Moscheles thus gives a very pleasing account of his first cognizance of

Beethoven:--

"I had been placed under the guidance and tuition of Dionysius Weber,

the founder and present director of the Prague Musical Conservatory; and

he, fearing that in my eagerness to read new music, I might injure the

systematic development of my piano-forte playing, prohibited the

library, a circulating musical library, and in a plan for my musical

education which he laid before my parents, made it an express condition

that for three years I should study no other authors but Mozart,

Clemente, and S. Bach. I must confess, however, that in spite of such

prohibition, I visited the library, gaining access to it through my

pocket money. It was about this time that I learned from some

schoolfellows that a young composer had appeared in Vienna, who wrote

the oddest stuff possible, such as no one could either play or

understand--crazy music, in opposition to all rule; and that this

composer's name was Beethoven. On repairing to the library to satisfy my

curiosity as to this so-called eccentric genius, I found there

Beethoven's 'Sonate Pathetique.' This was in the year 1804. My pocket

money would not suffice for the purchase of it, so I secretly copied it.

The novelty of its style was so attractive to me, and I became so

enthusiastic in my admiration of it, that I forgot myself so far as to

mention my new acquisition to my master, who reminded me of his

injunction, and warned me not to play or study any eccentric productions

until I had based my style upon more solid models. Without, however,

minding his injunction, I seized upon the piano-forte works of Beethoven

as they successively appeared, and in them found a solace and delight

such as no other composer afforded me.

"In the year 1809, my studies with my master, Weber, closed; and being

then also fatherless, I chose Vienna for my residence, to work out my

future musical career. Above all, I longed to see and become acquainted

with that man who had exercised so powerful an influence over my whole

being; whom, though I scarcely understood, I blindly worshipped. I

learned that Beethoven was most difficult of access, and would admit no

pupil but Ries; and for a long time my anxiety to see him remained

ungratified. In the year 1810, however, the longed-for opportunity

presented itself. I happened to be one morning in the music shop of

Domenico Artaria, who had just been publishing some of my early attempts

at composition, when a man entered with short and hasty steps, and

gliding through the circle of ladies and professors assembled on

business, or talking over musical matters, without looking up, as though

he wished to pass unnoticed, made his way direct for Artaria's private

office at the bottom of the shop. Presently Artaria called me in, and

said, 'This is Beethoven,'--and to the composer, 'This is the youth of

whom I have been speaking to you.' Beethoven gave me a friendly nod, and

said he had just been hearing a favorable account of me. To some modest

and humble expressions which I stammered forth he made no reply, and

seemed to wish to break off the conversation. I stole away with a

greater longing for that which I had sought, than before this meeting,

thinking to myself, 'Am I then, indeed, such a nobody that he could not

put one musical question to me? nor express one wish to know who had

been my master, or whether I had any acquaintance with his works?' My

only satisfactory mode of explaining the matter, and comforting myself

for the omission, was in Beethoven's tendency to deafness; for I had

seen Artaria speaking close to his ear. But I made up my mind that the

more I was excluded from the private intercourse which I so earnestly

coveted, the closer I would follow Beethoven in all the productions of

his mind."

If Moscheles had never seen more of Beethoven, how rejoiced he would

have been on reading his pathetic expressions recorded in those volumes,

as to the misconstructions he knew his fellow-men must put on conduct

caused by his calamity, at having detected the true cause of coldness in

his own instance, and that no mean suggestions of offended vanity made

him false to the genius, because repelled by the man!

Moscheles did see him further, and learned a great deal from this

intercourse, though it never became intimate. He closes with these

excellent remarks:--

"My feelings with respect to Beethoven's music have undergone no

variation, save to become warmer. In my first half score of years of

acquaintance with his works, he was repulsive to me, as well as

attractive. In each of them, while I felt my mind fascinated by the

prominent idea, and my enthusiasm kindled by the flashes of his genius,

his unlooked-for episodes, shrill dissonances, and bold modulations gave

me an unpleasant sensation. But how soon did I become reconciled to

them! all that had appeared hard I soon found indispensable. The

gnome-like pleasantries, which at first appeared too distorted, the

stormy masses of sound which I found too chaotic, I have in after times

learned to love. But while retracting my early critical exceptions, I

must still maintain as my creed that eccentricities like those of

Beethoven are reconcilable with his works alone, and are dangerous

models to other composers, many of whom have been wrecked in their

attempts at imitation."

No doubt the peculiarities of Beethoven are inimitable, though as great

would be as welcome in a mind of equal greatness. The natural office of

such a genius is to rouse others to a use and knowledge of their own

faculties; never to induce imitation of its own individuality.

As an instance of the justice and undoubting clearness of such a mind,

as to its own methods, take the following anecdote from Beethoven's

"Pupil Ries":--

"All the initiated must be interested in the striking fact which

occurred respecting one of Beethoven's last solo sonatas, (in B major,

with the great fugue, Op. 106,) a sonata which has _forty-one pages of

print_. Beethoven had sent it to me, to London, for sale, that it might

appear there at the same time as in Germany. The engraving was

completed, and I in daily expectation of the letter naming the day of

publication. This arrived at last, but with this extraordinary request:

'Prefix the following two notes, as a first bar, to the beginning of the

adagio.' This adagio has from nine to ten pages of print. I own the

thought struck me involuntarily that all might not be right with my dear

old master, a rumor to that effect having often been spread. What! add

two notes to a composition already worked out and out, and completed

months ago? But my astonishment was yet to be heightened by the

_effect_ of these two notes. Never could such be found again--so

striking--so important; no, not even if contemplated at the very

beginning of the composition. I would advise every true lover of the art

to play this adagio first _without_, and then with these two notes which

now form the first bar, and I have no doubt he will share in my

opinion."

No instance could more forcibly show how in the case of Beethoven, as in

that of other transcendent geniuses, the cry of insanity is raised by

vulgar minds on witnessing extraordinary manifestations of power. Such

geniuses perceive results so remote, are alive to combinations so

subtle, that common men cannot rise high enough to see why they think or

do as they do, and settle the matter easily to their own satisfaction,

crying, "He is mad"--"He hath a devil." Genius perceives the efficacy of

slight signs of thought, and loves best the simplest symbols; coarser

minds demand coarse work, long preparations, long explanations.

But genius heeds them not, but fills the atmosphere with irresistible

purity, till they also are pervaded by the delicate influence, which,

too subtile for their ears and eyes, enters with the air they breathe,

or through the pores of the skin.

The life of a Beethoven is written in his works; and all that can be

told of his life beside, is but as marginal notes on that broad page.

Yet since we have these notes, it is pleasant to have them in harmony

with the page. The acts and words of Beethoven are what we should

expect,--noble, leonine, impetuous,--yet tender. His faults are the

faults of one so great that he found few paths wide enough for his

tread, and knew not how to moderate it. They are not faults in

themselves, but only in relation to the men who surrounded him. Among

his peers he would not have had faults. As it is, they hardly deserve

the name. His acts were generally great and benignant; only in

transports of sudden passion at what he thought base did he ever injure

any one. If he found himself mistaken, he could not humble himself

enough,--but far outwent, in his contrition, what was due to those whom

he had offended. So it is apt to be with magnanimous and tender natures;

they will humble themselves in a way that those of a coarser or colder

make think shows weakness or want of pride. But they do so because a

little discord and a little wrong is as painful to them as a great deal

to others.

In one of his letters to a young friend, Beethoven thus magnanimously

confesses his errors:--

"I could not converse with you and yours with that peace of mind which I

could have desired, for the late wretched altercation was hovering

before me, showing me my own despicable conduct. But so it was; and what

would I not give could I obliterate from the page of my life this last

action, so degrading to my character, and so unlike my usual

proceedings!"

It seems this action of his was not of importance in the eyes of others.

Of the causes which acted upon him at such times he gives intimations in

another letter.

"I had been wrought into this burst of passion by many an unpleasant

circumstance of an earlier date. I have the gift of concealing and

restraining my irritability on many subjects; but if I happen to be

touched at any time when I am more than usually susceptible of anger, I

burst forth more violently than any one else. B. has doubtless most

excellent qualities, but he thinks himself utterly without faults, and

yet is most open to blame for those for which he censures others. He has

a littleness of mind which I have held in contempt since my infancy."

As a correspondent example of the manner in which true greatness

apologizes for its errors, we must quote a letter, lately made public,

from Sir Isaac Newton to Mr. Locke.

"Sir: Being of opinion that you endeavored to embroil me with

women, and by other means, I was so much affected with it as that,

when one told me you were sickly, and would not live, I answered,

''Twere better if you were dead.' I desire you to forgive me this

uncharitableness, for I am now satisfied that what you have done is

just, and I beg your pardon for having had hard thoughts of you for

it, and for representing that you struck at the root of morality in

a principle you laid down in your book of ideas, and designed to

pursue in another book, and that I took you for a Hobbist. I beg

your pardon also for saying or thinking that there was a design to

sell me an office, or to embroil me.

"I am your most humble and unfortunate servant,

"ISAAC NEWTON."

And this letter, observe, was quoted as proof of insanity in Newton.

Locke, however, shows by his reply that _he_ did not think the power of

full sincerity and elevation above self-love proved a man to be insane.

At a happy period Beethoven thus unveils the generous sympathies of his

heart.

"My compositions are well paid, and I may say I have more orders than I

can well execute; six or seven publishers, and more, being ready to take

any of my works. I need no longer submit to being bargained with; I ask

my terms, and am paid. You see this is an excellent thing; as, for

instance, I see a friend in want, and my purse does not at the moment

permit me to assist him; I have but to sit down and write, and my friend

is no longer in need."

Some additional particulars are given, in the letters collected by

Moscheles, of the struggles of his mind during the coming on of

deafness. This calamity, falling upon the greatest genius of his time,

in the prime of manhood,--a calamity which threatened to destroy not

only all enjoyment of life, but the power of using the vast treasure

with which he had been endowed for the use of all men,--casts common

ills so into the shade that they can scarcely be seen. Who dares

complain, since Beethoven could resign himself, to such an ill at such a

time as this?

"This beautiful country of mine, what was my lot in it? The hope of a

happy futurity. This might now be realized if I were freed from my

affliction. O, freed from that, I should compass the world! I feel

it--my youth is but beginning; have I not been hitherto but a sickly

creature? My physical powers have for some time been materially

increasing--those of my mind likewise. I feel myself nearer and nearer

the mark; I feel but cannot describe it; this alone is the vital

principle of your Beethoven. No rest for me: I know of none but in

sleep, and I grieve at having to sacrifice to that more time than I have

hitherto deemed necessary. Take but one half of my disease from me, and

I will return to you a matured and accomplished man, renewing the ties

of our friendship; for you shall see me as happy as I may be in this

sublunary world; not as a sufferer; no, that would be more than I could

bear; I will blunt the sword of fate; it shall not utterly destroy me.

How beautiful it is to live a thousand lives in one! No; I am not made

for a retired life--I feel it."

He _did_ blunt the sword of fate; he _did_ live a thousand lives in one;

but that sword had power to inflict a deep and poisoned wound; those

thousand lives cost him the pangs of a thousand deaths. He, born for

perpetual conquest, was condemned through life to "resignation." Let any

man, disposed to complain of his own ills, read the "Will" of Beethoven;

and see if he dares speak of himself above a whisper, after.

The matter of interest new to us in this English book is in notes and

appendix. Schindler's biography, whose plain and _naive_ style is fit

for the subject, is ironed out and plaited afresh to suit the "genteel"

English, in this translation. Elsewhere we have given in brief the

strong lineaments and piquant anecdotes from this biography;[7] here

there is not room: smooth and shorn as it is, we wish the translation

might be reprinted here.

We may give, at parting, two directions for the study of Beethoven's

genius and the perusal of his biography in two sayings of his own. For

the biography, "The limits have never yet been discovered which genius

and industry could not transcend." For the music, "From the depths of

the soul brought forth, she (Poesy) can only by the depths of the soul

be received or understood."

BROWN'S NOVELS.[8]

We rejoice to see these reprints of Brown's novels, as we have long been

ashamed that one who ought to be the pride of the country, and who is,

in the higher qualities of the mind, so far in advance of our other

novelists, should have become almost inaccessible to the public.

It has been the custom to liken Brown to Godwin. But there was no

imitation, no second hand in the matter. They were congenial natures,

and whichever had come first might have lent an impulse to the other.

Either mind might have been conscious of the possession of that peculiar

vein of ore, without thinking of working it for the mint of the world,

till the other, led by accident, or overflow of feeling, showed him how

easy it was to put the reveries of his solitary hours into words, and

upon paper, for the benefit of his fellow-men.

"My mind to me a kingdom is."

Such a man as Brown or Godwin has a right to say that. Their mind is no

scanty, turbid rill, rejoicing to be daily fed from a thousand others,

or from the clouds. Its plenteous source rushes from a high mountain

between bulwarks of stone. Its course, even and full, keeps ever green

its banks, and affords the means of life and joy to a million gliding

shapes, that fill its deep waters, and twinkle above its golden sands.

Life and Joy! Yes, Joy! These two have been called the dark Masters,

because they disclose the twilight recesses of the human heart. Yet the

gravest page in the history of such men is joy, compared with the mixed,

shallow, uncertain pleasures of vulgar minds. Joy! because they were all

alive, and fulfilled the purposes of being. No sham, no imitation, no

convention deformed or veiled their native lineaments, or checked the

use of their natural force. All alive themselves, they understood that

there is no happiness without truth, no perception of it without real

life. Unlike most men, existence was to them not a tissue of words and

seemings, but a substantial possession.

Born Hegelians, without the pretensions of science, they sought God in

their own consciousness, and found him. The heart, because it saw itself

so fearfully and wonderfully made, did not disown its Maker. With the

highest idea of the dignity, power, and beauty of which human nature is

capable, they had courage to see by what an oblique course it proceeds,

yet never lose faith that it would reach its destined aim. Thus their

darkest disclosures are not hobgoblin shows, but precious revelations.

Brown is great as ever human writer was in showing the self-sustaining

force of which a lonely mind is capable. He takes one person, makes him

brood like the bee, and extract from the common life before him all its

sweetness, its bitterness, and its nourishment.

We say makes _him_, but it increases our own interest in Brown, that, a

prophet in this respect of a better era, he has usually placed this

thinking, royal mind in the body of a woman. This personage, too, is

always feminine, both in her character and circumstances, but a

conclusive proof that the term _feminine_ is not a synonyme for _weak_.

Constantia, Clara Wieland, have loving hearts, graceful and plastic

natures, but they have also noble, thinking minds, full of resource,

constancy, courage. The Marguerite of Godwin, no less, is all refinement

and the purest tenderness; but she is also the soul of honor, capable of

deep discernment, and of acting in conformity with the inferences she

draws. The Man of Brown and Godwin has not eaten of the fruit of the

tree of knowledge, and been driven to sustain himself by the sweat of

his brow for nothing, but has learned the structure and laws of things,

and become a being, natural, benignant, various, and desirous of

supplying the loss of innocence by the attainment of virtue. So his

Woman need not be quite so weak as Eve, the slave of feeling or of

flattery; she also has learned to guide her helm amid the storm across

the troubled waters.

The horrors which mysteriously beset these persons, and against which,

so far as outward facts go, they often strive in vain, are but a

representation of those powers permitted to work in the same way

throughout the affairs of this world. Their demoniacal attributes only

represent a morbid state of the intellect, gone to excess from want of

balance with the other powers. There is an intellectual as well as a

physical drunkenness, and which, no less, impels to crime. Carwin, urged

on to use his ventriloquism till the presence of such a strange agent

wakened the seeds of fanaticism in the breast of Wieland, is in a state

no more foreign to nature than that of the wretch executed last week,

who felt himself drawn as by a spell to murder his victim, because he

had thought of her money and the pleasures it might bring him, till the

feeling possessed his brain that hurls the gamester to ruin. The victims

of such agency are like the soldier of the Rio Grande, who, both legs

shot off, and his life-blood rushing out with every pulse, replied

serenely to his pitying comrades, that "he had now that for which the

soldier enlisted." The end of the drama is not in this world, and the

fiction which rounds off the whole to harmony and felicity before the

curtain falls, sins against truth, and deludes the reader. The Nelsons

of the human race are all the more exposed to the assaults of Fate, that

they are decorated with the badges of well-earned glory. Who but feels

as they fall in death, or rise again to a mutilated existence, that the

end is not yet? Who, that thinks, but must feel that the recompense is,

where Brown places it, in the accumulation of mental treasure, in the

severe assay by fire that leaves the gold pure to be used some

time--somewhere?

Brown,--man of the brooding eye, the teeming brain, the deep and fervent

heart,--if thy country prize thee not, and had almost lost thee out of

sight, it is because her heart is made shallow and cold, her eye dim, by

the pomp of circumstance, the love of gross outward gain. She cannot

long continue thus, for it takes a great deal of soul to keep a huge

body from disease and dissolution. As there is more soul, thou wilt be

more sought; and many will yet sit down with thy Constantia to the meal

and water on which she sustained her full and thoughtful existence, who

could not endure the ennui of aldermanic dinners, or find any relish in

the imitation of French cookery. To-day many will read the words, and

some have a cup large enough to receive the spirit, before it is lost in

the sand on which their feet are planted.

Brown's high standard of the delights of intellectual communion and of

friendship, correspond with the fondest hopes of early days. But in the

relations of real life, at present, there is rarely more than one of the

parties ready for such intercourse as he describes. On the one side

there will be dryness, want of perception, or variety, a stupidity

unable to appreciate life's richest boon when offered to its grasp; and

the finer nature is doomed to retrace its steps, unhappy as those who,

having force to raise a spirit, cannot retain or make it substantial,

and stretch out their arms only to bring them back empty to the breast.

We were glad to see these reprints, but sorry to see them so carelessly

done. Under the cheap system, the carelessness in printing and

translating grows to a greater excess day by day. Please, Public, to

remonstrate; else very soon all your books will be offered for two

shillings apiece, and none of them in a fit state to be read.

EDGAR A. POE.[9]

Mr. Poe throws down the gauntlet in his preface by what he says of "the

paltry compensations, or more paltry commendations, of mankind." Some

champion might be expected to start up from the "somewhat sizable" class

embraced, or, more properly speaking, boxed on the ear, by this

defiance, who might try whether the sting of Criticism was as

indifferent to this knight of the pen as he professes its honey to be.

Were there such a champion, gifted with acumen to dissect, and a

swift-glancing wit to enliven the operation, he could find no more

legitimate subject, no fairer game, than Mr. Poe, who has wielded the

weapons of criticism without relenting, whether with the dagger he rent

and tore the garment in which some favored Joseph had pranked himself,

secure of honor in the sight of all men, or whether with uplifted

tomahawk he rushed upon the new-born children of some hapless genius,

who had fancied, and persuaded his friends to fancy, that they were

beautiful, and worthy a long and honored life. A large band of these

offended dignitaries and aggrieved parents must be on the watch for a

volume of "Poems by Edgar A. Poe," ready to cut, rend, and slash in

turn, and hoping to see his own Raven left alone to prey upon the

slaughter of which it is the herald.

Such joust and tournament we look to see, and, indeed, have some stake

in the matter, so far as we have friends whose wrongs cry aloud for the

avenger. Natheless we could not take part in the _melee_, except to

join the crowd of lookers-on in the cry "heaven speed the right!"

Early we read that fable of Apollo who rewarded the critic, who had

painfully winnowed the wheat,--with the chaff for his pains. We joined

the gentle Affirmative School, and have confidence that if we indulge

ourselves chiefly with the appreciation of good qualities, Time will

take care of the faults. For Time holds a strainer like that used in the

diamond mines--have but patience and the water and gravel will all pass

through, and only the precious stones be left. Yet we are not blind to

the uses of severe criticism, and of just censure, especially in a time

and place so degraded by venal and indiscriminate praise as the present.

That unholy alliance; that shameless sham, whose motto is,

"Caw me

And I'll caw thee;"

that system of mutual adulation and organized puff which was carried to

such perfection in the time, and may be seen drawn to the life in the

correspondence, of Miss Hannah More, is fully represented in our day and

generation. We see that it meets a counter-agency, from the league of

Truth-tellers, few, but each of them mighty as Fingal or any other hero

of the sort. Let such tell the whole truth, as well as nothing but the

truth, but let their sternness be in the spirit of Love. Let them seek

to understand the purpose and scope of an author, his capacity as well

as his fulfilments, and how his faults are made to grow by the same

sunshine that acts upon his virtues, for this is the case with talents

no less than with character. The rich field requires frequent and

careful weeding; frequent, lest the weeds exhaust the soil; careful,

lest the flowers and grain be pulled up along with the weeds.

It has often been our lot to share the mistake of Gil Blas with regard

to the Archbishop. We have taken people at their word, and while

rejoicing that women could bear neglect without feeling mean pique, and

that authors, rising above self-love, could show candor about their

works, and magnanimously meet both justice and injustice, we have been

rudely awakened from our dream, and found that chanticleer, who crowed

so bravely, showed himself at last but a dunghill fowl. Yet Heaven grant

we never become too worldly-wise thus to trust a generous word, and we

surely are not so yet, for we believe Mr. Poe to be sincere when he

says,--

"In defence of my own taste, it is incumbent upon me to say that I think

nothing in this volume of much value to the public or very creditable to

myself. Events not to be controlled have prevented me from making, at

any time, any serious effort, in what, under happier circumstances,

would have been the field of my choice."

We believe Mr. Poe to be sincere in this declaration; if he is, we

respect him; if otherwise, we do not. Such things should never be said

unless in hearty earnest. If in earnest, they are honorable pledges; if

not, a pitiful fence and foil of vanity. Earnest or not, the words are

thus far true; the productions in this volume indicate a power to do

something far better. With the exception of the Raven, which seems

intended chiefly to show the writer's artistic skill, and is in its way

a rare and finished specimen, they are all fragments--_fyttes_ upon the

lyre, almost all of which leave a something to desire or demand. This is

not the case, however, with these lines:--

TO ONE IN PARADISE.

Thou wast all that to me, love,

For which my soul did pine--

A green isle in the sea, love,

A fountain and a shrine,

All wreathed with fairy fruits and flowers,

And all the flowers were mine.

Ah, dream too bright to last!

Ah, starry Hope! that didst arise

But to be overcast!

A voice from out the Future cries,

"On! on!"--but o'er the Past

(Dim gulf!) my spirit hovering lies

Mute, motionless, aghast!

For, alas! alas! with me

The light of life is o'er!

No more--no more--no more

(Such language holds the solemn sea

To the sands upon the shore)

Shall bloom the thunder-blasted tree,

Or the stricken eagle soar!

And all my days are trances,

And all my nightly dreams

Are where thy dark eye glances,

And where thy footstep gleams--

In what ethereal dances,

By what eternal streams.

The poems breathe a passionate sadness, relieved sometimes by touches

very lovely and tender:--

"Amid the earnest woes

That crowd around my earthly path

(Drear path, alas! where grows

Not even one lonely rose.") * * *

* * * * *

"For her, the fair and debonair, that now so lowly lies,

The life upon her yellow hair, but not within her eyes--

The life still there, upon her hair--the death upon her eyes."

This kind of beauty is especially conspicuous, even rising into dignity,

in the poem called the Haunted Palace.

The imagination of this writer rarely expresses itself in pronounced

forms, but rather in a sweep of images, thronging and distant like a

procession of moonlight clouds on the horizon, but like them

characteristic and harmonious one with another, according to their

office.

The descriptive power is greatest when it takes a shape not unlike an

incantation, as in the first part of the Sleeper, where

"I stand beneath the mystic moon;

An opiate vapor, dewy, dim,

Exhales from out a golden rim,

And, softly dripping, drop by drop,

Upon the quiet mountain top,

Steals drowsily and musically

Into the universal valley."

Why _universal_?--"resolve me that, Master Moth."

And farther on, "the lily _lolls_ upon the wave."

This word _lolls_, often made use of in these poems, presents a vulgar

image to our thought; we know not how it is to that of others.

The lines which follow, about the open window, are highly poetical. So

is the Bridal Ballad in its power of suggesting a whole tribe and train

of thoughts and pictures, by few and simple touches.

The poems written in youth, written, indeed, we understand, in

childhood, before the author was ten years old, are a great

psychological curiosity. Is it the delirium of a prematurely excited

brain that causes such a rapture of words? What is to be gathered from

seeing the future so fully anticipated in the germ? The passions are not

unfrequently _felt_ in their full shock, if not in their intensity, at

eight or nine years old, but here they are _reflected upon_:--

"Sweet was their death--with them to die was rife

With the last ecstasy of satiate life."

The scenes from Politian are done with clear, sharp strokes; the power

is rather metaphysical than dramatic. We must repeat what we have

heretofore said, that we could wish to see Mr. Poe engaged in a

metaphysical romance. He needs a sustained flight and far range to show

what his powers really are. Let us have from him the analysis of the

Passions, with their appropriate Fates; let us have his speculations

clarified; let him intersperse dialogue or poem, as the occasion

prompts, and give us something really good and strong, firmly wrought,

and fairly blazoned.

ALFIERI AND CELLINI.[10]

These two publications have come to hand during the last month--a

cheering gleam upon the winter of our discontent, as we saw the flood of

bad translations of worse books which swelled upon the country.

We love our country well. The many false deeds and low thoughts; the

devotion to interest; the forgetfulness of principle; the indifference

to high and noble sentiment, which have, in so many ways, darkened her

history for some years back, have not made us despair of her yet

fulfilling the great destiny whose promise rose, like a star, only some

half a century ago upon the hopes of the world.

Should that star be forsaken by its angel, and those hopes set finally

in clouds of shame, the church which we had built out of the ruins of

the ancient time must fall to the ground. This church seemed a model of

divine art. It contained a labyrinth which, when threaded by aid of the

clew of Faith, presented, re-viewed from its centre, the most admirable

harmony and depth of meaning in its design, and comprised in its

decorations all the symbols of permanent interest of which the mind of

man has made use for the benefit of man. Such was to be our church, a

church not made with hands, catholic, universal, all whose stones should

be living stones, its officials the cherubim of Love and Knowledge, its

worship wiser and purer action than has before been known to men. To

such a church men do indeed constitute the state, and men indeed we

hoped from the American church and state, men so truly human that they

could not live while those made in their own likeness were bound down to

the condition of brutes.

Should such hopes be baffled, should such a church fall in the building,

such a state find no realization except to the eye of the poet, God

would still be in the world, and surely guide each bird, that can be

patient, on the wing to its home at last. But expectations so noble,

which find so broad a basis in the past, which link it so harmoniously

with the future, cannot lightly be abandoned. The same Power leads by a

pillar of cloud as by a pillar of fire--the Power that deemed even Moses

worthy only of a distant view of the Promised Land.

And to those who cherish such expectations rational education,

considered in various ways and bearings, must be the one great topic of

interest; an enterprise in which the humblest service is precious and

honorable to any who can inspire its soul. Our thoughts anticipate with

eager foresight the race that may grow up from this amalgamation of all

races of the world which our situation induces. It was the pride and

greatness of ancient nations to keep their blood unmixed; but it must be

ours to be willing to mingle, to accept in a generous spirit what each

clime and race has to offer us.

It is, indeed, the case that much diseased substance is offered to form

this new body; and if there be not in ourselves a nucleus, a heart of

force and purity to assimilate these strange and various materials into

a very high form of organic life, they must needs induce one distorted,

corrupt, and degraded beyond the example of other times and places.

There will be no medium about it. Our grand scene of action demands

grandeur and purity; lacking these, one must suffer from so base failure

in proportion to the success that should have been.

It would be the worthiest occupation of mind to ascertain the

conditions propitious for this meeting of the nations in their new home,

and to provide preventions for obvious dangers that attend it. It would

be occupation for which the broadest and deepest knowledge of human

nature in its mental, moral, and bodily relations, the noblest freedom

from prejudice, with the finest discrimination as to differences and

relations, directed and enlightened by a prophetic sense as to what Man

is designed by God to become, would all be needed to fit the thinker.

Yet some portion of these qualities, or of some of these qualities, if

accompanied by earnestness and aspiration, may enable any one to offer

useful suggestions. The mass of ignorance and selfishness is such, that

no grain of leaven must be despised.

And as the men of all countries come hither to find a home, and become

parts of a new life, so do the books of all countries gravitate towards

this new centre. Copious infusions from all quarters mingle daily with

the new thought which is to grow into American mind, and develop

American literature.

As every ship brings us foreign teachers, a knowledge of living

contemporary tongues must in the course of fifty years become the

commonest attainment. There exists no doubt in the minds of those who

can judge, that the German, French, Italian, Spanish, and Portuguese

tongues might, by familiar instruction and _an intelligent method_, be

taught with perfect ease during the years of childhood, so that the

child would have as distinct a sense of their several natures, and

nearly as much expertness in their use, as in his own. The higher uses

of such knowledge can, of course, be expected only in a more advanced

state of the faculties; but it is pity that the acquaintance with the

medium of thought should be deferred to a period when the mind is

sufficiently grown to bend its chief attention on the thoughts

themselves. Much of the most precious part of short human lives is now

wasted from an ignorance of what might easily be done for children, and

without taking from them the time they need for common life, play, and

bodily growth, more than at present.

Meanwhile the English begins to vie with the German and French

literature in the number, though not in the goodness, of the

translations from other languages. The indefatigable Germans can

translate, and do other things too; so that geniuses often there apply

themselves to the work as an amusement: even the all-employed Goethe

has translated one of the books before us, (Memoirs of Cellini.) But in

English we know but of one, Coleridge's Wallenstein, where the reader

will feel the electric current undiminished by the medium through which

it comes to him. And then the profligate abuse of the power of

translation has been unparalleled, whether in the choice of books or the

carelessness in disguising those that were good in a hideous mask. No

falsehood can be worse than this of deforming the expression of a great

man's thoughts, of corrupting that form which he has watched, and toiled

and suffered to make beautiful and true. We know no falsehood that

should call a more painful blush to the cheek of one engaged in it.

We have no narrowness in our view of the contents of such books. We are

not afraid of new standards and new examples. Only give enough of them,

variety enough, and from well-intentioned, generous minds. America can

choose what she wants, if she has sufficient range of choice; and if

there is any real reason, any deep root in the tastes and opinions she

holds at present, she will not lightly yield them. Only give her what is

good of its kind. Her hope is not in ignorance, but in knowledge. We

are, indeed, very fond of range, and if there is check, there should be

countercheck; and in this view we are delighted to see these great

Italians domesticated here. We have had somewhat too much of the French

and Germans of late. We value unchangeably our sparkling and rapid

French friend; still more the searching, honest, and, in highest sense,

visionary German genius. But there is not on earth, and, we dare to say

it, will not be again, genius _like_ that of Italy, or that can compare

with it, in its own way.

Italy and Greece were alike in this; those sunny skies ripened their

fruits perfectly. The oil and honey of Greece, the wine of Italy, not

only suggest, but satisfy. _There_ we find fulfilment, elsewhere great

achievement only.

O, acute, cautious, calculating Yankee; O, graceful, witty, hot-blooded,

flimsy Southron; and thou, man of the West, going ahead too fast to pick

up a thought or leave a flower upon thy path,--look at these men with

their great fiery passions, but will and intellect still greater and

stronger, perfectly sincere, from a contempt of falsehood. If they had

acted wrong, they said and felt that they had, and that it was base and

hateful in them. They were sagacious, as children are, not from

calculation, but because the fine instincts of nature were unspoiled in

them. I speak now of Alfieri and Cellini. Dante had all their

instinctive greatness and deep-seated fire, with the reflective and

creative faculties besides, to an extent of which they never dreamed.

He who reads these biographies may take them from several points of

view. As pictures of manners, as sincere transcripts of the men and

their times, they are not and could not be surpassed. That truth which

Rousseau sought so painfully and vainly by self-brooding, subtle

analysis, they attained without an effort. _Why_ they felt they cared

little, but _what_ they felt they surely knew; and where a fly or worm

has injured the peach, its passage is exactly marked, so that you are

sure the rest is fair and sound. Both as physiological and psychical

histories, they are full of instruction. In Alfieri, especially, the

nervous disease generated in the frame by any uncongenial tension of the

brain, the periodical crises in his health, the manner in which his

accesses of passion came upon him, afford infinite suggestion to one who

has an eye for the circumstances which fashion the destiny of man. Let

the physician compare the furies of Alfieri with the silent rages of

Byron, and give the mother and pedagogue the light in which they are now

wholly wanting, showing how to treat such noble plants in the early

stages of growth. We think the "hated cap" would not be put a second

time on the head so easily diseased.

The biography of Cellini, it is commonly said, is more interesting than

any romance. It _is_ a romance, with the character of the hero fully

brought out. Cellini lived in all the fulness of inward vigor, all the

variety of outward adventure, and passed through all the signs of the

Zodiac, in his circling course, occasionally raising a little vapor from

the art magic. He was really the Orlando Furioso turned Goldsmith, and

Angelicas and all the Peers of France joined in the show. However, he

never lived deeply; he had not time; the creative energy turned outward

too easily, and took those forms that still enchant the mind of Europe.

Alfieri was very different in this. He was like the root of some

splendid southern plant, buried beneath a heap of rubbish. Above him was

a glorious sky, fit to develop his form and excite his colors; but he

was compelled to a long and terrible struggle to get up where he could

be free to receive its influence. Institutions, language, family, modes

of education,--all were unfit for him; and perhaps no man was ever

called to such efforts, after he had reached manly age, to unmake and

remake himself before he could become what his inward aspiration craved.

All this deepened his nature, and it _was_ deep. It is his great force

of will and the compression of Nature within its iron grasp, where

Nature was so powerful and impulsive, that constitutes the charm of his

writings. It is the man Alfieri who moves, nay, overpowers us, and not

his writings, which have no flow nor plastic beauty. But we feel the

vital dynamics, and imagine it all.

By us Americans, if ever such we really are to be, Alfieri should be

held sacred as a godfather and holy light. He was a harbinger of what

most gives this time its character and value. He was the friend of

liberty, the friend of man, in the sense that Burns was--of the native

nobleness of man. Soiled and degraded men he hated. He was, indeed, a

man of pitiless hatred as of boundless love, and he had bitter

prejudices too, but they were from antipathies too strongly intertwined

with his sympathies for any hand less powerful than that of Death to

rend them away.

But our space does not permit us to do any justice to such a life as

Alfieri's. Let others read it, not from their habitual, but an eternal

point of view, and they cannot mistake its purport. Some will be most

touched by the storms of his youth, others by the exploits and conquests

of his later years; but all will find him, in the words of his friend

Casella, "sculptured just as he was, lofty, strange, and extreme, not

only in his natural characteristics, but in every work that did not seem

to him unworthy of his generous affections. And where he went too far,

it is easy to perceive his excesses always flowed from some praiseworthy

sentiment."

Among a crowd of thoughts suggested to the mind by reperusal of this

book, to us a friend of many years standing, we hastily note the

following:--

Alfieri knew how to be a friend, and had friends such as his masculine

and uncompromising temper fitted him to endure and keep. He had even two

or three of those noble friends. He was a perfect lover in delicacy of

sentiment, in devotion, in a desire for constancy, in a high ideal,

growing always higher, and he was, at last, happy in love. Many geniuses

have spoken worthily of women in their works, but he speaks of woman as

she wishes to be spoken of, and declares that he met the desire of his

soul realized in life. This, almost alone, is an instance where a great

nature was permanently satisfied, and the claims of man and woman

equally met, where one of the parties had the impatient fire of genius.

His testimony on this subject is of so rare a sort, we must copy it:--

"My fourth and last passion, fortunately for me, showed itself by

symptoms entirely different from the three first. In the former, my

intellect had felt little of the fires of passion; but now my heart and

my genius were both equally kindled, and if my passion was less

impetuous, it became more profound and lasting. Such was the flame which

by degrees absorbed every affection and thought of my being, and it will

never fade away except with my life. Two months satisfied me that I had

now found the _true woman_; for, instead of encountering in her, as in

all common women, an obstacle to literary glory, a hinderance to useful

occupations, and a damper to thought, she proved a high stimulus, a pure

solace, and an alluring example to every beautiful work. Prizing a

treasure so rare, I gave myself away to her irrevocably. And I certainly

erred not. More than twelve years have passed, and while I am writing

this chit-chat, having reached that calm season when passion loses its

blandishments, I cherish her more tenderly than ever; and I love her

just in proportion as glide from her in the lapse of time those

little-esteemed toll-gatherers of departing beauty. In her my soul is

exalted, softened, and made better day by day; and I will dare to say

and believe she has found in me support and consolation."

We have spoken of the peculiarities in Alfieri's physical condition.

These naturally led him to seek solace in violent exercise; and as in

the case of Beckford and Byron, horses were his best friends in the hour

of danger. This sort of man is the modern Achilles, "the tamer of

horses." In what degree the health of Alfieri was improved, and his

sympathies awakened by the society and care of these noble animals, is

very evident. Almost all persons, perhaps all that are in a natural

state, need to stand in patriarchal relations with the animals most

correspondent with their character. We have the highest respect for this

instinct and sincere belief in the good it brings; if understood, it

would be cherished, not ridiculed.

ITALY.--CARY'S DANTE.

Translating Dante is indeed a labor of love. It is one in which even a

moderate degree of success is impossible. No great Poet can be well

translated. The form of his thought is inseparable from his thought. The

births of his genius are perfect beings: body and soul are in such

perfect harmony that you cannot at all alter the one without veiling the

other. The variation in cadence and modulation, even where the words are

exactly rendered, takes not only from the form of the thought, but from

the thought itself, its most delicate charm. Translations come to us as

a message to the lover from the lady of his love through the lips of a

confidante or menial--we are obliged to imagine what was most vital in

the utterance.

These difficulties, always insuperable, are accumulated a hundred-fold

in the case of Dante, both by the extraordinary depth and subtlety of

his thought, and his no less extraordinary power of concentrating its

expression, till every verse is like a blade of thoroughly tempered

steel. You might as well attempt to translate a glance of fire from the

human eye into any other language--even music cannot do that.

We think, then, that the use of Cary's translation, or any other, can

never be to diffuse a knowledge of Dante. This is not in its nature

diffusible; he is one of those to whom others must draw near; he cannot

be brought to them. He has no superficial charm to cheat the reader into

a belief that he knows him, without entrance into the same sphere.

These translations can be of use only to the translators, as a means of

deliberate study of the original, or to others who are studying the

original, and wish to compare their own version of doubtful passages

with that of an older disciple, highly qualified, both by devotion and

mental development, for the study.

We must say a few words as to the pedantic folly with which this study

has been prosecuted in this country, and, we believe, in England. Not

only the tragedies of Alfieri and the Faust of Goethe, but the Divina

Commedia of Dante,--a work which it is not probable there are upon

earth, at any one time, a hundred minds able to appreciate,--are turned

into school books for little girls who have just left their hoops and

dolls, and boys whose highest ambition it is to ride a horse that will

run away, and brave the tutor in a college frolic.

This is done from the idea that, in order to get acquainted with a

foreign language, the student must read books that have attained the

dignity of classics, and also which are "hard." Hard indeed it must be

for the Muses to see their lyres turned into gridirons for the

preparation of a school-girl's lunch; harder still for the younglings to

be called to chew and digest thunderbolts, in lieu of their natural

bread and butter.

Are there not "classics" enough which would not suffer by being put to

such uses? In Greek, Homer is a book for a boy; must you give him Plato

because it is harder? Is there no choice among the Latins? Are all who

wrote in the Latin tongue equally fit for the appreciation of sixteen

Yankee years? In Italian, have you not Tasso, Ariosto, and other writers

who have really a great deal that the immature mind can enjoy, without

choking it with the stern politics of Alfieri, or piling upon a brain

still soft the mountainous meanings of Dante? Indeed, they are saved

from suffering by the perfect ignorance of all meaning in which they

leave these great authors, fancying, to their life-long misfortune, that

they have read them. I have been reminded, by the remarks of my young

friends on these subjects, of the Irish peasant, who, having been

educated on a book prepared for his use, called "Reading made easy,"

blesses through life the kindness that taught him his "Radamadasy;" and

of the child who, hearing her father quote Horace, observed _she_

"thought Latin was even sillier than French."

No less pedantic is the style in which the grown-up, in stature at

least, undertakes to become acquainted with Dante. They get the best

Italian Dictionary, all the notes they can find, amounting in themselves

to a library, for his countrymen have not been less external and

benighted in their way of regarding him. Painfully they study through

the book, seeking with anxious attention to know who Signor This is, and

who was the cousin of Signora That, and whether any deep papal or

anti-papal meaning was couched by Dante under the remark that Such-a-one

wore a great-coat. A mind, whose small chambers look yet smaller by

being crowded with furniture from all parts of the world, bought by

labor, not received from inheritance or won by love, asserts that he

must understand Dante well, better than any other person probably,

because he has studied him through in this way thirty or forty times. As

well declare you have a better appreciation of Shakspeare than any one

else because you have identified the birthplace of Dame Quickly, or

ascertained the churchyard where the ghost of the royal Dane hid from

the sight of that far more celestial spirit, his son.

O, painstaking friends! Shut your books, clear your minds from

artificial nonsense, and feel that only by spirit can spirit be

discerned. Dante, like each other great one, took the stuff that lay

around him, and wove it into a garment of light. It is not by ravelling

that you will best appreciate its tissue or design. It is not by

studying out the petty strifes or external relations of his time, that

you can become acquainted with the thought of Dante. To him these things

were only soil in which to plant himself--figures by which to dramatize

and evolve his ideas. Would you learn him, go listen in the forest of

human passions to all the terrible voices he heard with a tormented but

never-to-be-deafened ear; go down into the hells, where each excess that

mars the harmony of nature is punished by the sinner finding no food

except from his own harvest; pass through the purgatories of

speculation, of struggling hope, and faith, never quite quenched, but

smouldering often and long beneath the ashes. Soar if thou canst, but if

thou canst not, clear thine eye to see this great eagle soar into the

higher region where forms arrange themselves for stellar dance and

spheral melody,--and thought, with costly-accelerated motion, raises

itself a spiral which can only end in the heart of the Supreme.

He who finds in himself no fitness to study Dante in this way, should

regard himself as in the position of a candidate for the ancient

mysteries, when rejected as unfit for initiation. He should seek in

other ways to purify, expand, and strengthen his being, and, when he

feels that he is nobler and stronger, return and try again whether he is

"grown up to it," as the Germans say.

"The difficulty is in the thoughts;" and this cannot be obviated by the

most minute acquaintance with the history of the times. Comparison of

one edition with another is of use, as a guard against obstructions

through mistake. Still more useful will be the method recommended by Mr.

Cary, of comparing the Poet with himself; this belongs to the

intellectual method, and is the way in which to study our intellectual

friend.

The versions of Cary and Lyell will be found of use to the student, if

he wants to compare his ideas with those of accomplished

fellow-students. The poems in the London book would aid much in a full

appreciation of the comedy; they ought to be read in the original, but

copies are not easily to be met here, unless in the great libraries. The

Vita Nuova is the noblest expression extant of the inward life of Love,

the best preface and comment to every thing else that Dante did.

'Tis pity that the designs of Flaxman are so poorly reproduced in this

American book. It would have been far better to have had it a little

dearer, and thus better done. The designs of Flaxman were really a noble

comment upon Dante, and might help to interpret him; and we are sorry

that those who can see only a few of them should see them so

imperfectly. But in some, as in that of the meeting with Farinata, the

expression cannot be destroyed while one line of the original remained.

The "lost portrait" we do not like as preface to "La Divina Comedia." To

that belongs our accustomed object of reverence, the head of Dante, such

as the Florentine women saw him, when they thought his hair and beard

were still singed, his face dark and sublime with what he had seen

_below_.

Prefixed to the other book is a head "from a cast taken after death at

Ravenna, A. D. 1321." It has the grandeur which death sometimes puts on;

the fulness of past life is there, but made sacred in Eternity. It is

also the only front view of Dante we have seen. It is not unworthy to

mark the point

"When vigor failed the towering fantasy,

But yet the will rolled onward, like a wheel

In even motion by the love impelled

That moves the sun in heaven, and all the stars."

We ought to say, in behalf of this publication, that whosoever wants

Cary's version will rejoice, at last, as do we, to possess it in so fair

and legible guise.

Before leaving the Italians, we must mourn over the misprints of our

homages to the great tragedian in the preceding review. Our manuscripts

being as illegible as if we were a great genius, we never complain of

these errata, except when we are made to reverse our meaning on some

vital point. We did not say that Alfieri was perfect _in person_, nor

sundry other things that are there; but we do mourn at seeming to say of

our friends, "_Why_ they felt they care little, but _what_ they felt

they _scarcely_ knew," when in fact we asserted, "what they felt they

_surely_ knew."

In the article on the Celestial Empire we had made this assertion of the

Chinese music: "Like _their_ poetry, the music is of the narrowest

monotony;" in place of which stands this assertion: "Like _true_ poetry,

their music is of the narrowest monotony." But we trust the most

careless reader would not think the merely human mind capable of so

original a remark, and will put this blasphemy to account of that little

demon who has so much to answer for in the sufferings of poor writers

before they can get their thoughts to the eyes of their

fellow-creatures, in print, that there seems scarcely a chance of his

being redeemed as long as there is one author in existence to accuse

him.[11]

AMERICAN FACTS.

Such is the title of a volume just issued from the press; a grand title,

which suggests the epic poet or the philosopher. The purpose of the

work, however, is modest. It is merely a compilation, from which those

who have lived at some distance from the great highway may get answers

to their questions, as to events and circumstances which may have

escaped them. It is one of those books which will be valued in the

backwoods.

It would be a great book indeed, and one that would require the eye and

heart of a great man,--great as a judge, great as a seer, and great as a

prophet,--that should select for us and present in harmonious outline

the true American facts. To choose the right point of view supposes

command of the field.

Such a man must be attentive, a quiet observer of the slighter signs of

growth. But he must not be one to dwell superstitiously on details, nor

one to hasten to conclusions. He must have the eye of the eagle, the

courage of the lion, the patience of the worm, and faith such as is the

prerogative of man alone, and of man in the highest phase of his

culture.

We doubt not the destiny of our country--that she is to accomplish great

things for human nature, and be the mother of a nobler race than the

world has yet known. But she has been so false to the scheme made out at

her nativity, that it is now hard to say which way that destiny points.

We can hardly exhibit the true American facts without some idea of the

real character of America. Only one thing seems clear--that the energy

here at work is very great, though the men employed in carrying out its

purposes may have generally no more individual ambition to understand

those purposes, or cherish noble ones of their own, than the coral

insect through whose restless working new continents are upheaved from

ocean's breast.

Such a man, passing in a boat from one extremity of the Mississippi to

another, and observing every object on the shore as he passed, would yet

learn nothing of universal or general value, because he has no

principles, even in hope, by which to classify them. American facts!

Why, what has been done that marks individuality? Among men there is

Franklin. He is a fact, and an American fact. Niagara is another, in a

different style. The way in which newspapers and other periodicals are

managed is American; a go-ahead, fearless adroitness is American; so is

_not_, exclusively, the want of strict honor. But we look about in vain

for traits as characteristic of what may be individually the character

of the nation, as we can find at a glance in reference to Spain,

England, France, or Turkey. America is as yet but a European babe; some

new ways and motions she has, consequent on a new position; but that

soul that may shape her mature life scarce begins to know itself yet.

One thing is certain; we live in a large place, no less morally than

physically: woe to him who lives meanly here, and knows the exhibitions

of selfishness and vanity as the only American facts.

NAPOLEON AND HIS MARSHALS.[12]

As we pass the old Brick Chapel our eye is sometimes arrested by

placards that hang side by side. On one is advertised "the Lives of the

Apostles," on the other "Napoleon and his Marshals."

Surely it is the most monstrous thing the world ever saw, that eighteen

hundred years' profound devotion to a religious teacher should not

preclude flagrant and all but universal violation of his most obvious

precepts; that Napoleon and his Marshals should be some of the best

ripened fruit of our time; that our own people, so unwearied in building

up temples of wood and stone to the Prince of Peace, should be at this

era mad with boyish exultation at the winning of battles, and in a bad

cause too.

In view of such facts we cannot wonder that Dr. Channing, the editor of

the Tribune, and others who make Christianity their standard, should

find little savor in glowing expositions of the great French drama, and

be disgusted at words of defence, still more of admiration, spoken in

behalf of its leading actor.

We can easily admit at once that the whole French drama was

anti-Christian, just as the political conduct of every nation of

Christendom has been thus far, with rare and brief exceptions. Something

different might have been expected from our own, because the world has

now attained a clearer consciousness of right, and in our case our

position would have made obedience easy. We have not been led into

temptation; we sought it. It is greed, and not want, that has impelled

this nation to wrong. The paths of peace would have been for her also

the paths of wisdom and of pleasantness, but she would not, and has

preferred the path of the beast of prey in the uncertain forest, to the

green pastures where "walks the good Shepherd, his meek temples crowned

with roses red and white."

Since the state of things is such, we see no extremity of censure that

should fall upon the great French leader, except that he was like the

majority. He was ruthless and selfish on a larger scale than most

monarchs; but we see no difference in grain, nor in principles of

action.

Admit, then, that he was not a good man, and never for one moment acted

disinterestedly. But do not refuse to do homage to his genius. It is

well worth your while to learn to appreciate _that_, if you wish to

understand the work that the spirit of the time did, and is still doing,

through him; for his mind is still upon the earth, working here through

the tributary minds it fed. We must say, for our own part, we cannot

admit the right of men severely to criticise Napoleon, till they are

able to appreciate what he was, as well as see what he was not. And we

see no mind of sufficient grasp, or high-placed enough to take this

estimate duly, nor do we believe this age will furnish one. Many

problems will have to be worked out first.

We reject the exclusively moral no less than the exclusively

intellectual view, and find most satisfaction in those who, aiming

neither at apology nor attack, make their observations upon the great

phenomenon as partial, and to be received as partial.

Mr. Headley, in his first surprise at finding how falsely John Bull,

rarely liberal enough to be fully trusted in evidence on any topic, has

spoken of the acts of a hated and dreaded foe, does indeed rush too much

on the other side. He mistakes the touches of sentiment in Napoleon for

genuine feeling. Now we know that Napoleon loved to read Ossian, and

could appreciate the beauty of tenderness: but we do not believe that he

had one particle of what is properly termed heart;--that is, he could

always silence sentiment at once when his projects demanded it. Then Mr.

Headley finds apologies for acts where apology is out of place. They

characterize the ruthless nature of the man, and that is all that can be

said of them. He moved on, like the Juggernaut car, to his end, and

spilled the blood that was needed for this, whether that blood were

"ditch-water" or otherwise. Neither is this supposing him to be a

monster. The human heart is very capable of such uncontrolled

selfishness, just as it is of angelic love. "'Tis but the first step

that costs"--_much_. Yet some compassionate hand strewed flowers on

Nero's grave, and the whole world cried shame when Bonaparte's Mameluke

forsook his master.

Mr. Headley does not seem to be aware that there is no trust to be put

in Napoleon's own account of his actions. He seems to have been almost

incapable of speaking sincerely to those about him. We doubt whether he

could have forgotten with the woman he loved, that she might become his

historiographer.

But granting the worst that can be said of ruthless acts in the stern

Corsican, are we to reserve our anathema for him alone? He is no worse

than the other crowned ones, against whom he felt himself continually in

the balance. He has shed a greater quantity of blood, and done mightier

wrongs, because he had more power, and followed with more fervor a more

dazzling lure. We see no other difference between his conduct and that

of the great Frederic of Prussia. He never did any thing so meanly

wicked as has just been done in stirring up the Polish peasants to

assassinate the nobles. He never did any thing so atrocious as has been

done by Nicholas of Russia, who, just after his hypocritical intercourse

with that "venerable man," the Pope, when he so zealously defended

himself against the charge of scourging nuns to convert them to the

Greek church, administers the knout to a noble and beautiful lady

because she had given shelter for an hour to the patriot Dembinski. Why

then so zealous against Napoleon only? He is but a specimen of what man

must become when he _will_ be king over the bodies, where he cannot over

the souls, of his fellow-men. We doubt if it is any worse in the sight

of God to drain France of her best blood by the conscription, than to

tear the flower of Genius from the breast of Italy to perish in a

dungeon, leaving her overwhelmed and broken-hearted. Leaving all this

aside, and granting that Napoleon might have done more and better, had

his heart been pure from ambition, which gave it such electric power to

animate a vast field of being, there is no reason why we should not

prize what he did do. And here we think Mr. Headley's style the only one

in place. We honor him for the power he shows of admiring the genius

which, in ploughing its gigantic furrow, broke up every artificial

barrier that hid the nations of Europe one from the other--that has left

the "career open to talent," by a gap so broad that no "Chinese

alliance" can ever close it again, and in its vast plans of civic

improvement half-anticipated Fourier. With him all _thoughts_ became

_things_; it has been spoken in blame, it has been spoken in praise; for

ourselves we see not how this most practical age and country can refuse

to apprehend the designs, and study the instincts of this wonderful

practical genius.

The characters of the marshals are kept up with the greatest spirit, and

that power of seizing leading traits that gives these sketches the

greatness of dramatic poetry. The marshals are majestic figures; men

vulgar and undeveloped on many sides, but always clear and strong in

their own way. One mind animates them, and of that mind Napoleon is the

culminating point. He did not choose them; they were a part of himself,

a part of the same thought of which he was the most forcible

expression. If sometimes inclined to disparage them, it was as a man

might disparage his hand by saying it was not his head. He truly felt

that he was the central force, though some of them were greater in the

details of action than himself. Attempts have often been made to darken

even the military fame of Napoleon and his generals--attempts

disgraceful enough from a foe whom they so long held in terror. But to

any unprejudiced mind there is evident in the conduct of their battles,

the development of the instincts of genius in mighty force, and to

inevitable results.

With all the haste of hand and inequality of touch they show, these

sketches are full of strength and brilliancy, an honor to the country

that produced them. There is no got-up harmony, no attempt at

originality or acuteness; all is living,--the overflow of the mind; we

like Mr. Headley; even in his faults he is a most agreeable contrast to

the made men of the day.

In the sketches of the Marshals we have the men before us, a living

reality. Massena, at the siege of Genoa, is represented with a great

deal of simple force. The whole personality of Murat, with his "Oriental

nature" and Oriental dress, is admirably depicted. Why had nobody ever

before had the clearness of perception to see just this, _and no more_,

in the "theatrical" Murat? Of his darling hero, Ney, the writer has

implied so much all along, that he lays less stress on what he says of

him directly. He thinks it is all understood, and it is.

Take this book for just what it is; do not look for cool discussion,

impartial criticism, but take it as a vivacious and feeling

representation of events and actors in a great era: you will find it

full of truth, such as only sympathy could teach, and will derive from

it a pleasure and profit lively and genuine as itself. As to denying or

correcting its statements, it is very desirable that those who are able

should do that part of the work; but, in doing it, let them be grateful

for what _is_ done, and what _they_ could not do; grateful for

reproduction such as he who throws himself into the genius and the

persons of the time may hope for; but he never can who keeps himself

composed in critical distance and self-possession. You cannot have all

excellences combined in one person; let us then cheerfully work together

to complete the beautiful whole,--beautiful in its unity,--no less

beautiful in its variety.

PHYSICAL EDUCATION.[13]

This lecture of Dr. Warren is printed in a form suitable for popular

distribution, while the high reputation of its author insures it

respect. Readers will expect to find here those rules for daily practice

taught by that plain common-sense which men possess from nature, but

strangely lose sight of, amid their many inventions, and are obliged to

rediscover by aid of experience and science.

Here will be found those general statements as to modes of exercise,

care of the skin, choice of food, and time, and circumstances required

for its digestion, which might furnish the ounce of prevention that is

worth so many pounds of cure. And how much are these needed in this

country, where the most barbarous ignorance prevails on the subject of

cleanliness, sleeping accommodations, &c.! On these subjects improvement

would be easy; that of diet is far more complicated, and is,

unfortunately, one which requires great knowledge of the ways in which

the human frame is affected by the changes of climate and various other

influences, even wisely to discuss. If it is difficult where a race,

mostly indigenous to the soil, feed upon what Mother Nature has prepared

expressly for their use, and where excess or want of judgment in its use

produces disease, it must be far more so where men come from all

latitudes to live under new circumstances, and need a judicious

adaptation of the old to the new. The dogmatism and proscription that

prevail on this topic amuse the observer and distress the patient.

"Touch no meat for your life," says one. "It is not meat, but sugar,

that is your ruin," cries another. "No, salt is the destruction of the

world," sadly and gravely declares a third. Milk, which once conciliated

all regards, has its denunciators. "Water," say some, "is the bliss that

shall dissolve all bane. Drink; wash--take to yourself all the water you

can get." "That is madness--is far worse than useless," cry others,

"unless the water be pure. You must touch none that has not been tested

by a chemist." "Yes, you may at any rate drink it," say others, "and in

large quantities, for the power of water to aid digestion is obvious to

every observer."

"No," says Dr. Warren, "animals do not drink at the time they eat, but

some hours after; and they generally take very small quantities of

liquid, compared with that which is used by man. The savage, in his

native wilds, takes his solid food, when he can obtain it, to satiety,

reposes afterwards, and then resuming his chase through the forest,

stops at the rivulet to allay his thirst. The disadvantage of taking a

large quantity of liquid must be obvious to all those who consider that

the digesting liquid is diluted and weakened in proportion to the

quantity of drink."

What wonder is it, if even the well-disposed among the multitude, seeing

such dissension among the counsellors, gathering just enough from their

disputes to infer that they have no true philosophical basis for their

opinions, and seeing those who would set the example in practice of this

art without science of dietetics generally among the most morbid and

ill-developed specimens of humanity, just throw aside all rule upon the

subject, partake of what is set before them, trust to air, exercise, and

good intentions to ward off the worst effects of the promiscuous fare?

Yet, while hopeless at present of selecting the right articles, and

building up, so far as hereditary taint will permit, a pure and

healthful body from feeding on congenial substances, we know at least

this much, that stimulants and over-eating--not food--are injurious, and

may take care enough of ourselves to avoid these.

The other branches we can really act wisely in, Dr. Warren, after giving

the usual directions (rarely followed as yet) for airing beds, and

sleeping-rooms, adds,--

"The manner in which children sleep will readily be acknowledged to be

important; yet very little attention is paid to this matter. Children

are crowded together in small, unventilated rooms, often two or three in

a bed, and on beds composed of half prepared feathers, from which issues

a noxious effluvia, infecting the child at a period when he is least

able to resist its influence; so that in the morning, instead of feeling

the full refreshment and vigor natural to his age, he is pale, languid,

and for some time indisposed to exertion.

"The rooms in which children are brought up should be well aired, by

having a fireplace, which should be kept open the greater part of the

year. There never should be more than one in the same bed; and this

remark may be applied with equal propriety to adults. The substance on

which they lie should be hair, thoroughly prepared, so that it should

have no bad smell. In winter it may be of cotton, or of hair and cotton.

It would be very desirable, however, to place children in separate

apartments, as well as in separate beds.

"It has been justly said that adults as well as children had better

employ single instead of double beds; this remark is intended to apply

universally. The use of double beds has been very generally adopted in

this country, perhaps in part as a matter of economy; but this practice

is objectionable, for more reasons than can be stated here."

On the subject of exercise, he mentions particularly the triangle, and

we copy what he says, because of the perfect ease and convenience with

which one could be put up and used in every bed-chamber.

"The exercising the upper limbs is too much neglected; and it is

important to provide the means of bringing them into action, as well to

develop their powers as to enlarge and invigorate the chest, with which

they are connected, and which they powerfully influence. The best I know

of is the use of the triangle. This admirably exerts the upper limbs and

the muscles of the chest, and, indeed, when adroitly employed, those of

the whole body. The triangle is made of a stick of walnut wood, four

feet long, and an inch and a half in diameter. To each end is connected

a rope, the opposite extremities of which being confined together at

such height as to allow the motion of swinging by the hands."

We have ourselves derived the greatest benefit from this simple means.

Gymnastic exercises, and if possible in the open air, are needed by

every one who is not otherwise led to exercise all parts of the body by

various kinds of labor. Some, though only partial provision, is made for

boys by gymnasia and riding-schools. In wiser nations, such have been

the care of the state. And in despotic governments, the jealousy of a

tyrant was never more justly awakened than when the youth of the land,

by a devotion to gymnastic exercises, showed their aspiration to reach

the healthful stature of manhood. For every one who possesses a strong

mind in a sane body is heir presumptive to the kingdom of this world; he

needs no external credentials, but has only to appear and make clear his

title. But for such a princely form the eye searches the street, the

mart, and the council-chamber, in vain.

Those who feel that the game of life is so nearly up with them that they

cannot devote much of the time that is left to the care of wise living

in their own persons, should, at least, be unwilling to injure the next

generation by the same ignorance which has blighted so many of us in our

earliest year. Such should attend to the work of Mr. Combe,[14] among

other good books. Mr. Combe has done much good already in this country,

and this book should be circulated every where, for many of its

suggestions are too obviously just not to be adopted as soon as read.

Dr. Warren bears his testimony against the pernicious effects that

follow upon the use of tobacco, and we cannot but hope that what he says

of its tendency to create cancer will have weight with some who are

given to the detestable habit of chewing. This practice is so odious to

women, that we must regard its prevalence here as a token of the very

light regard in which they are held, and the consequent want of

refinement among men. Dr. Warren seems to favor the practice of

hydropathy to some extent, but must needs bear his testimony in full

against homoeopathy. No matter; the little doses will insinuate their

way, and cure the ills that flesh is heir to,

"For a' that, and a' that,

And mickle mair for a' that."

FREDERICK DOUGLASS.[15]

Frederick Douglass has been for some time a prominent member of the

abolition party. He is said to be an excellent speaker--can speak from a

thorough personal experience--and has upon the audience, besides, the

influence of a strong character and uncommon talents. In the book before

us he has put into the story of his life the thoughts, the feelings, and

the adventures that have been so affecting through the living voice; nor

are they less so from the printed page. He has had the courage to name

persons, times, and places, thus exposing himself to obvious danger, and

setting the seal on his deep convictions as to the religious need of

speaking the whole truth. Considered merely as a narrative, we have

never read one more simple, true, coherent, and warm with genuine

feeling. It is an excellent piece of writing, and on that score to be

prized as a specimen of the powers of the black race, which prejudice

persists in disputing. We prize highly all evidence of this kind, and it

is becoming more abundant. The cross of the Legion of Honor has just

been conferred in France on Dumas and Soulie, both celebrated in the

paths of light literature. Dumas, whose father was a general in the

French army, is a mulatto; Soulie, a quadroon. He went from New Orleans,

where, though to the eye a white man, yet, as known to have African

blood in his veins, he could never have enjoyed the privileges due to a

human being. Leaving the land of freedom, he found himself free to

develop the powers that God had given.

Two wise and candid thinkers--the Scotchman Kinmont, prematurely lost to

this country, of which he was so faithful and generous a student, and

the late Dr. Channing,--both thought that the African race had in them a

peculiar element, which, if it could be assimilated with those imported

among us from Europe, would give to genius a development, and to the

energies of character a balance and harmony, beyond what has been seen

heretofore in the history of the world. Such an element is indicated in

their lowest estate by a talent for melody, a ready skill at imitation

and adaptation, an almost indestructible elasticity of nature. It is to

be remarked in the writings both of Soulie and Dumas, full of faults,

but glowing with plastic life and fertile in invention. The same torrid

energy and saccharine fulness may be felt in the writings of this

Douglass, though his life, being one of action or resistance, has been

less favorable to _such_ powers than one of a more joyous flow might

have been.

The book is prefaced by two communications--one from Garrison, and one

from Wendell Phillips. That from the former is in his usual

over-emphatic style. His motives and his course have been noble and

generous; we look upon him with high respect; but he has indulged in

violent invective and denunciation till he has spoiled the temper of his

mind. Like a man who has been in the habit of screaming himself hoarse

to make the deaf hear, he can no longer pitch his voice on a key

agreeable to common ears. Mr. Phillips's remarks are equally decided,

without this exaggeration in the tone. Douglass himself seems very just

and temperate. We feel that his view, even of those who have injured him

most, may be relied upon. He knows how to allow for motives and

influences. Upon the subject of religion, he speaks with great force,

and not more than our own sympathies can respond to. The inconsistencies

of slaveholding professors of religion cry to Heaven. We are not

disposed to detest, or refuse communion with them. Their blindness is

but one form of that prevalent fallacy which substitutes a creed for a

faith, a ritual for a life. We have seen too much of this system of

atonement not to know that those who adopt it often began with good

intentions, and are, at any rate, in their mistakes worthy of the

deepest pity. But that is no reason why the truth should not be uttered,

trumpet-tongued, about the thing. "Bring no more vain oblations;"

sermons must daily be preached anew on that text. Kings, five hundred

years ago, built churches with the spoils of war; clergymen to-day

command slaves to obey a gospel which they will not allow them to read,

and call themselves Christians amid the curses of their fellow-men. The

world ought to get on a little faster than this, if there be really any

principle of improvement in it. The kingdom of heaven may not at the

beginning have dropped seed larger than a mustard-seed, but even from

that we had a right to expect a fuller growth than we can believe to

exist, when we read such a book as this of Douglass. Unspeakably

affecting is the fact that he never saw his mother at all by daylight.

"I do not recollect of ever seeing my mother by the light of day. She

was with me in the night. She would lie down with me, and get me to

sleep, but long before I waked she was gone."

The following extract presents a suitable answer to the hackneyed

argument drawn by the defender of slavery from the songs of the slave,

and is also a good specimen of the powers of observation and manly heart

of the writer. We wish that every one may read his book, and see what a

mind might have been stifled in bondage--what a man may be subjected to

the insults of spendthrift dandies, or the blows of mercenary brutes, in

whom there is no whiteness except of the skin, no humanity except in the

outward form, and of whom the Avenger will not fail yet to demand,

"Where is thy brother?"

"The Home Plantation of Colonel Lloyd wore the appeaance of a country

village. All the mechanical operations for all the farms were performed

here. The shoemaking and mending, the blacksmithing, cartwrighting,

coopering, weaving, and grain-grinding, were all performed by the slaves

on the Home Plantation. The whole place wore a business-like aspect very

unlike the neighboring farms. The number of houses, too, conspired to

give it advantage over the neighboring farms. It was called by the

slaves the _Great House Farm_. Few privileges were esteemed higher, by

the slaves of the out-farms, than that of being selected to do errands

at the Great House Farm. It was associated in their minds with

greatness. A representative could not be prouder of his election to a

seat in the American Congress, than a slave on one of the out-farms

would be of his election to do errands at the Great House Farm. They

regarded it as evidence of great confidence reposed in them by their

overseers; and it was on this account, as well as a constant desire to

be out of the field, from under the driver's lash, that they esteemed it

a high privilege, one worth careful living for. He was called the

smartest and most trusty fellow who had this honor conferred upon him

the most frequently. The competitors for this office sought as

diligently to please their overseers as the office-seekers in the

political parties seek to please and deceive the people. The same traits

of character might be seen in Colonel Lloyd's slaves, as are seen in the

slaves of the political parties.

"The slaves selected to go to the Great House Farm, for the monthly

allowance for themselves and their fellow-slaves, were peculiarly

enthusiastic. While on their way, they would make the dense old woods,

for miles around, reverberate with their wild songs, revealing at once

the highest joy and the deepest sadness. They would compose and sing as

they went along, consulting neither time nor tune. The thought that came

up came out,--if not in the word, in the sound,--and as frequently in

the one as in the other. They would sometimes sing the most pathetic

sentiment in the most rapturous tone, and the most rapturous sentiment

in the most pathetic tone. Into all their songs they would manage to

weave something of the Great House Farm. Especially would they do this

when leaving home. They would then sing most exultingly the following

words:--

'I am going away to the Great House Farm!

O, yea! O, yea! O!'

This they would sing as a chorus to words which to many would seem

unmeaning jargon, but which, nevertheless, were full of meaning to

themselves. I have sometimes thought that the mere hearing of those

songs would do more to impress some minds with the horrible character of

slavery, than the reading of whole volumes of philosophy on the subject

could do.

"I did not, when a slave, understand the deep meaning of those rude and

apparently incoherent songs. I was myself within the circle; so that I

neither saw nor heard as those without might see and hear. They told a

tale of woe which was then altogether beyond my feeble comprehension;

they were tones loud, long, and deep; they breathed the prayer and

complaint of souls boiling over with the bitterest anguish. Every tone

was a testimony against slavery, and a prayer to God for deliverance

from chains. The hearing of those wild notes always depressed my spirit,

and filled me with ineffable sadness. I have frequently found myself in

tears while hearing them. The mere recurrence to those songs, even now,

afflicts me; and while I am writing these lines, an expression of

feeling has already found its way down my cheek. To those songs I trace

my first glimmering conception of the dehumanizing character of slavery.

I can never get rid of that conception. Those songs still follow me, to

deepen my hatred of slavery, and quicken my sympathies for my brethren

in bonds. If any one wishes to be impressed with the soul-killing

effects of slavery, let him go to Colonel Lloyd's plantation, and, on

allowance day, place himself in the deep pine woods, and there let him,

in silence, analyze the sounds that shall pass through the chambers of

his soul; and if he is not thus impressed, it will only be because

'there is no flesh in his obdurate heart.'

"I have often been utterly astonished, since I came to the north, to

find persons who could speak of the singing among slaves as evidence of

their contentment and happiness. It is impossible to conceive of a

greater mistake. Slaves sing most when they are most unhappy. The songs

of the slave represent the sorrows of his heart; and he is relieved by

them only as an aching heart is relieved by its tears. At least, such is

my experience. I have often sung to drown my sorrow, but seldom to

express my happiness. Crying for joy and singing for joy were alike

uncommon to me while in the jaws of slavery. The singing of a man cast

away upon a desolate island might be as appropriately considered as

evidence of contentment and happiness, as the singing of a slave; the

songs of the one and of the other are prompted by the same emotion."

PHILIP VAN ARTEVELDE.[16]

These volumes have met with as warm a reception "as ever unripe author's

quick conceit," to use Mr. Taylor's own language, could hope or wish;

and so deservedly, that the critic's happy task, in examining them, is

to point out, not what is most to be blamed, but what is most to be

praised.

With joy we hail a new poet. Star after star has been withdrawn from our

firmament, and when that of Coleridge set, we seemed in danger of being

left, at best, to a gray and confounding twilight; but, lo! a "ray of

pure white light" darts across the obscured depths of ether, and allures

our eyes and hearts towards the rising orb from which it emanates. Let

us tremble no more lest our summer pass away without its roses, but

receive our present visitor as the harbinger of a harvest of delights.

The natural process of the mind in forming a judgment is comparison. The

office of sound criticism is to teach that this comparison should be

made, not between the productions of differently-constituted minds, but

between any one of these and a fixed standard of perfection.

Nevertheless it is not contrary to the canon to take a survey of the

labors of many artists with reference to one, if we value them, not

according to the degree of pleasure we have experienced from them, which

must always depend upon our then age, the state of the passions and

relations with life, but according to the success of the artist in

attaining the object he himself had in view. To illustrate: In the same

room hang two pictures, Raphael's Madonna and Martin's Destruction of

Nineveh. A person enters, capable of admiring both, but young,

excitable; he is delighted with the Madonna, but probably far more so

with the other, because his imagination is at that time more developed

than the pure love for beauty which is the characteristic of a taste in

a higher state of cultivation. He prefers the Martin, because it excites

in his mind a thousand images of sublimity and terror, recalls the

brilliancy of Oriental history, and the stern pomp of the old prophetic

day, and rouses his mind to a high state of action, _then_ as congenial

with its wants as at a later day would be the feeling of contented

absorption, of perfect satisfaction with a production of the human soul,

which one of Raphael's calmly beautiful creations is fitted to cause.

Now, it would be very unfair for this person to pronounce the Martin

superior to the Raphael, because it then gave him more pleasure. But if

he said, the one is intended to excite the imagination, the other to

gratify the taste, that which fulfils its object most completely must be

the best, whether it give me most pleasure or no; he would be on the

right ground, and might consider the two pictures relatively to one

another, without danger of straying very far from the truth.

_This_ is the ground we would assume in a hasty sketch, which will not,

we hope, be deemed irrelevant, of the most prominent essays to which the

last sixty years have given rise in the department of the work now

before us, previous to stating our opinion of its merits. Many, we are

aware, ridicule the idea of filling reviews with long dissertations, and

say they only want brief accounts of such books as are coming out, by

way of saving time. With such we cannot agree. We think the office of

the reviewer is, indeed, in part, to point out to the public attention

deserving works, which might otherwise slumber too long unknown on the

bookseller's shelves, but still more to present to the reader as large a

cluster of objects round one point as possible, thus, by suggestion,

stimulating him to take a broader or more careful view of the subject

than his indolence or his business would have permitted.

The terms Classical and Romantic, which have so long divided European

critics, and exercised so powerful an influence upon their decisions,

are not much known or heeded among us,--as, indeed, _belles-lettres_

cannot, generally, in our busy state of things, be important or

influential, as among a less free and more luxurious people, to whom the

more important truths are proffered through those indirect but alluring

mediums. Here, where every thing may be spoken or written, and the

powers that be, abused without ceremony on the very highway, the Muse

has nothing to do with dagger or bowl; hardly is the censor's wand

permitted to her hand. Yet is her lyre by no means unheeded, and if it

is rather by refining our tastes than by modelling our opinions that she

influences us, yet is that influence far from unimportant. And the time

is coming, perhaps in our day, we may (if war do not untimely check the

national progress) even see and temper its beginning, when the broad

West shall swarm with an active, happy, and cultivated population; when

the South, freed from the incubus which now oppresses her best energies,

shall be able to do justice to the resources of her soil and of her

mind; when the East, gathering from every breeze the riches of the old

world, shall be the unwearied and loving agent to those regions which

lie far away from the great deep, our bulwark and our minister. Then

will the division of labor be more complete; then will a surplus of

talent be spared from the mart, the forum, and the pulpit; then will the

fine arts assume their proper dignity, as the expression of what is

highest and most ethereal in the mind of a people. Then will our

quarries be thoroughly explored, and furnish materials for stately

fabrics to adorn the face of all the land, while our ports shall be

crowded with foreign artists flocking to take lessons in the school of

American architecture. Then will our floral treasures be arranged into

harmonious gardens, which, environing tasteful homes, shall dimple all

the landscape. Then will our Allstons and our Greenoughs preside over

great academies, and be raised far above any need, except of giving

outward form to the beautiful ideas which animate them; and ornament

from the exhaustless stores of genius the marble halls where the people

meet to rejoice, or to mourn, or where dwell those wise and good whom

the people delight to honor. Then shall music answer to and exalt the

national spirit, and the poet's brows shall be graced with the civic as

well as the myrtle crown. Then shall we have an American mind, as well

as an American system, and, no longer under the sad necessity of

exchanging money for thoughts, traffic on perfectly equal terms with the

other hemisphere. Then--ah, not yet!--shall our literature make its own

laws, and give its own watchwords; till then we must learn and borrow

from that of nations who possess a higher degree of cultivation though a

much lower one of happiness.

The term Classical, used in its narrow sense, implies a servile

adherence to the Unities, but in its wide and best sense, it means such

a simplicity of plan, selection of actors and events, such judicious

limitations on time and range of subject, as may concentrate the

interest, perfect the illusion, and make the impression most distinct

and forcible. Although no advocates for the old French school, with its

slavish obedience to rule, which introduces follies greater than those

it would guard against, we lay the blame, not on their view of the

drama, but on the then bigoted nationality of the French mind, which

converted the Mussulman prophet into a De Retz, the Roman princess into

a French grisette, and infected the clear and buoyant atmosphere of

Greece with the vapors of the Seine. We speak of the old French Drama:

with the modern we do not profess to be acquainted, having met with

scarcely any specimens in our own bookstores or libraries; but if it

has been revolutionized with the rest of their literature, it is

probably as unlike as possible to the former models.

We shall speak of productions in the classical spirit first; because Mr.

Taylor is a disciple of the other school, though otherwise we should

have adopted a contrary course.

The most perfect specimens of this style with which we are acquainted

are the Filippo, the Saul, and the Myrrha of Alfieri; the Wallenstein of

Schiller; the Tasso and the Iphigenia of Goethe. England furnishes

nothing of the sort. She is thoroughly Shakspearian.

There is no higher pleasure than to see a genius of a wild, impassioned,

many-sided eagerness, restraining its exuberance by its sense of

fitness, taming its extravagance beneath the rule its taste approves,

exhibiting the soul within soul, and the force of the will over all that

we inherit. The _abandon_ of genius has its beauty--far more beautiful

its voluntary submission to wise law. A picture, a description, has

beauty, the beauty of life; these pictures, these descriptions, arranged

upon a plan, made subservient to a purpose, have a higher beauty--that

of the mind of man acting upon life. Art is nature, but nature

new-modelled, condensed, and harmonized. We are not merely like mirrors,

to reflect our own times to those more distant. The mind has a light of

its own, and by it illumines what it re-creates.

This is the ground of our preference for the classical school, and for

Alfieri beyond all pupils of that school. We hold that if a vagrant bud

of poesy here and there be blighted by conforming to its rules, our loss

is more than made up to us by our enjoyment of plan, of symmetry, of the

triumph of genius over multiplied obstacles.

It has been often said that the dramas of Alfieri contrast directly with

his character. This is, perhaps, not true; we do but see the depths of

that volcano which in early days boiled over so fiercely. The wild,

infatuated youth often becomes the stern, pitiless old man. Alfieri did

but bend his surplus strength upon literature, and became a despot to

his own haughty spirit, instead of domineering over those of others.

We have selected his three masterpieces, though he, to himself an

inexorable critic, has shown no indulgence to his own works, and the

least successful of those which remain to us, Maria Stuarda, is marked

by great excellence.

Filippo has been so ably depicted in a work now well known, "Carlyle's

Life of Schiller," that we need not dwell upon it. All the light of the

picture, the softer feelings of the hapless Carlos and Elizabeth, is so

cast, as to make more visible the awing darkness of the tyrant's

perverted mind, deadened to all virtue by a false religion, cold and

hopeless as the dungeons of his own Inquisition, and relentless as

death. Forced by the magic wand of genius into the stifling precincts of

this mind, horror-struck that we must sympathize with such a state as

possible to humanity, we rush from the contemplation of the picture, and

would gladly curtain it over in our hall of imagery forever. Yet

stigmatize not our poet as a dark master, courting the shade, and hating

the glad lights which love and hope cast upon human nature. The drama

has a holy meaning, a patriot moral, and we, above all, should reverence

him, the aristocrat by birth, by education, and by tastes, whose love of

liberty could lead him to such conclusions.

In "Saul," a bright rainbow rises, by the aid of the Sun of

Righteousness, above the commotion of the tempest. David, the faithful,

the hopeful, combining the aesthetic culture, the winged inspiration of

the poet with the noble pride of Israel's chosen warrior, contrasts

finely with the unfortunate Saul, his mind darkened and convulsed by

jealousy, vain regrets, and fear of the God he has forgotten how to

love. The other three actors shade in the picture without attracting our

attention from the two principal personages. The Hebrew spirit breathes

through the whole. The beauty of the lyric effusions is so generally

felt, that encomium is needless; we shall only observe that in them

Alfieri's style, usually so severe, becomes flexible, melodious, and

glowing; thus we may easily perceive what he might have done, had not

the simplicity of his genius disdained the foreign aid of ornament upon

its Doric proportions.

Myrrha is, however, the highest exertion of his genius. The remoteness

of time and manners, the subject, at once so hackneyed and so revolting,

these great obstacles he seizes with giant grasp, and moulds them to his

purpose. Our souls are shaken to the foundation; all every-day barriers

fall with the great convulsion of passion. We sorrow, we sicken, we die

with the miserable girl, so pure under her involuntary crime of feeling,

pursued by a malignant deity in her soul's most sacred recesses, torn

from all communion with humanity, and the virtue she was framed to

adore. The perfection of plan, the matchless skill with which every

circumstance is brought out! The agonizing rapidity with which her

misery "va camminando al fine"! No! never was higher tragic power

exhibited; never were love, terror, pity, fused into a more penetrating

draught! Myrrha is a favorite acting-play in Italy--a fact inconceivable

to an English or American mind; for (to say nothing of other objections)

we should think such excess of emotion unbearable. But in those meridian

climes they drink deep draughts of passion too frequently to taste them

as we do.

We pass to works of far inferior power, but of greater beauty. We have

selected Iphigenia and Tasso as the most finished results of their

author's mature views of art. On his plays in the Romantic style, we

shall touch in another place. If any one ask why we do not class Faust

with either, we reply, that is a work without a parallel; one of those

few originals which have their laws within themselves, and should always

be discussed singly.

The unity of plan in Iphigenia is perfect. There is one pervading idea.

The purity of Iphigenia's mind must be kept unsullied, that she may be a

fit intercessor to the gods in behalf of her polluted family. Goethe,

in his travels through Italy, saw a picture of a youthful Christian

saint--Agatha, we think; struck by the radiant purity of her expression,

he resolved his heathen priestess should not have one thought which

could revolt the saint of the true religion. This idea is wonderfully

preserved throughout a drama so classic in its coloring and manners. The

happiest development of character, an interest in the denouement which

is only so far tempered by our trust in the lovely heroine, as to permit

us to enjoy all the minuter beauties on our way, (this the breathless

interest of Alfieri's dramas hardly allows, on a fourth or fifth

reading,) exquisite descriptive touches, and expressions of sentiment,

unequalled softness and harmony of style, distinguish a drama not to be

surpassed in its own department. Torquato Tasso[17] is of inferior

general, but greater particular beauty. The two worldly, the two higher

characters, with that of Alphonso halting between, are shaded with equal

delicacy and distinctness. The inward-turning imagination of the

ill-fated bard, and the fantastic tricks it plays with life, are painted

as only a poet's soul of equal depth, of greater versatility, could have

painted them. In analysis of the passions, and eloquent descriptions of

their more hidden workings, some parts may vie with Rousseau; while

several effusions of feeling are worthy of Tasso's own lyre, with its

"breaking heartstring's tone." The conduct of the piece being in perfect

accordance with the plan, gives the satisfaction we have mentioned in

speaking of Raphael's Madonna.

Schiller's Wallenstein does not strictly belong to this class, yet we

are disposed to claim it as observing the unities of time and interest;

the latter especially is entire, notwithstanding the many actors and

side-scenes which are introduced. Numberless touches of nature arrest

our attention, bright lights are flashed across many characters, but our

interest, momently increasing, is for Wallenstein--for the perversion,

the danger, the ruin of that monarch soul, that falling son of the

morning. Even that we feel in Max, with his celestial bloom of heart, in

Thekla's sweet trustfulness, is subsidiary. This work, generally known

to the reader through Mr. Coleridge's translation, affords an imperfect

illustration of our meaning. Miss Baillie's plays on the passions hold a

middle place. Unity of purpose there is--no unity of plan or conduct.

Bold, fine outline--very bad coloring. Profound, beautifully-expressed

reflections on the passions--utter want of skill in showing them out; a

thorough feeling, indeed, of the elements of tragedy,--had but the

vitalizing energy been added. Her plays are failures; but since she has

given us nothing else, we cannot but rejoice in having these. 'Tis great

pity that the authoress of De Montfort and Basil should not have

attempted a narrative poem.

Coleridge and Byron are signal instances how peculiar is the kind of

talent required for the drama; one a philosopher, both men of great

genius and uncommon mastery over language, both conversant with each

side of human nature, both considering the drama in its true light as

one of the highest departments of literature, both utterly wanting in

simplicity, pathos, truth of passion and liveliness of action--in that

thrilling utterance of heart to heart, whose absence _here_, no other

excellence can atone for. Of Maturin and Knowles we do not speak,

because theirs, though very good acting plays, are not, like Mr.

Taylor's, written for the closet; of Milman, because not sufficiently

acquainted with his plays. We would here pay a tribute to our countryman

Hillhouse, whose Hadad, read at a very early age, we remember with much

delight. Probably our judgment now might be different; but a work which

could make so deep an impression on any age, must have genius. We are

sorry we have never since met it in any library or parlor, and are not

competent to speak of it more particularly.

It will be seen that Mr. Taylor has not attempted the sort of dramatic

poetry which we consider the highest, but has labored in that which the

great wizard of Avon adopted, because it lay nearest at hand to clothe

his spells withal, and consecrated it, with his world-embracing genius,

to the (in our judgment) no small detriment of his country's taste.

Having thus declared that we cannot grant him our very highest meed of

admiration, (though we will not say that he might not win it if he made

the essay,) we hasten to meet him on his own ground. "Dramatica Poesis

est veluti Historia spectabilis," is his motto, taken from Bacon, who

formed his taste on Shakspeare. We would here mention that Goethe's

earlier works, Goetz von Berlichingen and Egmont are of this

school--brilliant fragments of past days, ballads acted out, historical

scenes and personages clustered round a hero; and we have seen that his

ripened taste preferred the form of Iphigenia and Tasso.

We cannot too strongly express our approbation of the opinions

maintained in his short preface to this work. We rejoice to see a leader

coming forward who is likely to un-Hemansize and un-Cornwallize

literature. We too have been sick, we too have been intoxicated with

_words_ till we could hardly appreciate thoughts; perhaps our present

writing shows traces of this Lower-Empire taste; but we have sense

enough left to welcome the English Phocion, who would regenerate public

feeling. The candor and modest dignity with which these opinions are

offered charm us. The remarks upon Shelley, whom we have loved, and do

still love passing well, brought truth home to us in a definite shape.

With regard to the lowness of Lord Byron's standard of character, every

thing indeed has been said which could be but not as Mr. Taylor has

said it; and we opine that his refined and gentle remarks will find

their way to ears which have always been deaf to the harsh sarcasms

unseasoned by wit, which have been current on this topic.

Our author too, notwithstanding his modest caveat, has acted upon his

principles, and furnished a forcible illustration of their justice. For

dignity of sentiment, for simplicity of manner, for truth to life, never

infringing upon respect for the ideal, we look to such a critic, and we

are not disappointed.

The scene is laid in Ghent, in the fourteenth century. The Flemish

mobocracy are brought before us with a fidelity and animation surpassing

those displayed in Egmont. Their barbarism, and the dissimilar, but not

inferior barbarism of their would-be lords, the bold, bad men, the

shameless crime and brainless tumult of those days, live before us. Amid

these clashing elements moves Philip Van Artevelde, with the presence,

not of a god, but of a great man, too superior to be shaken, too wise to

be shocked by their rude jarrings. He becomes the leader of his people,

and despite pestilence, famine, and their own untutored passions, he

leads them on to victory and power.

In the second part we follow Van Artevelde from his zenith of glory to

his decline. The tarnishing influence of prosperity on his spirit, and

its clear radiance again in adversity, are managed as the noble and

well-defined conception of the character deserves.

The boy king and his courtly, intriguing counsellors are as happily

portrayed as Vauclaire and the fierce commonalty he ruled, or resisted

with rope or sword, as the case might demand.

The two loves of Van Artevelde are finely imagined, as types of the two

states of his character. Both are lovely; the one how elevated! the

other how pity-moving in her loveliness! On the interlude of Elena we

must be allowed to linger fondly, though the author's self condemn our

taste.

We are no longer partial to the machinery of portents and presentiments.

Wallenstein's were the last we liked, but Van Artevelde's make good

poetry, and have historical vouchers. They remind us of those of Fergus

Mac Ivor.

We shall extract a speech of Van Artevelde's, in which a leading idea of

the work is expressed.

Father,--

So! with the chivalry of Christendom

I wage my war,--no nation for my friend,

Yet in each nation having hosts of friends.

The bondsmen of the world, that to their lords

Are bound with chains of iron, unto me

Are knit by their affections. Be it so.

From kings and nobles will I seek no more

Aid, friendship, or alliance. With the poor

I make my treaty; and the heart of man

Sets the broad seal of its allegiance there,

And ratifies the compact. Vassals, serfs,

Ye that are bent with unrequited toil,

Ye that have whitened in the dungeon's darkness,

Through years that know not change of night nor day,

Tatterdemalions, lodgers in the hedge,

Lean beggars with raw backs, and rumbling maws,

Whose poverty was whipped for starving you,--

I hail you my auxiliars and allies,

The only potentates whose help I crave!

Richard of England, thou hast slain Jack Straw,

But thou hast left unquenched the vital spark

That set Jack Straw on fire. The spirit lives;

And as when he of Canterbury fell,

His seat was filled by some no better clerk,

So shall John Ball, that slew him, be replaced.

Fain would we extract Van Artevelde's reply to the French envoy--the

oration of the dying Van den Bosch in the market-place of Ypres, the

last scene between the hero and the double-dyed dastard and traitor, Sir

Heurant of Heurlee, and many, many more, had we but space enough.

We have purposely avoided telling the story, as is usual in an article

of this kind, because we wish that every one should buy and read Van

Artevelde, instead of resting content with the canvas side of the

carpet.

A few words more, and we shall conclude these, we fear, already too

prolonged remarks. We would compare Mr. Taylor with the most applauded

of living dramatists, the Italian Alessandro Manzoni.

To wide and accurate historical knowledge, to purity of taste, to the

greatest elevation of sentiment, Manzoni unites uncommon lyric power,

and a beautiful style in the most beautiful language of the modern

world. The conception of both his plays is striking, the detached

beauties of thought and imagery are many; but where are the life, the

glow, the exciting march of action, the thorough display of character

which charm us in Van Artevelde? We _live_ at Ghent and Senlis; we

_think_ of Italy. Van Artevelde dies,--and our hearts die with him. When

Elena says, "The body,--O!" we could echo that "long, funereal note,"

and weep as if the sun of heroic nobleness were quenched from our own

horizon. "Carmagnola, Adelchis die,"--we calmly shut the book, and think

how much we have enjoyed it. Manzoni can deeply feel goodness and

greatness, but he cannot localize them in the contours of life before

our eyes. His are capital sketches, poems of a deep meaning,--but this,

yes! this _is_ a drama.

We cannot conclude more fitly, nor inculcate a precept on the reader

more forcibly, than in Mr. Taylor's own words, with a slight alteration:

"To say that I admire him is to admit that I owe him much; for

admiration is never thrown away upon the mind of him who feels it,

except when it is misdirected or blindly indulged. There is perhaps

nothing which more enlarges or enriches the mind than the disposition to

lay it genially open to impressions of pleasure, from the exercise of

every species of talent; nothing by which it is more impoverished than

the habit of undue depreciation. What is puerile, pusillanimous, or

wicked, it can do us no good to admire; but let us admire all that can

be admired without debasing the dispositions or stultifying the

understanding."

UNITED STATES EXPLORING EXPEDITION.

Slight as the intercourse held by the Voyager with the South Sea Islands

is, his narrative is always more prized by us than those of the

missionary and traders, who, though they have better opportunity for

full and candid observation, rarely use it so well, because their minds

are biased towards their special objects. It is deeply interesting to us

to know how much and how little God has accomplished for the various

nations of the larger portion of the earth, before they are brought into

contact with the civilization of Europe and the Christian religion. To

suppose it so little as most people do, is to impugn the justice of

Providence. We see not how any one can contentedly think that such vast

multitudes of living souls have been left for thousands of years without

manifold and great means of instruction and happiness. To appreciate

justly how much these have availed them, to know how far they are

competent to receive new benefits, is essential to the philanthropist as

a means of aiding them, no less than it is important to one philosopher

who wishes to see the universe as God made it, not as some men think he

OUGHT TO have made it.

The want of correct knowledge, and a fair appreciation of the

uncultivated man as he stands, is a cause why even the good and generous

fail to aid him, and contact with Europe has proved so generally more of

a curse than a blessing. It is easy enough to see why our red man, to

whom the white extends the Bible or crucifix with one hand, and the

rum-bottle with the other, should look upon Jesus as only one more

Manitou, and learn nothing from his precepts or the civilization

connected with them. The Hindoo, the South American Indian, who knew

their teachers first as powerful robbers, and found themselves called

upon to yield to violence not only their property, personal freedom, and

peace, but also the convictions and ideas that had been rooted and

growing in their race for ages, could not be otherwise than degraded and

stupefied by a change effected through such violence and convulsion. But

not only those who came with fire and sword, crying, "Believe or die;"

"Understand or we will scourge you;" "Understand _and_ we will only

plunder and tyrannize over you,"--not only these ignorant despots,

self-deceiving robbers, have failed to benefit the people they dared

esteem more savage than themselves, but the worthy and generous have

failed from want of patience and an expanded intelligence. Would you

speak to a man? first learn his language. Would you have the tree grow?

learn the nature of the soil and climate in which you plant it. Better

days are coming, we do hope, as to these matters--days in which the new

shall be harmonized with the old, rather than violently rent asunder

from it; when progress shall be accomplished by gentle evolution, as the

stem of the plant grows up, rather than by the blasting of rocks, and

blindness or death of the miners.