginson was a minister of religion at Worces ter in Massachusetts, then, as he describes it, "a seething centre of all reforms."

Like Browning, he was "ever a fighter," and probably was not sorry to exchange the title " Reverend " for that oi Colonel when the war broke out. He might have had a still higher military title if he had been so minded. This he declined partly because he doubted his competency,—a most insufficient reason, it would seem, in those days, for military knowledge was the last thing thought of when mili- tary appointments had to be made. The man who accepted the post which Mr. Higginson had refused was, we are told.

"almost wholly ignorant of military drill" and be made his

acceptance conditional on a certain local drill-master, whom he knew and could rely on, being made his Adjutant, to fur- nish the knowledge which he himself lacked. It is interesting

to note that this amateur commander blossomed, ultimately, into a Major-General; but whether by reason of his own ability, or the ability of his Adjutant, does not appear. Doubt-

less several instances occur in that war, of military genius developed under the same unpromising conditions, and many where heroism went far to supply the want of training. But it was a haphazard, dangerous method, and we need not wonder that McLellan thought two years not too long to create an invincible army out of such material. Meantime, Mr. Higginson "went on drilling and taking fencing lessons,'

and then modestly contented himself with the colonelcy ol the first regiment of negroes organised by the North,—a pro. ceeding which gave rise to a friendly "nonsense verse" :— "There was a young curate of Worcester Who could have a command if he'd choose ter, But he said each recruit Must be blacker than soot, Or else he'd go preach where he used ter."

In this experiment of arming the negroes he was profoundly interested, for he was one of the comparatively few American abolitionists who were as free from the prejudice of colour as an Englishman is. He found the negroes "an eminently trustful and affectionate race." Comparing the effect of military discipline on the white and the black recruits, he

says :—

" Few white soldiers enjoyed serving in the ranks for itselfe they accepted it for the sake of their country or because others did, or from the hope of promotion, but there was nevertheless a

secret feeling in most minds that it was a step down ; no person of democratic rearing really enjoys being under the orders of those who have hitherto been his equals. The negroes. on the other hand, who had been ordered about all their lives, felt it a step upward to be in uniform, to have rights as well as duties they rejoiced in the dignity of guard and outpost duty, which they did to perfection."

Mr. Higginson found, however, that this new-born sense of dignity needed judicious treatment. "The officers who

• copied the methods of plantation overseers proved failures."

It was necessary to appeal to the men's pride as soldiers, to win their affection, and to exercise absolute justice; an encouraging sign, surely, of dormant possibilities in the crashed and injured race. Thus treated, they were "more docile than white soldiers, more affectionate and more impulsive," and quite as brave. When sickness ended Mr.

Higginson's military career he returned, not without re- luctance, to civil life, and thenceforward devoted himself chiefly to literature and politics.

The public history of the several movements in which Mr.

Higginson took part has been written more than once. We know much from other sources of New England Transcen- dentalism, of Abolitionism, of the Civil War, and of the later revolt of the " Mugwumps " against civil corruption. Mr.

Higginson's more personal narrative deals with the same movements on the inside, and fills in the broad outlines already familiar. He describes it as "slight and fragmentary," which it is not ; and adds, truly enough, that such glimpses as he gives may suggest some aspects of character which formal biographers have missed. His pages bring before us personal characteristics of many public men with whom, in literature or in active life, he has worked; and although here and there we may take exception to his judgments, his sriticism is, on the whole, acute and discriminating. His lescription of John Brown as "simply a high-minded, unselfish, belated Covenanter," is excellent. He notes with

justice how Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes ridiculed a struggling movement, which afterwards, when it had become genteel, he was ready to befriend. He was one of the earliest contributors to the Atlantic Monthly, and at meetings of the club connected with that magazine he often met both Holmes and Lowell.

Their talk on those occasions was, in his opinion, clever but not always well-timed. They lacked, he says, "the beneficent discipline of English dining-rooms, where, as I learned long after, one is schooled into self-restraint." Certainly Dr. Holmes insisting to a clergyman that profane swearing

was originated in the free language of the pulpit, and Lowell maintaining to Mrs. Stowe that Tom. Jones was the best novel ever written—both the victims being invited guests—could not be termed "good form."

This incidental tribute to high breeding in England is remarkable, coming as it does from one who on most points is too jealously anxious to prove that the old country has no merits superior to the new. Mr. Higginson has written a

book on this topic, and the indignation freely expressed in its pages is not wholly absent from the present volume. When in England he met with a few persons who misunderstood his country. One unsophisticated young lady supposed Americans were such, against their will, because they could not help it. He takes this as typical of a prevailing British ignorance and

contempt of America. It may have been a joke. Certainly it was an isolated instance. On another occasion, when travelling in Scotland, he was vexed because a fellow- passenger asked him, "Did ye ever hear of 'Yarrow?" inter- preting this innocent question as an assumption of American want of culture, instead of, as it probably was, a Scotsman's modest doubt how far the fame of even his greatest country- man had penetrated. The erring fellow-passenger proved to be Principal Shairp. Americans vexed by such sayings as this should remember that they often attribute a similar ignorance to educated Englishmen. They will assume, for instance, that no Englishman knows who Daniel Webster was, and imagine that our ignorance of the American Constitution is so absolute that we think the Federal Government appoints all Judges.

Mr. Higginson saw London in 1872 and again six years later. Matthew Arnold, whom he met there, seemed to him "personally, as he had always seemed in literature, a keen but by no means judicial critic, and in no proper sense a poet." He does not, however, explain what he understands by a poet in the "proper sense." Tennyson, whom he visited, received him better than he expected, for Tennyson was re- ,

pnted to be antipathetic to American visitors ever since Bayard Taylor offended him. Darwin impressed him as "always the same simple, noble, absolutely truthful soul" Meeting Du Manlier, he asked him how he could justify him- self in representing the English people as so much handsomer than they really were, and received the significant reply that he pursued this course not only because it was pleasanter, but because it paid better. "There is Keene," he said, "who is one of the greatest artists now living, but people do not like his pictures so well as mine because he paints people as they really are." Of course, like every other New Englander who came to -London in the "seventies," Mr. Higginson visited Carlyle. In Carlyle's laugh he discerned a distinctive charac- teristic of the man, serving as a key to much that seemed erratic in his behaviour. Whenever that laugh burst out in its full volume it "had the effect of dissolving all the clouds of his apparent cynicism and leaving clear sky behind. What- ever seeming ungraciousness had preceded, his laugh revealed the genuine humourist at last, so that he almost seemed to have been playing with himself in the fierce things he had said." That Carlyle was essentially a hnmonrist has been overlooked by many persons—Mr. Fronde among the number —who had opportunities of knowing him intimately. Doubt- less visitors—less favoured than Mr. Higginson—who have quitted Carlyle's house angrily denouncing his discourtesy might have modified their opinion if they had waited for the laugh. There was a good deal of Laurence Boythorn, or his prototype Landor, in Carlyle.

We have dwelt chiefly on the public side of Mr. Higginson's work because in this country less is known of it than of his pithy and suggestive essays. Nevertheless, although so much of his life has been taken up with "causes "—notably with negro emancipation and the equality of the sexes—Mr. Higgin- son is, primarly, a man of letters. To those readers who know his earlier works it will suffice to say that in charm of style and general interest this volume of reminiscences shows no falling off.