CHAPTER XIV.

FAMILY SECRETS.

It was commonly understood in the town of Rockland that Dudley Venner

had had a great deal of trouble with that daughter of his, so

handsome, yet so peculiar, about whom there were so many strange

stories. There was no end to the tales that were told of her

extraordinary doings. Yet her name was never coupled with that of any

youth or man, until this cousin had provoked remark by his visit; and

even then it was rather in the shape of wondering conjectures whether

he would dare to make love to her, than in any pretended knowledge of

their relations to each other, that the public tongue exercised its

village-prerogative of tattle.

The more common version of the trouble at the mansion-house was

this:--Elsie was not exactly in her right mind. Her temper was

singular, her tastes were anomalous, her habits were lawless, her

antipathies were many and intense, and she was liable to explosions

of ungovernable anger. Some said that was not the worst of it. At

nearly fifteen years old, when she was growing fast, and in an

irritable state of mind and body, she had had a governess placed over

her for whom she had conceived an aversion. It was whispered among a

few who knew more of the family secrets than others, that, worried

and exasperated by the presence and jealous oversight of this person,

Elsie had attempted to get finally rid of her by unlawful means, such

as young girls have been known to employ in their straits, and to

which the sex at all ages has a certain instinctive tendency, in

preference to more palpable instruments for the righting of its

wrongs. At any rate, this governess had been taken suddenly ill, and

the Doctor had been sent for at midnight. Old Sophy had taken her

master into a room apart, and said a few words to him which turned

him as white as a sheet. As soon as he recovered himself, he sent

Sophy out, called in the old Doctor, and gave him some few hints, on

which he acted at once, and had the satisfaction of seeing his

patient out of danger before he left in the morning. It is proper to

say, that, during the following days, the most thorough search was

made in every nook and cranny of those parts of the house which Elsie

chiefly haunted, but nothing was found which might be accused of

having been the intentional cause of the probably accidental sudden

illness of the governess. From this time forward her father was never

easy. Should he keep her apart, or shut her up, for fear of risk to

others, and so lose every chance of restoring her mind to its healthy

tone by kindly influences and intercourse with wholesome natures?

There was no proof, only presumption, as to the agency of Elsie in

the matter referred to. But the doubt was worse, perhaps, than

certainty would have been,--for then he would have known what to do.

He took the old Doctor as his adviser. The shrewd old man listened to

the father's story, his explanations of possibilities, of

probabilities, of dangers, of hopes. When he had got through, the

Doctor looked him in the face steadily, as if he were saying, _Is

that all?_

The father's eyes fell. That was not all. There was something at the

bottom of his soul which he could not bear to speak of,--nay, which,

as often as it reared itself through the dark waves of unworded

consciousness into the breathing air of thought, he trod down as the

ruined angels tread down a lost soul trying to come up out of the

seething sea of torture. Only this one daughter! No! God never would

have ordained such a thing. There was nothing ever heard of like it;

it could not be; she was ill,--she would outgrow all these

singularities; he had had an aunt who was peculiar; he had heard that

hysteric girls showed the strangest forms of moral obliquity for a

time, but came right at last. She would change all at once, when her

health got more firmly settled in the course of her growth. Are there

not rough buds that open into sweet flowers? Are there not fruits,

which, while unripe, are not to be tasted or endured, that mature

into the richest taste and fragrance? In God's good time she would

come to her true nature; her eyes would lose that frightful, cold

glitter; her lips would not feel so cold when she pressed them

mechanically against his cheek; and that faint birth-mark, her mother

swooned when she first saw, would fade wholly out,--it was less

marked, surely, now than it used to be!

So Dudley Venner felt, and would have thought, if he had let his

thoughts breathe the air of his soul. But the Doctor read through

words and thoughts and all into the father's consciousness. There are

states of mind that may be shared by two persons in presence of each

other, which remain not only unworded, but _unthoughted_, if such a

word may be coined for our special need. Such a mutually

interpenetrative consciousness there was between the father and the

old physician. By a common impulse, both of them rose in a mechanical

way and went to the western window, where each started, as he saw the

other's look directed towards the white stone that stood in the midst

of the small plot of green turf.

The Doctor had, for a moment, forgotten himself, but he looked up at

the clouds, which were angry, and said, as if speaking of the

weather, "It is dark now, but we hope it will clear up by-and-by.

There are a great many more clouds than rains, and more rains than

strokes of lightning, and more strokes of lightning than there are

people killed. We must let this girl of ours have her way, as far as

it is safe. Send away this woman she hates, quietly. Get her a

foreigner for a governess, if you can,--one that can dance and sing

and will teach her. In the house old Sophy will watch her best. Out

of it you must trust her, I am afraid,--for she will not be followed

round, and she is in less danger than you think. If she wanders at

night, find her, if you can; the woods are not absolutely safe. If

she will be friendly with any young people, have them to see

her,--young men, especially. She will not love any one easily, perhaps

not at all; yet love would be more like to bring her right than anything

else. If any young person seems in danger of falling in love with

her, send him to me for counsel."

Dry, hard advice, but given from a kind heart, with a moist eye, and

in tones that tried to be cheerful and were full of sympathy. This

advice was the key to the more than indulgent treatment which, as we

have seen, the girl had received from her father and all about her.

The old Doctor often came in, in the kindest, most natural sort of

way, got into pleasant relations with Elsie by always treating her in

the same easy manner as at the great party, encouraging all her

harmless fancies, and rarely reminding her that he was a professional

adviser, except when she came out of her own accord, as in the talk

they had at the party, telling him of some wild trick she had been

playing.

"Let her go to the girls' school, by all means," said the Doctor,

when she had begun to talk about it. "Possibly she may take to some

of the girls or of the teachers. Anything to interest her.

Friendship, love, religion,--whatever will set her nature at work. We

must have headway on, or there will be no piloting her. Action first

of all, and then we will see what to do with it."

So, when Cousin Richard came along, the Doctor, though he did not

like his looks any too well, told her father to encourage his staying

for a time. If she liked him, it was good; if she only tolerated him,

it was better than nothing.

"You know something about that nephew of yours, during these last

years, I suppose?" the Doctor said. "Looks as if he had seen life.

Has a scar that was made by a sword-cut, and a white spot on the side

of his neck that looks like a bulletmark. I think he has been what

folks call a 'hard customer.'"

Dudley Venner owned that he had heard little or nothing of him of

late years. He had invited himself, and of course it would not be

decent not to receive him as a relative. He thought Elsie rather

liked having him about the house for a while. She was very

capricious,--acted as if she fancied him one day and disliked him the

next. He did not know,--but (he said in a low voice) he had a

suspicion that this nephew of his was disposed to take a serious

liking to Elsie. What should he do about it, if it turned out so?

The Doctor lifted his eyebrows a little. He thought there was no

fear. Elsie was naturally what they call a man-hater, and there was

very little danger of any sudden passion springing up between two

such young persons. Let him stay awhile; it gives her something to

think about.--So he stayed awhile, as we have seen.

The more Mr. Richard became acquainted with the family,--that is,

with the two persons of whom it consisted,--the more favorably the

idea of a permanent residence in the mansion-house seemed to impress

him. The estate was large,--hundreds of acres, with woodlands and

meadows of great value. The father and daughter had been living

quietly, and there could not be a doubt that the property which came

through the Dudleys must have largely increased of late years. It was

evident enough that they had an abundant income, from the way in

which Elsie's caprices were indulged. She had horses and carriages to

suit herself; she sent to the great city for everything she wanted in

the way of dress. Even her diamonds--and the young man knew something

about these gems--must be of considerable value; and yet she wore

them carelessly, as it pleased her fancy. She had precious old laces,

too, almost worth their weight in diamonds,--laces which had been

snatched from altars in ancient Spanish cathedrals during the wars,

and which it would not be safe to leave a duchess alone with for ten

minutes. The old house was fat with the deposits of rich generations

which had gone before. The famous "golden" fireset was a purchase of

one of the family who had been in France during the Revolution, and

must have come from a princely palace, if not from one of the royal

residences. As for silver, the iron closet which had been made in the

dining-room wall was running over with it: tea-kettles, coffee-pots,

heavy-lidded tankards, chafing-dishes, punch-bowls, all that all the

Dudleys had ever used, from the caudle-cup that used to be handed

round the young mother's chamber, and the porringer from which

children scooped their bread-and-milk with spoons as solid as ingots,

to that ominous vessel, on the upper shelf, far back in the dark,

with a spout like a slender italic S, out of which the sick and

dying, all along the last century, and since, had taken the last

drops that passed their lips. Without being much of a scholar, Dick

could see well enough, too, that the books in the library had been

ordered from the great London houses, whose imprint they bore, by

persons that knew what was best and meant to have it. A man does not

require much learning to feel pretty sure, when he takes one of those

solid, smooth, velvet-leaved quartos, say a Baskerville Addison, for

instance, bound in red morocco, with a margin of gold, as rich as the

embroidery of a prince's collar, as Vandyck drew it,--he need not

know much to feel pretty sure that a score or two of shelves full of

such books mean that it took a long purse, as well as a literary

taste, to bring them together.

To all these attractions the mind of this thoughtful young gentleman

may be said to have been fully open. He did not disguise from

himself, however, that there were a number of drawbacks in the way of

his becoming established as the heir of the Dudley mansion-house and

fortune. In the first place, Cousin Elsie was, unquestionably, very

piquant, very handsome, game as a hawk, and hard to please, which

made her worth trying for. But then there was something about Cousin

Elsie,--(the small, white scars began stinging, as he said this to

himself, and he pushed his sleeve up to look at them,)--there was

something about Cousin Elsie he couldn't make out. What was the

matter with her eyes, that they sucked your life out of you in that

strange way? What did she always wear a necklace for? Had she some

such love-token on her neck as the old Don's revolver had left on

his? How safe would anybody feel to live with her? Besides, her

father would last forever, if he was left to himself. And he may take

it into his head to marry again. That would be pleasant!

So talked Cousin Richard to himself, in the calm of the night and in

the tranquillity of his own soul. There was much to be said on both

sides. It was a balance to be struck after the two columns were added

up. He struck the balance, and came to the conclusion that he would

fall in love with Elsie Venner.

The intelligent reader will not confound this matured and serious

intention of falling in love with the young lady with that mere

impulse of the moment before mentioned as an instance of making love.

On the contrary, the moment Mr. Richard had made up his mind that he

should fall in love with Elsie, he began to be more reserved with

her, and to try to make friends in other quarters. Sensible men, you

know, care very little what a girl's present fancy is. The question

is: Who manages her, and how can you get at that person or those

persons? Her foolish little sentiments are all very well in their

way; but business is business, and we can't stop for such trifles.

The old political wire-pullers never go near the man they want to

gain, if they can help it; they find out who his intimates and

managers are, and work through them. Always handle any positively

electrical body, whether it is charged with passion, or power, with

some non-conductor between you and it, not with your naked

hands.--The above were some of the young gentleman's working axioms;

and he proceeded to act in accordance with them.

He began by paying his court more assiduously to his uncle. It was

not very hard to ingratiate himself in that quarter; for his manners

were insinuating, and his precocious experience of life made him

entertaining. The old neglected billiard-room was soon put in order,

and Dick, who was a magnificent player, had a series of games with

his uncle, in which, singularly enough, he was beaten, though his

antagonist had been out of play for years. He evinced a profound

interest in the family history, insisted on having the details of its

early alliances, and professed a great pride of race, which he had

inherited from his father, who, though he had allied himself with the

daughter of an alien race, had yet chosen one with the real azure

blood in her veins, as proud as if she had Castile and Aragon for her

dower and the Cid for her grandpapa. He also asked a great deal of

advice, such as inexperienced young persons are in need of, and

listened to it with great reverence.

It is not very strange that Uncle Dudley took a kinder view of his

nephew than the Judge, who thought he could read a questionable

history in his face,--or the old Doctor, who knew men's temperaments

and organizations pretty well, and had his prejudices about races,

and could tell an old sword-cut and a bullet-mark in two seconds from

a scar got by falling against the fender, or a mark left by king's

evil. He could not be expected to share our own prejudices; for he

had heard nothing of the wild youth's adventures, or his scamper over

the Pampas at short notice. So, then, "Richard Venner, Esquire, guest

of Dudley Venner, Esquire, at his elegant mansion," prolonged his

visit until his presence became something like a matter of habit, and

the neighbors settled it beyond doubt that the fine old house would

be illuminated before long for a grand marriage.

He had done pretty well with the father: the next thing was to gain

over the nurse. Old Sophy was as cunning as a red fox or a gray

woodchuck. She had nothing in the world to do but to watch Elsie; she

had nothing to care for but this girl and her father. She had never

liked Dick too well; for he used to make faces at her and tease her

when he was a boy, and now he was a man there was something about

him--she could not tell what--that made her suspicious of him. It was

no small matter to get her over to his side.

The jet-black Africans know that gold never looks so well as on the

foil of their dark skins. Dick found in his trunk a string of gold

beads, such as are manufactured in some of our cities, which he had

brought from the gold region of Chili,--so he said,--for the express

purpose of giving them to old Sophy. These Africans, too, have a

perfect passion for gay-colored clothing; being condemned by Nature,

as it were, to a perpetual mourning-suit, they love to enliven it

with all sorts of variegated stuffs of sprightly patterns, aflame

with red and yellow. The considerate young man had remembered this,

too, and brought home for Sophy some handkerchiefs of rainbow hue,

which had been strangely overlooked till now, at the bottom of one of

his trunks. Old Sophy took his gifts, but kept her black eyes open

and watched every movement of the young people all the more closely.

It was through her that the father had always known most of the

actions and tendencies of his daughter.

In the mean time the strange adventure on The Mountain had brought

the young master into new relations with Elsie. She had saved him in

the extremity of peril by the exercise of some mysterious power. He

was grateful, and yet shuddered at the recollection of the whole

scene. In his dreams he was pursued by the glare of cold glittering

eyes,--whether they were in the head of a woman or of a reptile he

could not always tell, the images had so run together. But he could

not help seeing that the eyes of the young girl had been often, very

often, turned upon him when he had been looking away, and fell as his

own glance met them. Helen Darley told him very plainly that this

girl was thinking about him more than about her book. Dick Venner

found she was getting more constant in her attendance at school. He

learned, on inquiry, that there was a new master, a handsome young

man. The handsome young man would not have liked the look that came

over Dick's face when he heard this fact mentioned.

In short, everything was getting tangled up together, and there would

be no chance of disentangling the threads in this chapter.

ON THE FORMATION OF GALLERIES OF ART.

It is barely fifty years since England refused the gift of the

pictures that now constitute the Dulwich Gallery. So rapidly,

however, did public opinion and taste become enlightened, that

twenty-five years afterwards Parliament voted seventy-three thousand

pounds for the purchase of thirty-eight pictures collected by Mr.

Angerstein. This was the commencement of their National Gallery. In

1790 but three national galleries existed in Europe,--those of

Dresden, Florence, and Amsterdam. The Louvre was then first

originated by a decree of the Constituent Assembly of France. England

now spends with open hand on schools of design, the accumulation of

treasures of art of every epoch and character, and whatever tends to

elevate the taste and enlarge the means of the artistic education of

her people,--perceiving, with far-sighted wisdom, that, through

improved manufacture and riper civilization, eventually a tenfold

return will result to her treasury. The nations of Europe exult over

a new acquisition to their galleries, though its cost may have

exceeded a hundred thousand dollars.

We are in that stage of indifference and neglect that one of our

wealthiest cities recently refused to accept the donation of a

gallery of some three hundred pictures, collected with taste and

discrimination by a generous lover of art, because it did not wish to

be put to the expense of finding wall-room for them. But this spirit

is departing, and now our slowness or reluctance is rather the result

of a want of knowledge and critical judgment than of a want of

feeling for art.

To stimulate this feeling, it is requisite that our public should

have free access to galleries in which shall be exhibited in

chronological series specimens of the art of all nations and schools,

arranged according to their motives and the special influences that

attended their development. After this manner a mental and artistic

history of the world may be spread out like a chart before the

student, while the artist with equal facility can trace up to their

origin the varied methods, styles, and excellences of each prominent

epoch. A gallery of art is a perpetual feast of the most intense and

refined enjoyment to every one capable of entering into its phases of

thought and execution, analyzing its external and internal being, and

tracing the mysterious transformations of spirit into form. It has

been well said, that a complete gallery, on a broad foundation, in

which all tastes, styles, and methods harmoniously mingle, is a court

of final appeal of one phase of civilization against another, from an

examination of which we can sum up their respective qualities and

merits, drawing therefrom for our own edification as from a perpetual

wellspring of inspiration and knowledge. But if we sit in judgment

upon the great departed, they likewise sit in judgment upon us. And

it is precisely where such means of testing artistic growth best

exist that modern art is at once most humble and most aspiring:

conscious of its own power and in many respects superior technical

advantages, both it and the public are still content to go to the

past for instruction, and each to seek to rise above the transitory

bias of fashion or local passions to a standard of taste that will

abide world-wide comparison and criticism.

An edifice for a gallery or museum of art should be fire-proof,

sufficiently isolated for light and effective ornamentation, and

constructed so as to admit of indefinite extension. Its chief feature

should be the suitable accommodation and exhibition of its contents.

But provision should be made for its becoming eventually in

architectural effect consistent with its object. The skeleton of such

a building need not be costly. Its chief expense would be in its

ultimate adornment with marble facings, richly colored stones,

sculpture or frescoes, according to a design which should enforce

strict purity of taste and conformity to its motive. This gradual

completion, as happened to the mediæval monuments of Europe, could be

extended through many generations, which would thus be linked with

one another in a common object of artistic and patriotic pride

gradually growing up among them, as a national monument, with its

foundations deeply laid in a unity of feeling and those desirable

associations of love and veneration which in older civilizations so

delightfully harmonize the past with the present. Each epoch of

artists would be instructed by the skill of its predecessor, and

stimulated to connect its name permanently with so glorious a shrine.

Wealth, as in the days of democratic Greece and Italy, would be

lavished upon the completion of a temple of art destined to endure as

long as material can defy time, a monument of the people's taste and

munificence. There would be born among them the spirit of those

Athenians who said to Phidias, when he asked if he should use ivory

or marble for the statue of their protecting goddess, "Use that

material which is most _worthy_ of our city."

Until recently, no attention has been paid, even in Europe, to

historical sequence and special motives in the arrangement of

galleries. As in the Pitti Gallery, pictures were generally hung so

as to conform to the symmetry of the rooms,--various styles, schools,

and epochs being intermixed. As the progress of ideas is of more

importance to note than the variations of styles or the degree of

technical merit, the chief attention in selection and position should

be given to lucidly exhibiting the varied phases of artistic thought

among the diverse races and widely separated eras and inspirations

which gave them being. The mechanism of art is, however, go

intimately interwoven with the idea, that by giving precedence to the

latter we most readily arrive at the best arrangement of the former.

Each cycle of civilization should have its special department,

Paganism and Christianity being kept apart, and not, as in the

Florentine Gallery, intermixed,--presenting a strange jumble of

classical statuary and modern paintings in anachronistic disorder, to

the loss of the finest properties of each to the eye, and the

destruction of that unity of motive and harmonious association so

essential to the proper exhibition of art. For it is essential that

every variety of artistic development should be associated solely

with those objects or conditions most in keeping with its

inspirations. In this way we quickest come to an understanding of its

originating idea, and sympathize with its feeling, tracing its

progress from infancy to maturity and decay, and comparing it as a

whole with corresponding or rival varieties of artistic development.

This systematized variety of one great unity is of the highest

importance in placing the spectator in affinity with art as a whole

and with its diversities of character, and in giving him sound

stand-points of comparison and criticism. In this way, as in the Louvre,

feeling and thought are readily transported from one epoch of

civilization to another, grasping the motives and execution of each

with pleasurable accuracy. We perceive that no conventional standard

of criticism, founded upon the opinions or fashions of one age, is

applicable to all. To rightly comprehend each, we must broadly survey

the entire ground of art, and make ourselves for the time members, as

it were, of the political and social conditions of life that give

origin to the objects of our investigations. This philosophical mode

of viewing art does not exclude an æsthetic point of view, but rather

heightens that and makes it more intelligible. Paganism would be

subdivided into the various national forms that illustrated its rise

and fall. Egypt, India, China, Assyria, Greece, Etruria, and Rome,

would stand each by itself as a component part of a great whole: so

with Christianity, in such shapes as have already taken foothold in

history, the Latin, Byzantine, Lombard, Mediæval, Renaissant, and

Protestant art, subdivided into its diversified schools or leading

ideas, all graphically arranged so as to demonstrate, amid the

infinite varieties of humanity, a divine unity of origin and design,

linking together mankind in one common family.

Beside statuary and paintings, an institution of this nature should

contain specimens of every kind of industry in which art is the

primary inspiration, to illustrate the qualities and degrees of

social refinement in nations and eras. This would include every

variety of ornamental art in which invention and skill are

conspicuous, as well as those works more directly inspired by higher

motives and intended as a joy forever. Architecture and objects not

transportable could be represented by casts or photographs. Models,

drawings, and engravings also come within its scope; and there should

be attached to the parent gallery a library of reference and a

lecture- and reading-room.

Connected with it there might be schools of design for improvement in

ornamental manufacture, the development of architecture, and whatever

aids to refine and give beauty to social life, including a simple

academic system for the elementary branches of drawing and coloring,

upon a scientific basis of accumulated knowledge and experience,

providing models and other advantages not readily accessible to

private resources, but leaving individual genius free to follow its

own promptings upon a well-laid technical foundation. As soon as the

young artist has acquired the grammar of his profession, he should be

sent forth to study directly from Nature and to mature his invention

unfettered by authoritative academic system, which more frequently

fosters conventionalism and imposes trammels upon talent than endows

it with strength and freedom.

Such is a brief sketch of institutions feasible amongst us from

humble beginnings by individual enterprise. Once founded and their

value demonstrated, the countenance of the state may be hopefully

invoked. Their very existence would become an incentive to munificent

gifts. Individuals owning fine works of art would grow ambitious to

have their memories associated with patriotic enterprise. Art invokes

liberality and evokes fraternity. The sentiment, that there is a

common property in the productions of genius, making possession a

trust for the public welfare, will increase among those by whose

taste and wealth they have been accumulated. Masterpieces will cease

to be regarded as the selfish acquisitions of covetous amateurs, but,

like spoken truth, will become the inalienable birthright of the

people,--finding their way freely and generously, through the

magnetic influences of public spirit and pertinent examples, to those

depositories where they can most efficaciously perform their mission

of truth and beauty to the world. Then the people themselves will

begin to take pride in their artistic wealth, to honor artists as

they now do soldiers and statesmen, and to value the more highly

those virtues which are interwoven with all noble effort.

In 1823, when the National Gallery of England was founded, the

English were nearly as dead to art as we are now. A few amateurs

alone cultivated it, but there was no general sympathy with nor

knowledge of it. Yet by 1837, in donations alone, the gallery had

received one hundred and thirty-seven pictures. Since that period

gifts have increased tenfold in value and numbers. Connected with it,

and a part of that noble, comprehensive, and munificent system of

art-education which the British government has inculcated, are the

British and Kensington Museums. Schools of design, with every

appliance for the growth of art, have rapidly sprung into existence.

Private enterprise and research have correspondingly increased.

British agents, with unstinted means, are everywhere ransacking the

earth in quest of everything that can add to the value and utility of

their national and private collections. A keen regard for all that

concerns art, a desire for its national development, an enlightened

standard of criticism, and with it the most eloquent art-literature

of any tongue, have all recently sprung into existence in our

motherland. All honor to those generous spirits that have produced

this,--and honor to the nation that so wisely expends its wealth! A

noble example for America! England also throws open to the

competition of the world plans for her public buildings and

monuments. Mistakes and defects there have been, but an honest desire

for amendment and to promote the intellectual growth of the nation

now characterizes her pioneers in this cause. And what progress!

Between 1823 and 1850, in the Museum alone, there have been expended

$10,000,000. Within twelve years, $450,000 have been expended on the

National Gallery for pictures, and yet its largest accession of

treasures is by gifts and bequests. Lately, beside the Pisani

Veronese bought for $70,000, eight other paintings have been

purchased at a cost of $50,000. In 1858, $36,000 were given for the

choice of twenty, of the early Italian schools, from the Lombardi

Gallery at Florence,--not masterpieces, but simply characteristic

specimens, more or less restored. The average cost of late

acquisitions has been about $6,000 each. In 1858, there were 823,000

visitors to both branches of the National Gallery. Who can estimate

not alone the pleasure and instruction afforded by such an

institution to its million of annual visitors, but the ideas and

inspiration thence born, destined to grow and fructify to the glory

and good of the nation? At present there are seventy-seven schools of

art in England, attended by 68,000 students. In 1859, they and

kindred institutions received a public grant of nearly $450,000. The

appropriation for the British Museum alone, for 1860, is £77,452.

To the Louvre Louis XVIII. added one hundred and eleven pictures, at

a cost of about $132,000; Charles X., twenty-four, at $12,000; Louis

Philippe, fifty-three, at $14,500; and Napoleon III., thus far,

thirty paintings, costing $200,000, one of which, the Murillo, cost

$125,000. Russia is following in the same path. Italy, Greece, and

Egypt, by stringent regulations, are making it yearly more difficult

for any precious work to leave their shores. If, therefore, America

is ever to follow in the same path, she must soon bestir herself, or

she will have nothing but barren fields to glean from.

DARWIN ON THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES.

Novelties are enticing to most people: to us they are simply

annoying. We cling to a long-accepted theory, just as we cling to an

old suit of clothes. A new theory, like a new pair of breeches, ("The

Atlantic" still affects the older type of nether garment,) is sure to

have hard-fitting places; or even when no particular fault can be

found with the article, it oppresses with a sense of general

discomfort. New notions and new styles worry us, till we get well

used to them, which is only by slow degrees.

Wherefore, in Galileo's time, we might have helped to proscribe, or

to burn--had he been stubborn enough to warrant cremation--even the

great pioneer of inductive research; although, when we had fairly

recovered our composure, and had leisurely excogitated the matter, we

might have come to conclude that the new doctrine was better than the

old one, after all, at least for those who had nothing to unlearn.

Such being our habitual state of mind, it may well be believed that

the perusal of the new book "On the Origin of Species by Means of

Natural Selection" left an uncomfortable impression, in spite of its

plausible and winning ways. We were not wholly unprepared for it, as

many of our contemporaries seem to have been. The scientific reading

in which we indulge as a relaxation from severer studies had raised

dim forebodings. Investigations about the succession of species in

time, and their actual geographical distribution over the earth's

surface, were leading up from all sides and in various ways to the

question of their origin. Now and then we encountered a sentence,

like Professor Owen's "axiom of the continuous operation of the

ordained becoming of living things," which haunted us like an

apparition. For, dim as our conception must needs be as to what such

oracular and grandiloquent phrases might really mean, we felt

confident that they presaged no good to old beliefs. Foreseeing, yet

deprecating, the coming time of trouble, we still hoped, that, with

some repairs and make-shifts, the old views might last out our days.

_Après nous le déluge_. Still, not to lag behind the rest of the

world, we read the book in which the new theory is promulgated. We

took it up, like our neighbors, and, as was natural, in a somewhat

captious frame of mind.

Well, we found no cause of quarrel with the first chapter. Here the

author takes us directly to the barn-yard and the kitchen-garden.

Like an honorable rural member of our General Court, who sat silent

until, near the close of a long session, a bill requiring all swine

at large to wear pokes was introduced, when he claimed the privilege

of addressing the house, on the proper ground that he had been

"brought up among the pigs, and knew all about them,"--so we were

brought up among cows and cabbages; and the lowing of cattle, the

cackling of hens, and the cooing of pigeons were sounds native and

pleasant to our ears. So "Variation under Domestication" dealt with

familiar subjects in a natural way, and gently introduced "Variation

under Nature," which seemed likely enough. Then follows "Struggle for

Existence,"--a principle which we experimentally know to be true and

cogent,--bringing the comfortable assurance, that man, even upon

Leviathan Hobbes's theory of society, is no worse than the rest of

creation, since all Nature is at war, one species with another, and

the nearer kindred the more internecine,--bringing in thousand-fold

confirmation and extension of the Malthusian doctrine, that

population tends far to outrun means of subsistence throughout the

animal and vegetable world, and has to be kept down by sharp

preventive checks; so that not more than one of a hundred or a

thousand of the individuals whose existence is so wonderfully and so

sedulously provided for ever comes to anything, under ordinary

circumstances; so the lucky and the strong must prevail, and the

weaker and ill-favored must perish;--and then follows, as naturally

as one sheep follows another, the chapter on "Natural Selection,"

Darwin's _cheval de bataille_, which is very much the Napoleonic

doctrine, that Providence favors the strongest battalions,--that,

since many more individuals are born than can possibly survive, those

individuals and those variations which possess any advantage, however

slight, over the rest, are in the long run sure to survive, to

propagate, and to occupy the limited field, to the exclusion or

destruction of the weaker brethren. All this we pondered, and could

not much object to. In fact, we began to contract a liking for a

system which at the outset illustrates the advantages of good

breeding, and which makes the most "of every creature's best."

Could we "let by-gones be by-gones," and, beginning now, go

on improving and diversifying for the future by natural

selection,--could we even take up the theory at the introduction of the

actually existing species, we should be well content, and so perhaps would

most naturalists be. It is by no means difficult to believe that

varieties are incipient or possible species, when we see what trouble

naturalists, especially botanists, have to distinguish between

them,--one regarding as a true species what another regards as a

variety; when the progress of knowledge increases, rather than

diminishes, the number of doubtful instances; and when there is less

agreement than ever among naturalists as to what the basis is in

Nature upon which our idea of species reposes, or how the word is

practically to be defined. Indeed, when we consider the endless

disputes of naturalists and ethnologists over the human races, as to

whether they belong to one species or to more, and if to more,

whether to three, or five, or fifty, we can hardly help fancying that

both may be right,--or rather, that the uni-humanitarians would have

been right several thousand years ago, and the multi-humanitarians

will be a few thousand years later; while at present the safe thing

to say is, that, probably, there is some truth on both sides.

"Natural selection," Darwin remarks, "leads to divergence of

character; for more living brings can be supported on the same area

the more they diverge in structure, habits, and constitution," (a

principle which, by the way, is paralleled and illustrated by the

diversification of human labor,) and also leads to much extinction of

intermediate or unimproved forms. Now, though this divergence may

"steadily tend to increase," yet this is evidently a slow process in

Nature, and liable to much counteraction wherever man does not

interpose, and so not likely to work much harm for the future. And if

natural selection, with artificial to help it, will produce better

animals and better men than the present, and fit them better to "the

conditions of existence," why, let it work, say we, to the top of its

bent. There is still room enough for improvement. Only let us hope

that it always works for good: if not, the divergent lines on

Darwin's diagram of transmutation made easy ominously show what small

deviations from the straight path may come to in the end.

The prospect of the future, accordingly, is on the whole pleasant and

encouraging. It is only the backward glance, the gaze up the long

vista of the past, that reveals anything alarming. Here the lines

converge as they recede into the geological ages, and point to

conclusions which, upon the theory, are inevitable, but by no means

welcome. The very first step backwards makes the Negro and the

Hottentot our blood-relations;--not that reason or Scripture objects

to that, though pride may. The next suggests a closer association of

our ancestors of the olden time with "our poor relations" of the

quadrumanous family than we like to acknowledge. Fortunately,

however,--even if we must account for him scientifically,--man with

his two feet stands upon a foundation of his own. Intermediate links

between the _Bimana_ and the _Quadrumana_ are lacking altogether; so

that, put the genealogy of the brutes upon what footing you will, the

four-handed races will not serve for our forerunners;--at least, not

until some monkey, live or fossil, is producible with great toes,

instead of thumbs, upon his nether extremities; or until some lucky

geologist turns up the bones of his ancestor and prototype in France

or England, who was so busy "napping the chuckie-stanes" and chipping

out flint knives and arrow-heads in the time of the drift, very many

ages ago,--before the British Channel existed, says Lyell[1],--and

until these men of the olden time are shown to have worn their

great-toes in a divergent and thumb-like fashion. That would be evidence

indeed: but until some testimony of the sort is produced, we must

needs believe in the separate and special creation of man, however it

may have been with the lower animals and with plants.

No doubt, the full development and symmetry of Darwin's hypothesis

strongly suggest the evolution of the human no less than the lower

animal races out of some simple primordial animal,--that all are

equally "lineal descendants of sense few beings which lived long

before the first bed of the Silurian system was deposited." But, as

the author speaks disrespectfully of spontaneous generation, and

accepts a supernatural beginning of life on earth, in some form or

forms of being which included potentially all that have since existed

and are yet to be, he is thereby not warranted to extend his

inferences beyond the evidence or the fair probability. There seems

as great likelihood that one special origination should be followed

by another upon fitting occasion, (such as the introduction of man,)

as that one form should be transmuted into another upon fitting

occasion, as, for instance, in the succession of species which differ

from each other only in some details. To compare small things with

great in a homely illustration: man alters from time to time his

instruments or machines, as new circumstances or conditions may

require and his wit suggest. Minor alterations and improvements he

adds to the machine he possesses: he adapts a new rig or a new rudder

to an old boat: this answers to _variation_. If boats could engender,

the variations would doubtless be propagated, like those of domestic

cattle. In course of time the old ones would be worn out or wrecked;

the best sorts would be chosen for each particular use, and further

improved upon, and so the primordial boat be developed into the scow,

the skiff, the sloop, and other species of water-craft,--the very

diversification, as well as the successive improvements, entailing

the disappearance of many intermediate forms, less adapted to any one

particular purpose; wherefore these go slowly out of use, and become

extinct species: this is _natural selection_. Now let a great and

important advance be made, like that of steam-navigation: here,

though the engine might be added to the old vessel, yet the wiser and

therefore the actual way is to make a new vessel on a modified plan:

this may answer to _specific creation_. Anyhow, the one does not

necessarily exclude the other. Variation and natural selection may

play their part, and so may specific creation also. Why not?

[Footnote 1: Vide _Proceedings of the British Association for the

Advancement of Science_, 1859, and London _Athenæum_, passim. It

appears to be conceded that these "celts" or stone knives are

artificial productions, and of the age of the mammoth, the fossil

rhinoceros, etc.]

This leads us to ask for the reasons which call for this new theory

of transmutation. The beginning of things must needs lie in

obscurity, beyond the bounds of proof, though within those of

conjecture or of analogical inference. Why not hold fast to the

customary view, that all species were directly, instead of

indirectly, created after their respective kinds, as we now behold

them,--and that in a manner which, passing our comprehension, we

intuitively refer to the supernatural? Why this continual striving

after "the unattained and dim,"--these anxious endeavors, especially

of late years, by naturalists and philosophers of various schools and

different tendencies, to penetrate what one of them calls "the

mystery of mysteries," the origin of species? To this, in general,

sufficient answer may be found in the activity of the human

intellect, "the delirious yet divine desire to know," stimulated as

it has been by its own success in unveiling the laws and processes of

inorganic Nature,--in the fact that the principal triumphs of our age

in physical science have consisted in tracing connections where none

were known before, in reducing heterogeneous phenomena to a common

cause or origin, in a manner quite analogous to that of the reduction

of supposed independently originated species to a common ultimate

origin,--thus, and in various other ways, largely and legitimately

extending the domain of secondary causes. Surely the scientific mind

of an age which contemplates the solar system as evolved from a

common, revolving, fluid mass,--which, through experimental research,

has come to regard light, heat, electricity, magnetism, chemical

affinity, and mechanical power as varieties or derivative

and convertible forms of one force, instead of independent

species,--which has brought the so-called elementary kinds of matter, such

as the metals, into kindred groups, and raised the question, whether the

members of each group may not be mere varieties of one species,--and

which speculates steadily in the direction of the ultimate unity of

matter, of a sort of prototype or simple element which may be to the

ordinary species of matter what the _protozoa_ or component cells of

an organism are to the higher sorts of animals and plants,--the mind

of such an age cannot be expected to let the old belief about species

pass unquestioned.

It will raise the question, how the diverse sorts of plants and

animals came to be as they are and where they are, and will allow

that the whole inquiry transcends its powers only when all endeavors

have failed. Granting the origin to be supernatural, or miraculous

even, will not arrest the inquiry. All real origination, the

philosophers will say, is supernatural; their very question is,

whether we have yet gone back to the origin, and can affirm that the

present forms of plants and animals are the primordial, the

miraculously created ones. And even if they admit that, they will

still inquire into the order of the phenomena, into the form of the

miracle. You might as well expect the child to grow up content with

what it is told about the advent of its infant brother. Indeed, to

learn that the new-comer is the gift of God, far from lulling

inquiry, only stimulates speculation as to how the precious gift was

bestowed. That questioning child is father to the man,--is

philosopher in short-clothes.

Since, then, questions about the origin of species will be raised,

and have been raised,--and since the theorizings, however different

in particulars, all proceed upon the notion that one species of plant

or animal is somehow derived from another, that the different sorts

which now flourish are lineal (or unlineal) descendants of other and

earlier sorts,--it now concerns us to ask, What are the grounds in

Nature, the admitted facts, which suggest hypotheses of derivation,

in some shape or other? Reasons there must be, and plausible ones,

for the persistent recurrence of theories upon this genetic basis. A

study of Darwin's book, and a general glance at the present state of

the natural sciences, enable us to gather the following as perhaps

the most suggestive and influential. We can only enumerate them here,

without much indication of their particular bearing. There is,--

1. The general fact of variability;--the patent fact, that all

species vary more or less; that domesticated plants and animals,

being in conditions favorable to the production and preservation of

varieties, are apt to vary widely; and that by interbreeding, any

variety may be fixed into a race, that is, into a variety which comes

true from seed. Many such races, it is allowed, differ from each

other in structure and appearance as widely as do many admitted

species; and it is practically very difficult, perhaps impossible, to

draw a clear line between races and species. Witness the human races,

for instance.

Wild species also vary, perhaps about as widely as those of

domestication, though in different ways. Some of them appear to vary

little, others moderately, others immoderately, to the great

bewilderment of systematic botanists and zoologists, and their

increasing disagreement as to whether various forms shall be held to

be original species or marked varieties. Moreover, the degree to

which the descendants of the same stock, varying in different

directions, may at length diverge is unknown. All we know is, that

varieties are themselves variable, and that very diverse forms have

been educed from one stock.

2. Species of the same genus are not distinguished from each other by

equal amounts of difference. There is diversity in this respect

analogous to that of the varieties of a polymorphous species, some of

them slight, others extreme. And in large genera the unequal

resemblance shows itself in the clustering of the species around

several types or central species, like satellites around their

respective planets. Obviously suggestive this of the hypothesis that

they were satellites, not thrown off by revolution, like the moons of

Jupiter, Saturn, and our own solitary moon, but gradually and

peacefully detached by divergent variation. That such closely related

species may be only varieties of higher grade, earlier origin, or

more favored evolution, is not a very violent supposition. Anyhow, it

was a supposition sure to be made.

3. The actual geographical distribution of species upon the earth's

surface tends to suggest the same notion. For, as a general thing,

all or most of the species of a peculiar genus or other type are

grouped in the same country, or occupy continuous, proximate, or

accessible areas. So well does this rule hold, so general is the

implication that kindred species are or were associated

geographically, that most trustworthy naturalists, quite free from

hypotheses of transmutation, are constantly inferring former

geographical continuity between parts of the world now widely

disjoined, in order to account thereby for the generic similarities

among their inhabitants. Yet no scientific explanation has been

offered to account for the geographical association of kindred

species, except the hypothesis of a common origin.

4. Here the fact of the antiquity of creation, and in particular of

the present kinds of the earth's inhabitants, or of a large part of

them, comes in to rebut the objection, that there has not been time

enough for any marked diversification of living things through

divergent variation,--not time enough for varieties to have diverged

into what we call species.

So long as the existing species of plants and animals were thought to

have originated a few thousand years ago and without predecessors,

there was no room for a theory of derivation of one sort from

another, nor time enough even to account for the establishment of the

races which are generally believed to have diverged from a common

stock. Not that five or six thousand years was a short allowance for

this; but because some of our familiar domesticated varieties of

grain, of fowls, and of other animals, were pictured and mummified by

the old Egyptians more than half that number of years ago, if not

much earlier. Indeed, perhaps the strongest argument for the original

plurality of human species was drawn from the identification of some

of the present races of men upon these early historical monuments and

records.

But this very extension of the current chronology, if we may rely

upon the archæologists, removes the difficulty by opening up a longer

vista. So does the discovery in Europe of remains and implements of

pre-historic races of men to whom the use of metals was unknown,--men

of the _stone age_, as the Scandinavian archæologists designate them.

And now, "axes and knives of flint, evidently wrought by human skill,

are found in beds of the drift at Amiens, (also in other places, both

in France and England,) associated with the bones of extinct species

of animals." These implements, indeed, were noticed twenty years ago;

at a place in Suffolk they have been exhumed from time to time for

more than a century; but the full confirmation, the recognition of

the age of the deposit in which the implements occur, their

abundance, and the appreciation of their bearings upon most

interesting questions, belong to the present time. To complete the

connection of these primitive people with the fossil ages, the French

geologists, we are told, have now "found these axes in Picardy

associated with remains of _Elephas primigenius, Rhinoceros

tichorhinus, Equus fossilis_, and an extinct species of _Bos_."[1] In

plain language, these workers in flint lived in the time of the

mammoth, of a rhinoceros now extinct, and along with horses and

cattle unlike any now existing,--specifically different, as

naturalists say, from those with which man is now associated. Their

connection with existing human races may perhaps be traced through

the intervening people of the stone age, who were succeeded by the

people of the bronze age, and these by workers in iron.[2] Now,

various evidence carries back the existence of many of the present

lower species of animals, and probably of a larger number of plants,

to the same drift period. All agree that this was very many thousand

years ago. Agassiz tells us that the same species of polyps which are

now building coral walls around the present peninsula of Florida

actually made that peninsula, and have been building there for

centuries which must be reckoned by thousands.

[Footnote 1: See Correspondence of M. Nicklès, in _American Journal

of Science and Arts_, for March, 1860.]

[Footnote 2: See Morlet, _Some General Views on Archæology_, in

_American Journal of Science and Arts_, for January, 1860, translated

from _Bulletin de la Société Vaudoise_, 1859.]

5. The overlapping of existing and extinct species, and the seemingly

gradual transition of the life of the drift period into that of the

present, may be turned to the same account. Mammoths, mastodons, and

Irish elks, now extinct, must have lived down to human, if not almost

to historic times. Perhaps the last dodo did not long outlive his

huge New Zealand kindred. The auroch, once the companion of mammoths,

still survives, but apparently owes his present and precarious

existence to man's care. Now, nothing that we know of forbids the

hypothesis that some new species have been independently and

supernaturally created within the period which other species have

survived. It may even be believed that man was created in the days of

the mammoth, became extinct, and was recreated at a later date. But

why not say the same of the auroch, contemporary both of the old man

and of the new? Still it is more natural, if not inevitable, to

infer, that, if the aurochs of that olden time were the ancestors of

the aurochs of the Lithuanian forests, so likewise were the men of

that age--if men they were--the ancestors of the present human races.

Then, whoever concludes that these primitive makers of rude flint

axes and knives were the ancestors of the better workmen of the

succeeding stone age, and these again of the succeeding artificers in

brass and iron, will also be likely to suppose that the _Equus_ and

_Bos_ of that time were the remote progenitors of our own horses and

cattle. In all candor we must at least concede that such

considerations suggest a genetic descent from the drift period down

to the present, and allow time enough--if time is of any account--for

variation and natural selection to work out some appreciable results

in the way of divergence into races or even into so-called species.

Whatever might have been thought, when geological time was supposed

to be separated from the present era by a clear line, it is certain

that a gradual replacement of old forms by new ones is strongly

suggestive of some mode of origination which may still be operative.

When species, like individuals, were found to die out one by one, and

apparently to come in one by one, a theory for what Owen sonorously

calls "the continuous operation of the ordained becoming of living

things" could not be far off.

That all such theories should take the form of a derivation of the

new from the old seems to be inevitable, perhaps from our inability

to conceive of any other line of secondary causes, in this

connection. Owen himself is apparently in travail with some

transmutation theory of his own conceiving, which may yet see the

light, although Darwin's came first to the birth. Different as the

two theories will probably be in particulars, they cannot fail to

exhibit that fundamental resemblance in this respect which betokens a

community of origin, a common foundation on the general facts and the

obvious suggestions of modern science. Indeed,--to turn the point of

a taking simile directed against Darwin,--the difference between the

Darwinian and the Owenian hypotheses may, after all, be only that

between homoeopathic and heroic doses of the same drug.

If theories of derivation could only stop here, content with

explaining the diversification and succession of species between the

tertiary period and the present time, through natural agencies or

secondary causes still in operation, we fancy they would not be

generally or violently objected to by the _savans_ of the present

day. But it is hard, if not impossible, to find a stopping-place.

Some of the facts or accepted conclusions already referred to, and

several others, of a more general character, which must be taken into

the account, impel the theory onward with accumulated force. _Vires_

(not to say _virus) acquirit eundo_. The theory hitches on

wonderfully well to Lyell's uniformitarian theory in geology,--that

the thing that has been is the thing that is and shall be,--that the

natural operations now going on will account for all geological

changes in a quiet and easy way, only give them time enough, so

connecting the present and the proximate with the farthest past by

almost imperceptible gradations,--a view which finds large and

increasing, if not general, acceptance in physical geology, and of

which Darwin's theory is the natural complement.

So the Darwinian theory, once getting a foothold, marches boldly on,

follows the supposed near ancestors of our present species farther

and yet farther back into the dim past, and ends with an analogical

inference which "makes the whole world kin." As we said at the

beginning, this upshot discomposes us. Several features of the theory

have an uncanny look. They may prove to be innocent: but their first

aspect is suspicious, and high authorities pronounce the whole thing

to be positively mischievous.

In this dilemma we are going to take advice. Following the bent of

our prejudices, and hoping to fortify these by new and strong

arguments, we are going now to read the principal reviews which

undertake to demolish the theory;--with what result our readers shall

be duly informed.

Meanwhile, we call attention to the fact, that the Appletons have

just brought out a second and revised edition of Mr. Darwin's book,

with numerous corrections, important additions, and a preface, all

prepared by the author for this edition, in advance of a new English

edition.

VANITY (1).

(ON A PICTURE OF HERODIAS'S DAUGHTER BY LUINI.)

Alas, Salome! Could'st thou know

How great man is,--how great thou art,--

What destined worlds of weal or woe

Lurk in the shallowest human heart,--

From thee thy vanities would drop,

Like lusts in noble anger spurned

By one who finds, beyond all hope,

The passion of his youth returned.

Ah, sun-bright face, whose brittle smile

Is cold as sunbeams flashed on ice!

Ah, lips how sweet, yet hard the while!

Ah, soul too barren even for vice!

Mirror of Vanity! Those eyes

No beam the less around them shed,

Albeit in that red scarf there lies

The Dancer's meed,--the Prophet's head.

VANITY (2.)

I.

False and Fair! Beware, beware!

There is a Tale that stabs at thee!

The Arab Seer! he stripped thee bare

Long since! He knew thee, Vanity!

By day a mincing foot is thine:

Thou runnest along the spider's line:--

Ay, but heavy sounds thy tread

By night, among the uncoffined dead!

II.

Fair and Foul! Thy mate, the Ghoul,

Beats, bat-like, at thy golden gate!

Around the graves the night-winds howl:

"Arise!" they cry, "thy feast doth wait!"

Dainty fingers thine, and nice,

With thy bodkin picking rice!--

Ay, but when the night's o'erhead,

Limb from limb they rend the dead!

REVIEWS AND LITERARY NOTICES.

_Popular Astronomy. A Concise Elementary Treatise on the Sun,

Planets, Satellites, and Comets_. By O.M. MITCHELL, Director of the

Cincinnati and Dudley Observatories. New York. 1860.

In this volume Professor Mitchell gives a very clear, and, in the

general plan pursued, a very good account of the methods and results

of investigation in modern astronomy. He has explained with great

fulness the laws of motion of the heavenly bodies, and has thus aimed

at giving more than the collection of disconnected facts which

frequently form the staple of elementary works on astronomy.

In doing this, however, he has fallen into errors so numerous, and

occasionally so grave, that they are difficult to be accounted for,

except on the supposition that some portions of the work were written

in great haste. Passing over a few mere oversights, such as a

statement from which it would follow that a transit of Venus occurred

every eight years, mistakes of dates, etc., we cite the following.

On page 114, speaking of Kepler's third law, the author says, "And

even those extraordinary objects, the revolving double stars, are

subject to the same controlling law." Since Kepler's third law

expresses a relationship between the motions of three bodies, two of

which revolve around a third much larger than either, it is a logical

impossibility that a system of only two bodies should conform to this

law.

On page 182, it is stated, that Newton's proving, that, if a body

revolved in an elliptical orbit with the sun as a focus, the force of

gravitation toward the sun would always be in the inverse ratio of

the square of its distance, "was equivalent to proving, that, if a

body in space, free to move, received a single impulse, and at the

same moment was attracted to a fixed centre by a force which

diminished as the square of the distance at which it operated

increased, such a body, thus deflected from its rectilinear path,

would describe an ellipse," etc. Not only does this deduction, being

made in the logical form,

If A is B, X is Y;

but X is Y;

therefore A is B,

not follow at all, but it is absolutely not true. The body under the

circumstances might describe an hyperbola as welt as an ellipse, as

Professor Mitchell himself subsequently remarks.

The author's explanation of the manner in which the attraction of the

sun changes the position of the moon's orbit is entirely at fault. He

supposes the line of nodes of the moon's orbit perpendicular to the

line joining the centres of the earth and sun, and the moon to start

from her ascending node toward the sun, and says that in this case

the effect of the sun's attraction will be to diminish the

inclination of the moon's orbit during the first half of the

revolution, and thus cause the node to retrograde; and to increase it

during the second half, and thus cause the nodes to retrograde. But

the real effect of the sun's attraction, in the case supposed, would

be to diminish the inclination during the first quarter of its

revolution, to increase it during the second, to diminish it again

during the third, and increase it again during the fourth, as shown

by Newton a century and a half ago.

In Chapter XV. we find the greatest number of errors. Take, for

example, the following computation of the diminution of gravity at

the surface of the sun in consequence of the centrifugal force,--part

of the data being, that a pound at the earth's surface will weigh

twenty-eight pounds at the sun's surface, and that the centrifugal

force at the earth's equator is 1/289 of gravity.

"Now, if the sun rotated in the same time as the earth, and their

diameters were equal, the centrifugal force on the equators of the

two orbs would be equal. But the sun's radius is about 111 times that

of the earth, and if the period of rotation were the same, the

centrifugal force at the sun's equator would be greater than that at

the earth's in the ratio of (111)^2 to 1, or, more exactly, in the

ratio of 12,342.27 to 1. But the sun rotates on its axis much slower

than the earth, requiring more than 25 days for one revolution. This

will reduce the above in the ratio of 1 to (25)^2, or 1 to 625; so

that we shall have the earth's equatorial centrifugal force (1/289) ×

12,342.27 ÷ 625 = 12,342.27/180,605 = 0.07 nearly for the sun's

equatorial centrifugal force. Hence the weight before obtained, 28

pounds, must be reduced seven hundredths of its whole value, and we

thus obtain 28 - 0.196 = 27.804 pounds as the true weight of one

pound transported from the earth's equator to that of the sun."

In this calculation we have three errors, the effect of one of which

would be to increase the true answer 111 times, of another 28 times,

and of a third to diminish it 10 times; so that the final result is

more than 300 times too great. If this result were correct, Leverrier

would have no need of looking for intermercurial planets to account

for the motion of the perihelion of Mercury; he would find a

sufficient cause in the ellipticity of the sun.

Considered from a scientific point of view, some of the gravest

errors into which the author has fallen are the suppositions, that

the perihelia and nodes of the planetary orbits move uniformly, and

that they can ever become exactly circular. At the end of about

twenty-four thousand years the eccentricity of the earth's orbit will

be smaller than at any other time during the next two hundred

thousand, at least; but it will begin to increase again long before

the orbit becomes circular. Astronomers have long known that the

eccentricity of Mercury's orbit will never be much greater or much

less than it is now; and moreover, instead of diminishing, as stated

by Professor Mitchell, it is increasing, and has been increasing for

the last hundred thousand years.

Finally, the chapter closes with an attempt to state the principle

known to mathematicians as "the law of the conservation of areas,"

which statement is entirely unlike the correct one in nearly every

particular.

It will be observed that we have criticized this work from a

scientific rather than from a popular point of view. As questions of

popular interest, it is perhaps of very little importance whether the

earth's orbit will or will not become circular in the course of

millions of years, or in what the principle of areas consists or does

not consist. But if such facts or principles are to be stated at all,

we have a right to see them stated correctly. However, in the first

nine chapters, which part of the book will be most read, few mistakes

of any importance occur, and the method pursued by Newton in deducing

the law of gravitation is explained in the author's most felicitous

style.

* * * * *

_El Fureidîs_. By the Author of "The Lamplighter" and "Mabel

Vaughan." Boston: Ticknor & Fields. 16mo.

That large army of readers whose mere number gave celebrity at once

to the authoress of "The Lamplighter" will at first be disappointed

with what they may call the location of this new romance by Miss

Cummins. The scene is laid in Syria, instead of New England, and the

"village" known to New Yorkers as Boston gives way to "El Fureidîs,"

a village in the valley of Lebanon. But while so swift a transition

from the West to the East may disappoint that "Expectation" which

Fletcher tells us "sits i' the air," and which we all know is not to

be balked with impunity, there can be no doubt, that, in shifting the

scene, the authoress has enabled us to judge her essential talent

with more accuracy. Possessing none of the elements which are thought

essential to the production of a sensation, "The Lamplighter" forced

itself into notice as a "sensation book." The writer was innocent of

all the grave literary crimes implied in such a distinction. The

first hundred and fifty pages were as simple, and as true to ordinary

nature, as the daisies and buttercups of the common fields; the

remaining two hundred pages repeated the stereotyped traditions and

customary hearsays which make up the capital of every professional

story-teller. The book began in the spirit of Jane Austen, and ended

in that of Jane Porter.

In "El Fureidîs" everything really native to the sentiment and

experience of Miss Cummins is exhibited in its last perfection, with

the addition of a positive, though not creative, faculty of

imagination. Feeling a strong attraction for all that related to the

East, through an accidental connection with friends who in

conversation discoursed of its peculiarities and wonders, she was led

to an extensive and thorough study of the numerous eminent scholars

and travellers who have recorded their experience and researches in

Syria and Damascus. Gradually she obtained a vivid internal vision of

the scenery, and a practical acquaintance with the details of life,

of those far-off Eastern lands. On this imaginative reproduction of

the external characteristics of the Orient she projected her own

standards of excellence and ideals of character; and the result is

the present romance, the most elaborate and the most pleasing

expression of her genius.

There is hardly anything in the work which can rightfully be called

plot. The incidents are not combined, but happen. A shy, sensitive,

fastidious, high-minded, and somewhat melancholy and dissatisfied

Englishman, by the name of Meredith, travelling from Beyrout to

Lebanon, falls in love with a Christian maiden by the name of

Havilah. She rejects him, on the ground, that, however blessed with

all human virtues, he is deficient in Christian graces. One of those

rare women who combine the most exquisite sensuous beauty with the

beauty of holiness, she cannot consent to marry, unless souls are

joined, as well as hands. Meredith, in the course of the somewhat

rambling narrative, "experiences religion," and the heroine then

feels for him that affection which she did not feel even in those

moments when he recklessly risked his life to save hers. In regard to

characterization, Meredith, the hero, is throughout a mere name,

without personality; but the authoress has succeeded in transforming

Havilah from an abstract proposition into an individual existence.

Her Bedouin lover, the wild, fierce, passionate Arab boy, Abdoul,

with his vehement wrath and no less vehement love, passing from a

frustrated design to assassinate Meredith, whom he considered the

accepted lover of Havilah, to an abject prostration of his whole

being, corporeal and mental, at the feet of his mistress, saluting

them with "a devouring storm of kisses," is by far the most intense

and successful effort at characterization in the whole volume. The

conclusion of the story, which results in the acceptance by Meredith

of the conditions enforced by the celestial purity of the heroine,

will be far less satisfactory to the majority of readers than if

Havilah had been represented as possessed of sufficient spiritual

power to convert her passionate Arab lover into a being fit to be a

Christian husband. By all the accredited rules of the logic of

passion, Abdoul deserved her, rather than Meredith. Leaving, however,

all those considerations which relate to the management of the story

as connected with the impulses of the characters, great praise cannot

be denied to the authoress for her conception and development of the

character of Havilah. Virgin innocence has rarely been more happily

combined with intellectual culture, and the reader follows the course

of her thoughts--and so vital are her thoughts that they cause all

the real events of the story--with a tranquil delight in her

beautiful simplicity and intelligent affectionateness, compared with

which the pleasure derived from the ordinary stimulants of romance is

poor and tame. At least two-thirds of the volume are devoted to

descriptions of Eastern scenery, habits, customs, manners, and men,

and these are generally excellent. Altogether, the book will add to

the reputation of the authoress.

* * * * *

_Life and Times of General Sam. Dale, the Mississippi Partisan_. By

J.F.H. CLAIBORNE. Illustrated by John M'Lenan. New York: Harper &

Brothers.

The adventures of General Dale, Mr. Claiborne tells us, were taken

from his own lips by the author and two friends, and from the notes

of all three a memoir was compiled, but the MSS. were lost in the

Mississippi. We regret that Dale's own words were thus lost; for the

stories of the hardy partisan are not improved by his biographer's

well-meant efforts to tell them in more graceful language. Mr.

Claiborne's cheap eloquence is perhaps suited to the unfastidious

taste of a lower latitude; but we prefer those stories, too few in

number, in which the homely words of Dale are preserved.

Dale does not appear to have done anything to warrant this "attempt

on his life," being no more remarkable than hundreds of others. He

saw several distinguished men; but of his anecdotes about them we can

only quote the old opinion, that the good stories are not new, and

the new are not good. As there is nothing particularly interesting in

the subject, so there is no peculiar charm thrown around it by the

manner in which Mr. Claiborne has executed his task. A noticeable and

very comic feature is presented in the praises which he has

interpolated, when ever any acquaintance of his is referred to. We

readily acquiesce, when we are told that Mr. A is a model citizen,

and that Mr. B is alike unsurpassed in public and private life; but

the latter statement becomes less intensely gratifying when we learn

the fact that Mr. C also has no superior, and that there are no

better or abler men than D, E, F, or G. We were aware that

Mississippi was uncommonly fortunate in having meritorious sons, but

not that so singularly exact an equality existed among them. Are they

all best? It is like the case of the volunteer regiment in which they

were all Major-Generals. Occasional eminence we can easily believe,

but a table-land of merit is more than we are prepared for; and we

are strongly led to suspect that praise so lavishly given may be

cheaply won.

* * * * *

_The Money-King and Other Poems_. By JOHN G. SAXE. Boston: Ticknor &

Fields. 16mo.

We regret having overlooked this pleasant volume so long. In a

previous collection of poems, which has run through fifteen editions,

Mr. Saxe fully established his popularity; and the present volume,

which is better than its predecessor, has in it all the elements of a

similar success. The two longest poems, "The Money-King" and "The

Press," have been put to the severe test of repeated delivery before

lyceum audiences in different parts of the country; and a poet is

sure to learn by such a method of publication, what he may not learn

by an appearance in print, the real judgment of the miscellaneous

public on his performance. He may doubt the justice of the praise or

the censure of the professional critic; but it is hard for him to

resist the fact of failure, when it comes to him palpably in the

satire that scowls in an ominous stare and the irony that lurks in an

audible yawn,--hard for him to question the reality of triumph, when

teeth flash at every gleam of his wit and eyes moisten at every touch

of his sentiment. Having tried each of these poems before more than a

hundred audiences, Mr. Saxe has fairly earned the right to face

critics fearlessly; and, indeed, the poems themselves so abound in

sense, shrewdness, sagacity, and fancy, in sayings so pithy and wit

so sparkling, are so lull of humor and good-humor, and flow on their

rhythmic and rhyming way with so much of the easy abandonment of

vivacious conversation, that few critics will desire to reverse the

favorable decisions of the audiences they have enlivened.

Among the miscellaneous poems, there are many which, in brilliancy,

in keen, good-natured satire, in facility and variety of

versification, in ingenious fancy, in joyousness of spirit and pure

love of fun, excel the longer poems to which we have just referred.

We have found the great majority of them exceedingly exhilarating

reading, and, if our limits admitted an extended examination, we feel

sure that the result of the analysis would be the eliciting of

unexpected merits rather than the detection of hidden defects.

* * * * *

_Say and Seal_. By the Author of "Wide, Wide World," and the Author

of "Dollars and Cents." In Two Volumes. Philadelphia: J.B. Lippincott

& Co.

Another story from "Elizabeth Wetherell" is a welcome addition to our

scanty stock of American, novels. Our real American novels may be

counted on our fingers, while the tales that claim the name may be

weighed by the ton. At the present time, we count Hawthorne among our

novelists, and Mrs. Stowe, and perhaps Curtis, since his "Trumps";

but as for our thousand and one unrivalled authors, "whose matchless

knowledge of the human heart and wonderful powers of delineation

place them far above Dickens or Thackeray," they are all, from

Sylvanus Cobb, Junior, down to Ned Buntline and Gilmore Simms,

beneath serious notice, and may be left to the easy verdict of the

readers of the cheap magazines and illustrated newspapers, in whose

columns they have gained a world-wide obscurity. Miss Warner's books

have always a genuine flavor of originality, and an acute, living

appreciation of Yankee character, that give them a right to rank,

unchallenged, as real and valuable novels. In their simplicity, their

freshness, their quiet humor and not less quiet fun, their frequent

narrowness and stiffness, and their deep and true religious

sentiment, they have the real essence of the New England character.

In every novel there are three principal elements,--the Hero, the

Heroine, the Villain,--all three gracefully blending, in the Plot. We

cannot especially congratulate our authors upon their Hero. In a

favorite farce, the slightly bewildered Mr. Lullaby observes

musingly, "Brown? Brown? That name sounds familiar! I must have heard

that name before! I'll swear I've heard that name before!" We have a

dim consciousness of having met "Mr. Linden" before, albeit under a

different name. A certain Mr. Humphreys, whom we remember of old,

strongly resembles him: so does one Mr. Guy Carleton. We were very

well pleased with our old friend Humphreys, (or Carleton,) and would

by no means hint at any reluctance to meet him again; but a new

novel, by its very announcement, implies a new hero,--and if we come

upon a plain family-party, when fondly hoping for an introduction to

some distinguished stranger, we may be excused for thinking ourselves

hardly treated. Is it so infallible a sign of superiority, moreover,

to speak constantly in riddles? This Sphinx-like style is eminently

characteristic of Mr. Linden. Then again, our authors have been too

ambitious. They laboriously assert Mr. Linden to be a marvel of

learning,--a man of vast and curious literary attainments: but all

that their hero does to maintain this reputation and vindicate their

opinion is to quote trite passages of poetry, which are all very

well, but which every gentleman of ordinary cultivation is expected

to know, and which no gentleman of ordinary cultivation is expected

to quote,--things that are remembered only to be avoided as utterly

threadbare. One unfortunate instance may be found at the beginning of

the second volume. Mr. Linden's acquirements are to receive peculiar

lustre from a triumph over no ordinary competitor,--over the

intelligent and well-read Doctor Harrison. Naturally, we expect

something recondite, and are by no means satisfied with the trite

"Cupid and my Campaspe played

At cards for kisses," etc.

Mr. Linden might as well have astonished the company by such a

transcendent proof of erudition as

"All the world's a stage,

And all the men and women," etc.

Or, passing "from grave to gay, from lively to severe," (for novelty

in quotations we find to be contagious,) have recounted the wildly

erratic history "of that false matron known in nursery rhyme,

Insidious Morey," or quoted

"How doth the little busy bee."

After which he might have soared into unapproachable heights of

surpassing literary erudition, by informing his awe-struck hearers

that the latter poem was written by Doctor Watts! The fact is, any

attempt to give the novelist's characters a learning which the

novelist does not possess is always hazardous.

The Heroine, Miss Faith Derrick, is a pretty, but not remarkably

original creation, who taxes our magnanimity sorely at times by her

blind admiration of her lover when he is peculiarly absurd, but whose

dumb rejection of Doctor Harrison, though a trifle theatrical, is

really charming. Faith is better than Linden: Linden is _"superbe,

magnifique"_; but Faith is "pretty good."

But the conception of the Villain is very fine. In Doctor Harrison we

hail a new development of that indispensable character. Of course,

the gentlemanly, good-humored Doctor is not to be considered a

villain in the ordinary acceptation of the word; he is only a

technical villain,--a villain of eminent respectability. It is almost

unnecessary to add, that he is immeasurably more attractive than the

real hero, Mr. Linden.

We regret to say that the conception is not carried out so well as it

deserves to be. Doctor Harrison descends to some low business, quite

unworthy of him, such as tampering with the mails. This is not only

mortifying, but entirely unnecessary; inasmuch as Doctor Harrison has

a subordinate villain to do all the low villany, in the person of

Squire Deacon, who shoots at Mr. Linden from behind a hedge (!), and

is never called to account therefor,--a strange remissness on the

part of everybody, which seems to have no recommendation except that

it leaves him free to do this very work of robbing the mails, and

which, by his failure to do it, is left utterly unexplained and

profoundly mysterious. All this is very bad. The Doctor's meanness is

utterly inconsistent; and the bare thought of a sober and uncommonly

awkward Yankee, like Squire Deacon, deliberately making _two_

separate attempts at assassination, is unspeakably ludicrous.

Moreover, we are hopelessly unable to see the need of having the

unfortunate Mr. Linden shot at all. Everything was going on very well

before, as nearly as we could see, and nothing appears to come of it,

after all,--not even the condign punishment of the incongruous and

never-to-be-sufficiently-marvelled-at assassin, who is suspected by

several people, and yet remains as unharmed as if murder on the

highway were altogether too common an occurrence in New England to

excite more than a moment's thought.

This leads us to speak of the Plot; and we are constrained to say

that a more inartistic, unfinished piece of work we cannot remember.

There is a lamentable waste of capital on Squire Deacon's

sportsmanlike propensities. Why not have something come of them? We

are not anxious to have the man hanged, or even indicted; but we did

expect a magnanimous pardon to be extended to him by Mr. Linden; and

although that gentleman was altogether too magnanimous before, we

should have acquiesced mildly. And what becomes of Mrs. Derrick?

There we are in earnest; for Mrs. Derrick is an especial favorite

with us. It seems as if our authors had become bewildered, and,

finding themselves fairly at a loss what to do with their characters,

who drift helplessly along through a great part of the second volume,

had seized desperately on the hero and heroine, determined to save

them at least, and, having borne them to a place of refuge, had

concluded to let the others look after themselves.

What redeems the novel, and gives it its peculiar and exquisite

charm, is the execution of certain detached passages. We have never

seen the drollery of a genuine Yankee to more advantage than in "Say

and Seal." An occasional specimen we venture to quote.

On Mr. Linden's first appearance at Mrs. Derrick's house, where he is

known only as the new teacher, nobody knows and nobody dares ask his

name; and recourse is accordingly had to the diplomacy of the "help."

"'Child,' said Mrs. Derrick, 'what on earth is his name?'

"'Mother, how should I know? I didn't ask him.'

"'But the thing is,' said Mrs. Derrick, 'I _did_ know; the Committee

told me all about him. And of course he thinks I know,--and I

don't,--no more than I do my great-grandmother's name, which I never

did remember yet.'

"'Mother, shall I go and ask him, or wait till after supper?'

"'Oh, you sha'n't go,' said her mother. 'Wait till after supper, and

we'll send Cindy. He won't care about his name till he gets his tea,

I'll warrant... Faith, don't you think he liked his supper?'

"'I should think he would, after having no dinner,' said Faith.

"'There's Cindy, this minute! Run and tell her to go right away, and

find out what his name is,--tell her _I_ want to know,--you can put

it in good words.'

"Cindy presently came back, and handed a card to Faith.

"'It's easy done,' said Cindy. 'I jest asked him if he'd any

objections towards tellin' his name,--and he kinder opened his eyes

at me, and said, "No." Then I said, says I, "Mis' Derrick do' know,

and she'd like ter." "Miss Derrick!" says he, and he took out his

pencil and writ that. But I'd like ter know _what_ he cleans his

pencil with,' said Cindy, in conclusion, for I'm free to confess _I_

never see brass shine so in my born days.'"

Cindy's "free confessions" are an important feature of the book.

In Chapter VI, Squire Deacon and his sister hold a brief Yankee

dialogue, of which this is a sample:--

"'Sam! what are you bothering yourself about Mr. Linden for?'

"'How long since you was made a trustee?' said the Squire, beginning

his sentence with an untranslatable sort of grunt, and ending it in

his teacup.

"'I've been _your_ trustee ever since you was up to anything,' said

his sister. 'Come, Sam,--don't you begin now! What's made you so

crusty?'

"'It a'n't the worst thing to be crusty,' said the Squire. 'Shows a

man's more'n half baked, anyhow.'

"'Well, what has he done?'

"'Sure enough!' said the Squire, 'what _has_ he done? That's just

what I can't find out.'

"'What do you want to find out for? What ails him?'

"'Suppose he hasn't done nothin'. Is that the sort o' man to teach

litteratur in Pattaquasset?'

"'Now, Sam Deacon, what do you expect to do by all this fuss you're

making?' said his sister, judicially.

"'What's the use of cross-examining a man at that rate? When I do

anything, you'll know it.'"

The characters are all invested with reality by skilfully introduced

anecdotes, or by personal traits carelessly and happily sketched. But

it is a costly expedient to give this reality, when our authors bring

in pet names, and other "love-lispings," which are sacred in privacy

and painfully ridiculous when exposed to the curious light. Many of

us readers find all this mawkish and silly, and others of us are

pained that to such scrutiny should be exposed the dearest secrets of

affection, and are not anxious to have them exposed to our own gaze.

It is too trying a confidence, too high an honor, to be otherwise

than unwelcome. With this criticism we close our notice of "Say and

Seal," in which we have been sparing neither of praise nor blame,

earnestly thanking the authors for a book that is worth finding fault

with.

* * * * *

_How Could He Help It? or, The Heart Triumphant_. By A.S. ROE. New

York: Derby & Jackson.

A fair representative of a class of books that are always pleasant

reading, although written without taste, cultivation, or

originality,--because they are obviously dictated by a kind heart and

genuine earnestness. In this volume the numerous heroes (so similar

in every respect that one might fancy them to be only one hero

mysteriously multiplied, like Kehama) and the fair heroines (exactly

equalling the heroes in number, we are happy to assure the

tenderhearted reader) are not in the least interesting, except for

sheer goodness of heart. This unaided moral excellence, however,

fairly redeems the book, and so far softens even our critical

asperity that we venture only to suggest,--first, that the utterly

unprecedented _patois_ of Mrs. Kelly is not Irish, for which a

careful examination of the context leads us to think it was

intended,--secondly, that "if he had have done it" is equally

guiltless of being English,--thirdly, that, if our author, desiring to

describe the feelings of a lover holding his mistress's hand, was

inspired by Tennyson's phrase of "dear wonder," he failed, in our

opinion, to improve on his original, when he substituted "the fleshy

treasure in his grasp."

* * * * *

_The New Tariff-Bill_. Washington. 1860.

We do not propose to submit the English of this new literary effort

of the House of Representatives at Washington to a critical

examination, (though it strikingly reminds us of some of the poems of

Mr. Whitman, and is a very fair piece of descriptive verse in the

_b'hoy_-anergic style,) or to attempt any argument on the vexed

question of Protection. But there is a section of the proposed act

which has a direct interest not only for all scholars, but for that

large and constantly increasing class whose thirst for what may be

called voluminous knowledge prompts them to buy all those

shelf-ornamenting works without which no gentleman's library can be

considered complete. Though in the matter of book-buying the

characters of gentleman and scholar, so seldom united, are

distinguished from each other with remarkable precision,--the desire

of the former being to cover the walls of what he superstitiously

calls his "study," and that of the latter to line his head, while the

resultant wisdom is measured respectively by volume and by mass,--yet

it is equally important to both that the literary furniture of the

one and the intellectual tools of the other should be cheap.

The "Providence Journal" deserves the thanks of all students for

having called attention to the fact, that, under the proposed tariff,

the duties will be materially increased on two classes of foreign

books: the cheap ones, like "Bohn's Library,"--and the bulky, but

often indispensable ones, such as the "Encyclopaedia Britannica." The

new bill, in short, proposes to substitute for the old duty of eight

_per cent. ad valorem_ a new one of fifteen cents the pound weight.

Could we suspect a Committee of Members of Congress of a joke

appreciable by mere members of the human family, could we suppose

them in a thoughtless moment to have carried into legislation a

mildened modicum of that metaphorical language which forms the staple

of debate, we should make no remonstrance. We recognize the severe

justice of an ideal avoirdupois in literary criticism. We remember

the unconscious sarcasm of the Atlantic Telegraph, as it sank

heart-broken under the strain of conveying the answer of the Heavy Father

of our political stage to the graceful "good-morning" of Victoria.

The enthusiastic member of the Academy of Lagado, who had spent eight

years in a vain attempt to extract sunbeams from cucumbers, might

have found profitable employment in smelting the lead even from light

literature, not to speak of richer deposits. Under an act thus

dubiously worded, and in a country which makes Bancroft a collector

of the customs and Hawthorne a weigher and gauger, the works of an

Alison and a Tupper would be put beyond the reach of all but the

immensely rich. The man of moderate means would be deprived of the

exhaustless misinformation of the Scottish Baronet, who has so

completely disproved the old charge against his countrymen of

possessing an _ingenium perfervidum_, (which Dr. Johnson would have

translated by _brimstone temperament_,) and of the don't-fail-to-

spread-your-umbrella-when-it-rains-or-you'll-spoil-your-hat wisdom of

the English Commoner, who seems to have named his chief work in a

moment of abnormal inspiration, since it has become proverbial as the

severest test of human philosophy.

But we cannot suspect the Congressional Committee of a joke, still

less of a joke at the expense of those anglers in the literary

current whose tackle, however bare of bait, never fails of a sinker

at the end of every line. They have been taught to look upon books as

in no wise differing from cotton and tobacco, and rate them

accordingly by a merely material standard. It has been the dealers in

books, and not the makers of them, who have hitherto contrived to

direct public opinion in this matter. We look upon Public Opinion

with no superstitious reverence,--for Tom's way of thinking is none

the wiser because the million other Toms and Dicks and Harries agree

with him,--nevertheless, even a fetish may justly become an object of

respectful interest to one who is to be sacrificed to it.

However it may be with iron, wool, and manufactured cotton, it is

clear that a duty on books is not protective of American literature,

but simply a tax on American scholarship and refinement. The

imperfectness of our public libraries compels every student to depend

more or less upon his own private collection of books; and it is a

fact of some significance, that, with the single exception of

Hildreth, all our prominent historians, Sparks, Irving, Bancroft,

Prescott, Ticknor, Motley, and Palfrey, have been men of independent

fortune. If anything should be free of duty, it should seem to be the

material of thought.

If Congress be really desirous of doing something for the benefit of

American authors, it would come nearer the mark, if it directed its

attention to the establishment on equitable grounds of some system of

International Copyright. A well-considered enactment to this end

would, we are convinced, be quite as advantageous to the

manufacturers as to the producers of books. We believe that a

majority of the large publishing houses of the country have been

gradually convinced of the inconveniences of the present want of

system. Many of them have found it profitable to enter into an

agreement with popular English authors for the payment of copyright,

and works thus reprinted cost the buyer no more than under the

privateering policy. But without some definite establishment of legal

rights and remedies, the publisher is at the mercy of a dishonorable,

sometimes of a vindictive competition, and must run the risk of

having the market flooded within a week with a cheaper and inferior

edition, reprinted from the sheets of his own which had been

honorably paid for. We do not pretend to argue the question of

literary property, the principle of it being admitted in the fact

that we have any copyright-laws at all. Our wish is to show, that, in

the present absence of settled law, the honest publisher is subjected

to risks from the resultant evils of which the whole reading

community suffers. The publisher, to protect himself, is forced to

make his reprint as cheaply as possible, and to hurry it through the

press with the disregard of accuracy inseparable from hasty

publication,--while the reader is put in possession of a book

destructive of eyesight, crowded with blunders, and unsightly in

appearance. Maps and plates are omitted, or copied so carelessly as

to be worse than useless; and whoever needs the book for study or

reference must still buy the original edition, made more costly

because imported in single copies, and because taxed for the

protection of a state of things discreditable in every way, and not

only so, but hostile to the true interests of both publishers and

public.

We do not claim any protection of American authorship from foreign

competition, but we cannot but think it unfair that British

authorship should be protected (as it now practically is) at the cost

of our own, and for the benefit of such publishers as are willing to

convey an English book without paying for it. The reprint of a

second-rate work by an English author has not only the advantage of a

stolen cheapness over a first-rate one on the same subject by an

American, but may even be the means of suppressing it altogether. The

intellectual position of an American is so favorable for the

treatment of European history as to overbalance in some instances the

disadvantages arising from want of access to original documents; yet

an American author whose work was yet in manuscript could not

possibly compete with an English rival, even of far inferior ability,

who had already published. If, within the last few years, a tolerably

popular history of France had been published in England, and cheaply

reprinted here, (as it surely would have been,) we doubt whether Mr.

Godwin would have undertaken his laborious and elaborate work,--or,

if he had, whether he would have readily found a bookseller bold

enough to pay an adequate price for the copyright. And it is to be

remembered that an American publisher gives this preference to an

English over an American book simply because he can get it for

nothing, by defrauding its author of the just reward of his industry

or genius. That an author loses his equitable claim to copyright for

the simple reason that by publication he has put himself in our power

is an argument fit to be used only by one who would make use of a

private letter that had accidentally come into his possession to the

damage of the writer.

The necessity of some kind of equitable arrangement was so strongly

felt by American publishers that a kind of unwritten law gradually

established itself among them. It was tacitly understood, that, when

a publisher had paid an English author for advance sheets, no rival

American edition should be published. But it already appears too

plainly that an arrangement with no guaranty but a private sense of

honor is liable to constant infringement for the gratification of

personal enmity, or in the hope of immediate profit. The rewards of

uprightness and honorable dealing are slow in coming, while those of

unscrupulous greed are immediate, even though dirty. Under existing

circumstances, free-trade and fair-play exist only in appearance: for

the extraordinary claim has been set up, that an American bookseller

has an exclusive right to all the future works of an English author

any one of whose former productions he has reprinted, whether with or

without paying for it; so that, however willing another publisher may

be to give the author a fair price for his book, or however desirous

the latter may be to conclude such a bargain, it is practically

impossible, so long as privateering is tolerated in the trade.

We have said nothing of the advantages which would accrue to our own

authors from a definite settlement of the question of international

copyright between England and America. How great these would be is

plain from the fact that the editions of American books republished

in England are already numbered by thousands. With the growth of the

English Colonies the value to an American author of an English

copyright is daily increasing. Indeed, it is a matter of

consideration for our publishers, whether Canada may not before long

retaliate upon them, and by cheaper reprints become as troublesome to

them as Belgium once was to France.

It is not creditable that America should be the last of civilized

nations to acknowledge the justice of an author's claim to a share in

the profits of a commercial value which he has absolutely created.

England is more liberal to our authors than we to hers, but it is

only under certain strictly limited contingencies that an American

can acquire copyright there. Were all our booksellers as scrupulous

as the few honorably exceptional ones among them now are, there would

be no need of legislative regulation; but, in the present condition

of things, he who undertakes to reprint an English book which he has

honestly paid for is at the mercy of whoever can get credit for poor

paper and worse printing. There is no reason why a distinction should

be made between copy-right and patent-right; but, if our legislators

refuse to admit any abstract right in the matter, they might at least

go so far as to conclude an international arrangement by which a

publisher in either country who was willing to pay for the right of

publication should be protected in its exercise. No just objection

could be made to a plan of this kind, which, if not so honest as a

general international law of copyright, would be profitable to our

publishers, and to such of our authors at least as had acquired any

foreign reputation.

RECENT AMERICAN PUBLICATIONS

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The Church of the First Three Centuries; or, Notices of the Lives and

Opinions of Some of the Early Fathers, with Special Reference to the

Doctrine of the Trinity; illustrating its Late Origin and Gradual

Formation. By Alvan Lamson, D.D. Boston. Walker, Wise, & Co. 8vo. pp.

xii., 352.

Plato's Apology and Crito; with Notes, by W.S. Tyler, Graves

Professor of Greek in Amherst College. New York. Appleton & Co. 12mo.

pp. 180. 75 cts.

Poems. By William H. Holcombe, M.D. New York. Mason Brothers. 12mo.

pp. 360. $1.25.

Science in Theology. Sermons preached in St. Mary's, Oxford, before

the University. By Adam S. Farrar, M.A., F.G.S., F.R.A.S., Michel

Fellow of Queen's College, Oxford; late One of the Select Preachers

to the University; and Preacher at the Chapel Royal, Whitehall.

Philadelphia. Smith, English, & Co. 12mo. pp. 250. 85 cts.

Remembered Words from the Sermons of Rev. I. Nichols, late Pastor of

the First Parish in Portland, Maine. Boston. Crosby, Nichols, Lee, &

Co. 12mo. pp. viii., 141. 75 cts.

The Throne of David; from the Consecration of the Shepherd of

Bethlehem to the Rebellion of Prince Absalom. Being an Illustration

of the Splendor, Power, and Dominion of the Reign of the Shepherd,

Poet, Warrior, King, and Prophet, Ancestor and Type of Jesus; in a

Series of Letters addressed by an Assyrian Ambassador, Resident at

the Court of Saul and David, to his Lord and King on the Throne of

Nineveh; wherein the Glory of Assyria, as well as the Magnificence of

Judea, is presented to the Reader as by an Eye-witness. By the Rev.

J.H. Ingraham, LL.D., Author of "The Prince of the House of David,"

and of "The Pillar of Fire." Philadelphia. Evans. 12mo. pp. 603.

$1.25.

The Boy-Inventor; a Memoir of Matthew Edwards, Mathematical

Instrument-Maker. Boston. Walker, Wise, & Co. 16mo. pp. 109. 50 cts.

History of the Republic of the United States of America, as traced in

the Writings of Alexander Hamilton and of his Contemporaries. By John

C. Hamilton. Volume VI. New York. Appleton & Co. 8vo. pp. xii., 620.

$2.50.

A Course of Exercises in All Parts of French Syntax, methodically

arranged after Poitevin's "Syntaxe Française"; to which are added Ten

Appendices. Designed for the Use of Academies, Colleges, and Private

Learners. By Frederick T. Winkelmann, A.M., Ph.D., Professor of

Latin, French, and German in the Packer Collegiate Institute of

Brooklyn, N.Y. New York. Appleton & Co. 16mo. pp. xvi., 366. $1.00.

Letters on the Divine Trinity, addressed to Henry Ward Beecher. By

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Echoes of Harper's Ferry. By James Redpath. Boston. Thayer &

Eldridge. 12mo. pp. 513. $1.25.

The Right of American Slavery. By T.W. Hoit, of the St. Louis

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St. Louis. L. Bushnell. 8vo. pp. 51. 25 cts.

El Fureidîs. By the Author of "The Lamplighter" and "Mabel Vaughan."

Boston. Ticknor & Fields. 16mo. pp. iv., 379. $1.00.

Dickens's Short Stories. Containing Thirty-One Stories never before

published in this Country. By Charles Dickens. Philadelphia. Peterson

& Brothers. 12mo. pp. 298. $1.25.

A Mother's Trials. By the Author of "My Lady." New York. Harper &

Brothers. 12mo. pp. 400. $1.00.

Letters of Alexander von Humboldt to Varnhagen von Ense. From 1827 to

1858. With Extracts from Varnhagen's Diaries, and Letters of

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Translated from the Second German Edition, by Friedrich Kapp. New

York. Rudd & Carleton. 12mo. pp. 407. $1.25.

Our Living Representative Men. From Official and Original Sources. By

John Savage. Philadelphia. Childs & Peterson. 12mo. pp. xxx., 503.

$1.25.

Leaves of Grass. By Walt Whitman. Boston. Thayer & Eldridge. 12mo.

pp. 456. $1.25.

Salmagundi; or, The Whim-Whams and Opinions of Launcelot Langstaff,

Esq., and Others. By William Irving, James Kirke Paulding, and

Washington Irving. Printed from the Original Edition, with a Preface

and Notes by Evert A. Duyckinck. New York. Putnam. 12mo. pp. xiv.,

412. $1.50.

Text-Book in Intellectual Philosophy, for Schools and Colleges;

containing an Outline of the Science, with an Abstract of its

History. By J.T. Champlin, D.D., President of Waterville College.

Boston. Crosby, Nichols, Lee, & Co. 12mo. pp. 240. 76 cts.

Katherine Morris: an Autobiography. By the Author of "Step by Step"

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The School and Family Primer: Introductory to the Series of School

and Family Readers. By Marcius Willson, Author of "American History,"

"Outlines of General History," etc. New York. Harper & Brothers.

12mo. pp. 48. 15 cts.

The First Reader, of the School and Family Series. By Marcius

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Willson. New York. Harper & Brothers. 12mo. pp. 360. 66 cts.

Kit Kelvin's Kernels. With Illustrations. New York. Rollo. 12mo. pp.

270. $1.00.

Sermons. By Joseph Addison Alexander, D.D. In Two Volumes. New York.

Charles Scribner. 12mo. pp. 414, 425. $2.50.

Lectures on Natural History: its Relations to Intellect, Taste,

Wealth, and Religion. By P.A. Chadbourne, Professor, etc. New York.

A.S. Barnes & Burr. 12mo. pp. 160.

The Elementary Spelling-Book. Being an Improvement on "The American

Spelling-Book." By Noah Webster, LL.D. New York. Appleton & Co. 16mo.

pp. 168. 12 cts.

Home and College. A Public Address delivered in the Hall of the

Massachusetts House of Representatives, March S, 1860. By F.D.

Huntington, Preacher to the University, and Plummer Professor of

Christian Morals in Harvard College. Boston. Crosby, Nichols, Lee, &

Co. 12mo. pp. 70. 50 cts.

What will He Do with It? By Pisistratus Caxton. A Novel. By Sir

Edward Bulwer Lytton, Bart. Library Edition. In Three Volumes.

Philadelphia. Lippincott & Co. 16mo. pp. 408, 444, 442. $3.00.

Devereux. A Tale. By Sir Edward Bulwer Lytton, Bart. Library Edition.

In Two Volumes. Philadelphia. Lippincott & Co. 12mo, pp. 344, 350.

$2.00.

The Last Days of Pompeii. By Sir Edward Bulwer Lytton, Bart. Library

Edition. In Two Volumes. Philadelphia. Lippincott & Co. 12mo. pp.

320, 334. $2.00.

Norton's Hand-Book to Europe; or, How to Travel in the Old World. By

J.H. Siddons. New York. Charles B. Norton. 12mo. pp. 243. $1.00.

Church Choral Book. Containing Tunes and Hymns for Congregational

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J.W. Tufts. Boston. Crosby, Nichols, Lee, & Co. 12mo. pp. 208.

Home as Found. Sequel to "Homeward Bound." By J. Fenimore Cooper.

Illustrated from Drawings by F.O.C. Darley. New York. W.A. Townsend &

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The West Indies and the Spanish Main. By Anthony Trollope, Author of

"Doctor Thorne," etc. New York. Harper & Brothers. 12mo. pp. 385.

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The New Discussion of the Trinity, Containing Notices of Professor

Huntington's Recent Defence of that Doctrine, reprinted from Various

Sources; together with Sermons by Rev. Thos. Starr King and Dr.

Orville Dewey. Boston. Walker, Wise, & Co. 12mo. pp. viii., 244. 63

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Life of George Washington. By Washington Irving. National Edition.

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American National Lyrics and Sonnets. By O. Prescott Hiller, Author

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Hawksview. A Familiar History of our Own Times. By Holme Lee, Author

of "Against Wind and Tide," etc. New York. W.A. Townsend & Co. 12mo.

pp. 330. $1.00.

Forty Years' Familiar Letters of James W. Alexander, D.D.

Constituting, with the Notes, a Memoir of his Life. Edited by his

Surviving Correspondent, John Hall, D.D. In Two Volumes. New York.

Charles Scribner. 12mo. pp. viii., 412, 379. $2.50.

A Discourse on the Life, Character, and Genius of Washington Irving,

delivered before the New York Historical Society, at the Academy of

Music in New York, April 3, 1860. By William Cullen Bryant. New York.

Putnam. 12mo. pp. 46.

Analytic Orthography; an Investigation of the Sounds of the Voice,

and their Alphabetic Notation; including the Mechanism of Speech, and

its Bearing upon Etymology. By S.S. Haldeman, A.M., Professor in

Delaware College, etc. Philadelphia. Lippincott & Co. 4to. pp. viii.,

148.

The Elements of Christian Doctrine, and its Development. Five

Sermons, preached before the South Congregational Society, Boston, in

January, February, and March, 1860, and printed at its Request. By

Edward E. Hale. Boston. Walker, Wise, & Co. pp. 68.

Mary Bunyan, the Blind Dreamer's Daughter. A Tale of Religious

Persecution. By Sallie Rochester Ford, Author of "Grace Truman." New

York. Sheldon & Co. 12mo. pp. 488. $1.00.

Unitarianism Defined. The Scripture Doctrine of the Father, Son, and

Holy Ghost. A Course of Lectures, by Frederick A. Farley, D.D.,

Pastor of the Church of the Saviour, Brooklyn, N.Y. Boston. Walker,

Wise, & Co. 12mo. pp. 272.

State-Pride. An Oration, delivered before the Calliopean and

Polytechnic Societies of the State Military School, at Charleston. By

William D. Porter. Charleston. Walker, Evans, & Co. 8vo. pp. 23.

Student-Songs. Kenyon College, Gambier, Ohio. Pittsburgh. W.S. Haven.

12mo. pp. 50.

Tom Brown at Oxford: a Sequel to School-Days at Rugby. By Thomas

Hughes, Author of "School-Days at Rugby." Part VI. Boston. Ticknor &

Fields. 16mo. pp. 72. 12 Cts.

The Countess and the Page. A Tale of Florentine Society. By G.W.M.

Reynolds. Philadelphia. Peterson & Brothers. 8vo. pp. 190. 50 cts.

Lucile. By Owen Meredith, Author of "The Wanderer," "Clytemnestra,"

etc. Boston. Ticknor & Fields. 32mo. pp. 352. 75 cts.