The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 06, No. 38, December, 1860

When about eight years of age, Arthur resided some time in Germany and Switzerland, with his father and mother. He had already become familiar with the French language, and a year later he read Latin with some facility. Although the father judiciously studied to repress his son's marked precocity of talent, Arthur wrote about this time several plays in prose and in rhyme,–compositions which were never exhibited, however, beyond the family-circle.

At ten years of age he became a pupil at a school in Putney, under the tuition of an excellent clergyman, where he continued two years. He then took a short tour on the Continent, and, returning, went to Eton, where he studied nearly five years. While at Eton, he was reckoned, according to the usual test at that place, not a first-rate Latin student, for his mind had a predominant bias toward English literature, and there he lingered among the exhaustless fountains of the earlier poetry of his native tongue. One who knew him well in those years has described him to us as a sweet-voiced lad, moving about the pleasant playing-fields of Eton with a thoughtful eye and a most kindly expression. Afterwards, as Tennyson, singing to the witch-elms and the towering sycamore, paints him, he mixed in all the simple sports, and loved to gather a happy group about him, as he lay on the grass and discussed grave questions of state. And again,–

"Thy converse drew us with delight,The men of rathe and riper years:The feeble soul, a haunt of fears,Forgot his weakness in thy sight."

His taste for philosophical poetry increased with his years, and Wordsworth and Shelley became his prime favorites. His contributions to the "Eton Miscellany" were various, sometimes in prose and now and then in verse. A poet by nature, he could not resist the Muse's influence, and he expressed a genuine emotion, oftentimes elegantly, and never without a meaning.

In the summer of 1827 he left Eton, and travelled with his parents eight months in Italy. And now began that life of thought and feeling so conspicuous to the end of his too brief career. Among the Alps his whole soul took the impress of those early introductions to what is most glorious and beautiful in Nature. After passing the mountains, Italian literature claimed his attention, and he entered upon its study with all the ardor of a young and earnest student. An Abbate who recognized his genius encouraged him with his assistance in the difficult art of Italian versification, and, after a very brief stay in Italy, at the age of seventeen, he wrote several sonnets which attracted considerable attention among scholars. Very soon after acquiring the Italian language, the great Florentine poet opened to him his mystic visions. Dante became his worship, and his own spirit responded to that of the author of the "Divina Commedia."

His growing taste led him to admire deeply all that is noble in Art, and he soon prized with enthusiasm the great pictures of the Venetian, the Tuscan, and the Roman schools. "His eyes," says his father, "were fixed on the best pictures with silent, intense delight." One can imagine him at this period wandering with all the ardor of youthful passion through the great galleries, not with the stolid stony gaze of a coldblooded critic, but with that unmixed enthusiasm which so well becomes the unwearied traveller in his buoyant days of experience among the unveiled glories of genius now first revealed to his astonished vision.

He returned home in 1828, and went to reside at Cambridge, having been entered, before his departure for the Continent, at Trinity College. It is said that he cared little for academical reputation, and in the severe scrutiny of examination he did not appear as a competitor for accurate mathematical demonstrations. He knew better than those about him where his treasures lay,–and to some he may have seemed a dreamer, to others an indifferent student, perhaps. His aims were higher than the tutor's black-board, and his life-thoughts ran counter to the usual college-routine. Disordered health soon began to appear, and a too rapid determination of blood to the brain often deprived him of the power of much mental labor. At Florence he had been seized with a slight attack of the same nature, and there was always a tendency to derangement of the vital functions. Irregularity of circulation occasioned sometimes a morbid depression of spirits, and his friends anxiously watched for symptoms of returning health. In his third Cambridge year he grew better, and all who knew and loved him rejoiced in his apparent recovery.

About this time, some of his poetical pieces were printed, but withheld from publication. It was the original intention for the two friends, Alfred Tennyson and Arthur Hallam, to publish together; but the idea was abandoned. Such lines as these the young poet addressed to the man who was afterwards to lend interest and immortality to the story of his early loss:–

"Alfred, I would that you beheld me now,Sitting beneath a mossy, ivied wallOn a quaint bench, which to that structure oldWinds an accordant curve. Above my headDilates immeasurable a wild of leaves,Seeming received into the blue expanseThat vaults this summer noon. Before me liesA lawn of English verdure, smooth, and bright,Mottled with fainter hues of early hay,Whose fragrance, blended with the rose-perfumeFrom that white flowering bush, invites my senseTo a delicious madness,–and faint thoughtsOf childish years are borne into my brainBy unforgotten ardors waking now.Beyond, a gentle slope leads into shadeOf mighty trees, to bend whose eminent crownIs the prime labor of the pettish winds,That now in lighter mood are twirling leavesOver my feet, or hurrying butterflies,And the gay humming things that summer loves,Through the warm air, or altering the boundWhere yon elm-shadows in majestic lineDivide dominion with the abundant light."

And this fine descriptive passage was also written at this period of his life:–

"The garden trees are busy with the showerThat fell ere sunset: now methinks they talk,Lowly and sweetly, as befits the hour,One to another down the grassy walk.Hark! the laburnum from his opening flowerThis cheery creeper greets in whisper light,While the grim fir, rejoicing in the night,Hoarse mutters to the murmuring sycamore.What shall I deem their converse? Would they hailThe wild gray light that fronts yon massive cloud,Or the half-bow rising like pillared fire?Or are they sighing faintly for desireThat with May dawn their leaves may be o'erflowed,And dews about their feet may never fail?"

The first college prize for English declamation was awarded to him this year; and his exercise, "The Conduct of the Independent Party during the Civil War," greatly improved his standing at the University. Other honors quickly followed his successful essay, and he was chosen to deliver an oration in the College Chapel just before the Christmas vacation. This was in the year 1831. He selected as his subject the one eminently congenial to his thought; and his theme, "The Influence of Italian upon English Literature," was admirably treated. The oration is before us as we write, and we turn the pages with a fond and loving eye. We remember, as we read, his brief sojourn,–that he died "in the sweet hour of prime,"–and we are astonished at the eloquent wisdom displayed by a lad of twenty summers. "I cannot help considering," he says, "the sonnets of Shakspeare as a sort of homage to the Genius of Christian Europe, necessarily exacted, although voluntarily paid, before he was allowed to take in hand the sceptre of his endless dominion." And he ends his charming disquisition in these words;–"An English mind that has drunk deep at the sources of Southern inspiration, and especially that is imbued with the spirit of the mighty Florentine, will be conscious of a perpetual freshness and quiet beauty resting on his imagination and spreading gently over his affections, until, by the blessing of Heaven, it may be absorbed without loss in the pure inner light of which that voice has spoken, as no other can,–

"'Light intellectual, yet full of love,Love of true beauty, therefore full of joy,Joy, every other sweetness far above.'"

It was young Hallam's privilege to be among Coleridge's favorites, and in one of his poems Arthur alludes to him as a man in whose face "every line wore the pale cast of thought." His conversations with "the old man eloquent" gave him intense delight, and he often alluded to the wonderful talks he had enjoyed with the great dreamer, whose magical richness of illustration took him captive for the time being.

At Abbotsford he became known to Sir Walter Scott, and Lockhart thus chronicles his visit:–

"Among a few other friends from a distance, Sir Walter received this summer [1829] a short visit from Mr. Hallam, and made in his company several of the little excursions which had in former days been of constant recurrence. Mr. Hallam had with him his son, Arthur, a young gentleman of extraordinary abilities, and as modest as able, who not long afterwards was cut off in the very bloom of opening life and genius. His beautiful verses, 'On Melrose seen in Company with Scott,' have since been often printed."

"I lived an hour in fair Melrose:It was not when 'the pale moonlight'Its magnifying charm bestows;Yet deem I that I 'viewed it right.'The wind-swept shadows fast careered,Like living things that joyed or feared,Adown the sunny Eildon Hill,And the sweet winding Tweed the distance crowned well."I inly laughed to see that sceneWear such a countenance of youth,Though many an age those hills were green,And yonder river glided smooth,Ere in these now disjointed wallsThe Mother Church held festivals,And full-voiced anthemings the whileSwelled from the choir, and lingered down the echoing aisle."I coveted that Abbey's doom:For if, I thought, the early flowersOf our affection may not bloom,Like those green hills, through countless hours,Grant me at least a tardy waningSome pleasure still in age's paining;Though lines and forms must fade away,Still may old Beauty share the empire of Decay!"But looking toward the grassy moundWhere calm the Douglas chieftains lie,Who, living, quiet never found,I straightway learnt a lesson high:And well I knew that thoughtful mienOf him whose early lyre had thrownOver these mouldering walls the magic of its tone."Then ceased I from my envying state,And knew that aweless intellectHath power upon the ways of Fate,And works through time and space uncheck'd.That minstrel of old ChivalryIn the cold grave must come to be;But his transmitted thoughts have partIn the collective mind, and never shall depart."It was a comfort, too, to seeThose dogs that from him ne'er would rove,And always eyed him reverently,With glances of depending love.They know not of that eminenceWhich marks him to my reasoning sense;They know but that he is a man,And still to them is kind, and glads them all he can."And hence their quiet looks confiding,Hence grateful instincts seated deep,By whose strong bond, were ill betiding,They'd risk their own his life to keep.What joy to watch in lower creatureSuch dawning of a moral nature,And how (the rule all things obey)They look to a higher mind to be their law and stay!"

At the University he lived a sweet and gracious life. No man had truer or fonder friends, or was more admired for his excellent accomplishments. Earnest in whatever he attempted, his enthusiasm for all that was high and holy in literature stamped his career at Trinity as one of remarkable superiority. "I have known many young men, both at Oxford and elsewhere, of whose abilities I think highly, but I never met with one whom I considered worthy of being put into competition with Arthur for a moment," writes his early and intimate friend. "I can scarcely hope to describe the feelings with which I regarded him, much less the daily beauty of his existence, out of which they grew," writes another of his companions. Politics, literature, philosophy he discussed with a metaphysical subtilty marvellous in one so young. The highest comprehension seemed native to his mind, so that all who came within the sphere of his influence were alike impressed with his vast and various powers. The life and grace of a charmed circle, the display of his gifts was not for show, and he never forgot to keep the solemn injunction, "My son, give me thine heart," clearly engraven before him.

Among his favorite authors, while at the University, we have been told he greatly delighted in the old dramatists, Webster, Heywood, and Fletcher. The grace and harmony of style and versification which he found particularly in the latter master became one of his favorite themes, and he often dwelt upon this excellence. He loved to repeat the sad old strains of Bion; and Aeschylus and Sophocles interested him deeply.

On leaving Cambridge, he took his degree and went immediately to London to reside with his father. It was a beautiful relation which always existed between the elder and the younger scholar; and now, as soon as Arthur had been entered on the boards of the Inner Temple, the father and son sat down to read law together. Legal studies occupied the young student till the month of October, 1832, when he became an inmate of the office of an eminent conveyancer in Lincoln's Inn Fields. Although he applied himself diligently to obtain a sound practical knowledge of the profession he had chosen, his former habits of literary pursuit did not entirely desert him. During the winter he translated most of the sonnets in the "Vita Nuova," and composed a dramatic sketch with Raffaello for the hero. About this period he wrote brief, but excellent, memoirs of Petrarch, Voltaire, and Burke, for the "Gallery of Portraits," then publishing by the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge. But his time, when unoccupied at the office, was principally devoted to metaphysical research and the history of philosophical opinion. His spirits, sometimes apt to be graver than is the wont of youth, now became more animated and even gay, so that his family were cheered on to hope that his health was firmly gaining ground. The unpleasant symptoms which manifested themselves in his earlier years had almost entirely disappeared, when an attack of intermittent fever in the spring of 1833 gave the fatal blow to his constitution. In August, the careful, tender father took his beloved son into Germany, trusting to a change of climate for restoration. Travelling slowly, they lingered among the scenes connected with a literature and a history both were so familiar with, and many pleasant and profitable hours of delightful converse gladdened Arthur's journey. It is difficult to picture a more interesting group of travellers through the picturesque regions they were again exploring.

No child was ever more ardently loved–nay, worshipped–by his father than Arthur Hallam. The parallel, perhaps, exists in Edmund Burke's fond attachment for and subsequent calamity in the loss of his son Richard. That passage in the life of the great statesman is one of the most affecting in all biographical literature. "The son thus deeply lamented," says Prior, "had always conducted himself with much filial duty and affection. Their confidence on all subjects was even more unreserved than commonly prevails between father and son, and their esteem for each other higher.... The son looked to the father as one of the first, if not the very first, character in history; the father had formed the very highest opinion of the talents of the son, and among his friends rated them superior to his own." The same confiding companionship grew up between Henry Hallam and his eldest boy, and continued till "death set the seal of eternity" upon the young and gifted Arthur.

The travellers were returning to Vienna from Pesth; a damp day set in while they were on the journey; again intermittent fever attacked the sensitive invalid, and suddenly, mysteriously, his life was ended. It was the 15th of September, 1833, and Arthur Hallam lay dead in his father's arms. Twenty-two brief years, and all high hopes for him, the manly, the noble-spirited, this side the tomb, are broken down forever. Well might his heart-crushed father sob aloud, "He seemed to tread the earth as a spirit from some better world." The author of "Horae Subsecivae" aptly quotes Shakspeare's memorable words, in connection with the tragic bereavement of that autumnal day in Vienna:–

"The idea of thy life shall sweetly creepInto my study of imagination;And every lovely organ of thy lifeShall come apparelled in more precious habit,More moving delicate, and full of life,Into the eye and prospect of my soul,Than when thou liv'dst indeed."

Standing by the grave of this young person, now made so renowned by the genius of a great poet, whose song has embalmed his name and called the world's attention to his death, the inevitable reflection is not of sorrow. He sleeps well who is thus lamented, and "nothing can touch him further."

THE CONFESSIONS OF A MEDIUM

It is not yet a year since I ceased to act as a Spiritual Medium. (I am forced to make use of this title as the most intelligible, but I do it with a strong mental protest.) At first, I desired only to withdraw myself quietly from the peculiar associations into which I had been thrown by the exercise of my faculty, and be content with the simple fact of my escape. A man who joins the Dashaways does not care to have the circumstance announced in the newspapers. "So, he was an habitual drunkard," the public would say. I was overcome by a similar reluctance,–nay, I might honestly call it shame,–since, although I had at intervals officiated as a Medium for a period of seven years, my name had been mentioned, incidentally, only once or twice in the papers devoted especially to Spiritualism. I had no such reputation as that of Hume or Andrew Jackson Davis, which would call for a public statement of my recantation. The result would be, therefore, to give prominence to a weakness, which, however manfully overcome, might be remembered to my future prejudice.

I find, however, that the resolution to be silent leaves me restless and unsatisfied. And in reflecting calmly–objectively, for the first time–upon the experience of those seven years, I recognize so many points wherein my case is undoubtedly analogous to that of hundreds of others who may be still entangled in the same labyrinth whence I have but recently escaped, so clear a solution of much that is enigmatical, even to those who reject Spiritualism, that the impulse to write weighs upon me with the pressure of a neglected duty. I cannot longer be silent, and, in the conviction that the truth of my statement will be evident enough to those most concerned in hearing it, without the authority of any name, (least of all, of one so little known as mine,) I now give my confession to the world. The names of the individuals whom I shall have occasion to introduce are, of course, disguised; but, with this exception, the narrative is the plainest possible record of my own experience. Many of the incidents winch I shall be obliged to describe are known only to the actors therein, who, I feel assured, will never foolishly betray themselves. I have therefore no fear that any harm can result from my disclosures.

In order to make my views intelligible to those readers who have paid no attention to psychological subjects, I must commence a little in advance of my story. My own individual nature is one of those apparently inconsistent combinations which are frequently found in the children of parents whose temperaments and mental personalities widely differ. This class of natures is much larger than would be supposed. Inheriting opposite, even conflicting, traits from father and mother, they assume, as either element predominates, diverse characters; and that which is the result of temperament (in fact, congenital inconsistency) is set down by the unthinking world as moral weakness or duplicity. Those who have sufficient skill to perceive and reconcile–or, at least, govern–the opposing elements are few, indeed. Had the power come to me sooner, I should have been spared the necessity of making these confessions.

From one parent I inherited an extraordinarily active and sensitive imagination,–from the other, a sturdy practical sense, a disposition to weigh and balance with calm fairness the puzzling questions which life offers to every man. These conflicting qualities–as is usual in all similar natures–were not developed in equal order of growth. The former governed my childhood, my youth, and enveloped me with spells, which all the force of the latter and more slowly ripened faculty was barely sufficient to break. Luxuriant weeds and brambles covered the soil which should have been ploughed and made to produce honest grain. Unfortunately, I had no teacher who was competent to understand and direct me. The task was left for myself, and I can only wonder, after all that has occurred, how it has been possible for me to succeed. Certainly, this success has not been due to any vigorous exercise of virtue on my part, but solely to the existence of that cool, reflective reason which lay perdue beneath all the extravagances of my mind.

I possessed, even as a child, an unusual share of what phrenologists call Concentrativeness. The power of absorption, of self-forgetfulness, was at the same time a source of delight and a torment. Lost in some wild dream or absurd childish speculation, my insensibility to outward things was chastised as carelessness or a hardened indifference to counsel. With a memory almost marvellous to retain those things which appealed to my imagination, I blundered painfully over the commonest tasks. While I frequently repeated the Sunday hymn, at dinner, I was too often unable to give the least report of the sermon. Withdrawn into my corner of the pew, I gave myself up, after the enunciation of the text, to a complete abstraction, which took no note of time or place. Fixing my eyes upon a knot in one of the panels under the pulpit, I sat moveless during the hour and a half which our worthy old clergyman required for the expounding of the seven parts of his discourse. They could never accuse me of sleeping, however; for I rarely even winked. The closing hymn recalled me to myself, always with a shock, or sense of pain, and sometimes even with a temporary nausea.

This habit of abstraction–properly a complete passivity of the mind–after a while developed another habit, in which I now see the root of that peculiar condition which made me a Medium. I shall therefore endeavor to describe it. I was sitting, one Sunday, just as the minister was commencing his sermon, with my eyes carelessly following the fingers of my right hand, as I drummed them slowly across my knee. Suddenly, the wonder came into my mind,–How is it my fingers move? What set them going? What is it that stops them? The mystery of that communication between will and muscle, which no physiologist has ever fathomed, burst upon my young intellect. I had been conscious of no intention of thus drumming my fingers; they were in motion when I first noticed them: they were certainly a part of myself, yet they acted without my knowledge or design! My left hand was quiet; why did its fingers not move also? Following these reflections came a dreadful fear, as I remembered Jane, the blacksmith's daughter, whose elbows and shoulders sometimes jerked in such a way as to make all the other scholars laugh, although we were sorry for the poor girl, who cried bitterly over her unfortunate, ungovernable limbs. I was comforted, however, on finding that I could control the motion of my fingers at pleasure; but my imagination was too active to stop there. What if I should forget how to direct my hands? What if they should refuse to obey me? What if my knees, which were just as still as the hymn-books in the rack before me, should cease to bend, and I should sit there forever? These very questions seemed to produce a temporary paralysis of the will. As my right hand lay quietly on my knee, and I asked myself, with a stupid wonder, "Now, can I move it?" it lay as still as before. I had only questioned, not willed. "No I cannot move it," I said, in real doubt I was conscious of a blind sense of exertion, wherein there was yet no proper exertion, but which seemed to exhaust me. Fascinated by this new mystery, I contemplated my hand as something apart from myself,–something subordinate to, but not identical with, me. The rising of the congregation for the hymn broke the spell, like the snapping of a thread.

The reader will readily understand that I carried these experiences much farther. I gradually learned to suspend (perhaps in imagination only, but therefore none the less really) the action of my will upon the muscles of my arms and legs; and I did it with the greater impunity, from knowing that the stir consequent upon the conclusion of the services would bring me to myself. In proportion as the will became passive, the activity of my imagination was increased, and I experienced a new and strange delight in watching the play of fantasies which appeared to come and go independently of myself. There was still a dim consciousness of outward things mingled with my condition; I was not beyond the recall of my senses. But one day, I remember, as I sat motionless as a statue, having ceased any longer to attempt to control my dead limbs, more than usually passive, a white, shining mist gradually stole around me; my eyes finally ceased to take cognizance of objects; a low, musical humming sounded in my ears, and those creatures of the imagination which had hitherto crossed my brain as thoughts now spoke to me as audible voices. If there is any happy delirium in the first stages of intoxication, (of which, thank Heaven, I have no experience,) it must be a sensation very much like that which I felt. The death of external and the birth of internal consciousness overwhelmed my childish soul with a dumb, ignorant ecstasy, like that which savages feel on first hearing the magic of music.