JOHN LOTHROP MOTLEY, 1814-1877

Life. Motley was born in Dorchester, now a part of Boston, April 15, 1814. He prepared for college at Bancroft's school in Northampton, and was graduated from Harvard in 1831. He then studied two years in Germany, where he became an intimate friend of Bismarck. Upon his return to America he took up the study of law, and began to practice in 1837. Four years later he was for a short time Secretary of Legation in St. Petersburg, and later served one term in the Massachusetts legislature. As Motley's friends had not been impressed with any enthusiasm for study displayed by him, they were rather surprised when, in 1851, he took his family to Europe to equip himself for writing a history of Holland. He spent five years in "conscientious research" in Holland, France, and Germany, the result of which was three of the greatest histories produced by America- The Rise of the Dutch Republic, History of the United Netherlands, and The Life and Death of John of Barneveld. A fourth work, planned to cover the Thirty Years' War, he did not live to write. From 1861 to 1865 he was United States Minister to Austria, and for part of 1869 and 1870, to England, whence he was recalled for reasons not yet considered sufficient. The recall and the death of his wife are together believed to have caused his own death. This took place in England, May 29, 1877, and there he was buried.

Authorship. Motley began his literary career during his law period with two novels, which were failures. Somewhat more successful were some essays published between his government service in Russia and his stay in Europe. But he had become interested in the history of Holland, and was convinced that he must write a book on it, even if it should be a failure like his novels. The attraction of the

subject seems to have lain in his patriotism, in a feeling expressed in the preface to The Rise of the Dutch Republic: "The maintenance of the right by the little provinces of Holland and Zealand in the sixteenth, by Holland and England united in the seventeenth, and by the United States of America in the eighteenth centuries, forms but a single chapter in the great volume of human fate; for the so-called revolutions of Holland,

England, and America are all links of one chain." And again: "The Dutch Republic originated in the courageous resistance of historical and chartered liberty to foreign despotism." This feeling prevents Motley's being altogether impartialhis Spaniards are too black and his Dutchmen are too white. In this spirit he paints the Dutch leader as the apostle and champion of human rights, and

A Striking Portrait. — William of Orange, called the Silent, is the hero of The Rise of the Dutch Republic. From the age of eleven, when William succeeded to the principality of Orange and went to the Queen Regent's Court at Brussels to be educated, Motley follows his career with a wealth of detail to the end. As soldier and statesman, his person

ality dominates the entire three volumes of Motley's great work. Perhaps the explanation of the superiority of The Rise to the other parts of the Dutch history lies in the unifying effect of this central figure. As Motley puts it: "The history of the rise of the Netherland Republic has been at the same time the biography of William the Silent."

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William's, however, is not the only striking portrait in the work. Philip of Spain, Cardinal Granvelle and the bloody Duke of Alva, Philip's henchmen; Margaret of Parma, the "man-minded offset" of Charles the Fifth, appointed by Philip to be regent of the Netherlands, these are only a few of the life-size portraits with which Motley's pages are crowded. The writer belongs to the Carlyle school of historians, believing that "universal history is at bottom the history of the great men who worked here."

THE TRANSCENDENTAL MOVEMENT

An Important Meeting. One of the most important events for literature in America in the nineteenth century was the formation of the so-called "Transcendental Club." It grew out of a meeting of four young Unitarian clergymen1 after the bicentennial celebration at Harvard in 1836. One member said they called themselves "the club of the like-minded; I suppose because no two of us thought alike." As Cabot says, however, they were "united by a common impatience of routine thinking." Or more specifically, according to Colonel Higginson, the young preachers were displeased with "the narrow tendencies of thought in the churches."

The inspiration of this group of men was the philosophy of Kant, Schelling, Hegel, and other leaders of thought in Germany. Part of it came directly through Edward

1 "Mr. Emerson, George Ripley, and myself, with one other." - REV. DR. F. H. HEDGE, quoted by Cabot, Memoir of Emerson, I, 244.

Everett, George Ticknor, and some others, who studied in the German universities; but a much larger part came by way of the writings of Carlyle and Coleridge. This philosophy taught, said Ripley, that there is "an order of truths which transcends the sphere of the external senses; that the truth of religion does not depend on tradition, nor historical facts, but has an unerring witness in the soul." Thus it will be seen that this club, which never had a formal organization, began with religion. Soon, however, it concerned itself with society and literature as well; and within a few years developed into the so-called Transcendental Movement, in which many of the greatest minds in New England enlisted.

The Keynote Individuality. — As has been said above,1 it was merely a belated manifestation on Puritan ground of English Romanticism; and the chief feature of both movements was the encouragement of every man to follow the bent of his own genius. This belief in the supreme importance of the individual is repeatedly set forth by the most eminent writer in the movement, Emerson. "Few and mean as my gifts may be," he writes in Self Reliance, “I actually am, and do not need for my own assurance or the assurance of my fellows any secondary testimony." In Experience he asks: "Shall I preclude my future, by taking a high seat, and kindly adapting my conversation to the shape of heads?" and answers himself: "When I come to that, the doctors shall buy me for a cent." In Spiritual Laws the same belief is expressed in impersonal and universal form "Each man has his own vocation. The talent is the call. There is one direction in which all space is open to him. He has faculties silently inviting him thither to endless exertion."

Men who came together on such a platform were neces

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sarily opposed to each other at many points. Hence, their most remarkable social experiment, Brook Farm, was a failure. The objects of this institute "of Agriculture and Education" were "to insure a more natural union between in

RALPH WALDO EMERSON.

tellectual and manual labor than now exists; to combine the thinker and the worker, as far as possible, in the same individual; to guarantee the highest mental freedom, by providing all with labor adapted to their tastes and talents, and securing to them the fruits of their industry; and do with the necessity of menial services by opening the benefits of education and the profits of labor to

away

all; and thus to prepare a society of liberal,

A likeness which seems to speak these intelligent, and culti

lines from The World-Soul:

66

'Spring still makes spring in the mind When sixty years are told."

vated persons, whose relations with each other would permit a

more wholesome and simple life than can be led amidst the pressure of our competitive institutions." Brook Farm lasted eight years; and when the land was sold and the mortgages paid, the stockholders received almost nothing for their investment.

"The Dial." With Transcendentalism from the lit