CHAPTER II

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BLACKWOOD'S

EDINBURGH MAGAZINE.

No. CCCLI. JANUARY, 1845. Vol. LVII.

CONTENTS

Homer, Dante, and Michael Angelo, 1

Settled at Last, Or, Red River Recollections, 18

Borodino. An Ode, 30

A Ramble in Montenegro, 33

AEsthetics of Dress. A Case of Hats, 51

The Three Guardsmen, 59

Marston; Or the Memoirs of a Statesman. Part XV., 75

Janus: From the Fasti of Ovid, 94

To a Blind Girl, 98

The Forced Sale, 99

Vanities in Verse. By B. Simmons, 114

Coleridge and Opium-eating, 117

EDINBURGH:

WILLIAM BLACKWOOD AND SONS, 45, GEORGE STREET.

AND 22, PALL-MALL, LONDON.

_To whom all Communications (post paid) must be addressed_.

SOLD BY ALL THE BOOKSELLERS IN THE UNITED KINGDOM

PRINTED BY BALLANTYNE AND HUGHES, EDINBURGH.

BLACKWOOD'S

EDINBURGH

MAGAZINE.

VOL. LVII.

JANUARY-JUNE, 1845.

WILLIAM BLACKWOOD & SONS, EDINBURGH,

AND

22, PALL-MALL, LONDON.

1845.

BLACKWOOD'S

EDINBURGH MAGAZINE.

NO. CCCLI. JANUARY, 1845. Vol. LVII.

HOMER, DANTE, AND MICHAEL ANGELO.

There is something inexpressibly striking, it may almost be said

awful, in the fame of HOMER. Three thousand years have elapsed since

the bard of Chios began to pour forth his strains; and their

reputation, so far from declining, is on the increase. Successive

nations are employed in celebrating his works; generation after

generation of men are fascinated by his imagination. Discrepancies of

race, of character, of institutions, of religion, of age, of the

world, are forgotten in the common worship of his genius. In this

universal tribute of gratitude, modern Europe vies with remote

antiquity, the light Frenchman with the volatile Greek, the

impassioned Italian with the enthusiastic German, the sturdy

Englishman with the unconquerable Roman, the aspiring Russian with the

proud American. Seven cities, in ancient times, competed for the

honour of having given him birth, but seventy nations have since been

moulded by his productions. He gave a mythology to the ancients; he

has given the fine arts to the modern world. Jupiter, Saturn, Mars,

Juno, are still household words in every tongue; Vulcan is yet the god

of fire, Neptune of the ocean, Venus of love. When Michael Angelo and

Canova strove to embody their conceptions of heroism or beauty, they

portrayed the heroes of the _Iliad_. Flaxman's genius was elevated to

the highest point in embodying its events. Epic poets, in subsequent

times, have done little more than imitate his machinery, copy his

characters, adopt his similes, and, in a few instances, improve upon

his descriptions. Painting and statuary, for two thousand years, have

been employed in striving to portray, by the pencil or the chisel, his

yet breathing conceptions. Language and thought itself have been

moulded by the influence of his poetry. Images of wrath are still

taken from Achilles, of pride from Agamemnon, of astuteness from

Ulysses, of patriotism from Hector, of tenderness from Andromache, of

age from Nestor. The galleys of Rome were, the line-of-battle ships of

France and England still are, called after his heroes. The Agamemnon

long bore the flag of Nelson; the Ajax perished by the flames within

sight of the tomb of the Telamonian hero, on the shores of the

Hellespont; the Achilles was blown up at the battle of Trafalgar.

Alexander the Great ran round the tomb of Achilles before undertaking

the conquest of Asia. It was the boast of Napoleon that his mother

reclined on tapestry representing the heroes of the _Iliad_, when he

was brought into the world. The greatest poets of ancient and modern

times have spent their lives in the study of his genius or the

imitation of his works. Withdraw from subsequent poetry the images,

mythology, and characters of the _Iliad_, and what would remain?

Petrarch spent his best years in restoring his verses. Tasso portrayed

the siege of Jerusalem, and the shock of Europe and Asia, almost

exactly as Homer had done the contest of the same forces, on the same

shores, two thousand five hundred years before. Milton's old age, when

blind and poor, was solaced by hearing the verses recited of the poet,

to whose conceptions his own mighty spirit had been so much indebted;

and Pope deemed himself fortunate in devoting his life to the

translation of the _Iliad_.

No writer in modern times has equalled the wide-spread fame of the

Grecian bard; but it may be doubted whether, in the realms of thought,

and in sway over the reflecting world, the influence of DANTE has not

been almost as considerable. Little more than five hundred years,

indeed, have elapsed--not a sixth of the thirty centuries which have

tested the strength of the Grecian patriarch--since the immortal

Florentine poured forth his divine conceptions; but yet there is

scarcely a writer of eminence since that time, in works even bordering

on imagination, in which traces of his genius are not to be found. The

_Inferno_ has penetrated the world. If images of horror are sought

after, it is to his works that all subsequent ages have turned; if

those of love and divine felicity are desired, all turn to the

_Paradise_ and the _Spirit of Beatrice_. When the historians of the

French Revolution wished to convey an idea of the utmost agonies they

were called on to portray, they contented themselves with saying it

equalled all that the imagination of Dante had conceived of the

terrible. Sir Joshua Reynolds has exerted his highest genius in

depicting the frightful scene described by him, when Ugolino perished

of hunger in the tower of Pisa. Alfieri, Metastasio, Corneille, Lope

de Vega, and all the great masters of the tragic muse, have sought in

his works the germs of their finest conceptions. The first of these

tragedians marked two-thirds of the _Inferno_ and _Paradiso_ as worthy

of being committed to memory. Modern novelists have found in his

prolific mind the storehouse from which they have drawn their noblest

imagery, the chord by which to strike the profoundest feelings of the

human heart. Eighty editions of his poems have been published in

Europe within the last half century; and the public admiration, so far

from being satiated, is augmenting. Every scholar knows how largely

Milton was indebted to his poems for many of his most powerful images.

Byron inherited, though often at second hand, his mantle, in many of

his most moving conceptions. Schiller has embodied them in a noble

historic mirror; and the dreams of Goethe reveal the secret influence

of the terrible imagination which portrayed the deep remorse and

hopeless agonies of Malebolge.

MICHAEL ANGELO has exercised an influence on modern art little, if at

all, inferior to that produced on the realms of thought by Homer and

Dante. The father of Italian painting, the author of the frescoes on

the Sistine Chapel, he was, at the same time, the restorer of ancient

sculpture, and the intrepid architect who placed the Pantheon in the

air. Raphael confessed, that he owed to the contemplation of his works

his most elevated conceptions of their divine art. Sculpture, under

his original hand, started from the slumber of a thousand years, in

all the freshness of youthful vigour; architecture, in subsequent

times, has sought in vain to equal, and can never hope to surpass, his

immortal monument in the matchless dome of St Peters. He found

painting in its infancy--he left it arrived at absolute perfection. He

first demonstrated of what that noble art is capable. In the Last

Judgment he revealed its wonderful powers, exhibiting, as it were, at

one view, the whole circles of Dante's _Inferno_--portraying with

terrible fidelity the agonies of the wicked, when the last trumpet

shall tear the veil from their faces, and exhibit in undisguised truth

that most fearful of spectacles--_a naked human heart_. Casting aside,

perhaps with undue contempt, the adventitious aids derived from

finishing, colouring, and execution, he threw the whole force of his

genius into the design, the expression of the features, the drawing of

the figures. There never was such a delineator of bone and muscle as

Michael Angelo. His frescoes stand out in bold relief from the walls

of the Vatican, like the sculptures of Phidias from the pediment of

the Parthenon. He was the founder of the school of painting both at

Rome and Florence--that great school which, disdaining the

representation of still life, and all the subordinate appliances of

the art, devoted itself to the representation of the grand and the

beautiful; to the expression of passion in all its vehemence--of

emotion in all its intensity. His incomparable delineation of bones

and muscles was but a means to an end; it was the human heart, the

throes of human passion, that his master-hand laid bare. Raphael

congratulated himself, and thanked God that he had given him life in

the same age with that painter; and Sir Joshua Reynolds, in his last

address to the Academy, "reflected, not without vanity, that his

Discourses bore testimony to his admiration of that truly divine man,

and desired that the last words he pronounced in that academy, and

from that chair, might be the name of Michael Angelo."[1]

The fame of these illustrious men has long been placed beyond the

reach of cavil. Criticism cannot reach, envy cannot detract from,

emulation cannot equal them. Great present celebrity, indeed, is no

guarantee for future and enduring fame; in many cases, it is the

reverse, but there is a wide difference between the judgment of the

present and that of future ages. The favour of the great, the passions

of the multitude, the efforts of reviewers, the interest of

booksellers, a clique of authors, a coterie of ladies, accidental

events, degrading propensities, often enter largely into the

composition of present reputation. But opinion is freed from all these

disturbing influences by the lapse of time. The grave is the greatest

of all purifiers. Literary jealousy, interested partiality, vulgar

applause, exclusive favour, alike disappear before the hand of death.

We never can be sufficiently distrustful of present opinion, so

largely is it directed by passion or interest. But we may rely with

confidence on the judgment of successive generations on departed

eminence; for it is detached from the chief cause of present

aberration. So various are the prejudices, so contradictory the

partialities and predilections of men, in different countries and ages

of the world, that they never can concur through a course of centuries

in one opinion, if it is not founded in truth and justice. The _vox

populi_ is often little more than the _vox diaboli_; but the voice of

ages is the voice of God.

It is of more moment to consider in what the greatness of these

illustrious men really consists--to what it has probably been

owing--and in what particulars they bear an analogy to each other.

They are all three distinguished by one peculiarity, which doubtless

entered largely into their transcendent merit--they wrote in the

infancy of civilization. Homer, as all the world knows, is the oldest

profane author in existence. Dante flourished about the year 1300: he

lived at a time when the English barons lived in rooms strewed with

rushes, and few of them could sign their names. The long life of

Michael Angelo, extending from 1474 to 1564, over ninety years, if not

passed in the infancy of civilization, was at least passed in the

childhood of the arts: before his time, painting was in its cradle.

Cimabue had merely unfolded the first dawn of beauty at Florence; and

the stiff figures of Pietro Perugino, which may be traced in the first

works of his pupil Raphael, still attest the backward state of the

arts at Rome. This peculiarity, applicable alike to all these three

great men, is very remarkable, and beyond all question had a powerful

influence, both in forming their peculiar character, and elevating

them to the astonishing greatness which they speedily attained.

It gave them--what Johnson has justly termed the first requisite to

human greatness--self-confidence. They were the first--at least the

first known to themselves and their contemporaries--who adventured on

their several arts; and thus they proceeded _fearlessly_ in their

great career. They had neither critics to fear, nor lords to flatter,

nor former excellence to imitate. They portrayed with the pencil, or

in verse, what they severally felt, undisturbed by fear, unswayed by

example, unsolicitous about fame, unconscious of excellence. They did

so for the first time. Thence the freshness and originality, the

vigour and truth, the simplicity and raciness by which they are

distinguished. Shakspeare owed much of his greatness to the same

cause; and thence his similarity, in many respects, to these great

masters of his own or the sister arts. When Pope asked Bentley what he

thought of his translation of the _Iliad_, the scholar replied, "You

have written a pretty book, Mr Pope; but you must not call it Homer."

Bentley was right. With all its pomp of language and melody of

versification, its richness of imagery and magnificence of diction,

Pope's Homer is widely different from the original. He could not avoid

it. The "awful simplicity of the Grecian bard, his artless grandeur

and unaffected majesty," will be sought for in vain in the

translation; but if they had appeared there, it would have been

unreadable in that age. Michael Angelo, in his bold conceptions,

energetic will, and rapid execution, bears a close resemblance to the

father of poetry. In both, the same faults, as we esteem them, are

conspicuous, arising from a too close imitation of nature, and a

carelessness in rejecting images or objects which are of an ordinary

or homely description. Dante was incomparably more learned than

either: he followed Virgil in his descent to the infernal regions; and

exhibits an intimate acquaintance with ancient history, as well as

that of the modern Italian states, in the account of the characters he

meets in that scene of torment. But in his own line he was entirely

original. Homer and Virgil had, in episodes of their poems, introduced

a picture of the infernal regions; but nothing on the plan of Dante's

_Inferno_ had before been thought of in the world. With much of the

machinery of the ancients, it bears the stamp of the spiritual faith

of modern times. It lays bare the heart in a way unknown even to Homer

and Euripides. It reveals the inmost man in a way which bespeaks the

centuries of self-reflection in the cloister which had preceded it. It

is the basis of all the spiritual poetry of modern, as the _Iliad_ is

of all the external imagery of ancient, times.

In this respect there is a most grievous impediment to genius in

later, or, as we term them, more civilized times, from which, in

earlier ages, it is wholly exempt. Criticism, public opinion, the

dread of ridicule--then too often crush the strongest minds. The

weight of former examples, the influence of early habits, the halo of

long-established reputation, force original genius from the untrodden

path of invention into the beaten one of imitation. Early talent feels

itself overawed by the colossus which all the world adores; it falls

down and worships, instead of conceiving. The dread of ridicule

extinguishes originality in its birth. Immense is the incubus thus

laid upon the efforts of genius. It is the chief cause of the

degradation of taste, the artificial style, the want of original

conception, by which the literature of old nations is invariably

distinguished. The early poet or painter who portrays what he feels or

has seen, with no anxiety but to do so powerfully and truly, is

relieved of a load which crushes his subsequent compeers to the earth.

Mediocrity is ever envious of genius--ordinary capacity of original

thought. Such envy in early times is innocuous or does not exist, at

least to the extent which is felt as so baneful in subsequent periods.

But in a refined and enlightened age, its influence becomes

incalculable. Whoever strikes out a new region of thought or

composition, whoever opens a fresh vein of imagery or excellence, is

persecuted by the critics. He disturbs settled ideas, endangers

established reputations, brings forward rivals to dominant fame. That

is sufficient to render him the enemy of all the existing rulers in

the world of taste. Even Jeffrey seriously lamented, in one of his

first reviews of Scott's poems, that he should have identified himself

with the unpicturesque and expiring images of feudality, which no

effort could render poetical. Racine's tragedies were received with

such a storm of criticism as wellnigh cost the sensitive author his

life; and Rousseau was so rudely handled by contemporary writers on

his first appearance, that it confirmed him in his morbid hatred of

civilization. The vigour of these great men, indeed, overcame the

obstacles created by contemporary envy; but how seldom, especially in

a refined age, can genius effect such a prodigy? how often is it

crushed in the outset of its career, or turned aside into the humble

and unobtrusive path of imitation, to shun the danger with which that

of originality is beset!

Milton's _Paradise Lost_ contains many more lines of poetic beauty

than Homer's _Iliad_; and there is nothing in the latter poem of equal

length, which will bear any comparison with the exquisite picture of

the primeval innocence of our First Parents in his fourth book.

Nevertheless, the _Iliad_ is a more interesting poem than the

_Paradise Lost_; and has produced and will produce a much more

extensive impression on mankind. The reason is, that it is much fuller

of event, is more varied, is more filled with images familiar to all

mankind, and is less lost in metaphysical or philosophical

abstractions. Homer, though the father of poets, was essentially

dramatic; he was an incomparable painter; and it is his dramatic

scenes, the moving panorama of his pictures, which fascinates the

world. He often speaks to the heart, and is admirable in the

delineation of character; but he is so, not by conveying the inward

feeling, but by painting with matchless fidelity its external

symptoms, or putting into the mouths of his characters the precise

words they would have used in similar circumstances in real life. Even

his immortal parting of Hector and Andromache is no exception to this

remark; he paints the scene at the Scaean gate exactly as it would have

occurred in nature, and moves us as if we had seen the Trojan hero

taking off his helmet to assuage the terrors of his infant son, and

heard the lamentations of his mother at parting with her husband. But

he does not lay bare the heart, with the terrible force of Dante, by a

line or a word. There is nothing in Homer which conveys so piercing an

idea of misery as the line in the _Inferno_, where the Florentine bard

assigns the reason of the lamentations of the spirits in Malebolge--

"Questi non hanno speranza di morte."

"These have not the _hope of death_." There speaks the spiritual poet;

he does not paint to the eye, he does not even convey character by the

words he makes then utter; he pierces by a single expression, at once

to the heart.

Milton strove to raise earth to heaven: Homer brought down heaven to

earth. The latter attempt was a much easier one than the former; it

was more consonant to human frailty; and, therefore, it has met with

more success. The gods and goddesses in the _Iliad_ are men and women,

endowed with human passions, affections, and desires, and

distinguished only from sublunary beings by superior power and the

gift of immortality. We are interested in them as we are in the genii

or magicians of an eastern romance. There is a sort of aerial epic

poem going on between earth and heaven. They take sides in the

terrestrial combat, and engage in the actual strife with the heroes

engaged in it. Mars and Venus were wounded by Diomede when combating

in the Trojan ranks; their blood, or rather the

"Ichor which blest immortals shed,"

flowed profusely; they fled howling to the palaces of heaven.

Enlightened by a spiritual faith, fraught with sublime ideas of the

divine nature and government, Milton was incomparably more just in his

descriptions of the Supreme Being, and more elevated in his picture of

the angels and arch-angels who carried on the strife in heaven; but he

frequently falls into metaphysical abstractions or theological

controversies, which detract from the interest of his poem.

Despite Milton's own opinion, the concurring voice of all subsequent

ages and countries has assigned to the _Paradise Regained_ a much

lower place than to the _Paradise Lost_. The reason is, that it is

less dramatic--it has less incident and action. Great part of the poem

is but an abstract theological debate between our Saviour and Satan.

The speeches he makes them utter are admirable, the reasoning is

close, the arguments cogent, the sentiments elevated in the speakers,

but dialectic too. In many of the speeches of the angel Raphael, and

in the council of heaven, in the _Paradise Lost_ there is too much of

that species of discussion for a poem which is to interest the

generality of men. Dryden says, that Satan is Milton's real hero; and

every reader of the _Paradise Lost_ must have felt, that in the Prince

of Darkness, and Adam and Eve, the interest of the poem consists. The

reason is, that the vices of the first, and the weakness of the two

last, bring them nearer than any other characters in the poem to the

standard of mortality; and we are so constituted, that we cannot take

any great interest but in persons who share in our failings.

Perhaps the greatest cause of the sustained interest of the _Iliad_ is

the continued and vehement _action_ which is maintained. The attention

is seldom allowed to flag. Either in the council of the gods, the

assembly of the Grecian or Trojan chiefs, or the contest of the

leaders on the field of battle, an incessant interest is maintained.

Great events are always on the wing: the issue of the contest is

perpetually hanging, often almost even, in the balance. It is the art

with which this is done, and a state of anxious suspense, like the

crisis of a great battle kept up, that the great art of the poet

consists. It is done by making the whole dramatic--bringing the

characters forward constantly to speak for themselves, making the

events succeed each other with almost breathless rapidity, and

balancing success alternately from one side to the other, without

letting it ever incline decisively to either. Tasso has adopted the

same plan in his _Jerusalem Delivered_, and the contests of the

Christian knights and Saracen leaders with the lance and the sword,

closely resemble those of the Grecian and Trojan chiefs on the plain

of Troy. Ariosto has carried it still further. The exploits of his

Paladins--their adventures on earth, in air, and water; their loves,

their sufferings, their victories, their dangers--keep the reader in a

continual state of suspense. It is this sustained and varied interest

which makes so many readers prefer the _Orlando Furioso_ to the

_Jerusalem Delivered_. But Ariosto has pushed it too far. In the

search of variety, he has lost sight of unity. His heroes are not

congregated round the banners of two rival potentates; there is no one

object or interest in his poem. No narrow plain, like that watered by

the Scamander, is the theatre of their exploits. Jupiter, from the

summit of Gargarus, could not have beheld the contending armies. The

most ardent imagination, indeed, is satiated with his adventures, but

the closest attention can hardly follow their thread. Story after

story is told, the exploits of knight after knight are recounted, till

the mind is fatigued, the memory perplexed, and all general interest

in the poem lost.

Milton has admirably preserved the unity of his poem; the grand and

all-important object of the fall of man could hardly admit of

subordinate or rival interests. But the great defect in the _Paradise

Lost_, arising from that very unity, is want of variety. It is strung

throughout on too lofty a key; it does not come down sufficiently to

the wants and cravings of mortality. The mind is awe-struck by the

description of Satan careering through the immensity of space, of the

battle of the angels, of the fall of Lucifer, of the suffering, and

yet unsubdued spirit of his fellow rebels, of the adamantine gates,

and pitchy darkness, and burning lake of hell. But after the first

feeling of surprise and admiration is over, it is felt by all, that

these lofty contemplations are not interesting to mortals like

ourselves. They are too much above real life--too much out of the

sphere of ordinary event and interest.

The fourth book is the real scene of interest in the _Paradise Lost_;

it is its ravishing scenes of primeval innocence and bliss which have

given it immortality. We are never tired of recurring to the bower of

Eve, to her devotion to Adam, to the exquisite scenes of Paradise, its

woods, its waters, its flowers, its enchantments. We are so, because

we feel that it paints the Elysium to which all aspire, which all have

for a brief period felt, but which none in this world can durably

enjoy.

No one can doubt that Homer was endowed with the true poetic spirit,

and yet there is very little of what we now call poetry in his

writings. There is neither sentiment nor declamation--painting nor

reflection. He is neither descriptive nor didactic. With great powers

for portraying nature, as the exquisite choice of his epithets, and

the occasional force of his similes prove, he never makes any

laboured attempt to delineate her features. He had the eye of a great

painter; but his pictorial talents are employed, almost unconsciously,

in the fervour of narrating events, or the animation of giving

utterance to thoughts. He painted by an epithet or a line. Even the

celebrated description of the fires in the plain of Troy, likened to

the moon in a serene night, is contained in seven lines. His

rosy-fingered morn--cloud-compelling Jupiter--Neptune, stiller of the

waves--Aurora rising from her crocus bed--Night drawing her veil over

the heavens--the black keel careering through the lashing waves--the

shout of the far-sounding sea--and the like, from which subsequent

poets and dramatists have borrowed so largely, are all brief

allusions, or epithets, which evidently did not form the main object

of his strains. He was a close observer of nature--its lights, its

shades, its storms and calms, its animals, their migrations, their

cries and habits; but he never suspends his narrative to describe

them. We shall look in vain in the _Iliad_, and even the _Odyssey_,

for the lengthened pictures of scenery which are so frequent in Virgil

and Tasso, and appear in such rich profusion in Milton. He describes

storms only as objects of terror, not to paint them to the eye. Such

things are to be found in the book of Job and in the Psalms, but with

the same brevity and magical force of emphatic expression. There never

was a greater painter of nature than Homer; there never was a man who

aimed less at being so.

The portraying of character and event was the great and evident object

of the Grecian bard; and there his powers may almost be pronounced

unrivalled. He never tells you, unless it is sometimes to be inferred

on an epithet, what the man's character that he introduces is. He

trusts to the character to delineate itself. He lets us get acquainted

with his heroes, as we do with persons around us, by hearing them

speak, and seeing them act. In preserving character, in this dramatic

way of representing it, he is unrivalled. He does not tell you that

Nestor had the garrulity of age, and loved to recur to the events of

his youth; but he never makes him open his mouth without descanting on

the adventures of his early years, and the degenerate race of mortals

who have succeeded the paladins of former days. He does not tell us

that Achilles was wrathful and impetuous; but every time he speaks,

the anger of the son of Peleus comes boiling over his lips. He does

not describe Agamemnon as overbearing and haughty; but the pride of

the king of men is continually appearing in his words and actions, and

it is the evident moral of the _Iliad_ to represent its pernicious

effects on the affairs of the Helenic confederacy. Ulysses never

utters a word in which the cautious and prudent counsellor, sagacious

in design but prompt in execution, wary in the council but decided in

the field, far-seeing but yet persevering, is not apparent. Diomede

never falters; alike in the field and the council he is indomitable.

When Hector was careering in his chariot round their fortifications,

and the king of men counselled retreat, he declared he would remain,

were it only with Sthenelus and his friends. So completely marked, so

well defined are his characters, though they were all rapacious chiefs

at first sight, little differing from each other, that it has been

observed with truth, that one well acquainted with the _Iliad_ could

tell, upon hearing one of the speeches read out without a name, who

was the chief who uttered it.

The two authors, since his time, who have most nearly approached him

in this respect, are Shakespeare and Scott. Both seem to have received

the pencil which paints the human heart from nature herself. Both had

a keen and searching eye for character in all grades and walks of

life; and what is a general accompaniment of such a disposition, a

strong sense of the ridiculous. Both seized the salient points in

mental disposition, and perceived at a glance, as it were, the ruling

propensity. Both impressed this character so strongly on their minds,

that they threw themselves, as it were, into the very souls of the

persons whom they delineated, and made them speak and act like nature

herself. It is this extraordinary faculty of identifying themselves

with their characters, and bringing out of their mouth the very words

which, in real life, would have come, which constitutes the chief and

permanent attraction of these wonderful masters of the human heart.

Cervantes had it in an equal degree; and thence it is that Homer,

Shakspeare, Cervantes, and Scott, have made so great, and, to all

appearance, durable impression on mankind. The human heart is, at

bottom, every where the same. There is infinite diversity in the dress

he wears, but the naked human figure of one country scarcely differs

from another. The writers who have succeeded in reaching this deep

substratum, this far-hidden but common source of human action, are

understood and admired over all the world. It is the same on the banks

of the Simois as on those of the Avon--on the Sierra Morena as the

Scottish hills. They are understood alike in Europe as Asia--in

antiquity as modern times; one unanimous burst of admiration salutes

them from the North Cape to Cape Horn--from the age of Pisistratus to

that of Napoleon.

Strange as it may appear to superficial observers, Cervantes bears a

close analogy, in many particulars, to Homer. Circumstances, and an

inherent turn for humour, made him throw his genius into an exquisite

ridicule of the manners of chivalry; but the author of _Don Quixote_

had in him the spirit of a great epic poet. His lesser pieces prove

it; unequivocal traces of it are to be found in the adventures of the

Knight of La Mancha himself. The elevation of mind which, amidst all

his aberrations, appears in that erratic character; the incomparable

traits of nature with which the work abounds; the faculty of

describing events in the most striking way; of painting scenes in a

few words; of delineating characters with graphic fidelity, and

keeping them up with perfect consistency, which are so conspicuous in

_Don Quixote_, are so many of the most essential qualities of an epic

poet. Nor was the ardour of imagination, the romantic disposition, the

brilliancy of fancy, the lofty aspirations, the tender heart, which

form the more elevated and not less essential part of such a

character, wanting in the Spanish novelist.

Sir Walter Scott more nearly resembles Homer than any poet who has

sung since the siege of Troy. Not that he has produced any poem which

will for a moment bear a comparison with the _Iliad_--fine as the

_Lady of the Lake_ and _Marmion_ are, it would be the height of

national partiality to make any such comparison. But, nevertheless,

Sir Walter's mind is of the same dimensions as that of Homer. We see

in him the same combination of natural sagacity with acquired

information; of pictorial eye with dramatic effect; of observation of

character with reflection and feeling; of graphic power with poetic

fervour; of ardour of imagination with rectitude of principle; of

warlike enthusiasm with pacific tenderness, which have rendered the

Grecian bard immortal. It is in his novels, however, more than his

poetry, that this resemblance appears; the author of _Waverley_ more

nearly approaches the blind bard than the author of the _Lay_. His

romances in verse contain some passages which are sublime, many which

are beautiful, some pathetic. They are all interesting, and written in

the same easy, careless style, interspersed with the most homely and

grotesque expressions, which is so well known to all the readers of

the _Iliad_. The battle in _Marmion_ is beyond all question, as

Jeffrey long ago remarked, the most _Homeric_ strife which has been

sung since the days of Homer. But these passages are few and far

between; his poems are filled with numerous and long interludes,

written with little art, and apparently no other object but to fill up

the pages or eke out the story. It is in prose that the robust

strength, the powerful arm, the profound knowledge of the heart,

appear; and it is there, accordingly, that he approaches at times so

closely to Homer. If we could conceive a poem, in which the storming

of Front-de-Boeuf's castle in _Ivanhoe_--the death of Fergus in

_Waverley_--the storm on the coast, and death scene in the fisher's

hut, in the _Antiquary_--the devoted love in the _Bride of

Lammermoor_--the fervour of the Covenanters in _Old Mortality_, and

the combats of Richard and Saladin in the _Talisman_, were united

together, and intermingled with the incomparable characters,

descriptions, and incidents with which these novels abound, they would

form an epic poem.

Doubts have sometimes been expressed, as to whether the _Iliad_ and

_Odyssey_ are all the production of one man. Never, perhaps, was doubt

not merely so ill founded, but so decisively disproved by internal

evidence. If ever in human composition the traces of one mind are

conspicuous, they are in Homer. His beauties equally with his defects,

his variety and uniformity, attest this. Never was an author who had

so fertile an imagination for varying of incidents; never was one who

expressed them in language in which the same words so constantly

recur. This is the invariable characteristic of a great and powerful,

but at the same time self-confident and careless mind. It is to be

seen in the most remarkable manner in Bacon and Machiavel, and not a

little of it may be traced both in the prose and poetical works of

Scott. The reason is, that the strength of the mind is thrown into the

thought as the main object; the language, as a subordinate matter, is

little considered. Expressions capable of energetically expressing the

prevailing ideas of the imagination are early formed; but, when this

is done, the powerful, careless mind, readily adopts them on all

future occasions where they are at all applicable. There is scarcely a

great and original thinker in whose writings the same expressions do

not very frequently recur, often in exactly the same words. How much

this is the case with Homer--with how much discrimination and genius

his epithets and expressions were first chosen, and how frequently he

repeats them, almost in every page, need be told to none who are

acquainted with his writings. That is the most decisive mark at once

of genius and identity. Original thinkers fall into repetition of

expression, because they are always speaking from one model--their own

thoughts. Subordinate writers avoid this fault, because they are

speaking from the thoughts of others, and share their variety. It

requires as great an effort for the first to introduce difference of

expression, as for the last to reach diversity of thought.

The reader of Dante must not look for the heart-stirring and animated

narrative--the constant interest--the breathless suspense, which

hurries us along the rapid current of the _Iliad_. There are no

councils of the gods; no messengers winging their way through the

clouds; no combats of chiefs; no cities to storm; no fields to win. It

is the infernal regions which the poet, under the guidance of his

great leader, Virgil, visits; it is the scene of righteous retribution

through which he is led; it is the apportionment of punishment and

reward to crime or virtue, in this upper world, that he is doomed to

witness. We enter the city of lamentation--we look down the depths of

the bottomless pit--we stand at the edge of the burning lake. His

survey is not a mere transient visit like that of Ulysses in Homer, or

of AEneas in Virgil. He is taken slowly and deliberately through every

successive circle of Malebolge; descending down which, like the

visitor of the tiers of vaults, one beneath another, in a feudal

castle, he finds every species of malefactors, from the chiefs and

kings whose heroic lives were stained only by a few deeds of cruelty,

to the depraved malefactors whose base course was unrelieved by one

ray of virtue. In the very conception of such a poem, is to be found

decisive evidence of the mighty change which the human mind had

undergone since the expiring lays of poetry were last heard in the

ancient world; of the vast revolution of thought and inward conviction

which, during a thousand years, in the solitude of the monastery, and

under the sway of a spiritual faith, had taken place in the human

heart. A gay and poetic mythology no longer amazed the world by its

fictions, or charmed it by its imagery. Religion no longer basked in

the sunshine of imagination. The awful words of judgment to come had

been spoken; and, like Felix, mankind had trembled. Ridiculous legends

had ceased to be associated with the shades below--their place had

been taken by images of horror. Conscience had resumed its place in

the direction of thought. Superstition had lent its awful power to the

sanctions of religion. Terror of future punishment had subdued the

fiercest passions--internal agony tamed the proudest spirits. It was

the picture of a future world--of a world of retribution--conceived

under such impressions, that Dante proposed to give; it is that which

he has given with such terrible fidelity.

Melancholy was the prevailing characteristic of the great Italian's

mind. It was so profound that it penetrated all his thoughts; so

intense that it pervaded all his conceptions. Occasionally bright and

beautiful ideas flitted across his imagination; visions of bliss,

experienced for a moment, and then lost for ever, as if to render more

profound the darkness by which they are surrounded. They are given

with exquisite beauty; but they shine amidst the gloom like sunbeams

struggling through the clouds. He inherited from the dark ages the

austerity of the cloister; but he inherited with it the deep feelings

and sublime conceptions which its seclusion had generated. His mind

was a world within itself. He drew all his conceptions from that

inexhaustible source; but he drew them forth so clear and lucid, that

they emerged, embodied as it were, in living images. His characters

are emblematic of the various passions and views for which different

degrees of punishment were reserved in the world to come; but his

conception of them was so distinct, his description so vivid, that

they stand forth to our gaze in all the agony of their sufferings,

like real flesh and blood. We see them--we feel them--we hear their

cries--our very flesh creeps at the perception of their sufferings. We

stand on the edge of the lake of boiling pitch--we feel the weight of

the leaden mantles--we see the snow-like flakes of burning sand--we

hear the cries of those who had lost the last earthly consolations,

the hope of death:--

"Quivi sospiri, pianti ed alti guai

Risonavan per l' aer senza stelle,

Perch' io al cominciar ne lacrimai.

Diverse lingue, orribili favelle,

Parole di dolore, accenti d' ira,

Voci alte e fioche, e suon di man con elle

Facevano un tumulto, il qual s' aggira

Sempre 'n quell' aria senza tempo tinta,

Come la rena quando 'l turbo spira.

* * * * *

Ed io: maestro, che e tanto greve

A lor che lamentar li fa si forte?

Rispose: dicerolti molto breve.

Questi non hanno speranza di morte."

_Inferno_, c. iii.

"Here sighs, with lamentations and loud moans,

Resounded through the air pierced by no star,

That e'en I wept at entering. Various tongues,

Horrible languages, outcries of woe,

Accents of anger, voices deep and hoarse,

With hands together smote that swell'd the sounds,

Made up a tumult, that for ever whirls

Round through that air with solid darkness stain'd,

Like to the sand that in the whirlwind flies.

* * * * *

I then: Master! What doth aggrieve them thus,

That they lament so loud? He straight replied:

That will I tell thee briefly. These of death

No hope may entertain."

CARY'S _Dante, Inferno_, c. iii.

Here is Dante portrayed to the life in the very outset. What a

collection of awful images in a few lines! Loud lamentations, hideous

cries, mingled with the sound of clasped hands, beneath a starless

sky; and the terrible answer, as the cause of this suffering, "These

have not the hope of death."

The very first lines of the _Inferno_, when the gates of Hell were

approached, and the inscription over them appeared, paints the dismal

character of the poem, and yet mingled with the sense of divine love

and justice with which the author was penetrated.

"Per me si va nella citta dolente;

Per me si va nell' eterno dolore;

Per me si va tra la perduta gente:

Giustizia mosse 'l mio alto Fattore;

Fecemi la divina Potestate,

La somma Sapienza e 'l primo Amore.

Dinanzi a me non fur cose create,

Se non eterne; ed io eterno duro:

Lasciate ogni speranza voi che 'ntrate."

_Inferno_, c. iii.

"Through me you pass into the city of woe:

Through me you pass into eternal pain:

Through me among the people lost for aye.

Justice the founder of my fabric moved:

To rear me was the task of power divine,

Supremest wisdom, and primeval love.

Before me things create were none, save things

Eternal, and eternal I endure.

All hope abandon, ye who enter here."

CARY'S _Dante, Inferno_, c. iii.

Dante had much more profound feelings than Homer, and therefore he has

painted deep mysteries of the human heart with greater force and

fidelity. The more advanced age of the world, the influence of

spiritual faith, the awful anticipation of judgment to come, the

inmost feelings which, during long centuries of seclusion, had been

drawn forth in the cloister, the protracted sufferings of the dark

ages, had laid bare the human heart. Its sufferings, its terrors, its

hopes, its joys, had become as household words. The Italian poet

shared, as all do, in the ideas and images of his age, and to these he

added many which were entirely his own. He painted the inward man, and

painted him from his own feelings, not the observation of others. That

is the grand distinction between him and Homer; and that it is which

has given him, in the delineation of mind, his great superiority. The

Grecian bard was an incomparable observer; he had an inexhaustible

imagination for fiction, as well as a graphic eye for the delineation

of real life; but he had not a deep or feeling heart. He did not know

it, like Dante and Shakspeare, from his own suffering. He painted the

external symptoms of passion and emotion with the hand of a master;

but he did not reach the inward spring of feeling. He lets us into his

characters by their speeches, their gestures, their actions, and keeps

up their consistency with admirable fidelity; but he does not, by a

word, an expression, or an epithet, admit us into the inmost folds of

the heart. None can do so but such as themselves feel warmly and

profoundly, and paint passion, emotion, or suffering from their own

experience, not the observation of others. Dante has acquired his

colossal fame from the matchless force with which he has portrayed the

wildest passions, the deepest feelings, the most intense sufferings of

the heart. He is the refuge of all those who labour and are heavy

laden--of all who feel profoundly or have suffered deeply. His verses

are in the mouth of all who are torn by passion, gnawed by remorse, or

tormented by apprehension; and how many are they in this scene of woe!

A distinguished modern critic[2] has said, that he who would now

become a great poet must first become a little child. There is no

doubt he is right. The seen and unseen fetters of civilization; the

multitude of old ideas afloat in the world; the innumerable worn-out

channels into which new ones are ever apt to flow; the general clamour

with which critics, nursed amidst such fetters, receive any attempts

at breaking them; the prevalence, in a wealthy and highly civilized

age, of worldly or selfish ideas; the common approximation of

characters by perpetual intercourse, as of coins, by continual rubbing

in passing from man to man, have taken away all freshness and

originality from ideas. The learned, the polished, the highly

educated, can hardly escape the fetters which former greatness throws

over the soul. Milton could not avoid them: half the images in his

poems are taken from Homer, Virgil, and Dante; and who dare hope for

emancipation when Milton was enthralled? The mechanical arts increase

in perfection as society advances. Science ever takes its renewed

flights from the platform which former efforts have erected. Industry,

guided by experience, in successive ages, brings to the highest point

all the contrivances and inventions which minister to the comfort or

elegances of life. But it is otherwise with genius. It sinks in the

progress of society, as much as science and the arts rise. The country

of Homer and AEschylus sank for a thousand years into the torpor of the

Byzantine empire. Originality perishes amidst acquisition. Freshness

of conception is its life: like the flame, it burns fierce and clear

in the first gales of a pure atmosphere; but languishes and dies in

that polluted by many breaths.

It was the resurrection of the human mind, after the seclusion and

solitary reflection of the middle ages, which gave this vein of

original ideas to Dante, as their first wakening had given to Homer.

Thought was not extinct; the human mind was not dormant during the

dark ages; far from it--it never, in some respects, was more active.

It was the first collision of their deep and lonely meditations with

the works of the great ancient poets, which occasioned the prodigy.

Universally it will be found to be the same. After the first flights

of genius have been taken, it is by the collision of subsequent

thought with it that the divine spark is again elicited. The meeting

of two great minds is necessary to beget fresh ideas, as that of two

clouds is to bring forth lightning, or the collision of flint and

steel to produce fire. Johnson said he could not get new ideas till he

had read. He was right; though it is not one in a thousand who strikes

out original thoughts from studying the works of others. The great

sage did not read to imbibe the opinions of others, but to engender

new ones for himself; he did not study to imitate, but to create. It

was the same with Dante; it is the same with every really great man.

His was the first powerful and original mind which, fraught with the

profound and gloomy ideas nourished in seclusion during the middle

ages, came into contact with the brilliant imagery, touching pathos,

and harmonious language of the ancients. Hence his astonishing

greatness. He almost worshipped Virgil, he speaks of him as a species

of god; he mentions Homer as the first of poets. But he did not copy

either the one or the other; he scarcely imitated them. He strove to

rival their brevity and beauty of expression; but he did so in giving

vent to new ideas, in painting new images, in awakening new emotions.

The _Inferno_ is as original as the _Iliad_; incomparably more so than

the _AEneid_. The offspring of originality with originality is a new

and noble creation; of originality with mediocrity, a spurious and

degraded imitation.

Dante paints the spirits of all the generations of men, each in their

circle undergoing their allotted punishment; expiating by suffering

the sins of an upper world. Virgil gave a glimpse, as it were, into

that scene of retribution; Minos and Rhadamanthus passing judgment on

the successive spirits brought before them; the flames of Tartarus,

the rock of Sisyphus, the wheel of Ixion, the vulture gnawing

Prometheus. But with Homer and Virgil, the descent into the infernal

regions was a brief episode; with Dante it was the whole poem. Immense

was the effort of imagination requisite to give variety to such a

subject, to prevent the mind from experiencing weariness amidst the

eternal recurrence of crime and punishment. But the genius of Dante

was equal to the task. His fancy was prodigious; his invention

boundless; his imagination inexhaustible. Fenced in, as he was,

within narrow and gloomy limits by the nature of his subject, his

creative spirit equals that of Homer himself. He has given birth to as

many new ideas in the _Inferno_ and the _Paradiso_, as the Grecian

bard in the _Iliad_ and _Odyssey_.

Though he had reflected so much and so deeply on the human heart, and

was so perfect a master of all the anatomy of mental suffering,

Dante's mind was essentially descriptive. He was a great painter as

well as a profound thinker; he clothed deep feeling in the garb of the

senses; he conceived a vast brood of new ideas, he arrayed them in a

surprising manner in flesh and blood. He is ever clear and definite,

at least in the _Inferno_. He exhibits in every canto of that

wonderful poem a fresh image, but it is a clear one, of horror or

anguish, which leaves nothing to the imagination to add or conceive.

His ideal characters are real persons; they are present to our senses;

we feel their flesh, see the quivering of their limbs, hear their

lamentations, and feel a thrill of joy at their felicity. In the

_Paradiso_ he is more vague and general, and thence its acknowledged

inferiority to the _Inferno_. But the images of horror are much more

powerful than those of happiness; and it is they which have entranced

the world. "It is easier," says Madame de Stael, "to convey ideas of

suffering than those of happiness; for the former are too well known

to every heart, the latter only to a few."

The melancholy tone which pervades Dante's writings was doubtless, in

a great measure, owing to the misfortunes of his life; and to them we

are also indebted for many of the most caustic and powerful of his

verses--perhaps for the design of the _Inferno_ itself. He took

vengeance on the generation which had persecuted and exiled him, by

exhibiting its leaders suffering in the torments of hell. In his long

seclusion, chiefly in the monastery of Santa Croce di Fonte Avellana,

a wild and solitary retreat in the territory of Gubbio, and in a tower

belonging to the Conte Falcucci, in the same district, his immortal

work was written. The mortifications he underwent during this long and

dismal exile are thus described by himself:--"Wandering over almost

every part in which our language extends, I have gone about like a

mendicant; showing against my will the wound with which fortune has

smitten me, and which is often falsely imputed to the demerit of him

by whom it is endured. I have been, indeed, a vessel without sail or

steerage, carried about to divers ports, and roads, and shores, by the

dry wind that springs out of sad poverty."

In the third circle of hell, Dante sees those who are punished by the

plague of burning sand falling perpetually on them. Their torments are

thus described--

"Supin giaceva in terra alcuna gente;

Alcuna si sedea tutta raccolta;

Ed altra andava continuamente.

Quella che giva intorno era piu molta;

E quella men che giaceva al tormento;

Ma piu al duolo avea la lingua sciolta.

Sovra tutto 'l sabbion d'un cader lento

Piovean di fuoco dilatate falde,

Come di neve in alpe senza vento.

Quali Alessandro in quelle parti calde

D' India vide sovra lo suo stuolo

Fiamme cadere infino a terra salde."

_Inferno_, c. xiv.

"Of naked spirits many a flock I saw,

All weeping piteously, to different laws

Subjected: for on earth some lay supine,

Some crouching close were seated, others paced

Incessantly around; the latter tribe

More numerous, those fewer who beneath

The torment lay, but louder in their grief.

O'er all the sand fell slowly wafting down

Dilated flakes of fire, as flakes of snow

On Alpine summit, when the wind is hush'd.

As, in the torrid Indian clime, the son

Of Ammon saw, upon his warrior band

Descending, solid flames, that to the ground

Came down."

CARY'S _Dante_, c. xiv.

The first appearance of Malebolge is described in these striking

lines--

"Luogo e in Inferno, detto Malebolge,

Tutto di pietra e di color ferrigno,

Come la cerchia che d'intorno il volge.

Nel dritto mezzo del campo maligno

Vaneggia un pozzo assai largo e profondo,

Di cui suo luogo contera l' ordigno.

Quel cinghio che rimane adunque e tondo

Tra 'l pozzo e 'l pie dell' alta ripa dura,

E ha distinto in dieci valli al fondo."

_Inferno_, c. xviii.

"There is a place within the depths of hell

Call'd Malebolge, all of rock dark-stain'd

With hue ferruginous, e'en as the steep

That round it circling winds. Right in the midst

Of that abominable region yawns

A spacious gulf profound, whereof the frame

Due time shall tell. The circle, that remains,

Throughout its round, between the gulf and base

Of the high craggy banks, successive forms

Ten bastions, in its hollow bottom raised."

CARY'S _Dante_, c. xviii.

This is the outward appearance of Malebolge, the worst place of

punishment in hell. It had many frightful abysses; what follows is the

picture of the first:--

"Ristemmo per veder l'altra fessura

Di Malebolge e gli altri pianti vani:

E vidila mirabilmente oscura.

Quale nell' arzana de' Veneziani

Bolle l' inverno la tenace pece,

A rimpalmar li legni lor non sani--

* * * * *

Tal non per fuoco ma per divina arte,

Bollia laggiuso una pegola spessa,

Che 'nviscava la ripa d'ogni parte.

I' vedea lei, ma non vedeva in essa

Ma che le bolle che 'l bollor levava,

E gonfiar tutta e riseder compressa.

* * * * *

E vidi dietro a noi un diavol nero

Correndo su per lo scoglio venire.

Ahi quant' egli era nell' aspetto fiero!

E quanto mi parea nell' atto acerbo,

Con l' ali aperte e sovre i pie leggiero!

L' omero suo ch' era acuto e superbo

Carcava un peccator con ambo l'anche,

Ed ei tenea de' pie ghermito il nerbo.

* * * * *

Laggiu il butto e per lo scoglio duro

Si volse, e mai non fu mastino sciolto

Con tanta fretta a seguitar lo furo.

Quei s' attuffo e torno su convolto;

Ma i demon che del ponte avean coverchio

Gridar: qui non ha luogo il Santo Volto.

Qui si nuota altramenti che nel Serchio:

Pero se tu non vuoi de' nostri graffi,

Non far sovra la pegola soverchio.

Poi l' addentar con piu di cento raffi,

Disser: coverto convien che qui balli,

Si che se puoi nascosamente accaffi."

_Inferno_, c. xxi.

"----To the summit reaching, stood

To view another gap, within the round

Of Malebolge, other bootless pangs.

Marvellous darkness shadow'd o'er the place.

In the Venetians' arsenal as boils

Through wintry months tenacious pitch, to smear

Their unsound vessels in the wintry clime.

* * * * *

So, not by force of fire but art divine,

Boil'd here a glutinous thick mass, that round

Limed all the shore beneath. I that beheld,

But therein not distinguish'd, save the bubbles

Raised by the boiling, and one mighty swell

Heave, and by turns subsiding fall.

* * * * *

Behind me I beheld a devil black,

That running up, advanced along the rock.

Ah! what fierce cruelty his look bespake.

In act how bitter did he seem, with wings

Buoyant outstretch'd, and feet of nimblest tread.

His shoulder, proudly eminent and sharp,

Was with a sinner charged; by either haunch

He held him, the foot's sinew griping fast.

* * * * *

Him dashing down, o'er the rough rock he turn'd;

Nor ever after thief a mastiff loosed

Sped with like eager haste. That other sank,

And forthwith writhing to the surface rose.

But those dark demons, shrouded by the bridge,

Cried--Here the hallow'd visage saves not: here

Is other swimming than in Serchio's wave,

Wherefore, if thou desire we rend thee not,

Take heed thou mount not o'er the pitch. This said,

They grappled him with more than hundred hooks,

And shouted--Cover'd thou must sport thee here;

So, if thou canst, in secret mayst thou filch."

CARY'S _Dante_, c. xxi.

Fraught as his imagination was with gloomy ideas, with images of

horror, it is the fidelity of his descriptions, the minute reality of

his pictures, which gives them their terrible power. He knew well what

it is that penetrates the soul. His images of horror in the infernal

regions were all founded on those familiar to every one in the upper

world; it was from the caldron of boiling pitch in the arsenal of

Venice that he took his idea of one of the pits of Malebolge. But what

a picture does he there exhibit! The writhing sinner plunged headlong

into the boiling waves, rising to the surface, and a hundred demons,

mocking his sufferings, and with outstretched hooks tearing his flesh

till he dived again beneath the liquid fire! It is the reality of the

scene, the images familiar yet magnified in horror, which constitutes

its power: we stand by; our flesh creeps as it would at witnessing an

_auto-da-fe_ of Castile, or on beholding a victim perishing under the

knout in Russia.

Michael Angelo was, in one sense, the painter of the Old Testament, as

his bold and aspiring genius arrived rather at delineating the events

of warfare, passion, or suffering, chronicled in the records of the

Jews, than the scenes of love, affection, and benevolence, depicted in

the gospels. But his mind was not formed merely on the events

recorded in antiquity: it is no world doubtful of the immortality of

the soul which he depicts. He is rather the personification in

painting of the soul of Dante. His imagination was evidently fraught

with the conceptions of the _Inferno_. The expression of mind beams

forth in all his works. Vehement passion, stern resolve, undaunted

valour, sainted devotion, infant innocence, alternately occupied his

pencil. It is hard to say in which he was greatest. In all his works

we see marks of the genius of antiquity meeting the might of modern

times: the imagery of mythology blended with the aspirations of

Christianity. We see it in the dome of St Peter's, we see it in the

statue of Moses. Grecian sculpture was the realization in form of the

conceptions of Homer; Italian painting the representation on canvass

of the revelations of the gospel, which Dante clothed in the garb of

poetry. Future ages should ever strive to equal, but can never hope to

excel them.

Never did artist work with more persevering vigour than Michael

Angelo. He himself said that he laboured harder for fame, than ever

poor artist did for bread. Born of a noble family, the heir to

considerable possessions, he took to the arts from his earliest years

from enthusiastic passion and conscious power. During a long life of

ninety years, he prosecuted them with the ardent zeal of youth. He was

consumed by the thirst for fame, the desire of great achievements, the

invariable mark of heroic minds; and which, as it is altogether beyond

the reach of the great bulk of mankind, so is the feeling of all

others which to them is most incomprehensible. Nor was that noble

enthusiasm without its reward. It was his extraordinary good fortune

to be called to form, at the same time, the Last Judgment on the wall

of the Sistine Chapel, the glorious dome of St Peter's, and the group

of Notre Dame de Pitie, which now adorns the chapel of the Crucifix,

under the roof of that august edifice. The "Holy Family" in the

Palazzo Pitti at Florence, and the "Three Fates" in the same

collection, give an idea of his powers in oil-painting: thus he

carried to the highest perfection, at the same time, the rival arts of

architecture, sculpture, fresco and oil painting.[3] He may truly be

called the founder of Italian painting, as Homer was of the ancient

epic, and Dante of the great style in modern poetry. None but a

colossal mind could have done such things. Raphael took lessons from

him in painting, and professed through life the most unbounded respect

for his great preceptor. None have attempted to approach him in

architecture; the cupola of St Peter's stands alone in the world.

But notwithstanding all this, Michael Angelo had some defects. He

created the great style in painting, a style which has made modern

Italy as immortal as the arms of the legions did the ancient. But the

very grandeur of his conceptions, the vigour of his drawing, his

incomparable command of bone and muscle, his lofty expression and

impassioned mind, made him neglect, and perhaps despise, the lesser

details of his art. Ardent in the pursuit of expression, he often

overlooked execution. When he painted the Last Judgment or the Fall of

the Titans in fresco, on the ceiling and walls of the Sistine Chapel,

he was incomparable; but that gigantic style was unsuitable for lesser

pictures or rooms of ordinary proportions. By the study of his

masterpieces, subsequent painters have often been led astray; they

have aimed at force of expression to the neglect of delicacy in

execution. This defect is, in an especial manner, conspicuous in Sir

Joshua Reynolds, who worshipped Michael Angelo with the most devoted

fervour; and through him it has descended to Lawrence, and nearly the

whole modern school of England. When we see Sir Joshua's noble glass

window in Magdalen College, Oxford, we behold the work of a worthy

pupil of Michael Angelo; we see the great style of painting in its

proper place, and applied to its appropriate object. But when we

compare his portraits, or imaginary pieces in oil, with those of

Titian, Velasquez, or Vandyke, the inferiority is manifest. It is not

in the design but the finishing; not in the conception but the

execution. The colours are frequently raw and harsh; the details or

distant parts of the piece ill-finished or neglected. The bold neglect

of Michael Angelo is very apparent. Raphael, with less original genius

than his immortal master, had more taste and much greater delicacy of

pencil; his conceptions, less extensive and varied, are more perfect;

his finishing is always exquisite. Unity of emotion was his great

object in design; equal delicacy of finishing in execution. Thence he

has attained by universal consent the highest place in painting.

"Nothing," says Sir Joshua Reynolds, "is denied to well-directed

labour; nothing is to be attained without it." "Excellence in any

department," says Johnson, "can now be attained only by the labour of

a lifetime; it is not to be purchased at a lesser price." These words

should ever be present to the minds of all who aspire to rival the

great of former days; who feel in their bosoms a spark of the spirit

which led Homer, Dante, and Michael Angelo to immortality. In a

luxurious age, comfort or station is deemed the chief good of life; in

a commercial community, money becomes the universal object of

ambition. Thence our acknowledged deficiency in the fine arts; thence

our growing weakness in the higher branches of literature. Talent

looks for its reward too soon. Genius seeks an immediate recompense;

long protracted exertions are never attempted; great things are not

done, because great efforts are not made.

None will work now without the prospect of an immediate return. Very

possibly it is so; but then let us not hope or wish for immortality.

"Present time and future," says Sir Joshua Reynolds, "are rivals; he

who solicits the one must expect to be discountenanced by the other."

It is not that we want genius; what we want is the great and heroic

spirit which will devote itself; by strenuous efforts, to great

things, without seeking any reward but their accomplishment.

Nor let it be said that great subjects for the painter's pencil, the

poet's muse, are not to be found--that they are exhausted by former

efforts, and nothing remains to us but imitation. Nature is

inexhaustible; the events of men are unceasing, their variety is

endless. Philosophers were mourning the monotony of time, historians

were deploring the sameness of events, in the years preceding the

French Revolution--on the eve of the Reign of Terror, the flames of

Moscow, the retreat from Russia. What was the strife around Troy to

the battle of Leipsic?--the contests of Florence and Pisa to the

revolutionary war? What ancient naval victory to that of Trafalgar?

Rely upon it, subjects for genius are not wanting; genius itself,

steadily and perseveringly directed, is the thing required. But genius

and energy alone are not sufficient; COURAGE and disinterestedness are

needed more than all. Courage to withstand the assaults of envy, to

despise the ridicule of mediocrity--disinterestedness to trample under

foot the seductions of ease, and disregard the attractions of

opulence. An heroic mind is more wanted in the library or the studio,

than in the field. It is wealth and cowardice which extinguish the

light of genius, and dig the grave of literature as of nations.

SETTLED AT LAST; OR, RED RIVER RECOLLECTIONS.

CHAP. I.

HOMEWARD BOUND.

I had left New Orleans with the full intention of proceeding without

stop or delay to my home upon the Red River; but notwithstanding this

determination, my wife and myself were unable to resist Richards'

pressing invitation to pause for a day or two at his house. Upon our

yielding to his solicitations, he proceeded to recruit other guests

among our travelling companions, and soon got together a pleasant

party. My father-in-law, Monsieur Menou, went on to my plantation, but

Julie remained with us, as did also her aunt, Madame Duras, an

agreeable old lady with a slight expression of perfidy in her light

blue, French-looking eyes, possessed withal of infinite delicacy and

_finesse_--a fervent admirer of the old court school of Louis the

Fifteenth, in the _chronique scandaleuse_ of which she was as well

versed as if she had been herself a contemporary of that

pleasure-loving monarch. Besides these ladies, there was a young

Frenchman named Vergennes, the third son of some Gascon viscount, and

a distant cousin of the Menous, who had come to America till the

scandal occasioned by certain republican scribblings of his in one of

the newspapers of the day should have blown over, and till he could

revisit his country without risk of obtaining a lodging gratis in the

Conciergerie. He had brought with him a head crammed with schemes for

the political regeneration of the whole world, and a trunkful of

French fashions, neither of which, as I reckoned, were likely to take

much with us. He made me laugh inwardly twenty times a-day by his

Utopian theories and fancies. Truth to tell, in matters of politics or

of sound common sense, these Frenchmen are for the most part mere

children, and reach their dying day without ever becoming men. Take

them by their weak points, their unlimited vanity or their love of

what they call glory, and you may ride them like a horse to water.

Vergennes, however, when one could get him off his hobby, was a

pleasant gentlemanly fellow enough.

It was impossible to spare Richards more than three days, and at six

o'clock on the morning of the fourth, we went on board the steamer

Alexandria. I had prevailed on my friend and his wife, and the whole

party, to come and pass a week or two at my house, which was now quite

ready for the reception of guests. The three days we had remained with

Richards had been one continued fete, and considering the good living,

and the heat of the weather--the thermometer ranging from 95 deg. to

100 deg.--there were few things more agreeable or better to be done, than

to take a steam up the Red River. The fresh breezes on the water might

save some of us a touch of fever. On board we went therefore, all in

high glee and good-humour with each other.

We had passed the Atchafalaya, and had crossed over to the

Francisville side, in order to avoid the powerful current occasioned

by the influx of the Red River into the Mississippi. A strong wind had

sprung up, and in the middle of the stream the waves were of a

considerable height. The Mississippi was full to overflowing, and the

mouth of the Red River, as far as the eye could reach, presented the

appearance of an extensive lake, with thousands of tree trunks

floating upon it. I had left the cabin, and was standing on deck with

Richards and Vergennes, looking out upon the broad sheet of water that

lay before us. We were just turning into the Red River when I observed

a rowboat pulling across from the direction of Woodville, and which

had already arrived within a hundred yards of us without attracting

the attention of any one on board the steamer. It was cutting in and

out amongst the enormous floating trees, with a boldness that, in that

part of the river--near the middle of which we were--might almost be

called insanity.

"That man must be mad, or in love!" cried the captain.

"It is Ralph Doughby!" exclaimed Richards. "Captain, it is Mister

Doughby. Pray, stop the ship and let him come on board."

Doughby it was. The mad fellow was standing bolt upright, and hardly

taking the trouble to bend to one side or the other in conformity with

the movements of the boat, which was dancing about on the waves and

between the tree-trunks, while the six negro rowers were washed over

and over by the spray.

"Here's your famous Red River!" shouted the harebrained Doughby. "A

fine country for wild-ducks and geese, and alligators too. Hurra,

boys!"

"For God's sake, Mr Doughby!" screamed and implored the ladies, as the

Kentuckian dashed his boat slap up to the side of the steamer, without

waiting till the speed of the vessel was slackened, and hastily caught

a rope which was thrown to him. Just at that moment a wave as high as

a man rose between the steamer and the boat and separated them, and

Doughby still maintaining his hold on the rope, he was dragged out of

his skiff and tossed like a feather against the steamer's side, where

he hung half in and half out of the water.

"Haul in, boys--haul me in, lads--or your d----d paddles will do it!"

"Pull him in!" shouted we all, "pull him in for God's sake!"

"Ay, pull in!" cried Doughby, and giving a spring upwards he caught

hold of the railing of the deck, threw himself over it with a bound,

and stood in all safety amongst the astonished and grinny-visaged

Cyclops who were hastening to his assistance. We hurried down from the

quarterdeck, breathless with astonishment at this desperate and

unnecessary piece of daring.

"Pshaw" cried Doughby; "steward, a glass of hot; and, captain, see

that my portmanteau comes on board, and that my negers get away with

whole skins; and a good morning to you, gentlemen--in five minutes we

shall meet again."

And so saying, he emptied the glass which the black steward held out

to him, made a slight bow to the ladies on the quarterdeck, sprang

into the gentlemen's cabin, and thence into the first state-room that

stood open.

"An _entree en scene_ quite _a la_ Doughby," said Richards laughing.

"Quite so," replied I.

Ralph Doughby, Esquire of New Feliciana, La., was an old acquaintance

of Richards and myself, and an excellent specimen of a warm-hearted,

impetuous, breakneck Kentuckian, with a share of earthquake in his

composition that might be deemed large, even in Kentucky. He had come

to Louisiana some eight years previously, a voyage of a thousand miles

or more down the Cumberland River, the Ohio, and Mississippi, in a

flat boat with half a dozen negroes, some casks of flour, hams, and

Indian corn, and a few horses, and had settled at Woodville on a

couple of thousand acres of good land, bought at five dollars an acre,

to be paid in five years. His industry and energy had caused him to

thrive, and he was now as well established planter as any on the

Mississippi; his six negroes had amounted to forty, his wilderness had

become a respectable plantation, his cotton was sought after, and he

had not only paid for his acres but had already a large sum in the

Planters' Bank. His frank open character had made him friends on all

hands, and there was not a more popular man in Louisiana than Major

Ralph Doughby.

During the stay I made at Richards' house previously to my marriage,

Doughby had passed a day there in company with one Mr Lambton and his

daughter, Yankees--the latter a beautiful girl, but cold and formal

like most of her countrywomen. An aunt of hers, who possessed large

plantations on the Mississippi, had made up a match between Miss

Lambton and Doughby, and they were then proceeding to New York, where

the marriage was in due time to be solemnized. Richards and myself had

observed, however, that the wild headlong manners and character of the

Kentuckian, joined though they were to great goodness of heart and

many sterling qualities, did not appear very pleasing to the stiff,

etiquette-loving fine lady, and it was without any great surprise

that we heard, some time afterwards, of the marriage being broken off,

in consequence, it was said, of some wild freak of Doughby's. We were

asking one another for the particulars of this rupture, which neither

of us had heard, when the Kentuckian made his reappearance in the

cabin. He had changed his dress, and, taking him altogether, was by no

means an ill-looking fellow. His light blue gingham frock and

snow-white trousers fitted him well; an elegant straw hat, very fine

linen, and a diamond shirt-pin that must have cost the best part of a

thousand dollars, contributed to give a sort of genteel planter-like

air. His first care upon emerging from his state-room was to empty a

glass of toddy. He then approached Richards and myself.

"And Miss Lambton?" said Richards enquiringly.

"Haven't you heard?" said Doughby; "you must have heard! It's all

up--she won't hear speak of me--persists in her resolution--won't see

me; or give me a chance of making my peace. I'm the most unlucky

fellow on the face of the earth," continued he, changing his tone on a

sudden to a melancholy sort of whine--"I wish I lay three hundred feet

deep in the bed of the Mississippi. I tell you, boys, it's clean up

with me, I feel that. I'm a lost man, done for entirely--shall never

recover it!"

We burst out into a violent fit of laughter, as who would not have

done at the sight of a young giant of seven-and-twenty, with cheeks as

red as poppies, shoulders that seemed made like those of Atlas to

support a world; pair of dark blue-grey eyes with a laughing devil

dancing in them, and a little moist just now from the effects of the

toddy, and the man dying of love! He measured five feet thirteen

inches in his stockings, with legs that might have belonged to an

elephant, and fists calculated to frighten a buffalo.

"Be d----d to your laughing!" cried Doughby--"Steward, another

glass--d'ye hear, you cursed neger, where are you hidden? Don't you

hear when a gentleman speaks to you? D'ye want me to tattoo your black

brainpan? You laugh," he continued to Richards and myself, relapsing

into his whimpering tones; "but if you only knew--none of the women

will have me--this is the seventh who has packed me off."

"The seventh!" cried I laughing, "what, only the seventh, Doughby?

Pshaw! that's nothing; during my bachelor's life I had at least two

dozen refusals, and I am only a year older than yourself."

"You be hanged with your two dozen! Steward, the toddy is only fit for

old women--too much water in it; you don't know how to make toddy.

Tell your captain to come here. I'll have you sent to the devil. No, I

tell you my heart is so full, it feels as if it would burst. She won't

hear of me. I will tell you all about it, boys--but who is that?"

interrupted he, pointing to Vergennes, who was standing near us, and

looking on in great wonderment. "Ah, Monshur Tonson! happy to see you,

Monshur Tonson! Parleh vouh English? Prenez un seat, et un glass de

Madeira. Nous parlerons hansamble le Franseh. Neger, a bottle of

Madeira; and let it be good, or you'll get the bottle across your

crooked shins. A bottle of Irish for me, d'ye hear, real Irish whisky,

or if you haven't any, Scotch will do. No, boys, I tell you I am a

gone man. Dismissed, sent away, packed off with a flea in my ear, as

they say."

And so saying, he threw himself on a sofa with a violence that made it

crack again; the steward brought the Madeira and the whisky, and we

drew round the table to condole with the love-stricken Kentuckian. A

few minutes passed in the composition of the toddy, which was

evidently destined to play the chief part in the way of a consoler;

and when Doughby had got a large beer-glass of the comfortable mixture

before him, he began his narrative.

CHAPTER II

THE RACE.

"I will tell you how it all happened, and how it was that Miss

Lambton--in short you shall hear it all--it's the first time I have

spoken about it, but now it shall out; you shall judge and decide

between us, by Jove you shall! You recollect it was in the beginning

of June that we left your house, Richards, to go up the

Mississippi--it was a Friday, a day that I hate. All seamen and

hunters do hate it; it's an unlucky day. All the bad luck I ever had,

came to me on Fridays. I had a feeling that something would go wrong

when we went on board the Helen M'Gregor. I thought Miss Lambton

looked shy upon me, and the old gentleman stiffer than ever. I

followed the Miss, however, wherever she went, so close, that once or

twice I trod the fringe off her petticoats."

"That was bad manners, Doughby."

"Pshaw! What did it matter? I told her not to bother her head about

it, that when we got to New York, or even to Cincinnati or Louisville,

I would buy her a whole shopful of dresses. She made no answer to

that; but when I had the misfortune to tear her third flounce, she

said, that if I went on in that way she would not have a whole gown

left when she got to Louisville. 'With a whole one or none at all,

Miss,' said I, 'you'll always be a charming creature.' That now was as

pretty a compliment as ever was paid in Kentucky, but she did not seen

to hear it.

"On the third day we were just passing St Helena, when old Lambton

came up to me. 'Mister Doughby,' said he, quite confidential like,

'pardon me, my dear good Mister Doughby, but don't you think that you

sometimes take rather too much ardent spirits, and thereby injure your

health as well as give a bad example to your fellow-citizens, which,

on the part of a respectable man like yourself, is very much to be

regretted?'

"'Bad example!' says I--'to be regretted, Mister Lambton!--I take too

much ardent spirits! I certainly am not of that opinion, Mister

Lambton, and if you are I can only say you are very much mistaken. You

shall see yourself,' said I, 'how much ballast an old Kentuckian can

take in without sinking under it: devil a diving duck ever swallowed

more water than a Kentucky man can rum.'

"I thought to let the old squaretoes see that he had a man before him,

not one of his spindleshanked tallow-chopped Yankees, who go sneaking

about the meeting-house from morning till night, or moping in their

rooms, and calculating and speculating how they can best take in

honest warm-blooded South and Westlanders. 'You shall see,' said

I--but he shook his head and walked away, and I looked after him, and

shook my head too. Pah! I found out afterwards that he was president

of a temperance society, the devil take them all! Temperance

societies! What is rum for, if it isn't to be drank?"

Doughby was rapidly warming with his subject.

"He is a queer old fellow, that Mister Lambton, as stiff and as cold

as an icicle on a water-butt. Of a morning he was scarcely out of bed

when he knocked at the door of the ladies' cabin in his brocade

dressing-gown, and Miss Lambton must come out and hear him read the

whole morning service of the Episcopal Church, and make the responses,

and so on, for a full hour. Then the whole day he walked about as

grave and solemn as the chief-justice of the district court. Before

dinner he said a grace which lasted a full quarter of an hour. The

soup was often cold, and half the dinner eaten up from under our

noses, while this was going on. Sometimes most of the other passengers

had done their dinner, and were gone to the bar to take a glass, and

he still praying. I was often ready to jump out of my skin with

impatience."

"The praying was all well enough, if it had not lasted so long," said

I, laughing.

"Pah! I hate people who are always wanting to be a shining light to

their fellow-citizens. There's a deal of pride, a deal of arrogance

and presumption in it. If a man wishes to pray, let him do so, and I

do it myself; but people don't want to be reminded of those things. I

tell you I have always found pride behind that sort of piety. The

Yankees think we are heathens, and that they are the elect who are to

enlighten us. Pshaw! I hate such humbug."

"Not so badly reasoned," observed Richards.

"However," continued Doughby, "I soon saw that, with one thing or

another, I was getting out of the old gentleman's good books. He

became more and more stiff and silent. That wouldn't have annoyed me

much; but one morning the captain came to me and said, in a sort of

apologising manner, that the ladies had desired him to beg me not to

pay so many visits to their cabin, particularly of a morning, when

some of them had not quite finished their toilet, but that I should

always ask leave first and have myself announced, as it is set down in

the regulations."

"'What!' says I, 'have myself announced when I go to see my own wife,

that is to be? What do the other ladies matter to me, whether they've

got on silk gowns or cotton ones? I only go to see Miss Lambton.'

"'Miss Lambton was present,' said the captain, 'when the ladies gave

me the commission; and she and Mr Lambton most particularly requested

me to have the regulations enforced.'

"'Miss Lambton!' said I; 'that's a lie now, captain. She never could

have done that.'

"'Mister Doughby,' said he, 'it is no lie; and if another than

yourself had said such a thing, I would have struck him down like a

mad dog. And I must beg of you to retract your words, and ascertain to

your own satisfaction that what I have said is a fact.'

"So I ran off and asked Miss Lambton and Mr Lambton, and they answered

me as dry as fagots, and said the captain had spoken the truth. I was

a'most raving mad when I heard this, as savage as a panther; and, to

console myself, I drank perhaps a trifle more than I should have done.

But what else can one do on a voyage up the Mississippi? Much as I

like him, old father Mississip, one gets awful sick of him after a

time, steaming along for days and weeks together, nothing to be heard

but clap-clap-clap, trap-trap-trap, or to be seen but the dull muddy

waters and the never-ending forest. Day and night, wood and water,

water and wood. It is wearisome work at the best.

"It was exactly two o'clock in the afternoon on the seventh day of our

voyage when we got beyond Wolf's Island, which, as you know, lies

above New Madrid and below the mouth of the Ohio. The poor Helen

M'Gregor burst her boiler since then, as you'll have heard, at that

very place, and sent half a hundred passengers into the other world.

Past Wolf's Island, we came up with the Ploughboy, the Huntress, the

Louisville, and a couple more steamers, all going our way. It made

quite a little fleet. I was sitting in the cabin with Miss Lambton and

the old gentleman, who were cool and silent enough, when somebody

called out, 'Here comes the George Washington.' A glorious steamer it

is that George, more like a floating palace than a boat, as it goes

skimming along as lightly and smoothly as a swan. It's a real pleasure

to see it. I kept my place by Miss Lambton; but, to tell you the

truth, I was sitting upon hot coals. What can be the reason that we

men feel so deucedly cowed and quailed by the petticoats? Hang me if I

know. Suddenly there was a cry upon deck, 'The Washington is passing

us.' I could stand it no longer, but bolted up-stairs, and sure enough

there it came in all its pride and power, trarara, trarara, rushing

and dashing and spitting fire like Emperor Nap. at the head of his

guards and dragoons and artillery. It was already in the midst of the

other five steamers, passing them all. The whole of our passengers

were on deck looking on, and I can tell you that our hearts beat quick

as we saw the George walking up to us. The dinner-bell rang. Not a

foot moved to go below. 'Captain,' cried I, 'we must not let the

George pass us; you can't think of allowing such a thing?' says I;

'must show them that we are Mississippi men.'

"'Mister Doughby,' says he, 'it's the George Washington,' says

he--'hundred and twenty horse power,' says he.

"'Devil a hundred,' said I. 'You only say so because you are afraid to

race him. And if he had two hundred horse power, what then? Shorten

your stirrups and give your horse the spur,' say I.

"I saw that the captain's blood was getting up; his eyes were fixed on

the old George as if he would have eaten it, and he became red and

blue and green, all manner of colours, like a dolphin; his teeth

chattered, and he bit his lips till the blood ran over his chin. On

came the Washington quicker than ever, the paddles clattering, the

steam hissing, the crew hurraing like mad.

"'Captain,' cried I, 'the Washington's passing you; it's all up with

the honour of the Helen M'Gregor.'

"The captain stood there as if his face had been rubbed over with

chalk, and the drops of sweat ran down his forehead. The five steamers

that we had passed were now hurraing with delight to see that we

should be humbled in our turn. 'Captain,' said I, 'will you let

yourself be beaten out of the field without firing a shot? The Helen

M'Gregor is a new ship--Crack on, man!'

"He could stand it no longer, but ran forward and screamed out to the

stokers. 'More wood!' cried he, 'High pressure, high pressure!'

"'Blaze away, boys!' cried I, 'Blaze away, and hurra for the Helen

M'Gregor!'

"And the fellows pitched whole cartloads of wood upon the fire, and

stirred and poked away till they were wet through with perspiration,

and our chimney began to whistle and sing, that it was a pleasure to

hear it. We were just entering the Ohio, the Washington close upon our

heels, when old Lambton and Emily came running upon deck in an

almighty fright.

"'Mr Doughby, for heaven's sake! Mr Doughby--captain, for God's sake!

Will you destroy yourself, and the steamer, and your fellow-citizens?

Will you race with the George Washington?'

"'For God's sake, Mr Doughby!' cried the Miss.

"'Mr Doughby!' squealed the old Yankee, who had quite forgotten his

stiffness, 'I demand and insist that you use your influence to prevent

the captain from racing.'

"'Pshaw!' said I, 'it's nothing of the sort--ain't going to race--only

want to see which ship goes quickest.'

"'That must not be. I protest against it--the safety of our

fellow-citizens--our own. If the boiler bursts'----

"'Nonsense!' said I--'safety of our fellow-citizens! Our

fellow-citizens _are_ in safety. We don't mean to race, Mister

Lambton,' says I; 'we are only trying for a minute which ship can go

the fastest.'

"'Mr Doughby!' cried Emily, half beside herself--throwing her arms

round me, and trying to drag me towards the engine--'Mr Doughby, if

you have the smallest affection--regard I would say--for me, exert

your influence, stop this horrid racing!'

"And then she left me and ran to the captain, who was standing beside

the engineer.

"The Washington was close behind us--we, as I said before, were

running slap into the mouth of the Ohio. There's no finer piece of

water in the whole world for a race. The current of the Mississippi

drives back that of the Ohio as far as Trinity, so that upon entering

the river, the stream is in your favour. The two rivers are together

four or five miles wide, and form a sort of circus, enclosed by the

shores of Illinois, of Old Kentuck, and her daughter Missouri.[4] We

were nearest to the Illinois side, which gave us a small advantage

over our opponent, who was more on the Kentucky side, end kept coming

on faster and faster, with the other five boats, who had also clapped

more steam on, a short distance behind him. Our Helen M'Gregor still

kept the lead; who the devil could have helped racing? No one, of a

certainty, except such a mackerel-blooded Yankee as old Lambton. All

was heat and steam, rattle and clatter; the engines thumping, the

water splashing, the fire blazing and roaring out of the chimneys,

which sent out clouds of smoke and showers of sparks. The enemy was

close upon us, Father George's honest face almost in a line with our

stern.

"'Helen M'Gregor, hold your own!' cried I. 'Don't spare the wood,

boys, lay it on thick, pile it up moun_tain_eous; ten dollars for you

when you've beaten him!'

"'Hurra!' cried the hundred passengers; 'hurra! The Washington loses,

we are gaining ground.'

"Only the captain could not say a word; he stood there with his blue

lips pressed hard together, looking more like a statue than a man. We

were going our twenty knots, and keep it up we must if we did not want

to fall back amongst the mob of the Huntress, the Ploughboy, and the

rest of them. Every joint and hinge in the boat seemed to be cracking,

the engine roared and groaned, the steam howled and hissed.

"'The Helen M'Gregor is a gallant lass!' cried I. 'A brave

Scotchwoman! She has fire in her veins.'

"And so she really had. She stretched out like a racehorse that feels

the spur in his flank for the first time; not steaming or swimming,

but flying like a bird, rushing like a wild-cat or an elk that's been

shot at; the waters of the Ohio flashing from her side in a white

creamy foam. The Kentucky shores on our right, with their forests and

cotton-trees, were flying away from us; on our left, the banks of

Illinois seemed to dance past us, the big trees looking like witches

scampering off on their broomsticks. Behind us, the high land of

Missouri was rapidly disappearing, Colonel Boon's plantation getting

smaller every second, till at last it appeared no bigger than a

dovecot. Every thing around us seemed in motion, swimming, flying,

racing. Hurras by thousands; seven steamers groaning, creaking,

hissing, and rattling; a noise and a heat that made our heads dizzy,

blinded our eyes, and took away our hearing. It was a gallopade, a

race between giants.

"We were close to the wood below Trinity--the race as good as won, for

Trinity was of course the winning post. Suddenly the captain cried

out, 'He is passing us!' and, as he said the word, he looked as wild

as a tortured redskin, and bit his lips more savage than ever, and

caught hold of the quarterdeck railing as if he would have torn it

down.

"'Captain,' said I, 'it's impossible--he is not passing us.'

"'Look yourself, Mr Doughby,' said he.

"The man was right. The old George is an almighty fast ship, that is

certain. I saw that in two minutes we should be beaten. We had not

even so long to wait.

"'By my soul he is passing us!' cried I.

"'He is passing us,' repeated the captain in a low voice. He was

deadly white. I couldn't say a word; and as for him, he was obliged to

support himself against the railing, or he would have fallen down.

There was no help for it, however; the Washington's figure-head was

already in a line with our stern--in ten seconds, a third of the

vessel's length was parallel with us--another ten seconds, two-thirds,

and in less than a minute he dashed proudly before us with a deafening

hurra from crew and passengers, which was echoed from the other five

steamers, till we heard nothing on all sides but hurras and hurras. I

would have given a thousand dollars down to have reached Trinity two

minutes sooner. Just then a number of voices cried out, 'The boiler's

bursting! The boiler's bursting!' And there was a cracking noise, and

then a loud rush. Here comes the hot bath, thought I, and wished

myself a pleasant journey out of the world. But it was nothing; the

cry came from a couple of negers, echoed by Miss Lambton and Mister

Lambton, and the rest of the old women folk from the ladies' cabin.

They had gone in a body to the engineer, and had so begged, and

prayed, and bothered him, that he had given in, and opened the valve,

and we only half a mile from Trinity. I am certain that if the

cowardly rascal had not done that, we should have made a drawn race

of it, for the Washington got in not two minutes before us. I fell

upon the engineer, and if it had not been for the captain, and one or

two old acquaintances, I should have leathered him upon the spot--ay,

if it were to have cost me a thousand dollars; he deserved it well,

the dishonourable scamp! We were now in Trinity, we had done five

miles in less than twelve minutes; but Miss Lambton was so angry, and

the old gentleman so bitter cold and stiff--a pair of fire-tongs is

nothing compared to him--Couldn't be helped, however. Honor before

every thing."

"But you really were too foolhardy," observed Richards.

"Foolhardy!" repeated Doughby, "foolhardy, when the honour of a ship

was at stake!"

"Pshaw! The honour of a steam-boat!"

"Pshaw, do you say, Richards? Well, if I didn't know you to be a

thoroughbred Virginian, hang me if I should not almost take you for

one of those wishywashy Creoles. Pshaw, say you, the honour of a

steam-boat! A steamer, let me tell you, is also a ship, and a big one

too, and an American one, a thorough American one. It's our ship; we

invented it, they'd have been long enough in the old country before

finding such a thing out--Pshaw, do you say? And if Percy had said

pshaw upon Lake Erie, or Lawrence on Champlain, or Rogers, or Porter,

you might say pshaw to every thing--to the honour of a steamer, a

ship, a country. But I tell you that the man who says pshaw when his

ship is beaten in a race, will also say it when it is taken in a

fight. In short, that sort of pride is emulation, and that emulation

is the real thing."

"But the life of so many men?"

"I tell you, that of the hundred and twenty passengers that we had on

board the Helen, there were not three besides that leathern old

Yankee, Mister Lambton, and the women, who would have cared one straw

if the boiler had burst, provided we had got to Trinity two minutes

the sooner."

We could not help laughing at this Kentucky bull, but at the same time

we were compelled to admit the truth of what Doughby meant to say. In

spite of Uncle Sam's usual phlegm and _nonchalance_, there are

occasions when he seems to change his nature; and in the anxiety to

see his ship first at the goal, to forget what he does not otherwise

easily lose sight of, namely, wife and child, land and goods; as to

his own life, it does not weigh a feather in the balance. He becomes a

perfect madman, setting every thing upon a single cast. And the yearly

loss of five hundred to a thousand lives, sacrificed in these

desperate races, does not appear to cure him in any degree of his

mania.

"Well," continued Doughby, resuming his narrative, "it was as much as

I could do to get a word from Miss Emily during the rest of the

voyage. The time went terribly slow, and my patience was clean

expended when we got to Louisville. We stopped at the Lafayette Hotel,

and I was in my room before dinner, when the waiter brought me a

letter from Mister Lambton. The old gentleman had the honour to inform

me, in accordance with his daughter's wishes, that there did not exist

sufficient harmony between my character and that of Miss Emily to

render a union between us desirable. And, under these circumstances,

he took leave to request of me that I would consider the projected

marriage as entirely broken off; and, with his and his daughter's best

wishes for my happiness, he had the honour to be my very humble

servant. There was a deal more of it, but that was the pith. When I

had read it, I burst out of my room like mad, either to throttle old

Lambton or to throw myself at his daughter's feet, I didn't rightly

know which. But the Yankee had been too cunning for me. He had left

the hotel with his daughter, and gone off by the Cincinnati steamer. I

went on board the next that was going, and got to Cincinnati three

hours after him, but missed him again. He had taken a chaise and

started for his estate at Dayton, near Yellow Springs. And all I have

done since is no use. She won't hear of me, and I'm the most unhappy

fellow alive."

And so saying, he threw his feet upon the table, crossed his arms,

and remained in this position for a couple of minutes, staring

earnestly at the ceiling. Suddenly he brought his legs down again,

started up, and gazed through the cabin window.

"Hallo!" cried he, "here are your Red River bottoms. Will have a look

at them--will go on deck? You may take away, steward. Come, Monshur

Tonson, come with me, come, my dear little Frenchman! Nous parlons

hansamble le Fransch."

And thereupon he struck up the favourite western ditty, "Let's go to

Old Kentuck," seized young De Vergennes by the arm, and dragged him

through the folding-doors and out upon deck.

"He's not the man to break his heart about a woman," said I to

Richards.

"Hardly," replied my friend.