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Microwave Cavities and Detectors for

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Springer Proceedings in Physics 245

Gianpaolo Carosi
Gray Rybka Editors

Microwave Cavities
and Detectors
for Axion Research
Proceedings of the 3rd International
Workshop
Springer Proceedings in Physics

Volume 245
Indexed by Scopus
The series Springer Proceedings in Physics, founded in 1984, is devoted to timely
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More information about this series at http://www.springer.com/series/361


Gianpaolo Carosi • Gray Rybka
Editors

Microwave Cavities and


Detectors for Axion Research
Proceedings of the 3rd International
Workshop
Editors
Gianpaolo Carosi Gray Rybka
Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory Physics and Astronomy Department
Livermore, CA, USA University of Washington
Seattle, WA, USA

ISSN 0930-8989 ISSN 1867-4941 (electronic)


Springer Proceedings in Physics
ISBN 978-3-030-43760-2 ISBN 978-3-030-43761-9 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-43761-9

© This is a U.S. government work and not under copyright protection in the U.S.; foreign copyright
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Preface

The mystery of dark matter remains as one of the most pressing questions in
physics today and one well-motivated candidate is the QCD axion. Although axions
are predicted to have extraordinarily weak couplings to ordinary matter, it was
pointed out decades ago by Pierre Sikivie that they can be detected through their
resonant conversion to photons in microwave cavities threaded by a strong magnetic
field. Only recently have experiments utilizing this technique, such as the Axion
Dark Matter Experiment (ADMX), come online with the sensitivity required to
probe large regions of parameter space. At their heart, these experiments contain
large, highly tunable microwave cavities that can be cooled to dilution refrigerator
temperatures in the presence of a large magnetic field. Detecting the feeble (of
order 10−24 W) axion-to-photon conversion signals also requires highly specialized
superconducting detectors that can operate near the quantum limit (or beyond).
Designing and optimizing such systems is a nontrivial task.
As a result, a series of workshops have been organized to bring together subject
matter experts in axion dark matter detection, cryogenic microwave cavity design,
and quantum sensor technology in order to explore new ideas and train new
researchers. These proceedings are from the “3rd Workshop on Microwave Cavities
and Detectors for Axion Research,” which took place at Lawrence Livermore
National Laboratory (LLNL) from August 21–24, 2018. Over 40 people from
around the world attended, including subject matter experts from Lawrence Liv-
ermore National Laboratory (LLNL), Stanford Linear Accelerator Center (SLAC),
Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL), Fermi National Accelerator
Laboratory (FNAL), University of Washington, University of Florida, University of
California, Berkeley, University of Western Australia, CERN, and the Institute for
Basic Science (IBS), South Korea. The proceedings are based on a series of lectures
on topics ranging from the fundamentals of microwave simulations to new concepts
for cavity systems and superconducting detectors. In addition, new axion detection
techniques that are complementary to the standard microwave cavity search are
presented.
This workshop, along with its predecessor workshops which took place on
August 25–27, 2015 and January 10–13, 2017, provided useful in sharing ideas,

v
vi Preface

experiences, and technologies as well as training a new generation of researchers.


As a result, it is anticipated that these workshops will continue on an approximately
yearly basis. All of these workshops were supported by generous contributions from
the Heising-Simons Foundation and were hosted at LLNL. We thank them both for
their support and would also like to thank the many participants for putting this
workshop and proceedings together. Finally, we would like to thank the reader who
we hope will be able to use these proceedings to learn more about the exciting field
of axion dark matter detection.
LLNL-PROC-784944

Livermore, CA, USA Gianpaolo Carosi


Contents

Microwave Cavity Simulation Using Ansys HFSS. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1


Mark Jones
Ultra-High Field Solenoids and Axion Detection . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
Mark D. Bird
Recent Results with the ADMX Experiment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
N. Du
The Microstrip SQUID Amplifier in ADMX . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23
Sean R. O’Kelley, Gene Hilton, and John Clarke
The ORGAN Experiment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37
Ben T. McAllister and Michael E. Tobar
The 3 Cavity Prototypes of RADES: An Axion Detector Using
Microwave Filters at CAST . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45
Sergio Arguedas Cuendis, A. Álvarez Melcón, C. Cogollos,
A. Díaz-Morcillo, B. Döbrich, J.D. Gallego, B. Gimeno, I.G. Irastorza,
A.J. Lozano-Guerrero, C. Malbrunot, P. Navarro, C. Peña Garay,
J. Redondo, T. Vafeiadis, and W. Wünsch
Search for 5–9 µeV Axions with ADMX Four-Cavity Array . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53
Jihee Yang, Joseph R. Gleason, Shriram Jois, Ian Stern, Pierre Sikivie,
Neil S. Sullivan, and David B. Tanner
Tunable High-Q Photonic Bandgap Cavity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 63
Ankur Agrawal, Akash V. Dixit, David I. Schuster and Aaron Chou
Source Mass Characterization in the ARIADNE Axion Experiment . . . . . . 71
Chloe Lohmeyer, N. Aggarwal, A. Arvanitaki, A. Brown A. Fang,
A.A. Geraci, A. Kapitulnik, D. Kim, Y. Kim, I. Lee, Y.H. Lee,
E. Levenson-Falk, C.Y. Liu, J.C. Long, S. Mumford, A. Reid,
Y. Semertzidis, Y. Shin, J. Shortino, E. Smith, W.M. Snow,
E. Weisman, A. Schnabel, L. Trahms, and J. Voigt

vii
viii Contents

CAPP-PACE Experiment with a Target Mass Range Around 10 µeV . . . . . 83


Doyu Lee,Woohyun Chung, Ohjoon Kwon, Jinsu Kim, Danho Ahn,
Caglar Kutlu, and Yannis K. Semertzidis
High Resolution Data Analysis: Plans and Prospects . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 89
Shriram Jois, Leanne Duffy, Neil Sullivan, David Tanner,
and William Wester
Operation of a Ferromagnetic Axion Haloscope. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 97
D. Alesini, C. Braggio, G. Carugno, N. Crescini, D. Di Gioacchino,
P. Falferi, S. Gallo, U. Gambardella, C. Gatti, G. Iannone, G. Lamanna,
C. Ligi, A. Lombardi, R. Mezzena, A. Ortolan, S. Pagano, R. Pengo,
A. Rettaroli, G. Ruoso, C. C. Speake, L. Taffarello, and S. Tocci
Overview of the Cosmic Axion Spin Precession Experiment (CASPEr) . . . 105
Derek F. Jackson Kimball, S. Afach, D. Aybas, J. W. Blanchard,
D. Budker, G. Centers, M. Engler, N. L. Figueroa, A. Garcon,
P. W. Graham, H. Luo, S. Rajendran, M. G. Sendra, A. O. Sushkov,
T. Wang, A. Wickenbrock, A. Wilzewski, and T. Wu
Axion Dark Matter Search at IBS/CAPP . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 123
SungWoo Youn
Multiple-Cell Cavity for High Mass Axion Dark Matter Search . . . . . . . . . . . 131
Junu Jeong, SungWoo Youn, and Yannis K. Semertzidis
Exclusion Limits on Hidden-Photon Dark Matter Near 2 neV from
a Fixed-Frequency Superconducting Lumped-Element Resonator . . . . . . . . 139
A. Phipps, S. E. Kuenstner, S. Chaudhuri, C. S. Dawson, B. A. Young,
C. T. FitzGerald, H. Froland, K. Wells, D. Li, H. M. Cho, S. Rajendran,
P. W. Graham, and K. D. Irwin
Employing Precision Frequency Metrology for Axion Detection . . . . . . . . . . . 147
Maxim Goryachev, Ben T. McAllister, and Michael Tobar
Bayesian Searches and Quantum Oscillators . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 155
George Chapline and Matt Otten
Status of the MADMAX Experiment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 163
Chang Lee
Orpheus: Extending the ADMX QCD Dark-Matter Axion Search
to Higher Masses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 169
Gianpalo Carosi, Raphael Cervantes, Seth Kimes, Parashar Mohapatra,
Rich Ottens, and Gray Rybka
Microwave Cavity Simulation Using
Ansys HFSS

Mark Jones

Abstract The design of microwave cavity detectors for axion dark matter research
is often accomplished using advanced full-wave electromagnetic simulation soft-
ware tools. These tools provide a cost-effective approach to evaluate a wide variety
of cavity configurations, frequency tuning mechanisms, and conductive or dielectric
materials and coatings. One simulation software package used for this application
is Ansys High Frequency Structure Simulator (HFSS), which is based upon the
well-established finite element method. HFSS includes numerous features useful for
microwave cavity design such as parametric geometry modeling, adaptive meshing
algorithm, curvilinear mesh elements, driven modal and eigenmode matrix solvers,
and optimization algorithms. This paper describes the use of the HFSS software to
simulate microwave cavities for axion haloscope detectors, with an example tutorial
for a cylindrical cavity. Excellent agreement between the simulated and analytical
results is shown for the resonant frequency, quality factor, and form factor.

Keywords Ansys HFSS · Cavity simulation · Finite element modeling

1 Overview of HFSS

1.1 General Capabilities

Ansys HFSS [1] is a full-wave frequency-domain three-dimensional electromag-


netic field solver which uses the finite element method to solve Maxwell’s equations.
It offers industry-standard accuracy, adaptive meshing of arbitrary geometries, fully
parametric modeling, multiple optimization engines, high-performance computing
capabilities, and multi-physics integration via the Ansys Workbench environment.

M. Jones ()
Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, Richland, WA, USA
e-mail: a.mark.jones@pnnl.gov

© This is a U.S. government work and not under copyright protection in the U.S.; 1
foreign copyright protection may apply 2020
G. Carosi, G. Rybka (eds.), Microwave Cavities and Detectors for Axion Research,
Springer Proceedings in Physics 245, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-43761-9_1
2 M. Jones

HFSS has been commercially available for approximately 30 years and is widely
used to design antennas, filters, waveguides, connectors, transitions, and electronic
packages.
Multiple numerical solvers are available within the HFSS software, each targeted
for different applications. A license allows the use of the frequency-domain finite
element solver, frequency-domain finite element eigenmode solver, time-domain
finite element solver, frequency-domain integral equation solver, frequency-domain
finite element boundary integral hybrid solver, frequency-domain planar integral
equation solver, or a linear circuit solver. A license allows the solver to use a
maximum of four processor cores. Additional high-performance computing (HPC),
optimization, and distributed solver licenses are available to increase computing
capabilities.

1.2 User Interface

The HFSS user interface is integrated into the Electronics Desktop environment
which is part of the Electromagnetics Suite. Figure 1 shows the user interface
of HFSS Release 19 within the Electronics Desktop. The user interface consists
of multiple window panes with a menu and ribbon toolbar along the top, project
manager and properties windows on the left, 3D model editor tree window in the
center, graphics window on the right, and message manager and progress windows
along the bottom.

1.3 Solution Types for Cavity Simulation

Two solution types applicable to microwave cavity design are the frequency-domain
eigenmode and frequency-domain driven modal solvers. The eigenmode solver
calculates the natural resonances of the cavity based upon the geometry, materials,
and boundary conditions. It calculates modal frequencies, unloaded quality factors,
and electromagnetic field solutions for up to 20 modes simultaneously. This solver
can be used to study the modal behavior of a resonant structure, generate mode maps
for tuned cavities, and calculate field-based quantities such as the cavity form factor.
The driven modal solution uses one or more ports to excite the cavity structure
and provides network parameters (SYZ parameters) and electromagnetic field
solutions. A wave port is a cross-section of a transmission line used to calculate
the characteristic impedance and complex propagation constant of the excitation
mode. The driven modal solver can be used to include antenna feed probes to predict
transmission and reflection coefficients and study how to achieve critical coupling to
a cavity mode. Multiple frequency sweep types are available to obtain SYZ matrix
and electromagnetic field results over a user-specified bandwidth.
Microwave Cavity Simulation Using Ansys HFSS 3

Fig. 1 HFSS Release 19 user interface within the Electronics Desktop environment

1.4 Meshing Technologies for Cavity Simulation

The creation of a robust, efficient mesh which accurately represents the model
geometry is a critical step required to obtain accurate results from a finite element
method solver. HFSS generates a tetrahedral element mesh using an iterative
algorithm which refines the element size and distribution until a user-defined
convergence criteria is reached. This method produces a graded mesh with fine
discretization in locations required to accurately represent the field behavior,
effectively tuning the mesh to the electromagnetic performance of the structure. The
convergence parameter used in mesh generation is typically the modal frequency for
an eigenmode solution and S-parameters for a driven modal solution.
In addition to the automatic meshing algorithm, the user can manually influence
the initial mesh density. These optional controls can further focus mesh elements
in critical areas to reduce the number of adaptive passes needed to converge to the
specified criteria, but are not required to achieve accurate results. Both rectilinear
and curvilinear tetrahedral mesh elements are available to optimally represent the
model geometry. Curvilinear mesh elements are recommended for the simulation of
cylindrical or curved cavity structures.
4 M. Jones

1.5 Boundary Conditions for Cavity Simulation

The electromagnetic solver requires boundary conditions to define material proper-


ties for geometry surfaces. These surface definitions also can be used to simplify
geometries or make the meshing process more efficient. By default, any object sur-
face that contacts the background is automatically defined as a perfectly conducting
boundary. Cavity models often include finite conductivity boundaries to model good
conductors such as copper.
Other applicable boundary conditions include absorbing or perfectly matched
layer boundaries to model open regions, impedance boundaries for resistive materi-
als, layered impedance boundaries for thin coatings, periodic boundaries for repeat-
ing structures, and symmetry plane boundaries to reduce model size. Frequency-
dependent properties can be included for the driven modal solver. Effects such as
surface roughness and anisotropy can also be included as appropriate.

1.6 Electromagnetic Fields Calculator

HFSS includes a calculator which can access field data to perform a wide variety
of mathematical operations. The calculator can use geometric, complex, vector,
and scalar data to create numerical, graphical, or exportable results. Additionally,
frequently used expressions can be created and loaded into any project. The fields
calculator is used to obtain the cavity form factor which is a value between 0 and 1
representing the axion coupling to a cavity mode in a haloscope detector. Although
it is provided directly with the eigenmode solver results, the quality factor can also
be calculated using the magnetic field data if desired.

2 Resonant Cavity Example

2.1 Creating the Model

The example model described here is a cylindrical copper cavity with a radius
of 21 cm and height of 100 cm. The TM010 mode is expected to resonate at
546.42 MHz with an unloaded quality factor of 61,391 [2] and form factor of 0.692
[3].
Create HFSS Project Insert project into Electronics Desktop using File > New.
Set Eigenmode Solution Type Select HFSS > Solution Type and select Eigen-
mode.
Set Model Units Select Modeler > Units and select cm.
Microwave Cavity Simulation Using Ansys HFSS 5

Set Dialog Data Entry Mode Select Tools > Options > General Options and then
3D Modeler > Drawing > Dialog.
Set Default Transparency Value Select Tools > Options > General Options and
then 3D Modeler > Display > Rendering. Enter a value of 0.7.
Create Parameterized Cavity Select Draw > Cylinder. Enter “cavity_rad” in
radius value and then 21 cm. Enter “cavity_height” in height value and then 100 cm.
Assign Cavity Wall Conductivity Select the cavity in the 3D Modeler Editor
tree. Select Edit > Extend Selection > All Object Faces. Select HFSS > Bound-
aries > Assign > Finite Conductivity. Enter “cavity_walls” in the name field.
Apply Curvilinear Mesh Elements Select the cavity in the 3D Modeler Editor
tree. Select HFSS > Mesh Operations > Assign > Apply Curvilinear Meshing and
enter “Cavity” in the name field.

2.2 Solving the Model

Add Solution Setup Select HFSS > Analysis Setup > Add Solution Setup. Enter
minimum frequency = 540 MHz, number of modes = 3, maximum number of
passes = 12, maximum delta frequency per pass = 2%, and minimum passes = 4.
Save Project Select File > Save and enter “cavity.aedt” as the file name.
Perform Validation Check Select HFSS > Validation Check and confirm a check
mark appears beside each step.
Solve Model Select HFSS > Analyze All in the menu bar.

2.3 Viewing the Results

View Solution Data Select HFSS > Results > Solution Data. Select Eigenmode
Data tab to view modal frequencies and quality factors for each requested mode.
The first mode is TM010 , the second mode is TM011 , and the third mode is TE113 .
The Mode 1 frequency should be 546.42 MHz and quality factor should be 61,378.
The simulated frequency exactly agrees with the analytical value and the unloaded
quality factor agrees within 0.02%. Select the Convergence tab to view adaptive pass
information including the number of mesh elements and frequency convergence
value for each pass. Select Profile tab to view the log file for the simulation.
View E-Field Phase Animation Select XZ and YZ planes in the 3D Modeler
Editor tree. Select HFSS > Fields > Plot Fields > E > Mag_E. Right-click on
Mag_E1 plot in the Field Overlays section of the Project Manager tree. Select Phase
6 M. Jones

Fig. 2 Plot of TM010 mode electric field magnitude in two vertical planes

as the swept variable with start value of 0◦ , stop value of 170◦ , and step value of 17
(Fig. 2).
View E-Field Vector Animation Select XZ and YZ planes in the 3D Modeler
Editor tree. Select HFSS > Fields > Plot Fields > E > Vector_E.
Active Mode of Interest Select HFSS > Fields > Edit Sources. Enter a magnitude
of 1 J for the desired mode and magnitude of 0 J for the other two modes. This will
activate the desired mode for all field plots and post-processing calculations.
Calculate Form Factor Select HFSS > Fields > Calculator. Due to space lim-
itations, the detailed steps used to calculate form factor are not included here.
The simulated value should be 0.692 which agrees exactly with the analytical
calculation.

3 Summary

This paper has described several key features of the Ansys HFSS software which
is used to design microwave cavities for axion dark matter research. Effective
use of advanced simulation software allows researchers to efficiently investigate
Microwave Cavity Simulation Using Ansys HFSS 7

concepts for a wide variety of cavity designs and obtain detailed insights into the
electromagnetic behavior of the structure. A step-by-step procedure for an example
cylindrical cavity was also given showing excellent agreement with analytical
calculations for the resonant frequency, quality factor, and form factor.

References

1. Ansys HFSS Homepage, https://www.ansys.com/products/electronics/ansys-hfss/. Accessed 15


Jan 2019
2. X. Li, Y. Jiang, Design of a cylindrical cavity resonator for measurements of electrical properties
of dielectric materials, University of Gavle Master Thesis, 2010
3. I. Stern, A.A. Chisholm, J. Hoskins, P. Sikivie, N.S. Sullivan, D.B. Tanner, G. Carosi, K. van
Bibber, Cavity design for high-frequency axion dark matter detectors. Rev. Sci. Instrum. 86,
123305 (2015)
Ultra-High Field Solenoids and Axion
Detection

Mark D. Bird

Abstract High Temperature Superconducting (HTS) materials are now becoming


incorporated into magnets that are being used for a variety of physics applications.
Axion detection is a particularly attractive application for these conductors and
there is significant promise that reliable systems can be built. However, there are
still many challenges that are presently unresolved when it comes to building
magnets of this scale from these materials. In particular, when a superconducting
magnet quenches the energy stored in the magnetic field is converted into heat.
If not controlled properly, the energy can be deposited in a non-uniform manner
that results in excessive heating in some regions and damage to the magnet. For
magnets using traditional Low Temperature Superconductors (LTS) methods of
protecting the magnet during quench have been relatively well developed. For
the HTS materials this development is presently underway, but no demonstrations
protecting coils of the size needed for axion detection have yet been published.

Keywords Superconducting magnet · Axion detection · Quench protection

1 Introduction

The Axion Dark Matter eXperiment (ADMX) has been trying to detect axions for
many years using an 8 T magnet with a 500 mm bore inside of which a radio-
frequency resonant cavity has been installed along with various electronics. A
primary parameter of interest in such searches is the square of the magnetic field
integrated over the volume of the rf cavity, or approximately the square of the central
field of the magnet multiplied by the volume of the detector, B0 2 V. Hence, large
bore, high field magnets are vital to the search for axions. For ADMX, B0 2 V is
approximately 12 T2 m3 .

M. D. Bird ()
National High Magnetic Field Laboratory, Florida State University, Tallahassee, FL, USA
e-mail: bird@magnet.fsu.edu

© This is a U.S. government work and not under copyright protection in the U.S.; 9
foreign copyright protection may apply 2020
G. Carosi, G. Rybka (eds.), Microwave Cavities and Detectors for Axion Research,
Springer Proceedings in Physics 245, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-43761-9_2
10 M. D. Bird

HTS materials were first discovered in 1986 and are also known to supercon-
duct at higher fields than the LTS materials. NbTi is the most commonly used
superconductor for magnets, being used in most magnets for Magnetic Resonance
Imaging (MRI) as well as most superconducting dipole and quadrupole magnets for
synchrotrons. It is also the conductor used in the present AMDX magnet. However,
NbTi is limited to applications below approximately 10 T. Nb3 Sn is the other
commonly used superconductor for magnets. It is frequently used in magnets for
Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR) or Condensed Matter Physics (CMP) having
attained fields as high as 23.5 T.
The cheapest way to attain higher B0 2 V than in the present ADMX would be
to build a large bore, modest field magnet using NbTi. For example, a commercial
human whole body MRI magnet has a bore of ~90 cm and can provide field up to
7 T routinely with some examples having been delivered up to 9.4 T and one at
10.5 T. A new MRI magnet in France has been delivered and energized to 11.74 T
with B0 2 V ~ 430 T2 m3 but is not yet fully operational. Another extreme example
is the Compact Muon Solenoid detector installed on the Large Hadron Collider at
CERN which provides 4T in a bore of 6 m, for B0 2 V ~ 5300 T2 m3 .
However, given the expected energy of the axion, the rf cavities must be of
modest size, which would require slaving many of them together to build a next-
generation axion detector based on NbTi magnets. Based on these constraints in
cavity design, the bore of the magnet should be ~16 cm and the length of the rf cavity
should be no more than 2.5 times the diameter. This leads us to need extremely
intense magnetic fields for which HTS materials are uniquely well suited.

2 Present HTS Magnet State of the Art

There are presently three HTS conductors to be considered for this application:
BiSCCO-2212, BiSCCO-2223, and REBCO. All three superconduct above 100 T,
all have adequate current-density at 20–40 T for construction of an ultra-high-field
(UHF) magnet. Rare Earth Barium Copper Oxide (Y or Gd being the Rare Earth
component) was the first to become available in a high strength form suitable for
UHF magnets. In 2007 SuperPower provided a conductor consisting of ~40 µm of
Hastelloy with some buffer layers, ~1 µm of YBCO, Ag, and Cu cladding. The
National High Magnetic Field Laboratory (MagLab) proceeded to build some test
coils and secured funding to develop a 32 T superconducting magnet for CMP. This
magnet has now reached field and is expected to start to serve the user community
in the coming months [1].
In 2010 Seungyong Hahn, Yuki Iwasa, and others at MIT presented a new
concept for UHF magnets: No-Insulation (NI-) REBCO. In this approach there
is no insulation on the composite superconducting tape [2]. LTS magnets require
insulation on the conductor. When an insulated conductor quenches (converts from
Ultra-High Field Solenoids and Axion Detection 11

superconducting to normal state), the current moves from the superconducting


material to the Cu and Ag within the composite conductor. If the current-density
is too high, the power density will be too high and the conductor will start to melt
before the magnet is de-energized. To prevent this, a significant fraction (50–80%)
of the conductor cross section is usually Cu. With HTS conductors it becomes
possible to leave out the inter-turn insulation. In this case, when the conductor
quenches, the current can move into Cu and Ag in adjacent turns of conductor.
Less Cu is needed in individual tapes, the cross section of the conductor can become
smaller, the current-density of the magnet becomes larger, and the size of the magnet
becomes much smaller. The dominant stress in a solenoid is proportional to the
product of magnetic field, current-density, and radius of the turn of conductor. When
the size drops, the stresses reduce and less reinforcement materials are required. This
results in still more reduction in size. The highest field attained purely with this
technology is 26 T that was reached by a coil of only 17 cm outer diameter designed
by Hahn, built by SuNAM, and tested at the MagLab in 2015 [3]. A smaller coil
reached 14.4 T while operating inside a 31.1 T resistive magnet for a total field of
45.5 T at the MagLab in 2017 (see https://nationalmaglab.org/news-events/news/
mini-magnet-packs-world-record-punch).
In 2013 a new ultra-high strength version of Bi-2223 tape became available from
Sumitomo. It has been used by Satoshi Awaji and others at the Tohoku Magnet Lab
to complete a 24 T magnet that was commissioned in early 2017 and is presently
serving the CMP community [4].
Bi-2212 has been transformed in recent years into a very high current-density
conductor and concepts are being developed for high-strength reinforcement to
enable UHF magnets [5].

3 Proposed Magnet Concepts for Next-Generation ADMX

A number of conceptual designs have been created for magnets with 16 cm bore
and fields ranging between 24 T and 30 T. One approach would be to build a
system that is nearly a copy of the MagLab’s 32 T magnet leaving out the innermost
REBCO coil. With this approach, 24 T in 16 cm should be achieved with low risk. It
should also be possible to build a 30 T, 16 cm bore magnet using this approach but
using more HTS material and less LTS material than in the existing 32 T magnet.
These approaches would benefit from the extensive development effort that enabled
the 32 T magnet system to be completed, including extensive quench analysis and
testing [6].
Another approach would be to use the newer NI-REBCO technology. This might
result in much more compact coils that provide similar field in a similar bore size.
However, NI-REBCO has not yet had a comprehensive analysis of behavior during
quench and development of a means to prevent damage during quench.
12 M. D. Bird

4 Managing High Energy Quenches

During quench the energy stored in the magnetic field (½ LI2 , where L = inductance
and I = current) is converted into heat. As mentioned above, if this heating is not
uniform, it can destroy a coil. To reduce heating, most commercial magnets include
resistors and back-to-back diodes across the coils or sections of coils. If a quench
occurs in a coil, the voltage builds up until it reaches the diode breakdown voltage at
which point the diode allows current to flow through a bypass around the coil. This
allows the current in the normal zone to drop and avoid overheating. The energy is
dissipated in the resistors. (Back-to-back diodes are used so the magnet can operate
at either positive or negative field.)
However, the drop in current in one coil induces voltage on the adjacent coils
(transformer effect) which, coupled with the diodes, results in the current in the
second coil to rise. When the current in the second coil gets too high, this coil in
turn will quench and decay, and current will be induced in the next coil. During
this process, a coil might operate at higher current than during normal steady-state
operation and be more highly stressed than intended. To avoid either overheating
or overstressing the coils, the designer must consider the interaction of all the
inductances, resistors, diodes, and the evolution of the resistance of the coils during
the quench process [7]. Many magnets have been destroyed over the years due to
insufficient attention to quench protection.
For NI-REBCO coils, the same phenomenon occurs, except on a much larger,
or finer, scale. Each turn of conductor is an independent inductor and the contact
area between each pair of turns is a resistive element. The turn itself has variable
resistance depending on the temperature, field, and current. Instead of a few or
dozens of coil sections, there are thousands or tens of thousands of turns interacting
with each other.
Figure 1 shows the current distribution in an NI-REBCO coil during quench as
computed by Markiewicz in 2015 [8]. All turns in the coil were originally at 200
amps. When a quench was introduced at the top of the coil (disk 1, left in the
figure) current started redistributing around the resistive section. Mutual inductance
between the turns caused current spikes in various turns as a quench wave passes
from the top of the coil to the bottom. Computed current spikes are >3 times the
normal operating current of 200 A. These current spikes can result in high hoop
stresses within a coil as well as high forces between multiple nested coils.
The 32 T magnet at the MagLab stores 8 MJ of energy, ~0.3 MJ of it in the HTS
coils. For comparison, 20 T LTS magnets sold by Oxford Instruments installed at
the MagLab store 1–2 MJ depending on when they were built. A stick of dynamite
also stores ~1 MJ of energy. Table 1 lists several HTS magnets in development
worldwide over recent years with goals of reaching 24 T or greater as well as the
amount of energy stored by the HTS parts of those magnets. The table does not
include lower field magnets because such fields are attainable by LTS magnets and
it does not include small test coils that stored <0.1 MJ of energy. Also note that
Bruker does not publish anything about their progress towards 1.1–1.2 GHz NMR
Ultra-High Field Solenoids and Axion Detection 13

700

600

500
Current (A)

400

300

200

100
70
0 65
10 60
m m]
Dis 20 55 s[
k# diu
5
30 0 Ra
Fig. 1 Axisymmetric model of current distribution in an NI-REBCO coil during quench. Each
turn has a position along the length (from disk 1 at the top to disk 30 at the bottom) and in the
depth along the radius (1–20 mm from the inner radius). The current was initially 200 A in all
turns. At this point 271 ms into the quench, some turns have >600 A which might lead to excessive
hoop stress

magnets, so they might have destroyed coils that are not reported here. We see that
only eight coils worldwide of this field and energy have been built to date and that
four of those were destroyed by quench and are not expected to be put into service.
The exceptions are a 24 T magnet in Sendai, Japan completed in 2017, the 32 T
magnet completed in 2017 at the MagLab in Tallahassee, and the 25.8 T and 28.2 T
NMR magnets by Bruker that reached performance specifications in 2019. We see
that the largest amount of energy stored by a successful HTS magnet to date was
0.4 MJ. (Many smaller HTS test coils have been destroyed that stored much less
than this.) Conceptual designs for axion detectors store 1.7–10 MJ.

5 Proposed Development Route

Reliable quench detection systems have been developed for LTS magnets (all
commercial firms and government labs have them) and they are being developed for
HTS magnets also. Doing so requires meaningful numerical modeling of quench
in these magnets and benchmarking of the computational results with experimental
ones. Then approaches can be proposed and modeled for protection systems which
will also need to be tested. The MagLab has been performing quench analysis for
14

Table 1 Partial list of various HTS coils built or under development to date that were intended to reach fields >23 T
Use Field Cold Bore Amount of HTS HTS stored energy Technology Organization Year
Condensed 25 Ta 4 cm 2.1 km 0.1 MJ I-REBCO + Bi-2223 + LTS Riken 2015 [9]
matter, other 28 Ta 4 cm 2.1 km 0.1 MJ I-REBCO + Bi-2223 + LTS Riken 2015 [10]
25 Ta 5 cm 14 km 0.4 MJ I-REBCO + LTS Tohoku 2016 [11]
24 T 5 cm 11.4 km 0.4 MJ Bi2223 + LTS Tohoku 2017 [12]
32 T 3 cm 9.4 km 0.3 MJ Ins-REBCO + LTS MagLab 2017 [1]
35 T 4 cm 45 km 1.8 MJ NI-REBCO KBSI, MagLab [13]
40 T 3 cm >15 km >2.8 MJ REBCO MagLab
NMR 25.8 T I-REBCO + LTS Bruker 2019 [14]
28.2 T I-REBCO + LTS Bruker 2019 [14]
30.5 Ta 6 cm 12 km 0.3 MJ NI-REBCO + LTS MIT [15]
30.5 T 9 cm ~30 km Bi-2223 + LTS + misc. RIKEN 2023 [16]
Axions 24 Ta 3 cm 9.4 km 0.4 MJ NI-REBCO KBSI, SuNAM, CAPP 2015 [17]
25 T 10 cm ~36 km [2] 1.7 MJ NI-REBCO Brookhaven, CAPP 2018 [18]
30 T 16 cm 30 km 2.5 MJ NI-REBCO + LTS MagLab, ADMX
30 T 16 cm 40–60 km 6–10 MJ NI-REBCO MagLab, ADMX
Bold font indicates coils that have been tested to date
Plain font indicates coils under construction presently
Italics font indicates coils that have been proposed
a Indicates coil that has been damaged and removed from service
M. D. Bird
Ultra-High Field Solenoids and Axion Detection 15

I-REBCO coils for many years as part of our 32 T magnet project and has developed
a reliable protection system. A particular test coil was intentionally quenched >100
times without damage
Analysis of NI-REBCO coils has been published by a few groups (some results
shown above). Improvement of modeling is underway and the development of
protection systems is starting at the MagLab and elsewhere. However, there remains
a significant amount of work in this field to be completed prior to having reliable
magnets using NI-REBCO.
Another challenge is materials cost. Presently HTS materials are extremely
expensive. However, most manufacturers claim costs can and will be reduced as
volume of production increases.

6 Conclusions

While the HTS materials show tremendous potential to enable UHF magnets, there
is presently only one magnet operating routinely at higher field than is available
from LTS magnets. Several challenges remain to be overcome prior to reliable HTS
magnets becoming widespread. Leading among these are quench protection and
cost. Great progress is presently being made on quench protection. In 2017 the
highest field attained by an all-superconducting magnet jumped from 27 to 32.1 T.
This tremendous increase is the result of a 9-year development effort at the MagLab.
While the route to still higher fields or larger bores seems much clearer than it was a
few years ago, there remains a great deal of work to complete. Modeling of quenches
in HTS coils is advancing quickly and reliable magnets should become routine in
the coming years.
Acknowledgement The author is greatly indebted to Hongyu Bai and Denis Markiewicz who
created design of magnets suitable for axion detection that are listed in Table 1. Their contributions
are greatly appreciated. David Tanner and Neil Sullivan brought this potential application for ultra-
high field magnets to the author’s attention and had many discussions about the requirements,
goals, etc. The author also had various fruitful discussions with Hubertus Weijers and Seungyong
Hahn about the possibility of designing REBCO double-pancake magnets for axion detection. The
author is indebted to all of them.

References

1. H. Weijers, Characteristics of the 32 T superconducting magnet. Presented at the Low


Temperature Superconductor Workshop, Jacksonville, FL, Feb. 12-14, 2018
2. S. Hahn, D.K. Park, J. Bascunan, Y. Iwasa, HTS pancake coils without turn-to-turn insulation.
IEEE Trans. Appl. Supercond. 21, 1592 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1109/TASC.2010.2093492
3. S. Yoon, J. Kim, K. Cheon, H. Lee, S. Hahn, S.-H. Moon, 26 T 35 mm all-GdBa2 Cu3 O7-x
multi-width no-insulation superconducting magnet. Supercond. Sci. Technol. 29, 04LT04
(2016). https://doi.org/10.1088/0953-2048/29/4/04LT04
16 M. D. Bird

4. S. Awaji, K. Watanabe, H. Oguro, H. Miyazaki, S. Hanai, T. Tosaka, S. Ioka, First performance


test of a 25 T cryogen-free superconducting magnet. Supercond. Sci. Technol. 30, 065001
(2017). https://doi.org/10.1088/1361-6668/aa6676
5. K. Zhang, H. Higley, L. Ye, S. Gourlay, S. Prestemon, T. Shen, E. Bosque, C. English, J. Jiang,
Y. Kim, J. Lu, U. Trociewitz, E. Hellstrom, D. Larbalestier, Tripled critical current in racetrack
coils made of Bi-2212 Rutherford cables with overpressure processing and leakage control.
Supercond. Sci. Technol. 31, 105009 (2018)
6. M. Breschi, L. Cavallucci, P.L. Ribani, A.V. Gavrilin, H.W. Weijers, Analysis of quench in th
NHMFL REBCO prototype coils for the 32 T magnet project. Supercond. Sci. Technol. 29,
055002 (2016)
7. A.A. Konjukhov et al., Quenching of multisection superconducting magnet and internal and
external shunt resistors. IEEE Trans. Magn. 25(2), 1538–1540 (1989)
8. W.D. Markiewicz, J.J. Jaroszynski, D.V. Abraimov, R.E. Joyner, A. Khan, Quench analysis of
pancake wound REBCO coils with low resistance between turns. Supercond. Sci. Technol. 29,
025001 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1088/0953-2048/29/2/025001
9. K. Kajita et al., Degradation of a REBCO coil due to cleavage and peeling originating from an
electromagnetic force. IEEE Trans. Appl. SC 26(4), 4301106 (2016)
10. Y. Yanagisawa et al., 27.6 T Generation using Bi-2223/REBCO superconducting coils, in
IEEE/CSC & ESAS Superconductivity News Forum (global edition), July 2016
11. S. Awaji et al., Learning from R&D and operation of HTS insert coil for high field magnet.
Presented at 13th EuCAS, Geneva, 17-21 September 2017
12. S. Awaji et al., First performance test of a 25 T cryogen-free superconducting magnet.
Supercond. Sci. Technol. 30, 065001 (2017)
13. K. Kim et al., Design and performance estimation of a 35 T 40 mm no-insulation all-REBCO
user magnet. Supercond. Sci. Technol. 30, 065008 (2017)
14. Bruker representative, private communication, EuroMAR, Nantes, France, July 2018
15. P. Micheal et al., Assembly and test of a 3-nested-coil 800-MHz REBCO insert (H800)
for the MIT 1.3 GHz LTS/HTS NMR magnet. Presented at 2018 applied superconductivity
conference, Seattle, Oct. 29–Nov. 2, 2018
16. H. Maeda, Development of a persistent mode 1.3 GHz NMR magnet by using superconducting
joints. Presented at the NHMFL, April 30, 2018
17. Y. Semertzidis, Private communication, 2018 applied superconductivity conference, Seattle,
Oct. 29 – Nov. 2, 2018
18. R. Gupta et al., 25 T, 100 mm bore HTS solenoid for axion dark matter search. Presented at
2018 applied superconductivity conference, Seattle, Oct. 29 – Nov. 2, 2018
Recent Results with the ADMX
Experiment

N. Du on Behalf of the ADMX Collaboration

Abstract The ADMX experiment is an axion haloscope using a microwave cavity


in a strong magnetic field to search for dark matter axions. I will present on
results from our run 1A in which we excluded the range of axion–photon couplings
predicted by QCD axions for axion masses between 2.66 and 2.81 µeV. These
results marked the first time a haloscope experiment achieved sensitivity to the well-
motivated DFSZ axion. In addition, I will provide updates on the search for axions
in the 2.82–3.31 μeV madss range with the ADMX experiment.

Keywords Axion · Haloscope · Cavity resonator

1 Introduction

Axions are a hypothetical particle that emerged as a solution to the strong-CP


problem in QCD physics [12, 17, 18]. The properties of axions make them a
viable dark matter candidate. For axions to be a dark matter candidate, current
cosmological constraints suggest an axion mass between 1–100 µeV [1–4, 6, 13].
The coupling between axions and photons is model dependent. Two generic models
for the axion are the KSVZ [8, 14] and DFSZ model [5, 19] axions, with the DFSZ
coupling to axion coupling to photons being 2.7 times larger for KSVZ axions.
The ADMX experiment uses an axion haloscope to search for dark matter axions
[15]. Axion haloscopes are resonant cavities placed in a strong magnetic field.
Axion particles inside the magnetic field couple off the field, producing microwave
photons.

N. Du ()
University of Washington, Seattle, WA, USA
e-mail: ndu@uw.edu

© This is a U.S. government work and not under copyright protection in the U.S.; 17
foreign copyright protection may apply 2020
G. Carosi, G. Rybka (eds.), Microwave Cavities and Detectors for Axion Research,
Springer Proceedings in Physics 245, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-43761-9_3
18 N. Du et al.

2 Hardware

The ADMX experiment is a 136 L cylindrical copper cavity placed inside a 6.7 T
solenoid magnet. The cavity is tuned with two copper-plated rods that extend the
length of the cavity and can be positioned between near the center of the cavity
and the walls of the cavity. During operation, the cavity frequency is tuned by
actuating a room temperature stepper motor which is connected to the tuning rods
by a cryogenic gearbox. When the cavity frequency is tuned to the same frequency
as the photon produced from the axion, the expected power deposited into the cavity
is
      
−22 V B 2 C  gγ 2 ρa
Paxion = 1.9 ∗ 10 W
136l 6.8T 0.4 0.97 0.45 GeV cm−3
  
f Q
× , (1)
650 MHz 5000

where V is the cavity volume, B is the magnetic field, C is the form factor which is
defined as the amount of overlap between the electric field of the cavity mode and
the external magnetic field, gγ is the model-dependent coupling to the photon, ρa
is the axion dark matter density around the Earth, f is the frequency of the photons
from the conversion, and Q is the loaded quality factor of the cavity. In the case
of the ADMX experiment, the TM010 mode has the most alignment with the field
produced by the solenoid magnet, so it was the mode used for searching for axions.
An antenna that is coupled to the cavity extracts the power from the cavity and
transfers it into a radio frequency amplifier chain. During the run in 2017, the
amplifier chain contained a tunable Michelson SQUID amplifier (MSA) [10, 11]
followed by a broadband cryogenic heterostructure field-effect transistor (HFET)
amplifier. The amplified signal is transmitted to a receiver where it is mixed down
with a local oscillator to a 10.7 MHz intermediate frequency for further processing
and analysis.
To reduce the system noise temperature within the experiment, the cavity and
Michelson SQUID amplifier are cooled with a dilution refrigerator system. ADMX
uses a wet dilution refrigerator developed by Janis Cryogenics which has a cooling
power of 800 µW at 100 mK. During the 2017 run, ruthenium oxide thermometers
measured that the dilution refrigerator cooled the cavity down to 150 mK and the
MSA to 300 mK. Following the run, improvements were made to the capacity of
the 1 K pot and the heat sinking of the experiment which improved the thermal
performance. New measurements made during the most recent run indicate the
cavity is now at 150 mK and the amplifier package was 230 mK.
ADMX Results 19

3 Data Taking

During standard data taking operations, small steps are made in the tuning rods
to adjust the resonant frequency of the cavity by less than one cavity line-width.
Afterwards, the cavity resonant frequency and Q were measured with an S21
transmission measurement and then a power spectrum was taken by digitizing the
power from the cavity in a 25 kHz span about the cavity resonant frequency. For
every several scans, an S11 reflection measurement was taken to check the antenna
coupling to the cavity mode. If the coupling was too low, the antenna position was
adjusted accordingly.
The power in the receiver was calibrated by comparing the power on and off
the cavity resonance with thermometers within the experiment. Off resonance,
the power came from Johnson noise from an attenuator being reflected off the
cavity. On resonance, the power came from Johnson noise from the cavity itself.
Using thermometry, the attenuator was measured to be 300 mK and the cavity was
measured to be 150 mK. By fitting the power spectrum with a model of the radio
frequency chain and using the thermometry with the experiment, we were able to
measure the total system noise temperature. An example of one such scan used for
calibrating the system noise power is shown in Fig. 1.

Fig. 1 A power spectrum used to calibrate the system noise in the experiment. The on resonance
power comes from the receiver and a 150 mK cavity. The off resonance power comes from the
receiver and a 300 mK attenuator. Comparing the off resonance and on resonance power allows for
a calibration of the receiver noise temperature. The asymmetry is the result of interactions between
various components within the experiment [7]
20 N. Du et al.

Frequency (MHz)
640 650 660 670 680 690 700
18

|
DFSZ
16 2
RBF HAYSTAC
UF
log |ga γ γ / g

1 ADMX 2013
GeV-1), 100% Dark Matter

KSVZ
14 0
DFSZ
This work (N-Body)
−1
12 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 20
Axion Mass ( μeV)

10
KSVZ
8
-16

6
|gaγ γ | (10

Axion Lineshape
4 Maxwellian
DFSZ
2 N-Body

0
2.65 2.7 2.75 2.8 2.85 2.9
Axion Mass (μeV)

Fig. 2 A 90% upper confidence limit on the axion–photon coupling gaγ γ and the axion mass.
The red line is the limit set using a Maxwell–Boltzmann lineshape for axion lineshape derived
from the isothermal halo model[16] , and the blue line is the limit set using the axion lineshape
from N -body simulations [9]. We were unable to set limits between 660.16 and 660.27 MHz due
to external radio frequency interference, as indicated by the gray bar. The results of this search in
comparison with others are shown in the inset [7]

4 Results

In 2017, ADMX searched for axions in the frequency range 645–680 MHz and
found no signals consistent with axions. Two persistent signals were observed.
However, a measurement of the radio interference at the experimental site deter-
mined that the signals were due to external radio interference. In the absence of
axion signals in the explored frequency range, a 90% upper confidence limit was
placed on axion–photon couplings using data for Maxwellian [16] and N-body [9]
astrophysical models shown in Fig. 2. The upper limit excluded DFSZ axions for
models that make up 100% of dark matter. This marks the first haloscope experiment
that has achieved sensitivity to the well-motivated DFSZ model for axion coupling.

5 Conclusions

In 2017, ADMX became the first haloscope experiment to achieve sensitivity to


DFSZ axions. Since then, ADMX has begun another run in 2018 searching for
axions over a different mass range. The upgrades made to the refrigeration and an
increased magnetic field have increased the sensitivity of the experiment to dark
matter axions. As seen in Fig. 3, the current ongoing run has already collected
significantly more axion search data.
ADMX Results 21

Fig. 3 A comparison of the data collected by ADMX during our 2017 run and our ongoing 2018
run. The figure of merit is taken to be the square of the signal to noise expected from a DFSZ axion
multiplied by the total band explored. During our current run, ADMX has already collected five
times more data for axion searches

ADMX anticipates searching for axion masses up to 40 ueV (10 GHz) with multi-
cavity resonators. ADMX is in a position to make a potential axion discovery at any
time during the data taking process.

References

1. G. Ballesteros, J. Redondo, A. Ringwald, C. Tamarit, Unifying inflation with the axion, dark
matter, baryogenesis, and the seesaw mechanism. Phys. Rev. Lett. 118, 071802 (2017)
2. E. Berkowitz, M.I. Buchoff, E. Rinaldi, Lattice QCD input for axion cosmology. Phys. Rev. D
92, 034507 (2015)
3. C. Bonati, M. D’Elia, M. Mariti, G. Martinelli, M. Mesiti, F. Negro, F. Sanfilippo, G. Villadoro,
Axion phenomenology and θ-dependence from Nf = 2 + 1 lattice QCD. J. High Energy Phys.
2016(3), 155 (2016)
4. S. Borsanyi, Z. Fodor, J. Guenther, K.-H. Kampert, S.D. Katz, T. Kawanai, T.G. Kovacs, S.W.
Mages, A. Pasztor, F. Pittler, J. Redondo, A. Ringwald, K.K. Szabo, Calculation of the axion
mass based on high-temperature lattice quantum chromodynamics. Nature 539(7627), 69–71
(2016)
5. M. Dine, W. Fischler, M. Srednicki, A simple solution to the strong CP problem with a harmless
axion. Phys. Lett. B104, 199 (1981)
6. M. Dine, P. Draper, L. Stephenson-Haskins, D. Xu, Axions, instantons, and the lattice. Phys.
Rev. D 96, 095001 (2017)
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incongruously united by some bookseller,—of Coleridge, Shelley and
Keats. The only unity is in the subjectiveness and the aspiration
common to the three writers. Shelley, though a poetic mind, is never
a poet. His muse is uniformly imitative; all his poems composite. A
good English scholar he is, with ear, taste, and memory; much more,
he is a character full of noble and prophetic traits; but imagination,
the original, authentic fire of the bard, he has not. He is clearly
modern, and shares with Richter, Chateaubriand, Manzoni and
Wordsworth, the feeling of the infinite, which so labors for expression
in their different genius. But all his lines are arbitrary, not necessary.
When we read poetry, the mind asks,—Was this verse one of twenty
which the author might have written as well; or is this what that man
was created to say? But, whilst every line of the true poet will be
genuine, he is in a boundless power and freedom to say a million
things. And the reason why he can say one thing well, is because his
vision extends to the sight of all things, and so he describes each as
one who knows many and all.
The fame of Wordsworth is a leading fact in modern literature,
when it is considered how hostile his genius at first seemed to the
reigning taste, and with what limited poetic talents his great and
steadily growing dominion has been established. More than any poet
his success has been not his own but that of the idea which he
shared with his coevals, and which he has rarely succeeded in
adequately expressing. The Excursion awakened in every lover of
Nature the right feeling. We saw stars shine, we felt the awe of
mountains, we heard the rustle of the wind in the grass, and knew
again the ineffable secret of solitude. It was a great joy. It was nearer
to Nature than anything we had before. But the interest of the poem
ended almost with the narrative of the influences of Nature on the
mind of the Boy, in the First Book. Obviously for that passage the
poem was written, and with the exception of this and of a few strains
of the like character in the sequel, the whole poem was dull. Here
was no poem, but here was poetry, and a sure index where the
subtle muse was about to pitch her tent and find the argument of her
song. It was the human soul in these last ages striving for a just
publication of itself. Add to this, however, the great praise of
Wordsworth, that more than any other contemporary bard he is
pervaded with a reverence of somewhat higher than (conscious)
thought. There is in him that property common to all great poets, a
wisdom of humanity, which is superior to any talents which they
exert. It is the wisest part of Shakspeare and of Milton. For they are
poets by the free course which they allow to the informing soul,
which through their eyes beholdeth again and blesseth the things
which it hath made. The soul is superior to its knowledge, wiser than
any of its works.
With the name of Wordsworth rises to our recollection the name of
his contemporary and friend, Walter Savage Landor—a man working
in a very different and peculiar spirit, yet one whose genius and
accomplishments deserve a wiser criticism than we have yet seen
applied to them, and the rather that his name does not readily
associate itself with any school of writers. Of Thomas Carlyle, also,
we shall say nothing at this time, since the quality and energy of his
influence on the youth of this country will require at our hands,
erelong, a distinct and faithful acknowledgment.
But of all men he who has united in himself, and that in the most
extraordinary degree, the tendencies of the era, is the German poet,
naturalist and philosopher, Goethe. Whatever the age inherited or
invented, he made his own. He has owed to Commerce and to the
victories of the Understanding, all their spoils. Such was his capacity,
that the magazines of the world’s ancient or modern wealth, which
arts and intercourse and skepticism could command,—he wanted
them all. Had there been twice so much, he could have used it as
well. Geologist, mechanic, merchant, chemist, king, radical, painter,
composer,—all worked for him, and a thousand men seemed to look
through his eyes. He learned as readily as other men breathe. Of all
the men of this time, not one has seemed so much at home in it as
he. He was not afraid to live. And in him this encyclopædia of facts,
which it has been the boast of the age to compile, wrought an equal
effect. He was knowing; he was brave; he was clean from all
narrowness; he has a perfect propriety and taste,—a quality by no
means common to the German writers. Nay, since the earth as we
said had become a reading-room, the new opportunities seem to
have aided him to be that resolute realist he is, and seconded his
sturdy determination to see things for what they are. To look at him
one would say there was never an observer before. What sagacity,
what industry of observation. To read his record is a frugality of time,
for you shall find no word that does not stand for a thing, and he is of
that comprehension which can see the value of truth. His love of
Nature has seemed to give a new meaning to that word. There was
never man more domesticated in this world than he. And he is an
apology for the analytic spirit of the period, because, of his analysis,
always wholes were the result. All conventions, all traditions he
rejected. And yet he felt his entire right and duty to stand before and
try and judge every fact in nature. He thought it necessary to dot
round with his own pen the entire sphere of knowables; and for many
of his stories, this seems the only reason: Here is a piece of
humanity I had hitherto omitted to sketch;—take this. He does not
say so in syllables,—yet a sort of conscientious feeling he had to be
up to the universe, is the best account and apology for many of
them. He shared also the subjectiveness of the age, and that too in
both the senses I have discriminated. With the sharpest eye for form,
color, botany, engraving, medals, persons and manners, he never
stopped at surface, but pierced the purpose of a thing and studied to
reconcile that purpose with his own being. What he could so
reconcile was good; what he could not, was false. Hence a certain
greatness encircles every fact he treats; for to him it has a soul, an
eternal reason why it was so, and not otherwise. This is the secret of
that deep realism, which went about among all objects he beheld, to
find the cause why they must be what they are. It was with him a
favorite task to find a theory of every institution, custom, art, work of
art, which he observed. Witness his explanation of the Italian mode
of reckoning the hours of the day, as growing out of the Italian
climate; of the obelisk of Egypt, as growing out of a common natural
fracture in the granite parallelopiped in Upper Egypt; of the Doric
architecture, and the Gothic; of the Venetian music of the gondolier,
originating in the habit of the fishers’ wives of the Lido singing on
shore to their husbands on the sea; of the amphitheatre, which is the
enclosure of the natural cup of heads that arranges itself round every
spectacle in the street; of the coloring of Titian and Paul Veronese,
which one may verify in common daylight in Venice every afternoon;
of the Carnival at Rome; of the domestic rural architecture in Italy;
and many the like examples.
But also that other vicious subjectiveness, that vice of the time,
infected him also. We are provoked with his Olympian self-
complacency, the patronizing air with which he vouchsafes to
tolerate the genius and performances of other mortals, “the good
Hiller,” “our excellent Kant,” “the friendly Wieland,” &c. &c. There is a
good letter from Wieland to Merck, in which Wieland relates that
Goethe read to a select party his journal of a tour in Switzerland with
the Grand Duke, and their passage through the Vallais and over the
St. Gothard. “It was,” says Wieland, “as good as Xenophon’s
Anabasis. The piece is one of his most masterly productions, and is
thought and written with the greatness peculiar to him. The fair
hearers were enthusiastic at the nature in this piece; I liked the sly
art in the composition, whereof they saw nothing, still better. It is a
true poem, so concealed is the art too. But what most remarkably in
this, as in all his other works, distinguishes him from Homer and
Shakspeare, is, that the Me, the Ille ego, everywhere glimmers
through, although without any boasting and with an infinite fineness.”
This subtle element of egotism in Goethe certainly does not seem to
deform his compositions, but to lower the moral influence of the man.
He differs from all the great in the total want of frankness. Who saw
Milton, who saw Shakspeare, saw them do their best, and utter their
whole heart manlike among their brethren. No man was permitted to
call Goethe brother. He hid himself, and worked always to astonish,
which is egotism, and therefore little.
If we try Goethe by the ordinary canons of criticism, we should say
that his thinking is of great altitude, and all level; not a succession of
summits, but a high Asiatic table-land. Dramatic power, the rarest
talent in literature, he has very little. He has an eye constant to the
fact of life and that never pauses in its advance. But the great
felicities, the miracles of poetry, he has never. It is all design with
him, just thought and instructed expression, analogies, allusion,
illustration, which knowledge and correct thinking supply; but of
Shakspeare and the transcendent muse, no syllable. Yet in the court
and law to which we ordinarily speak, and without adverting to
absolute standards, we claim for him the praise of truth, of fidelity to
his intellectual nature. He is the king of all scholars. In these days
and in this country, where the scholars are few and idle, where men
read easy books and sleep after dinner, it seems as if no book could
so safely be put in the hands of young men as the letters of Goethe,
which attest the incessant activity of this man, to eighty years, in an
endless variety of studies, with uniform cheerfulness and greatness
of mind. They cannot be read without shaming us into an emulating
industry. Let him have the praise of the love of truth. We think, when
we contemplate the stupendous glory of the world, that it were life
enough for one man merely to lift his hands and cry with St.
Augustine, “Wrangle who pleases, I will wonder.” Well, this he did.
Here was a man who, in the feeling that the thing itself was so
admirable as to leave all comment behind, went up and down, from
object to object, lifting the veil from every one, and did no more.
What he said of Lavater, may trulier be said of him, that “it was
fearful to stand in the presence of one before whom all the
boundaries within which Nature has circumscribed our being were
laid flat.” His are the bright and terrible eyes which meet the modern
student in every sacred chapel of thought, in every public enclosure.
But now, that we may not seem to dodge the question which all
men ask, nor pay a great man so ill a compliment as to praise him
only in the conventional and comparative speech, let us honestly
record our thought upon the total worth and influence of this genius.
Does he represent, not only the achievement of that age in which he
lived, but that which it would be and is now becoming? And what
shall we think of that absence of the moral sentiment, that singular
equivalence to him of good and evil in action, which discredit his
compositions to the pure? The spirit of his biography, of his poems,
of his tales, is identical, and we may here set down by way of
comment on his genius the impressions recently awakened in us by
the story of Wilhelm Meister.
All great men have written proudly, nor cared to explain. They
knew that the intelligent reader would come at last, and would thank
them. So did Dante, so did Machiavel. Goethe has done this in
Meister. We can fancy him saying to himself:—There are poets
enough of the Ideal; let me paint the Actual, as, after years of
dreams, it will still appear and reappear to wise men. That all shall
right itself in the long Morrow, I may well allow, and my novel may
wait for the same regeneration. The age, that can damn it as false
and falsifying, will see that it is deeply one with the genius and
history of all the centuries. I have given my characters a bias to error.
Men have the same. I have let mischance befall instead of good
fortune. They do so daily. And out of many vices and misfortunes, I
have let a great success grow, as I had known in my own and many
other examples. Fierce churchmen and effeminate aspirants will
chide and hate my name, but every keen beholder of life will justify
my truth, and will acquit me of prejudging the cause of humanity by
painting it with this morose fidelity. To a profound soul is not austere
truth the sweetest flattery?
Yes, O Goethe! but the ideal is truer than the actual. That is
ephemeral, but this changes not. Moreover, because nature is moral,
that mind only can see, in which the same order entirely obtains. An
interchangeable Truth, Beauty and Goodness, each wholly
interfused in the other, must make the humors of that eye which
would see causes reaching to their last effect and reproducing the
world forever. The least inequality of mixture, the excess of one
element over the other, in that degree diminishes the transparency of
things, makes the world opaque to the observer, and destroys so far
the value of his experience. No particular gifts can countervail this
defect. In reading Meister, I am charmed with the insight; to use a
phrase of Ben Jonson’s, “it is rammed with life.” I find there actual
men and women even too faithfully painted. I am moreover
instructed in the possibility of a highly accomplished society, and
taught to look for great talent and culture under a gray coat. But this
is all. The limits of artificial society are never quite out of sight. The
vicious conventions, which hem us in like prison walls and which the
poet should explode at his touch, stand for all they are worth in the
newspaper. We are never lifted above ourselves, we are not
transported out of the dominion of the senses, or cheered with an
infinite tenderness, or armed with a grand trust.
Goethe, then, must be set down as the poet of the Actual, not of
the Ideal; the poet of limitation, not of possibility; of this world, and
not of religion and hope; in short, if we may say so, the poet of
prose, and not of poetry. He accepts the base doctrine of Fate, and
gleans what straggling joys may yet remain out of its ban. He is like
a banker or a weaver with a passion for the country; he steals out of
the hot streets before sunrise, or after sunset, or on a rare holiday, to
get a draft of sweet air and a gaze at the magnificence of summer,
but dares not break from his slavery and lead a man’s life in a man’s
relation to nature. In that which should be his own place, he feels like
a truant, and is scourged back presently to his task and his cell.
Poetry is with Goethe thus external, the gilding of the chain, the
mitigation of his fate; but the Muse never assays those thunder-
tones which cause to vibrate the sun and the moon, which dissipate
by dreadful melody all this iron network of circumstance, and abolish
the old heavens and the old earth before the freewill or Godhead of
man. That Goethe had not a moral perception proportionate to his
other powers, is not then merely a circumstance, as we might relate
of a man that he had or had not the sense of tune or an eye for
colors, but it is the cardinal fact of health or disease; since, lacking
this, he failed in the high sense to be a creator, and, with divine
endowments, drops by irreversible decree into the common history
of genius. He was content to fall into the track of vulgar poets and
spend on common aims his splendid endowments, and has declined
the office proffered to now and then a man in many centuries in the
power of his genius, of a Redeemer of the human mind. He has
written better than other poets only as his talent was subtler, but the
ambition of creation he refused. Life for him is prettier, easier, wiser,
decenter, has a gem or two more on its robe, but its old eternal
burden is not relieved; no drop of healthier blood flows yet in its
veins. Let him pass. Humanity must wait for its physician still at the
side of the road, and confess as this man goes out, that they have
served it better who assured it out of the innocent hope in their
hearts that a Physician will come, than this majestic Artist, with all
the treasuries of wit, of science, and of power at his command.
The criticism, which is not so much spoken as felt in reference to
Goethe, instructs us directly in the hope of literature. We feel that a
man gifted like him should not leave the world as he found it. It is
true, though somewhat sad, that every fine genius teaches us how to
blame himself. Being so much, we cannot forgive him for not being
more. When one of these grand monads is incarnated whom nature
seems to design for eternal men and draw to her bosom, we think
that the old weariness of Europe and Asia, the trivial forms of daily
life will now end, and a new morning break on us all. What is
Austria? What is England? What is our graduated and petrified social
scale of ranks and employments? Shall not a poet redeem us from
these idolatries, and pale their legendary lustre before the fires of the
Divine Wisdom which burn in his heart? All that in our sovereign
moments each of us has divined of the powers of thought, all the
hints of omnipresence and energy which we have caught, this man
should unfold, and constitute facts.
And this is the insatiable craving which alternately saddens and
gladdens men at this day. The Doctrine of the Life of Man
established after the truth through all his faculties;—this is the
thought which the literature of this hour meditates and labors to say.
This is that which tunes the tongue and fires the eye and sits in the
silence of the youth. Verily it will not long want articulate and
melodious expression. There is nothing in the heart but comes
presently to the lips. The very depth of the sentiment, which is the
author of all the cutaneous life we see, is guarantee for the riches of
science and of song in the age to come. He who doubts whether this
age or this country can yield any contribution to the literature of the
world, only betrays his own blindness to the necessities of the
human soul. Has the power of poetry ceased, or the need? Have the
eyes ceased to see that which they would have, and which they
have not? Have they ceased to see other eyes? Are there no lonely,
anxious, wondering children, who must tell their tale? Are we not
evermore whipped by thoughts;
“In sorrow steeped, and steeped in love
Of thoughts not yet incarnated.”
The heart beats in this age as of old, and the passions are busy as
ever. Nature has not lost one ringlet of her beauty, one impulse of
resistance and valor. From the necessity of loving none are exempt,
and he that loves must utter his desires. A charm as radiant as
beauty ever beamed, a love that fainteth at the sight of its object, is
new to-day.
“The world does not run smoother than of old,
There are sad haps that must be told.”
Man is not so far lost but that he suffers ever the great Discontent
which is the elegy of his loss and the prediction of his recovery. In
the gay saloon he laments that these figures are not what Raphael
and Guercino painted. Withered though he stand, and trifler though
he be, the august spirit of the world looks out from his eyes. In his
heart he knows the ache of spiritual pain, and his thought can
animate the sea and land. What then shall hinder the Genius of the
time from speaking its thought? It cannot be silent, if it would. It will
write in a higher spirit and a wider knowledge and with a grander
practical aim than ever yet guided the pen of poet. It will write the
annals of a changed world, and record the descent of principles into
practice, of love into Government, of love into Trade. It will describe
the new heroic life of man, the now unbelieved possibility of simple
living and of clean and noble relations with men. Religion will bind
again these that were sometime frivolous, customary, enemies,
skeptics, self-seekers, into a joyful reverence for the circumambient
Whole, and that which was ecstacy shall become daily bread.

II.

WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR. [6]

We sometimes meet in a stage coach in New England an erect,


muscular man, with fresh complexion and a smooth hat, whose
nervous speech instantly betrays the English traveller;—a man
nowise cautious to conceal his name or that of his native country, or
his very slight esteem for the persons and the country that surround
him. When Mr. Bull rides in an American coach, he speaks quick and
strong; he is very ready to confess his ignorance of everything about
him, persons, manners, customs, politics, geography. He wonders
that the Americans should build with wood, whilst all this stone is
lying in the roadside; and is astonished to learn that a wooden house
may last a hundred years; nor will he remember the fact as many
minutes after it has been told him: he wonders that they do not make
elder-wine and cherry-bounce, since here are cherries, and every
mile is crammed with elder-bushes. He has never seen a good horse
in America, nor a good coach, nor a good inn. Here is very good
earth and water and plenty of them; that he is free to allow; to all
other gifts of nature or man his eyes are sealed by the inexorable
demand for the precise conveniences to which he is accustomed in
England. Add to this proud blindness the better quality of great
downrightness in speaking the truth, and the love of fair play, on all
occasions, and moreover the peculiarity which is alleged of the
Englishman, that his virtues do not come out until he quarrels.
Transfer these traits to a very elegant and accomplished mind, and
we shall have no bad picture of Walter Savage Landor, who may
stand as a favorable impersonation of the genius of his countrymen
at the present day. A sharp, dogmatic man, with a great deal of
knowledge, a great deal of worth, and a great deal of pride; with a
profound contempt for all that he does not understand; a master of
all elegant learning, and capable of the utmost delicacy of sentiment,
and yet prone to indulge a sort of ostentation of coarse imagery and
language. His partialities and dislikes are by no means culpable, but
are often whimsical and amusing; yet they are quite sincere, and,
like those of Johnson and Coleridge, are easily separable from the
man. What he says of Wordsworth is true of himself, that he delights
to throw a clod of dirt on the table, and cry “Gentlemen, there is a
better man than all of you.” Bolivar, Mina and General Jackson will
never be greater soldiers than Napoleon and Alexander, let Mr.
Landor think as he will; nor will he persuade us to burn Plato and
Xenophon, out of our admiration of Bishop Patrick, or “Lucas on
Happiness,” or “Lucas on Holiness,” or even Barrow’s Sermons. Yet
a man may love a paradox without either losing his wit or his
honesty. A less pardonable eccentricity is the cold and gratuitous
obtrusion of licentious images, not so much the suggestion of
merriment as of bitterness. Montaigne assigns as a reason for his
license of speech, that he is tired of seeing his Essays on the work-
tables of ladies, and he is determined they shall for the future put
them out of sight. In Mr. Landor’s coarseness there is a certain air of
defiance, and the rude word seems sometimes to arise from a
disgust at niceness and over-refinement. Before a well-dressed
company he plunges his fingers in a cesspool, as if to expose the
whiteness of his hands and the jewels of his ring. Afterward, he
washes them in water, he washes them in wine; but you are never
secure from his freaks. A sort of Earl Peterborough in literature, his
eccentricity is too decided not to have diminished his greatness. He
has capital enough to have furnished the brain of fifty stock authors,
yet has written no book.
But we have spoken all our discontent. Possibly his writings are
open to harsher censure; but we love the man, from sympathy as
well as for reasons to be assigned; and have no wish, if we were
able, to put an argument in the mouth of his critics. Now for twenty
years we have still found the “Imaginary Conversations” a sure
resource in solitude, and it seems to us as original in its form as in its
matter. Nay, when we remember his rich and ample page, wherein
we are always sure to find free and sustained thought, a keen and
precise understanding, an affluent and ready memory familiar with all
chosen books, an industrious observation in every department of life,
an experience to which nothing has occurred in vain, honor for every
just and generous sentiment and a scourge like that of Furies for
every oppressor, whether public or private,—we feel how dignified is
this perpetual Censor in his curule chair, and we wish to thank a
benefactor of the reading world.
Mr. Landor is one of the foremost of that small class who make
good in the nineteenth century the claims of pure literature. In these
busy days of avarice and ambition, when there is so little disposition
to profound thought or to any but the most superficial intellectual
entertainments, a faithful scholar, receiving from past ages the
treasures of wit and enlarging them by his own love, is a friend and
consoler of mankind. When we pronounce the names of Homer and
Æschylus; Horace, Ovid and Plutarch; Erasmus, Scaliger and
Montaigne; Ben Jonson and Isaak Walton; Dryden and Pope,—we
pass at once out of trivial associations and enter into a region of the
purest pleasure accessible to human nature. We have quitted all
beneath the moon and entered that crystal sphere in which
everything in the world of matter reappears, but transfigured and
immortal. Literature is the effort of man to indemnify himself for the
wrongs of his condition. The existence of the poorest play-wright and
the humblest scrivener is a good omen. A charm attaches to the
most inferior names which have in any manner got themselves
enrolled in the registers of the House of Fame, even as porters and
grooms in the courts; to Creech and Fenton, Theobald and Dennis,
Aubrey and Spence. From the moment of entering a library and
opening a desired book, we cease to be citizens, creditors, debtors,
housekeepers and men of care and fear. What boundless leisure!
what original jurisdiction! the old constellations have set, new and
brighter have arisen; an Elysian light tinges all objects:—
“In the afternoon we came unto a land
In which it seemed always afternoon.”
And this sweet asylum of an intellectual life must appear to have
the sanction of nature, as long as so many men are born with so
decided an aptitude for reading and writing. Let us thankfully allow
every faculty and art which opens new scope to a life so confined as
ours. There are vast spaces in a thought: a slave, to whom the
religious sentiment is opened, has a freedom which makes his
master’s freedom a slavery. Let us not be so illiberal with our
schemes for the renovation of society and nature as to disesteem or
deny the literary spirit. Certainly there are heights in nature which
command this; there are many more which this commands. It is vain
to call it a luxury, and as saints and reformers are apt to do, decry it
as a species of day-dreaming. What else are sanctities, and reforms,
and all other things? Whatever can make for itself an element,
means, organs, servants, and the most profound and permanent
existence in the hearts and heads of millions of men, must have a
reason for its being. Its excellency is reason and vindication enough.
If rhyme rejoices us there should be rhyme, as much as if fire cheers
us we should bring wood and coals. Each kind of excellence takes
place for its hour and excludes everything else. Do not brag of your
actions, as if they were better than Homer’s verses or Raphael’s
pictures. Raphael and Homer feel that action is pitiful beside their
enchantments. They could act too, if the stake was worthy of them:
but now all that is good in the universe urges them to their task.
Whoever writes for the love of truth and beauty, and not with ulterior
ends, belongs to this sacred class; and among these, few men of the
present age have a better claim to be numbered than Mr. Landor.
Wherever genius or taste has existed, wherever freedom and justice
are threatened, which he values as the element in which genius may
work, his interest is sure to be commanded. His love of beauty is
passionate, and betrays itself in all petulant and contemptuous
expressions.
But beyond his delight in genius and his love of individual and civil
liberty, Mr. Landor has a perception that is much more rare, the
appreciation of character. This is the more remarkable considered
with his intense nationality, to which we have already alluded. He is
buttoned in English broadcloth to the chin. He hates the Austrians,
the Italians, the French, the Scotch, and the Irish. He has the
common prejudices of an English landholder; values his pedigree,
his acres and the syllables of his name; loves all his advantages, is
not insensible to the beauty of his watch seal, or the Turk’s head on
his umbrella; yet with all this miscellaneous pride there is a noble
nature within him which instructs him that he is so rich that he can
well spare all his trappings, and, leaving to others the painting of
circumstance, aspire to the office of delineating character. He draws
his own portrait in the costume of a village schoolmaster, and a
sailor, and serenely enjoys the victory of nature over fortune. Not
only the elaborated story of Normanby, but the whimsical selection of
his heads proves this taste. He draws with evident pleasure the
portrait of a man who never said anything right and never did
anything wrong. But in the character of Pericles he has found full
play for beauty and greatness of behavior, where the circumstances
are in harmony with the man. These portraits, though mere sketches,
must be valued as attempts in the very highest kind of narrative,
which not only has very few examples to exhibit of any success, but
very few competitors in the attempt. The word Character is in all
mouths; it is a force which we all feel; yet who has analyzed it? What
is the nature of that subtle and majestic principle which attaches us
to a few persons, not so much by personal as by the most spiritual
ties? What is the quality of the persons who, without being public
men, or literary men, or rich men, or active men, or (in the popular
sense) religious men, have a certain salutary omnipresence in all our
life’s history, almost giving their own quality to the atmosphere and
the landscape? A moral force, yet wholly unmindful of creed and
catechism, intellectual, but scornful of books, it works directly and
without means, and though it may be resisted at any time, yet
resistance to it is a suicide. For the person who stands in this lofty
relation to his fellow-men is always the impersonation to them of
their conscience. It is a sufficient proof of the extreme delicacy of this
element, evanescing before any but the most sympathetic vision,
that it has so seldom been employed in the drama and in novels. Mr.
Landor, almost alone among living English writers, has indicated his
perception of it.
These merits make Mr. Landor’s position in the republic of letters
one of great mark and dignity. He exercises with a grandeur of spirit
the office of writer, and carries it with an air of old and
unquestionable nobility. We do not recollect an example of more
complete independence in literary history. He has no clanship, no
friendships that warp him. He was one of the first to pronounce
Wordsworth the great poet of the age, yet he discriminates his faults
with the greater freedom. He loves Pindar, Æschylus, Euripides,
Aristophanes, Demosthenes, Virgil, yet with open eyes. His position
is by no means the highest in literature: he is not a poet or a
philosopher. He is a man full of thoughts, but not, like Coleridge, a
man of ideas. Only from a mind conversant with the First Philosophy
can definitions be expected. Coleridge has contributed many
valuable ones to modern literature. Mr. Landor’s definitions are only
enumerations of particulars; the generic law is not seized. But as it is
not from the highest Alps or Andes but from less elevated summits
that the most attractive landscape is commanded, so is Mr. Landor
the most useful and agreeable of critics. He has commented on a
wide variety of writers, with a closeness and extent of view which
has enhanced the value of those authors to his readers. His
Dialogue on the Epicurean philosophy is a theory of the genius of
Epicurus. The Dialogue between Barrow and Newton is the best of
all criticisms on the essays of Bacon. His picture of Demosthenes in
three several Dialogues is new and adequate. He has illustrated the
genius of Homer, Æschylus, Pindar, Euripides, Thucydides. Then he
has examined before he has expatiated, and the minuteness of his
verbal criticism gives a confidence in his fidelity when he speaks the
language of meditation or of passion. His acquaintance with the
English tongue is unsurpassed. He “hates false words, and seeks
with care, difficulty and moroseness those that fit the thing.” He
knows the value of his own words. “They are not,” he says, “written
on slate.” He never stoops to explanation, nor uses seven words
where one will do. He is a master of condensation and suppression,
and that in no vulgar way. He knows the wide difference between
compression and an obscure elliptical style. The dense writer has yet
ample room and choice of phrase, and even a gamesome mood
often between his valid words. There is no inadequacy or
disagreeable contraction in his sentence, any more than in a human
face, where in a square space of a few inches is found room for
every possible variety of expression.
Yet it is not as an artist that Mr. Landor commends himself to us.
He is not epic or dramatic, he has not the high, overpowering
method by which the master gives unity and integrity to a work of
many parts. He is too wilful, and never abandons himself to his
genius. His books are a strange mixture of politics, etymology,
allegory, sentiment, and personal history; and what skill of transition
he may possess is superficial, not spiritual. His merit must rest, at
last, not on the spirit of the dialogue or the symmetry of any of his
historical portraits, but on the value of his sentences. Many of these
will secure their own immortality in English literature; and this, rightly
considered, is no mean merit. These are not plants and animals, but
the genetical atoms of which both are composed. All our great debt
to the Oriental world is of this kind, not utensils and statues of the
precious metal, but bullion and gold-dust. Of many of Mr. Landor’s
sentences we are fain to remember what was said of those of
Socrates; that they are cubes, which will stand firm, place them how
or where you will.

III.

PRAYERS. [7]

“Not with fond shekels of the tested gold,


Nor gems whose rates are either rich or poor
As fancy values them: but with true prayers,
That shall be up at heaven and enter there
Ere sunrise; prayers from preserved souls,
From fasting maids, whose minds are dedicate
To nothing temporal.”
Shakspeare.
Pythagoras said that the time when men are honestest is when
they present themselves before the gods. If we can overhear the
prayer we shall know the man. But prayers are not made to be
overheard, or to be printed, so that we seldom have the prayer
otherwise than it can be inferred from the man and his fortunes,
which are the answer to the prayer, and always accord with it. Yet
there are scattered about in the earth a few records of these devout
hours, which it would edify us to read, could they be collected in a
more catholic spirit than the wretched and repulsive volumes which
usurp that name. Let us not have the prayers of one sect, nor of the
Christian Church, but of men in all ages and religions who have
prayed well. The prayer of Jesus is (as it deserves) become a form
for the human race. Many men have contributed a single expression,
a single word to the language of devotion, which is immediately
caught and stereotyped in the prayers of their church and nation.
Among the remains of Euripides we have this prayer: “Thou God of
all! infuse light into the souls of men, whereby they may be enabled
to know what is the root from whence all their evils spring, and by
what means they may avoid them.” In the Phædrus of Plato, we find
this petition in the mouth of Socrates: “O gracious Pan! and ye other
gods who preside over this place! grant that I may be beautiful
within; and that those external things which I have may be such as
may best agree with a right internal disposition of mine; and that I
may account him to be rich, who is wise and just.” Wacic the Caliph,
who died a. d. 845, ended his life, the Arabian historians tell us, with
these words: “O thou whose kingdom never passes away, pity one
whose dignity is so transient.” But what led us to these
remembrances was the happy accident which in this undevout age
lately brought us acquainted with two or three diaries, which attest, if
there be need of attestation, the eternity of the sentiment and its
equality to itself through all the variety of expression. The first is the
prayer of a deaf and dumb boy:—
“When my long-attached friend comes to me, I have
pleasure to converse with him, and I rejoice to pass my
eyes over his countenance; but soon I am weary of
spending my time causelessly and unimproved, and I
desire to leave him, (but not in rudeness), because I
wished to be engaged in my business. But thou, O my
Father, knowest I always delight to commune with thee in
my lone and silent heart; I am never full of thee; I am
never weary of thee; I am always desiring thee. I hunger
with strong hope and affection for thee, and I thirst for thy
grace and spirit.
“When I go to visit my friends, I must put on my best
garments, and I must think of my manner to please them. I
am tired to stay long, because my mind is not free, and
they sometimes talk gossip with me. But oh, my Father,
thou visitest me in my work, and I can lift up my desires to
thee, and my heart is cheered and at rest with thy
presence, and I am always alone with thee, and thou dost
not steal my time by foolishness. I always ask in my heart,
where can I find thee?”

The next is a voice out of a solitude as strict and sacred as that in


which nature had isolated this eloquent mute:—
“My Father, when I cannot be cheerful or happy, I can
be true and obedient, and I will not forget that joy has
been, and may still be. If there is no hour of solitude
granted me, still I will commune with thee. If I may not
search out and pierce thy thought, so much the more may
my living praise thee. At whatever price, I must be alone
with thee; this must be the demand I make. These duties
are not the life, but the means which enable us to show
forth the life. So must I take up this cross, and bear it
willingly. Why should I feel reproved when a busy one
enters the room? I am not idle, though I sit with folded
hands, but instantly I must seek some cover. For that
shame I reprove myself. Are they only the valuable
members of society who labor to dress and feed it? Shall
we never ask the aim of all this hurry and foam, of this
aimless activity? Let the purpose for which I live be always
before me; let every thought and word go to confirm and
illuminate that end; namely, that I must become near and
dear to thee; that now I am beyond the reach of all but
thee.
“How can we not be reconciled to thy will? I will know
the joy of giving to my friend the dearest treasure I have. I
know that sorrow comes not at once only. We cannot meet
it and say, now it is overcome, but again, and yet again, its
flood pours over us, and as full as at first.
“If but this tedious battle could be fought,
Like Sparta’s heroes at one rocky pass,
‘One day be spent in dying,’ men had sought
The spot, and been cut down like mower’s grass.”
The next is in a metrical form. It is the aspiration of a different
mind, in quite other regions of power and duty, yet they all accord at
last.

“Great God, I ask thee for no meaner pelf


Than that I may not disappoint myself,
That in my action I may soar as high,
As I can now discern with this clear eye.

“And next in value, which thy kindness lends,


That I may greatly disappoint my friends,
Howe’er they think or hope that it may be,
They may not dream how thou’st distinguished me.

“That my weak hand may equal my firm faith,


And my life practise more than my tongue saith;
That my low conduct may not show,
Nor my relenting lines,
That I thy purpose did not know,

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