THE LECTURE.

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On Christmas evening we listened to a lecture by Mark Twain, the humorist. His subject, the American Vandal Abroad, gave him full opportunity to indulge in his rich vein of mirth provoking wit, while yet there was under all a foundation of good sense; but both humor and sense served as a setting for earnest word pictures of places and scenes and works of art, in Europe, Egypt and Palestine, which made the lecture much more than a mere piece of amusing drollery. In a few simple sentences he would bring before the imagination clear and brilliant pictures which are next to, and perhaps more impressive, than the real scene. For Artists and Poets always see more in Nature to love and admire than ordinary observers. Such lectures convince me that far more satisfactory and enduring imagery can be impressed upon the mind by words, tone and gesture, than by painting or engraving. A picture, for instance, can give us an idea of a city as a whole, only by a dim and distant view, which seldom interests; while description will bring before us the sky, not only as seen from the distance, but as though we were moving through it.

After holding the audience spell bound, for a while, before the Sphynx, with its melancholy gaze over the past ages, or after contemplating some beautiful scene like Venice, its silent palaces, its bridges and gondolas; or Athens looked down upon by bright moonlight from the Acropolis, he would leave dry land and take to his native element of quaint humor. Then came in his laughable, matter-of-fact Vandalisms, which, while enjoyed, also served to heighten the previous enjoyment. He mingled in a little of the grotesque and just enough of the terrible to heighten the glow of his humorous descriptions, while these, in turn, served, by contrast, to enrich the splendor of his great pictures. It was this artistic changing of the excitement for different faculties and the different sides of our nature, that so completely entertained, and rested, and kept the attention of the audience constantly fixed. This is all art, the very highest kind; that consummate art which conceals itself under the perfect simplicity and naturalness of its own production; which, in choosing language, gives us a medium of such chrystaline clearness that language, by the hearer, is never thought of.—The art that prunes, rejects, condenses, polishes and elaborates sentences, imagery and thought.

This Artist seems intentionally to avoid all effort at sublimity and pathos. For there was not a particle of either of these great powers in his lecture. This, too, the Artist learns—to know where he might fall and where he can safely venture.

In wit, of the keen, cold, sparkling kind, he might, doubtless, have given us enough; but good taste and that sympathy which is the source of all genial humor, taught him to refrain. Cutting wit, unless for the tough hide of vice or bigotry, ought not to be cultivated or indulged in. Readers and hearers all relish something else much better than sarcasm; and yet, if cutting becomes necessary, all prefer to see the operation performed kindly, with a good sharp instrument, and not with an old saw.

In this lecture there was not an unkind cut for man or beast; not even a kick for the Grecian bend.1explanatory note There was not a word to disturb any one’s belief, religious or political. In such a lecture anything offensive would be much out of place. But when Theodore Tilton comes we shall probably all of us get disturbed. Among our old and cherished opinions we can then expect, earthquakes and volcanic eruptions. We will then learn the difference between the Humorist and the Reformer.2explanatory note

The Winter Lecture Course seems to have become an established institution throughout the country. It gives the public a good opportunity to meet face to face with the distinguished writers and speakers; to see them in their best moments, when animated with intellectual effort. It gives us the rich result of years of labor and culture, not only as the product of the pen, but the thought aided by the elocution of the thinker. It will tend to improve public speaking and writing, by teaching the public to appreciate true oratory and to discriminate between the crude and diffuse and the polished and condensed in literature; between the affected and trifling, and the manly and substantial in thought. It teaches us our mother tongue, its true pronunciation, and the great power and beauty of language when properly used.