The World's Greatest Books — Volume 10 — Lives and Letters

John Alexander Hammerton, Arthur Mee

Informations

• Publié par: muthong
• Publié le: 08 décembre 2010
• Nombre de lectures: 16
• Langue: English

Extrait

The Project Gutenberg EBook of The World's Greatest Books, Vol X, by Various
This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or
re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.net
Title: The World's Greatest Books, Vol X
Author: Various
Release Date: June 10, 2004 [EBook #12572]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE WORLD'S GREATEST BOOKS, VOL X ***
Produced by John Hagerson, Kevin Handy and PG Distributed Proofreaders
THE WORLD'S
GREATEST
BOOKS
JOINT EDITORS
ARTHUR MEE
Editor and Founder of the Book of Knowledge
J.A. HAMMERTON
Editor of Harmsworth's Universal Encyclopaedia
VOL. X
LIVES AND LETTERS
Table of Contents
HUGO, VICTOR
Deeds and Words
HUME, MARTIN
Courtships of Elizabeth
Love Affairs of Mary Queen of ScotsIRVING, WASHINGTON
Life of Christopher Columbus
Life of George Washington
JOSEPHUS, FLAVIUS
Autobiography
LA ROCHEFOUCAULD: See ROCHEFOUCAULD
LOCKHART, JOHN GIBSON
Life of Sir Walter Scott
Life of Robert Burns
LUTHER, MARTIN
Table Talk
MIRABEAU, COMTE DE
Memoirs
MOORE, THOMAS
Life of Byron
MORISON, J.A.C.
Life of St. Bernard
MORLEY, JOHN
Life of Cobden
PEPYS, SAMUEL
Diary
PLINY THE YOUNGER
Letters
RICHELIEU, CARDINAL
Political Testament
ROUSSEAU, JEAN JACQUES
Confessions
ROCHEFOUCAULD, FRANÇOIS DUC de LA
Memoirs
SÉVIGNÉ, Mme. de
Letters
SOUTHEY, ROBERT
Life of Nelson
STAAL, Mme. de
Memoirs
STANHOPE, EARL
Life of Pitt
STANLEY, A.P. Life of Thomas Arnold, D.D.
STRICKLAND, AGNES
Life of Queen Elizabeth
SWIFT, JONATHAN
Journal to Stella
TOLSTOY, COUNT LYOF N.
Childhood, Boyhood, Youth
My Confession
VILLARI, PASQUALE
Life of Girolamo Savanarola
WESLEY, JOHN
Journal
WOOLMAN, JOHN
Journal
A Complete Index of THE WORLD'S GREATEST BOOKS will be found at the
end of Volume XX.
Acknowledgement
Acknowledgement and thanks for permitting the use of the following
selections in this volume, viz., "The Courtships of Queen Elizabeth,"
and "The Love Affairs of Mary Queen of Scots," by Major Martin
Hume, are herewith tendered to Everleigh Nash, of London,
England.
VICTOR HUGO
Deeds and Words
"Deeds and Words" ("Actes et Paroles"), which is dated June, 1875,
is the record of Victor Hugo's public life, speeches and letters, down
to the year of his death, which occurred on May 32, 1885; but it is
most important as a defence of his political career from 1848
onwards. It does not, however, tell us how changeable his opinions
had actually been. His inconstant attachments are thus summed up
by Dr. Brandes: "He warmly supports the candidacy of Louis
Napoleon for the post of President of the Republic ... lends him his
support when he occupies that post, and is even favourable to the
idea of an empire, until the feeling that he is despised as a politician
estranges him from the Prince-President, and resentment at the
coup d'etat drives him into the camp of the extreme Republicans.
His life may be said to mirror the political movements of France
during the first half of the century." (See FICTION.)
I.--Right and LawAll human eloquence, among all peoples and in all times, may be summed up
as the quarrel of Right against Law.
But this quarrel tends ever to decrease, and therein lies the whole of progress.
On the day when it has disappeared, civilisation will have attained its highest
point; that which ought to be will have become one with that which is; there will
be an end of catastrophes, and even, so to speak, of events; and society will
develop majestically according to nature. There will be no more disputes nor
factions; no longer will laws be made, they will only be discovered. Education
will have taken the place of war, and by means of universal suffrage there will
be chosen a parliament of intellect.
In that serene and glorious age there will be no more warriors, but workers only;
creators in the place of exterminators. The civilisation of action will have
passed away, and that of thought will have succeeded. The masterpieces of art
and of literature will be the great events.
Frontiers will disappear; and France, which is destined to die as the gods die,
by transfiguration, will become Europe. For the Revolution of France will be
known as the evolution of the peoples. France has laboured not for herself
alone, but has aroused world-wide hopes, and is herself the representative of
all human good-will.
Right and Law are the two great forces whose harmony gives birth to order, but
their antagonism is the source of all catastrophe. Right is the divine truth, and
Law is the earthly reality; liberty is Right and society is Law. Wherefore there
are two tribunes, one of the men of ideas, the other of the men of facts; and
between these two the consciences of most still vacillate. Not yet is there
harmony between the immutable and the variable power; Right and Law are in
ceaseless conflict.
To Right belong the inviolability of human life, liberty, peace; and nothing that is
indissoluble, irrevocable, or irreparable. To Law belong the scaffold, sword,
and sceptre; war itself; and every kind of yoke, from divorceless marriage in the
family to the state of siege in the city. Right is to come and go, buy, sell,
exchange; Law has its frontiers and its custom-houses. Right would have free
and compulsory education, without encroaching on young consciences; that is
to say, lay instruction; Law would have the teaching of ignorant friars. Right
demands liberty of belief, but Law establishes the state religions. Universal
suffrage and universal jury belong to Right, but restricted franchise and packed
juries are creatures of the Law.
What a difference there is! And let it be understood that all social agitation
arises from the persistence of Right against the obstinacy of Law. The keynote
of the present writer's public life has been "Pro jure contra legem"--for the Right
which makes men, against the Law which men have made. He believes that
liberty is the highest expression of Right, and that the republican formula,
"Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity," leaves nothing to be added or to be taken
away. For Liberty is Right, Equality is Fact, and Fraternity is Duty. The whole of
man is there. We are brothers in our life, equal in birth and death, free in soul.
II.--Days of Childhood
At the beginning of this nineteenth century there was a child who lived in a
great house, surrounded by a large garden, in the most deserted part of Paris.
He lived with his mother, two brothers, and a venerable and worthy priest, whowas his only tutor, and taught him much Latin, a little Greek, and no history at
all. Here, at the time of the First Empire, the three boys played and worked,
watched the clouds and trees and listened to the birds, under the sweet
influence of their mother's smile.
It was the child's misfortune, though no one's fault, that he was taught by a
priest. What can be more terrible than a system of untruth, sincerely believed?
For a priest teaches falsehoods, ignorant of the truth, and thinks he does well;
everything he does for the child is done against the child, making crooked that
which nature has made straight; his teaching poisons the young mind with
aged prejudices, drawing evening twilight, like a curtain, over the dawn.
That ancient, solitary house and garden, formerly a convent and then the home
of his childhood, is still in his old age a dear and religious memory, though its
site is now profaned by a modern street He sees it in a romantic atmosphere, in
which, amid sunbeams and roses, his spirit opened into flower. What a stillness
was in its vast rooms and cloisters. Only at long intervals was the silence
broken by the return of a plumed and sabred general, his father, from the wars.
That child, already thoughtful, was myself.
One night--it was some great festival of the empire, and all Paris was illumined-
-my mother was walking in the garden with three of my father's comrades, and I
was following them, when we saw a tall figure in the gloom of the trees. It was
the proscribed Victor du Lahorie, my godfather. He was even then conspiring
against Bonaparte in the cause of liberty, and was shortly after executed. I
remember his saying, "If Rome had kept her kings, she had not been Rome,"
and then, looking on me, "Child, put liberty first of all!" That one word
outweighed my whole education.
III.--Before the Exile
It was not until the writer saw, in 1848, the triumph of all the enemies of
progress that he knew in the depths of his heart that he belonged, not to the
conquerors, but to the vanquished. The Republic lay inanimate; but, gazing on
her form, he saw that she was liberty, and not even the sure fore-knowledge of
the ruin and exile that must follow could prevent his espousal with the dead. On
June 15 he made his protest from the tribune, and from th