MILLENNIAL LITERATURE.

 

(From the London Review.)

THE dawn and sunset, at least in poetry, are always steeped in gold and in like manner the two horizons of our being, the Past and the Future, are, in the eyes of reflective persons, lit up with the splendour of a golden age. Dissatisfaction with the Present must assume one of these two forms; it must look back on the past with affection and regret, or forward to the Future with fond expectation. The ancients were prone to the former view, the moderns are prone to the future. The ruder the tribe, the more does it delight in an age of Saturn—a period long past, when the gods appeared among men, when mortals had angel lovers, when Odin was the Messiah of the Norsemen, and " Gitohe Manito, the mighty, smoked the calumet, the peace pipe, as a signal to the nations." But even among the ancients, the more thoughtful placed their reliance upon the future ; Plato devised an imaginary Republic, where justice and virtue should reign triumphant; and Cumæan sibyls sang of One who should restore the world's prime, calm the passions of men and the fierceness of beasts, link the nations together in peaceful brotherhood, and multiply upon all living things the blessing of perpetual summer, copious riches, and unbroken health. Sir Thomas More echoed Plato, and raised a very queer little island in unknown seas, which he called Utopia, where goods were to be divided, and all sorts of happy dreams realised. The millennium of the first century of Christianity, of the Abbot Joachim, surnamed the Prophet, in the twelfth century, of Ben Ezra, and of Edward Irving, is a better defined Utopia than that of Sir Thomas. We are happy to learn from Dr. Cumming that it may be expected in a year or two at the most, for we have never been able to give credence to the Swedenborgians when they assured us, on the authority of their founder, that it is come already. We fully admit the improvements in London and Paris, but they hardly, and Vienna and St. Petesburg perhaps still less, come up to our ideas of the New Jerusalem. The millennium has supplied a multitude of attractive images to Cowper in his, "Winter Walk," and to follow in his " Course of Time ;" and though we cannot help doubting whether it will ever be safe to let " the lion and the libbard and the bear graze with the fearless flocks," there are other features in the millennial programme more likely and easy to be attained. That "rivers of gladness should water all the earth and clothe all climes with beauty" in the "scenes surpassing fable and yet true"— that fertile lands, laughing with abundance, should "exult to see their thistly curse repealed"— that there should be " none to covet ' where all are full—that all creatures should worship man and all mankind one Father —that error like a " creeping pestilence," should be chased away— that disease should die out, and the pure and uncontaminated blood hold its due course nor fear the frost of age"— that the rams of Nebaioth and the flocks of Kedar should gather to the true light of the sacred city, and that " the looms of Ormus, and the mines of Ind, and Saba's spicy groves " should pay tribute there—are visions which, however figurative, may be securely indulged in by the most sober philanthropist, visions which harmonise with those of another poet whose expectations are based on Mill rather than Isaiah, who has "dipt into the future, " and seen " the vision of the world " and all the wonders that will be—

"When the war drum throbs no longer, and the battle flags are

furled

In the parliament of man, the federation of the world ;

When the common sense of most shall hold a fretful realm in

awe,

And the kindly earth shall slumber, kept in universal law. "

After three hundred years of reading printed books, society has arrived at a point beyond which its future is likely to be an onward march. It looks back on so many obstacles overcome, so many revivals after decay, that it is now in the position of an invading army which occupies all the strongest fortresses, and is moving straight towards the capital. Good is ever seen to spring out of its evils and abuses— good which is not isolated, but links on to other good, and co-operates with it to an end. The entire train is in motion. Civilised nations lead on half-civilised, and half civilised drag forward the uncivilised. Scarcely will you find on the face of the earth a retrograde movement. The impetus given everywhere to progress has been communicated even to dead matter, and the powers of nature are quickened by the powers of thought. Hence all literature takes a prospective turn, and labours, either consciously or unconsciously, for the achievement of a grand and glorious result in the distance of time. In this sense it is millennial. Its progressive character is  manifest in every branch, and the keen observer will detect it in every twig and bud. It peeps forth, from every column in a newspaper no less than from every page of an encyclopædia. It is confined to no one breed, and to no one class of thinkers. Christian, unchristian, and even antichristian writers conspire in various ways, and in different degrees, in raising the degraded masses of humanity, and inspiring them with new hopes and prospects. Dean Stanley and Victor Hugo, Dr Pusey and Carlyle, Dr Newman and Renan, have many, very many points of contact ; and each is applying his powerful mind to improve his men, and to bring in " The Golden Year," when all men's good shall be each man's rule. In saying this we do not by any means mean to imply that the differences between them are of no account, nor to raise any question here about their respective claims. We write in the spirit of the last of the three divines above mentioned, who, in commenting upon "Ecce Homo," said, "It is substantially a good book, and, we trust, will work for good." Indeed, as regards the future of society, "all things work together for good." "All things wax, and roll onwards," says Carlyle ; "Arts, establishments, opinions, nothing is completed, but ever completing." Un genie finit l' autre, writes Victor Hugo. Newton adopts Kepler, and supplements Bacon; Milton strengthens Cromwell's hands, and Cromwell is the red right arm of the poets of freedom; the criticism of Herder and Lessing gives rise to the poetry of Goethe and Schiller ; the cession of Venetia to the Italians throws open the archives of Venice, and the national archives filling three hundred rooms supply many curious facts hitherto unknown in the history of England. Thus the organic filaments of thought are interwoven through all lands and throughout all time. All that is produced reproduces. Philosophers, poets, legislators, artists, naturalists, historians, hold one another's hands, and strike onward to higher, vaster, more beautiful combinations and results than have yet been seen.

There was a period in the history of Athens when oral instruction and disputation was the rage ; when new theories of the universe and of man were advanced in quick succession by philosophers and sophists, each more absurd and, perhaps, more ingenious than the former In science and morals they were quacks and impostors and their highest wisdom was philosophy run mad. The very reverse of all this obtains in our day. Our physical science being nothing more or less than the observation of nature, it must be true, so far as its inductions reach ; while every effort made among us for social improvement consists in quickening the understanding, imparting useful knowledge, and inculcating principles of justice between man and man. Thus, all popular literature tends to lessen the monstrous inequality of classes in society which has so long disgraced and retarded the human race, and to raise the labouring and poorer order from a serf-like dependence on rich employers. It pleads for a larger remuneration of labour, and a wider extension of political privileges. It advocates a better distribution of property by gradual and legal measures. It would leave every man free to dispose by will of his own goods and estates, and would teach the industrial part of the population to become, in a great degree, self-dependent. It would encourage employers to make their workmen partners, in their business, by promising them a percentage on its profits over and above their daily earnings. It would invite labourers not merely to associate thus with capitalists, but also to form companies or co-operative stores among themselves, and thus work on their own account, and rise in the social scale. In this way it is thought that their material condition would be improved, and that the habit of self-reliance and the sense of responsibility would engender self-respect, integrity, and the higher moral qualities. Half a century ago literature was straining every nerve to clear the seas of slave ships, and to wake the songs of freedom among the sugar-canes of the West. Now it is busy in behalf of women, whom it would render less dependent upon man. It would provide them more numerous fields of labour and sources of gain. It would, in view of the vast increase of population, open up to single women modes of livelihood hitherto untried, that so they may not be driven to seek marriage by compulsion, but support themselves easily and honourably. In its millennial character it cares also for our little ones. It is zealous for their instruction and in protecting them from the selfish exactions of merciless employers in unwholesome factories. It would check intoxication, not by stringent laws, but by improving the poor man's dwelling, making his home less repulsive, and providing him with the means of innocent recreation on the only day he is able to take any. It would promote subdivision of land in England, and longer leases in Ireland. It would indemnify the cottier for money he may have spent on improvements during his tenancy and in this and almost every other plan, which it proposes for the good of society, the elements of moral, mental, and material progress will, when carefully inspected, be found closely combined. The parliamentary debates every evening, which become literature on the next morning, exhibit this tendency uniformly and in great abundance. Our fathers had to struggle for the removal of intolerable grievances, but we often need a check, lest we should carry benevolent designs into operation prematurely. Theories which were ridiculed or despised when first put forward by Owen and Louis Blanc have now been reduced to practice, and shorn of their objectionable features. Competition among co-operative stores will be as useful and desirable as it is among individual labourers and as both increase the well-being of the working classes will be in every way more apparent. The long-standing relations existing between the rich and the poor, the master and the hireling, will be happily modified, and the gulf that separates industry and aristocracy will be narrowed and bridged over.

Such are some of the dreams in which political economy and social science now fondly indulge. We call them millennial, because they point to unlimited progress, and to results of which the importance and grandeur are likely to augment in an ever-increasing ratio. International policy is undergoing as many beneficial changes as national habits. Antipathies are wearing away, and the brotherhood of all races and peoples is more distinctly felt. Protection and monopoly have received mortal blows, and we may hope that their ultimate doom is sealed. As duelling is almost extinct, so wars are less frequent, and diplomacy finds a ready solution for disputes once settled only by the sword. The International Exhibition of all Nations in Paris is a scroll of prophecy. Compare it with the blood-stained annals of 1792 and 1793, or with the humiliating presence of the Allies there in 1815. It is literature—millennial literature —expressed in symbols more eloquent than those of speech and seems, with its thousand voices, to bid the ships and railroads of all seas and lands bear the mission of the Cross and the Press to ripen the harvest of " the golden year."

Sydney Morning Herald (NSW : 1842 - 1954), Thursday 27 June 1867, page 3