The Hebrew cosmogony is more scientific than that of India. The Hindoos

tell us that the universe exists in two states, that it is sometimes

visible and sometimes invisible; but they do not tell us by what process

things come forth from the _thehom_ or “deep,” and return again into the

same. But in the Hebrew cosmogony all that is explained. According to

the Hebrews, things are in this “deep” when they are not related to each

other; and they come forth from this “deep” by coming into relations

with each other. According to the Hebrews, things have no power in

themselves to come into relations with each other, that is, to emerge

from this “deep,” but must be brought into such relations by the Divine

Energy: so it is the putting forth of the Divine Energy which causes

this universe to appear, and the withdrawing of that Energy which causes

it to disappear again. This may be illustrated. In order to the

possibility of an act of vision, it is necessary not only that there

should be some person capable of seeing and some object capable of being

seen, but also that the light requisite in order that these two may be

brought into relations should exist. Who can see in the dark? So long as

there is no light, the seer and the seen exist to each other potentially

only: but as soon as the light shines these two become related.

In the Hebrew Scriptures, the Divine Powers, which bring finite

existences into relations with each other, thus causing them to emerge

from the _thehom_, or “deep,” are called—_the Spirit of God_. “Darkness

was on the face of the deep, and the Spirit of God moved on the face of

the waters.” This Divine Spirit, operating upon man in its ordinary

measure, makes man to be what he is; operating beyond its ordinary

measure, it becomes especial _inspiration_. The Hebrews supposed this

universe would continue in visible existence so long as the Spirit of

God should breath upon it, but that it would fall back into the

_the-hom_ the moment that spirit should withdraw its vivifying power.

We read in the speech of Elihu, reported in the book of Job:—

“There is a spirit in man:

And the inspiration of the Almighty giveth them understanding. . .

.

The Spirit of God hath made me,

And the breath of the Almighty hath given me life. . . .

Who hath given unto God a charge over the earth?

Or who hath disposed the whole world?

If He set his heart upon man—

_If He gather unto Himself his Spirit and his breath;_

_All flesh shall perish together._

_And man shall turn again unto dust._”

Also in the 104th Psalm:

“Thy creatures wait all upon thee;

That thou mayest give them their meat in due season.

That thou givest them, they gather:

Thou openest thine hand—they are filled with good.

_Thou hidest thy face—they are troubled:_

_Thou takest away their breath—they die and return to their dust._

_Thou sendest forth thy Spirit—they are (re-) created:_

_And thou renewest the face of the earth._”

Inspiration, therefore, does not consist in an intensification of the

soul’s being, in the implanting of a new principle, or springing source

in the centre of its substance, but it consists in a leading forth of

the soul to a greater intensity of _manifestation_—to a greater

distance from the original chaos, _the-hom_, or “deep.”

BETH.

* * * * *

A LITERARY GOSSIP WITH MISS MITFORD.[12]

Draw the curtains, stir the fire, make a semicircle round the rug, and

now for a _causerie_. Mary Russell Mitford shall talk to us out of the

three volumes of reminiscences she has just given to the world; and

whatever we have to say about the sundry things she discourseth upon

therein shall be said in a cordial, and, at the same time, perfectly

frank spirit, as becometh an honest fireside.

There she sits in the large chair, not quite so young as she was when

she charmed all homesteads and hearth-stones with pictures of her own

quiet Berkshire village, before railroads came to destroy the pretty

wayside inns, where travelers used to be so snug and comfortable in tiny

carpeted rooms with dimity curtains and glass cupboards full of

antediluvian china: when little Red-riding-hoods were as plenty as

blackberries, and the gipsies were never at a loss for secluded nooks

and dells, where they could camp and cook, and tell stories under the

hedge-rows, with a feeling of solitude and security they can never enjoy

again in merry England. That was a long, long time ago; yet Mary Russell

Mitford looks as ready as she was in her brightest days to enter with a

relishing zest into the garden delights and book pleasures that have

formed the occupation and happiness of her life, and made her name known

and welcome wherever natural description and unaffected feeling are

truly appreciated.

There she sits, with as homely and good-humored an air as if, instead of

writing books and holding correspondence with half the celebrities of

her time, she had no other vocation in this world than to attend to

domestic affairs, prune shrubs on the lawn, dispense flannels at

Christmas to the poor, and look after a neighboring school. Beside her

chair stands her constant companion, a remarkable stick, with an odd

sort of a head to it; and to make her actual presence the more palpable

she should be surrounded by her inseparable friends—Fanchon, her little

dog, that might be crouched at her feet, with its sensitive ears lifting

and falling at every sound; her neat maid, Nancy, watching her on a low

stool, and her boy, Henry—(we hope he is still a boy,) and that he will

contrive, for her sake, to continue so—standing behind her chair.

That stick has a biography all to itself, and a very curious one it is.

Sixty years ago it was a stick of quality, and belonged to some Dowager

Duchess of Athol, who has no more reality for us than one of the

embroidered ladies in an old piece of tapestry. So far as its original

owner is concerned, the stick, for aught we know to the contrary, may be

a phantom-stick, or a witch-stick; but, be that as it may, Miss

Mitford’s father bought it at the sale of Berkshire House, where it was

huddled by the auctioneer into a lot of old umbrellas, watering-pots,

and flower-stands. It was then light, straight, and slender, nearly four

feet high, polished, veined, and of a yellowish color, and of the order

called a crook, such, says Miss Mitford, who is evidently very

particular about it, as may be seen upon a chimney-piece figuring in the

hand of some trim shepherdess of Dresden china. First, the housekeeper

carried this stick—then, when the housekeeper died, Miss Mitford’s

mother took possession of it; and from her it descended to Miss Mitford,

herself, who, first out of whim, and afterward from habit and necessity,

made it her trusty supporter on all occasions. The adventures of that

stick are as full of perils and hair-breadth escapes as ever befell a

South Sea whaler, or a Hudson’s bay trapper. Once it was lost in a fair,

once forgotten in a marquee at a cricket match, and at another time

stolen by a little boy, which cost its mistress a ten miles walk for its

recovery. But the worst calamity that befell it was, when in the act of

drawing down a rich branch of woodbine from the top of a hedge, its

ivory crook came off, falling into a muddy ditch, and sinking so

irretrievably that it was never recovered. The crook, it seems, was very

handsome, and was bound with a silver rim, imparting a lady-like

appearance to the stick, which at the first sight, gave you a hint of

its aristocratic origin. In this extremity it was sent to a parasol shop

to have a new crook put on, but the stupid people first docked many

inches of its height, and then put on a bone umbrella-top, that fell off

of its own accord in a few days. A good-natured friend remedied the

second loss by fastening on an ebony top, which looks, after four or

five years’ wear, a little graver, “and more fit for the poor old

mistress, who having at first taken to a staff in sport, is now so lame

as to be unable to walk without one.” The memoirs of a walking-stick may

strike our readers as a mere waste of words and paper; but it is

surprising what slight incidents rise into importance and interest in a

country life, and how much the reality of its portraiture is indebted to

trivial, but by no means unessential features. At all events, Miss

Mitford’s stick is a stick of note, and should no more be passed over in

silence than the ruff of Queen Elizabeth, or the flowing ringlets of

Congreve.

Miss Mitford’s life seems to have opened upon her in that page of the

old quarto edition of “Percy’s Reliques,” where the ballad of the

“Children in the Wood” is to be found. It is the first book, almost the

first event she remembers. They used to put her upon a table before she

was three years old, when she was, as she says, only a sort of

twin-sister to her own doll, to make her read leading articles out of

the morning papers; and the reward for this terrible penance was to hear

her mother recite the “Children in the Wood,” just as children are

rewarded for taking nauseous things by a promise of a lump of sugar. At

last, she got possession of the volumes themselves, and made

acquaintance with the rest of the ballads, which possess as great a

charm for her now as they did then; and she never looks upon the old

books—the very same edition Dr. Johnson used to treat with a very

learned and unwise superciliousness—that the days of her childhood, or

doll-hood, do not come vividly back upon her.

She still keeps to the Percy collection. She does not seem to care about

the lore that has been dug up since, or the antiquarian research that

has come to the illustration of our old English poetry. Even the first

edition contents her—she will have no other—she has an affection for

it—it is enough for her purpose—it recalls the happy time when its

pages disclosed a new world of enchantments to her—and she holds it in

reverence amongst her literary penates. There is nothing in her

reminiscences to show that she troubles herself about Percy societies,

or Shakspeare societies, that she has ever dipped into Notes and

Queries, or would think herself obliged to the officious critic who

should detect a flaw in her two precious quarto volumes. The faith and

the enthusiasm of childhood still cling to the well-known book, and

would be very much put out by being disturbed at their devotions. And

this is the character of Miss Mitford’s mind. She would rather believe

in an old tradition than have it dispelled by the detective police that

go about exploring chronicles and ferreting out damaging facts. She

thinks a pleasant delusion better than a disagreeable truth; and it is

to this fondness for old books, and old places, and the old stories that

have grown up into a popular creed about them, that we may trace the

paramount charm of simplicity and trustfulness, the cheerful spirit and

the teeming good-nature which abound in her writings.

To us, we must acknowledge, this freshness of the heart and entire

freedom of the imagination, is very delightful. Miss Mitford is not a

critic; but she is something a great deal better and more agreeable. She

is of too enjoyable a temperament for a critic; she has not a tinge of

the malice or perversity of criticism in her genial nature. For this

reason, her opinions are sometimes slightly heterodox, but it is always

on the side of a good-will, and a hearty admiration of some gracious or

gentle quality which she has been at the pains to discover, and which

few people would take the trouble to look for. She speaks rapturously of

Davis’ “Life of Curran;” has such innocent rural views of literature,

that she thinks nobody reads Pope and Dryden now, and that George Darley

is unknown as a poet to the English public; detects a close resemblance

between the Irish novels of Banim and the romanticist creations of

Victor Hugo, Sue, Dumas, and the rest of that school; thinks that few

works are better worth reading than Moncton Milnes’ “Life of Keats,” not

only for the sake of Keats, but of his “generous benefactors, Sir James

Clarke and Mr. Severn;” regrets that certain works have fallen into

oblivion, from which no effort of fashionable or literary patronage can

redeem them; considers Willis, Lowell and Poe the great American poets;

and hopes that Richardson’s novels and Walpole’s letters will never come

to an end. Nobody’s judgment can suffer any damage from such amiable

notions; and the world is always sure to derive benefit from the kindly

spirit that overlooks a hundred defects and follies for the sake of a

single virtue it finds hidden beneath them. We wish there were more Miss

Mitfords, with her intellect, to set us so influential an example of

toleration and a willingness to be pleased.

She confesses that she was a spoilt child, and that papa spoilt her. It

is evident, from what we have just said, that sudden and high as was the

growth of her reputation, the public have not spoilt her. What the

applause of critics and the admiration of her readers failed to do, papa

did. “Not content with spoiling me in-doors, he spoilt me out. How well

I remember his carrying me round the orchard on his shoulder, holding

fast my little three-year-old feet, whilst the little hands hung on to

his pig-tail, which I called my bridle—those were days of

pig-tails—hung so fast, and lugged so heartily, that sometimes the

ribbon would come off between my fingers, and send his hair floating,

and the powder flying down his back.” The papa who thus made her first

acquainted with the orchard, occupies a still more prominent space in

her subsequent reminiscences. From him to whom she was indebted for her

early love of nature, and the happy hours of childhood, she also derived

the heaviest sorrow of her life. The story is strange and melancholy.

A young physician, clever, handsome, gay, in a small town in Hampshire,

Miss Mitford’s father won the hand of an heiress with a property of

eight-and-twenty thousand pounds. With the exception of two hundred a

year, settled on her as pin-money, the whole of this fortune was

injudiciously placed at the free use of Dr. Mitford, who seems to have

possessed every quality to make his wife happy—except prudence. Being

an eager Whig, he plunged into election politics and made enemies; being

very hospitable, he spent more money than he could afford; and,

endeavoring to retrieve the waste by cards and speculation, he sank

nearly the whole of his resources. In this extremity, he thought he

would do better in a fresh place, and so the family removed to Lyme

Regis, where they had a fine house, which twenty years before had been

rented by the great Lord Chatham for the use of his sons. Here they led

a very gay life for two or three seasons—balls, excursions, dinners;

yet in the midst of it, Miss Mitford says, she felt a secret conviction

that something was wrong—“such a foreshowing as makes the quicksilver

in the barometer sink while the weather is still bright and clear.” Her

father went ominously to London, and lost more money—she does not say

how—all was now gone except the pin-money: friends departed one by one,

and there was great hurry and confusion, and then everything was to be

parted with, and everybody to be paid, and the family made a forced

journey to London, part of which was performed in a tilted cart without

springs, for lack of better conveyance.

Settled in a dingy, comfortless lodging in one of the suburbs beyond

Westminster Bridge, Dr. Mitford’s constitutional vivacity returned. He

used to take his little girl, then ten years old, in his hand about town

to show her the sights; and one day they stopped at an Irish

lottery-office, and showing her certain mysterious bits of paper with

numbers on them, he desired her to choose one. She selected No. 2,224;

but as this was only a quarter, and papa wanted to purchase a whole

ticket, he desired her to choose again. But her heart was set on No.

2,224, because the numbers added together made up ten, and that day

happened to be her tenth birth-day. Fortunately, the lottery-office man

had the whole number in shares, and so the ticket was bought. She must

relate the sequel in her own words.

“The whole affair was a secret between us, and my father,

whenever he got me to himself, talked over our future twenty

thousand pounds, just like Almaschar over his basket of eggs.

“Meanwhile time passed on, and one Sunday morning we were all

preparing to go to church, when a face that I had forgotten, but

my father had not, made its appearance. It was the clerk of the

lottery-office. An express had just arrived from Dublin,

announcing that No. 2,224 had drawn a prize of twenty thousand

pounds, and he had hastened to communicate the good news.

“Ah, me! in less than twenty years what was left of the produce

of the ticket so strangely chosen? What? except the Wedgwood

dinner service that my father had had made to commemorate the

event, with the Irish harp within the border on one side, and

his family crest on the other. That fragile and perishable ware

long outlasted the more perishable money!”

Miss Mitford relates these painful recollections with a serenity and

patience that yield a lesson from which her readers may profit as

largely as from the example of extravagance and recklessness which made

so severe a demand on her feelings and her philosophy; and it is

pleasant, after all her vicissitudes and jolting over the rough ways of

the world, to find her in a tranquil cottage, in the midst of the

scenery she loves, with her dog and her maid, her stick and her pony,

enjoying as much felicity as can be reasonably looked for in the sunset

of a chequered life.

Scattered over the volumes without much heed of chronology or sequence,

are many little personal scraps that will hereafter enter into her

biography, from the light which they throw upon the cast and color of

her training. The papa, who was so indifferent to money, who was

addicted to such ruinous habits, and who in his general relations with

society, seems to have sacrificed the comfort and repose of his home,

was, nevertheless, the most devoted of fathers. From her earliest

childhood to the last hour of his life, he treated her with an

affectionate and caressing tenderness that, in spite of his manifest

errors, leaves an amiable impression of his character behind. One of the

incidents on which she dwells with the greatest satisfaction was her

first visit to London; and the mode of it is not only illustrative of

the comparatively primitive habits of the time, but of the simplicity of

the man in his domestic life. Having occasion to come to London in the

middle of July, he suddenly announced his intention of taking her up

with him in his gig; and at this open fashion they started, stopping to

dine at Crauford Bridge in a little inn—then a very famous

posting-house—whose pretty garden and Portugal laurels she still

remembers; and then on to Hatchett’s Hotel in Piccadilly, where she

stood looking out of the window and wondering when the crowd would go

by; and in the evening she was so unconscious of fatigue from this

exciting journey that papa took her to the Haymarket to see a

comedy—one of the comedies, she says, that George III. used to enjoy so

heartily, although what sort of comedy it was we know not, unless, which

we shrewdly suspect, it was a specimen of Colman the Younger, or of the

Morton and Reynolds school. She had seen plays before in a barn—but

never such a play as this. The whole description of this trip to London

is as good in its way as anything Fielding himself could have done.

“Dear papa,” in the pride of his heart, insisted upon making an

accomplished musician of her, and would “stick her up” to the piano,

although she had neither ear, taste, nor application. Her master was

Hook, the father of the facetious Theodore, and she was taught in the

schoolroom where Miss Landon passed the greater part of her life.

Luckily they shut her up in a room to make her practise the harp, and as

it was full of books she fell to reading, and under these auspicious

circumstances made her first acquaintance with the plays of Voltaire and

Molière. She was caught in the fact of laughing till the tears ran down

her cheeks over that passage in the “Bourgeois Gentilhomme,” where the

angry father apostrophises the galley, “Que diable alloit-il faire dans

cette galère!” As her good stars had it, she was detected in her

delinquency by the husband of the schoolmistress, who happened to be a

Frenchman, an adorer of Molière, and a hater of music, and who, instead

of chiding her for her neglect of the instrument, dismissed the

harp-mistress, and made the young student a present of a cheap edition

of Molière, for her own reading, which she has to this hour, in twelve

unbound, foreign-looking, little volumes.

After these scenes, we find her in a cottage, at Taplow—at this time a

grown-up lady—looking over a garden of honeysuckles, lilies, and roses,

making excursions to Windsor, to Gray’s Lawn at Stoke Poges, to Burke’s

at Beaconsfield, and to the College at Chalfont, where Milton found a

refuge during the plague. We always associate Miss Mitford with

cottages. We cannot imagine her living in a slated house, three stories

high, with a carriage sweep, and steps up to the door—we cannot suffer

her in our imagination to have any of the comforts and solidity of a

well-built mansion about her; it must be a cottage, with its ivy

creepers, its portico and latticed windows, and everything round it

looking as green and rural as a wilderness of trees and shrubs, growing

up luxuriantly in a warm, languid climate can make it. In short, we must

smother her in flowers, or she is not the Miss Mitford that we know so

well in the pastoral books she has written.

Turning from the autobiographical passages which form so interesting a

part of these volumes, there are a variety of literary sketches of an

equally attractive kind. Miss Mitford runs over a wide field of books

and recollections; and from her extensive acquaintance with literary

people, and the desultory character of her reading, she supplies an

abundant store of anecdote and remark.

The following is new, and certainly very curious. The scene is an old,

wooden, picturesque house, at Cambridge, in America, once the head

quarters of Washington, but now the residence of Longfellow, the poet.

“One night the poet chanced to look out of his window, and saw

by the vague starlight a figure riding slowly past the mansion.

The face could not be distinguished; but the tall, erect person,

the cocked hat, the traditional costume, the often-described

white horse, all were present. Slowly he paced before the house,

and then returned, and then again passed by, after which,

neither horse nor rider were seen or heard of.”

Miss Mitford does not give us any authority for this anecdote; but the

collectors of ghost stories are not very particular about authorities,

and will be content to take it upon her own, as we do.

There is a sketch of Elizabeth Barrett, and a little biography attached

to it, which will be read with interest. Miss Mitford’s acquaintance

with her commenced fifteen years ago.

“Of a slight, delicate figure, with a shower of dark curls

falling on either side of a most expressive face large, tender

eyes richly fringed by dark eye-lashes, a smile like a sunbeam,

and such a look of youthfulness, that I had some difficulty in

persuading a friend, in whose carriage we went together to

Chiswick, that the translator of the ‘Prometheus of Æschylus,’

the authoress of the ‘Essay on Mind,’ was old enough to be

introduced into company, or, in technical language, was _out_.”

It was in the following year that Miss Barrett broke a blood-vessel in

the lungs, which consigned her to a long illness, during which she lost

a favorite brother by one of those melancholy accidents which leave

ineffaceable memories in the hearts of the survivors. He was drowned,

with two companions, in sight of her windows at Torquay, whither she was

ordered for change of air. This tragedy nearly killed her; and more than

a year afterward, when she was removed to London by easy journeys, she

told Miss Mitford that, “during that whole winter, the sound of the

waves rang in her ears like the moans of one dying.”

William Cobbett was one of the notabilities to whom Miss Mitford was

introduced by her father, whose intimacy with him was brought about

through their mutual attachment to field sports. She describes him in

his own house as a man of unfailing good humor and great heartiness;

tall, stout and athletic, with a bright smile, and an air compounded of

the soldier and the farmer, to which his habitual red waistcoat

contributed not a little. His activity was something to be remembered,

for he would begin the day by mowing his own lawn, a laborious pastime

in which he beat his gardener, who was esteemed, except himself, the

best mower in the parish.

Upon one occasion, Dr. Mitford and his daughter were invited to

Cobbett’s to meet the wife and daughters of a certain Dr. Blamire; and

as it appeared that Dr. Mitford had formerly flirted with Mrs. Blamire,

some amusement was expected from seeing how they would meet after a

lapse of twenty years, both of them having shaken off the old _liaison_,

and married in the meanwhile.

“The most diverting part of this scene, very amusing to a

bystander, was, that my father, the only real culprit, was the

only person who throughout maintained the appearance and

demeanor of the most unconscious innocence. He complimented Mrs.

Blamire on her daughters—two very fine girls—inquired after

his old friend, the doctor, and laughed and talked over by-gone

stories with the one lady, just as if he had not jilted her, and

played the kind and attentive husband to the other, just as if

he had never in all his days made love to anybody except his own

dear wife.”

Formerly, we frequently met with physicians who belonged to this class,

and who were indebted for their professional success mainly to their

social tactics and invincible pleasantry; but although you still

occasionally fall in with a medical man who considers it as necessary to

cultivate popularity amongst ladies as to attend to the practice of his

art, the age of the flirt-physicians, we are happy to believe, has

passed away.

Miss Mitford’s literary “recollections” bear rather more upon books than

upon the authors of them. The book-gossip to which she invites us,

traverses a considerable round of poets, novelists, and miscellaneous

writers, and the specimens of their works over which she lingers with

delight, make a body of extracts which enhance the value and variety of

the publication. Her notes upon these selected passages discover a

geniality and earnestness which will be grateful even to the reader who

may sometimes have occasion to think that her praise is a little in

excess, or who may doubt the judgment that has been shown in particular

selections.

This tendency to a good-natured estimate of her favorite authors, shows

itself most conspicuously in her admiration of certain poets, whose

merits the world has not hitherto rated so highly. We are not sorry,

nevertheless, to meet snatches of such people as Mr. Spencer and Miss

Catharine Fanshawe—whose chief claim to notice is, that she was the

author of the Enigma on the letter H, which used to be ascribed to

Byron—for, except through the flattering medium of books like these, we

are not very likely to see the _vers de société_ that were in such

request some fifty years ago, disinterred for our special delectation.

They are abundantly curious, and discover a certain verbal facility and

gayety of the thinnest and airiest kind, which will at least amuse, if

not instruct the reader, by setting him thinking of the extinct modes

and tastes to which they were addressed, and out of which they extracted

their fugitive popularity. But poetasters of this order, however

cheerfully and successfully they help to shed a grace on private life,

and to give a sort of intellectual vivacity to social intercourse, can

never be made to survive their hour in print. They must perish with the

occasion that gave them birth; and you might as well hope to procure for

the acted charade, if it were taken down in short-hand and published,

the same success in the closet that it received on its impromptu

delivery, as to procure for the graceful trifles thrown off for the

amusement of a _coterie_, the honors of a permanent place in the

library. They never aimed at such a destiny, and can never achieve it;

and it may be doubted whether their fragile existence should be risked

in print at all.

Of all the neglected, forgotten, or unknown books Miss Mitford has

brought to life again, the Autobiography of Holcroft is the most

deserving of resuscitation. We know no memoir of its kind—excepting the

only one forbidden book in French literature—that possesses its charm

of frankness, truthfulness of detail, and quiet development of

character. Unfortunately it is nothing more than a fragment, consisting

of seventeen chapters, dictated by Holcroft—a prolific author and

translator—in his last illness; stopping short at an interesting point

in his career, and furnishing such evidences of clear-sighted judgment,

and happy skill in relation and portraiture, as to leave an indelible

regret upon the mind of the reader at finding himself cast upon the

grander diction of Hazlitt for the continuation of the narrative. The

contrast is painful. The brilliancy and paradoxical genius of Hazlitt,

rendered him of all men the most unfit to follow up the unpretending

strength and simplicity of Holcroft; and the transition is something

like being transported from the fresh air and pastoral beauty of a

natural landscape into a severe Italian garden. There was but one point

in common between them—and that was the most contracted and least

characteristic of all—their agreement in politics. Holcroft was a man

of larger powers, and a wider range of tastes than might be predicated

from that party martyrdom which gave him so distressing a notoriety in

the latter days of his life, to the partial eclipse of his literary

reputation. But the subject is not likely to be revived now, nor would

it repay the labors of a more competent editor. Miss Mitford, however,

has done well in drawing attention to Holcroft’s book, and the extracts

she has given from it will be read with interest; but it is only from

the memoir itself, as a whole, tracing the course of the self-educated

boy from his origin upward, that an adequate notion can be formed of the

enthralling charm of that singular narrative.

We have exceeded our limits. A gossip, intended to occupy only five

minutes or so, has already run over the brim of the measure which we

proposed to fill up to the health of Miss Mitford. It is not the first

time she has tempted us into an excess of this kind; but, if the reader

will open her volumes over the fireside as we have done, we are mistaken

if he do not find quite as much difficulty as we do now in shutting them

up and putting them down again.

-----

[12] Recollections of a Literary Life; or Books, Places, and People. By

Mary Russell Mitford, Author of “Our Village,” etc. 3 vols.

* * * * *

THE BLACK HUNTSMAN.

HORACE W. SMITH.

Loud blew the wind at the midnight hour,

With many a wintry blast,

Which fairly shook old Rodenstine’s tower,

As the Wild Black Huntsman passed.

The deer he sprang from his leafy bed,

As he heard the piercing sounds,

And the oak boughs crashed to his antlered head,

As he flew from the phantom hounds.

The rite of the holy monk was stayed,

And he trembling dropped his beads,

As he heard the tramp through the forest glades

And the neigh of the goblin steeds.

From the revellers hand the wine-cup fell,

At the forester’s festive board;

And a sudden charm came o’er the spell

Of the minstrels tuneful chord.

The old oak shook in its ancient hold,

The abbey bell tolled to the blast;

And the cloud and the tempest onward rolled,

As the Wild Black Huntsman passed.

* * * * *

[Illustration: J. Hayter, W.H. Mote

COQUETISH SEVENTEEN.

Graham’s Magazine 1852]

* * * * *

THE TWO ISABELS;

OR COQUETISH SEVENTEEN.

[with a steel plate.]

BY MRS. S. C. HALL.

Oh love, love, love, love!—love is like a dizziness,

It will not let a poor man go about his business.

Old Song.

And are those follies going,

And is my proud heart growing

Too cold, or wise, for woman’s eyes

Again to set it glowing?

Moore.

The General put on his spectacles, and looked steadfastly at Isabel for

at least two minutes. “Turn your head,” he said, at last—“there, to the

left.”

Isabel Montford, although an acknowledged beauty, was as amiable as she

was admired; she had also a keen appreciation of character; and, though

somewhat piqued, was amused by the oddity of her aunt’s old lover. The

General was a fine example of the well-preserved person and manners of

the past century; beauty always recognizes beauty as a distinguished

relative; and Isabel turned her head, to render it as attractive as it

could be.

The General smiled, and after gazing for another minute with evident

pleasure, he said—“Do me the favor to keep that attitude, and walk

across the room.”

Isabella did so with much dignity; she certainly was exceedingly

handsome;—her step light, but firm; her figure, admirably poised; her

head, well and gracefully placed; her features, finely formed; her eyes

and smile, bright and confiding. She would have been more captivating

had her dress been less studied; her taste was evidently Parisien rather

than classic. The gentleman muttered something, in which the words,

“charming,” and “to be regretted,” only met her ear; then he spoke

distinctly:

“You solicited my candor, young lady—you challenged comparison between

you and your compeers, and the passing belles whom I have seen. Now, be

so kind as to walk out of the room, re-enter, and curtsey.”

Had Isabel Montford been an uneducated young lady, she might have

flounced out of the _salon_, in obedience to her displeasure, which was

very decided; but as it was, she drew herself to her full height, and

swept through the folding-doors. The General took a very large pinch of

snuff. “That is so perfectly a copy of her poor aunt!” he

murmured;—“just so would she pass onward, like a ruffled swan; she went

after that exact fashion into the ante-room, when she refused me, for

the fourth time, thirty-five years ago.”

The young Isabel re-entered, and curtseyed. The gentleman seated

himself, leaned his clasped hands upon the head of his beautiful inlaid

cane—which he carried rather for show than use—and said, “Young lady,

you look a divinity! Your _tourneure_ is perfection; but your curtsey is

frightful! A dip, a bob, a bend, a shuffle, a slide, a canter—neither

dignified, graceful, nor self-possessed! A curtsey is in grace what an

_adagio_ is in music;—only masters of the art can execute either the

one or the other. Why, the beauty of the Duchess of Devonshire could not

have saved her reputation as a graceful woman, if she had dared such a

curtsey as that.”

“I assure you, sir,” remonstrated the offended Isabel, “that Madame

Micheau——”

“What do I care for the woman!” exclaimed the General, indignantly.

“Have I not memory?”

“Can you not teach me?” said Isabel, amused and interested by his

earnestness.

“I teach you!—I! No; the curtseys which captivated thousands in my

youth were more an inspiration than an art. The very queen of _ballet_,

in the present day, cannot curtsey.”

“Could my aunt?” inquired Isabel, a little saucily.

“Your aunt, Miss Montford, was grace itself. Ah! there are no such women

now a-days!”

And, after the not very flattering observation, the General moved to the

piano. Isabel’s brows contracted and her cheeks flushed; however, she

glanced at the looking-glass, was comforted, and smiled. He raised the

cover, placed the seat with the grave gallantry of an old courtier, and

invited the young lady to play. She obeyed, to do her justice, with

prompt politeness; she was not without hope that _there_, at least, the

old gentleman would confess she was triumphant. Her white hands, gemmed

with jewels, flew over the keys like winged seraphs; they bewildered the

eye by the rapidity of their movements. The instrument thundered, but

the thunder was so continuous that _there was no echo_! “The contrast

will come by-and-by,” thought the disciple of the old school—“there

must be some shadow to throw up the lights.”

Thunder—crash—thunder—crash—drum—rattle—a confused, though

eloquent, running backward and forward of sounds, the rings flashing

like lightning! Another crash—louder—a great deal of crossing

hands—violent strides from one end of the instrument to the

other—prodigious displays of strength on the part of the fair

performer—a terrific shake! “What desperate exertion!” thought the

General; “and all to produce a soulless noise.” Then followed a fearful

banditti of octaves—another crash, louder and more prolonged than the

rest; and she looked up with a triumphant smile—a smile conveying the

same idea as the pause of an opera-dancer after a most wonderful

_pirouette_.

“Do you keep a tuner in the house, my dear young lady?” inquired the

General.

If a look could have annihilated, he would have crumbled into ashes; but

he only returned it with admiration, thinking, “How astonishingly like

her aunt, when she refused me the second time!”

“And that is fashionable music, Miss Montford? I have lived so long out

of England, only hearing the music of Beethoven, and Mozart, and

Mendelssohn, I was not aware that noise was substituted for power, and

that execution had banished expression. Dear me!—why, the piano is

vibrating at this moment! Poor thing! How long does a piano last you,

Miss Montford?”

Isabel was losing her temper, when fortunately her aunt—still Miss

Vere—came to the rescue. The lovers of thirty years past, would have

met any where else as strangers. The once rounded and queen-like form of

the elder Isabel was shorn of its grace and beauty; of all her

attributes, of all her attractions, dignity only remained; and it was

that high-bred, innate dignity which can never be acquired, and is never

forgotten. She had not lost the eighth of an inch of her height, and her

gray hair was braided in full folds over her fair but wrinkled brow.

Isabel Montford looked so exactly what Isabel Vere had been, that

General Gordon was sorely perplexed; Isabel Vere, if truth must be told,

had taken extra pains with her dress; her niece had met the General the

night before, and her likeness to her aunt had so recalled the past,

that his promised visit to his old sweetheart (as he still called her)

had fluttered and agitated her more than she thought it possible an

interview with _any man_ could do; she quarreled with her beautiful gray

hair, she cast off her black velvet dress disdainfully, and put on a

blue _Moire antique_. (She remembered how much the Captain—no, the

General, once admired blue.) She was not a coquette; even gray hair at

fifty-five does not cure coquetry where it has existed in all its

strength; but, for the sake of her dear niece, she wished to look as

well as possible. She wondered why she had so often refused “poor

Gordon.” She had been all her life of too delicate a mind to be a

husband-hunter, too well satisfied with her position to calculate how it

could be improved, and yet, she did not hesitate to confess to herself

that now, in the commencement of old age, however verdant it might be,

she would have been happier, of more consequence, of more value, as a

married woman. She had too much good sense, and good taste, to belong to

the class of discontented females, consisting of husbandless and

childless women, who seek to establish laws at war with the laws of the

Almighty; so, if her heart did beat a little stiffly, and sundry

passages passed through her brain in connection with her old adorer, and

what the future might be—she may be forgiven, and will be, by those not

strong-minded women who understand enough of the waywardness of human

nature to know that, if _young_ heads and _old_ hearts are sometimes

found together, so are young hearts and old heads. The young laugh to

scorn the idea of Cupid and a crutch, but Cupid has strange vagaries,

and at any moment can barb his crutch with the point of an arrow.

“The old people,” as Isabel Montford irreverently called them that

evening, did not get on well together; they were in a great degree

disappointed one with the other. They stood up to dance the _minuet de

la cour_, and Isabel Vere languished and swam as she had never done

before; but the General only wondered how stiff she had grown, and hoped

that he was not as ill used by time as Mistress Isabel Vere had been. At

first, Isabel Montford thought it “good fun” to see the antiquities

bowing and curtseying, but she became interested in the lingering

courtliness of the little scene, trembled lest her aunt should appear

ridiculous, and then wondered how she could have refused such a man as

General Gordon must have been.

Days and weeks flew fast; the General became a constant visitor in the

square, and the heart of Isabel Vere had never beaten so loudly at

twenty as it did at fifty-and-five; nothing, she thought, could be more

natural than that the General should recall the days of his youth, and

seek the friendship and companionship of her who had never married,

while he—faithless man!—had been guilty of two wives during his

“services in India.” It was impossible to tell which of the ladies he

treated with the most attention. Isabel Montford took an especial

delight in tormenting him, and he was cynical enough towards her at

times. Although he frankly abused her piano-forte-playing, yet he

evidently preferred it to the music Miss Vere practised so indefatigably

to please him, or to the songs she sang, in a voice which from a high

“soprano,” had been crushed by time into what might be considered a very

singular “mezzo.” He somehow forgot how to find fault with Miss

Montford’s dancing, and more than once became her partner in a

quadrille. It was evident, that while the General was growing young,

Miss Vere remained—“as she was!” Isabel Montford amused herself at his

expense, but he did not—quick-sighted and man-of-the-world though he

was—perceive it. At first he was remarkably fond of recalling and

dating events, and dwelling upon the grace, and beauty, and interest,

and advantage, of whatever was past and gone—much to the occasional

pain of Isabel Vere, who, gentle-hearted as she was, would have

consigned _dates_ to the bottomless pit; latterly, however, he talked a

good deal more of the present than of the past, and, greatly to the

annoyance of younger men, fell into the duties of escort to both

ladies,—accompanying them to places of public promenade and amusement.

On such occasions, Miss Isabel Vere looked either earnest or

bashful—yes, positively bashful; and Miss Isabel Montford, brimful of

as much mischief as a lady could delight in. At times, the General laid

aside his cynical observations, together with his cane, which was not

even replaced by an umbrella; to confess the truth, he had experienced

several symptoms of _heart disease_, which, though they made him

restless and uncomfortable, brought hopes and aspirations of life,

rather than fears of death.

One morning, Isabel Montford and the General were alone in the _salon_

where this little scene first opened:

“Our difference has never been settled yet,” she exclaimed, gaily; “you

have never proved to me the superiority of the Old school over the New.”

“Simply because of your superiority to both,” he replied.

“I do not perceive the point of the answer,” said the young lady. “What

has my superiority over _both_ to do with the question?”

The General arose and shut the door. “Do you think you could listen to

me seriously for five minutes?” he said.

“Listening is always serious work,” she answered. He took her hand

within his; she felt it was the hand of age; the bones and sinews

pressed on her soft palm with an earnest pressure.

“Isabel Montford—could you love an old man?”

She raised her eyes to his, and wondered at the light which filled

them:—

“Yes,” she answered, “I could love an old man dearly; I could confide to

him the dearest secret of my heart.”

“And your heart, your heart itself? Such things have been, sweet

Isabel.” His hand was _very_ hard, but she did not withdraw hers.

“No, not _that_, because—because I have not my heart to give.” She

spoke rapidly, and with emotion. “I have it not to give, and I have so

longed to tell you my secret! You have such influence with my aunt, you

have been so affectionate, so like a father to me, that if you would

only intercede with _her_, for HIM and me, I know she could not refuse.

I have often——often thought of entreating this, and now it was so kind

of you to ask, if I could love an old man, giving me the opportunity of

showing that I do, by confiding in you, and asking your intercession.”

The room became misty to the General’s eyes, and the rattle of a

battle-field sounded in his ears, and beat upon his heart.

“And pray, Miss Montford,” he said, after a pause, “who may _him_ be?”

“Ah, _you_ do not know him!—my aunt forbade the continuance of our

acquaintance the day before I had the happiness to meet you. It was most

fortunate I wooed you to call upon her, thinking—” (she looked up at

his fine face, whose very wrinkles were aristocratic, and smiled her

most bewitching smile) “thinking the presence of the only man she ever

loved would soften her, and hoping that I should one day be privileged

to address you as my friend, my uncle!” And she kissed his hand.—It

really was hard to bear. “I have heard her say,” persisted the young

lady, “that when prompted by evil counsel, she refused you, she loved

you, and since your return she only lives in your presence.” The General

wondered if this was true, and thought he would not give the young

beauty a triumph. He was recovering his self-possession. “I remembered

your admiration of _passing belles_, and felt how kindly you tolerated

me, _for my aunt’s sake_; and surely you will aid me in a matter upon

which my happiness, and the happiness of that poor dear fellow depends?”

She bent her beautiful eyes on the ground.

“And who is the poor dear fellow?” inquired the General, in a singularly

husky voice.

“Henry Mandeville,” half-whispered Isabel. “Oh, is it not a beautiful

name? the initials on those lovely handkerchiefs you gave me will still

do; I shall still be I. M.”

“A son of old Admiral Mandeville’s?”

“The _youngest_ son,” she sighed, “that is my aunt’s objection; were he

the _eldest_, she would have been too happy. Oh, sir, he is such a fine

fellow—such a hero!—lost a leg at Cabool, and received I don’t know

how many stabs from those horrid Affgauns.”

“Lost a leg!” repeated the General, with an approving glance at his own;

“why he can never dance with you.”

“No, but he can admire my dancing, and does not think my curtsey a dip,

a shuffle, a bend, a bob, a slide, a canter! Ah! dear General, I was

always perfection in his eyes.”

“By the immortal duke,” thought the General, “the young divinity is

laughing at me.”

“My aunt only objects to his want of money; now I have abundance for

both; and your recommendation, dear sir, at the Horse Guards, would at

once place him in some position of honor and of profit; and even if it

were abroad, I could leave my dear aunt with the consciousness that her

happiness is secured by you, dear, guardian angel that you are. Ah! sir,

at your time of life you can have no idea of our feelings.”

“Oh yes, I have!” sighed the General.

“Bless you!” she exclaimed enthusiastically; “I thought you would recall

the days of your youth and feel for us; and when you see my dear

Harry”—

“With a cork leg”—

“Ay, or with two cork legs—you will I know be convinced that my

happiness is as secure as your own.”

“Women are riddles, one and all!” said the General, “and I should have

known that before.”

“Oh! do not say such cruel things and disappoint me, depending as I have

been on your kindness and affection. Hark!” she continued, “I hear my

aunt’s footstep: now dear, _dear_ General, reason coolly with her—my

very existence depends on it. If you only knew him! Promise, do promise,

that you will use your influence, all-powerful as it is, to save my

life.”

She raised her beautiful eyes, swimming in unshed tears, to his; she

called him her uncle, her dear noble-hearted friend; she rested her

snowy hand lovingly, imploringly on his shoulder, and even murmured a

hope that, her aunt’s consent once gained, it might not be impossible to

have the two weddings _on the same day_.

The General may have dreaded the banter of sundry members of the “Senior

United Service Club,” who had already jested much at his devotion to the

two Isabels; he _may_ have felt a generous desire to make two young

people happy, and his good sense doubtless suggested that sixty-five and

seventeen bear a strong affinity to January and May; he certainly did

himself honor, by adopting the interests of a brave young officer as his

own, and avoided the banter of “the club,” by pledging his thrice-told

vows to his “old love,” the same bright morning that his “new love” gave

her heart and hand to Henry Mandeville.

* * * * *

REVIEW OF NEW BOOKS.

_The Works of Shakspeare: the Text Carefully Restored According

to the First Editions; With Introductions, Notes, Original and

Selected, and a Life of the Poet. By the Rev. H. N. Hudson, A.

M. In Eleven Volumes. Boston: James Monroe & Co. Vol. 3._

This beautiful edition of Shakspeare, a fac-simile of the celebrated

Chiswick edition in type and paper, has now reached its third volume. It

is edited by Mr. Hudson, well known all over the country as one of the

most accomplished of Shakspeare’s critics and commentators, and who in

his present labors has far surpassed the reputation he obtained by his

lectures on the same subject. The present volume contains The Merchant

of Venice, As You Like It, All’s Well that Ends Well, and The Taming of

the Shrew. The text is very carefully revised, and the notes are clear,

short, and full of matter, and flash the meaning of obscure phrases,

remote allusions, and other difficulties of the text, at once upon the

reader’s mind, without any parade of learning or paradox of

interpretation. It is, however, in the introductory notices to the plays

that the analytical and interpretative genius of the editor shines forth

most resplendently. Every lover of Shakspeare should possess this

edition, had it nothing to recommend it but these alone. They give the

results of meditations, alike penetrating and profound, on the interior

processes of Shakspeare’s mind in creating character and in forming

plots; and the marvel of his genius, in its depth, delicacy,

comprehension, fertility, and sweetness, is developed with the austerity

of science and the geniality of a sympathizing spirit. These

introductions are not only thus critical, but they include in a short

space a large amount of antiquarian knowledge respecting the

bibliography and sources of the plays; and the old tales which suggested

or formed the basis of the plots, are re-told with much skill and

simplicity of narration.

The masterpiece of the present volume is the introduction to The

Merchant of Venice. It is exceedingly brilliant in style, but the

brilliancy seems to come from an inward heat and fervor generated by an

intense contemplation of the subject, so that the diction sparkles, as

Ben Jonson would say, “like salt in fire.” The brilliancies are flashes,

not of fancy, but of thought; and frequently are the result of vigorous

condensation in statement, or of logic which gets on fire by the very

rapidity of its movement. The finest elements of the style, however, are

its subtleties of statement and representation, subtleties which follow

the most intricate windings and enfoldings of complex thought, speeding

on the fire track of an ideal allusion to the very limits of its course,

and thoroughly mastering all the obstacles of expression in giving form

to the most evanescent workings of the creative power.

Thus in speaking of the apparent heterogeneousness but real unity of the

play, he remarks: “The persons naturally fall into three several groups,

with each its several plot and action; yet the three are most skillfully

complotted, each standing out clear and distinct in its place, yet

concurring with the others in dramatic unity, so that every thing helps

on every other thing, without either the slightest confusion or the

slightest appearance of care to avoid it. Of these three groups it is

hardly necessary to add that Antonio, Shylock and Portia are the

respective centres; while the part of Lorenzo and Jessica, though

strictly an episode, seems, nevertheless, to grow forth as an element of

the original germ, _a sort of inherent superfluity_, and as such

essential, not indeed to the being, but to the well-being of the work;

in short, a fine romantic undertone accompaniment to the other parts,

yet contemplated and provided for in the whole plan and structure of the

piece; _itself_ in harmony with all the rest, and therefore perfecting

their harmony with one another.” We will put it to the consciousness of

every reader of Shakspeare if this does not chime with his feeling of

the matter; but to show the grounds of this instinctive taste, and

exhibit it in its intellectual form, and justify it by the austerest

principles of philosophical criticism, requires Mr. Hudson’s sharpness

of eye and ready refinements of expression. The specimen we have given,

as it is not the best which might be selected, so is it a very common

and unobtrusive characteristic of his criticism.

In commenting on the characters of the play, Mr. Hudson displays more

than ordinary keenness and discrimination. We are acquainted with no

student of Shakspeare who could read the analysis of Shylock, Antonio,

Portia and Jessica, without receiving an addition to his knowledge. Even

Launcelot Gobbo has his share of the critic’s acumen; his necessity, in

the organism of the piece, is demonstrated; and the exquisite

_non-sequiturism_ of his whole personality is finely described. “A

mixture, indeed, of conceit and drollery, and hugely wrapped up in self,

yet he is by no means a commonplace buffoon, but stands firm and secure

in the sufficiency of his original stock. His elaborate nonsense, his

grasping at a pun without catching it, yet feeling just as grand as if

he did, is both ludicrous and natural; his jokes, to be sure, are mostly

failures; nevertheless they are laughable, because he dreams not but

that they succeed.”

It is needless to say that the prominent feature in Mr. Hudson’s

criticism is Shylock. The combination in him of the individual and the

national, Shylock the Jew and the Jew Shylock, is indicated with a bold,

firm hand. One paragraph is especially powerful. “Shylock,” he says, “is

a true representative of his nation; wherein we have a pride which for

ages never ceased to provoke hostility, but which no hostility could

ever subdue; a thrift which still invited rapacity, but which no

rapacity could ever exhaust; and a weakness, which, while it exposed the

subjects to wrong, only deepened their hate, because it left them

without the means or the hope of redress. Thus Shylock is a type of

national sufferings, sympathies, and antipathies. Himself an object of

bitter insult and scorn to those about him; surrounded by enemies whom

he is too proud to conciliate and too weak to oppose; he can have no

life among them but money; no hold upon them but interest; no indemnity

out of them but revenge. Such being the case, what wonder that the

elements of national greatness became congealed or petrified into

malignity? As avarice was the passion in which he mainly lived, of

course, the Christian virtues which thwarted this were the greatest

wrong that could be done him. With these strong national traits are

interwoven personal traits equally strong. Thoroughly and intensely

Jewish, he is not more a Jew than he is Shylock. In his hard, icy

intellectuality, and his ‘dry, mummy-like tenacity’ of purpose, with a

dash now and then of biting sarcastic humor, we see the remains of a

great and noble nature, out of which all the genial sap of humanity has

been pressed by accumulated injuries. With as much elasticity of mind as

stiffness of neck, every step he takes but the last is as firm as the

earth he treads upon. Nothing can daunt, nothing disconcert him;

remonstrance cannot move, ridicule cannot touch, obloquy cannot

exasperate him; when he has not provoked, he has been forced to bear

them; and now that he does provoke them, he is proof against them. In a

word, he may be broken; he cannot be bent.”

We cannot refrain from picking out a sentence, here and there, in the

critic’s admirable delineation of Portia. “Eminently practical in her

tastes and turn of mind, full of native, home-bred sense and virtue, she

unites therewith something of the ripeness and dignity of a sage, a

rich, mellow eloquence, and a large, noble discourse, the whole being

tempered with the best grace and sensibility of womanhood. . . Nothing

can be more fitting and well-placed than her demeanor, now bracing her

speech with grave maxims of moral and practical wisdom, now unbending

her mind in playful sallies of wit, or innocent, roguish banter. . . .

It is no drawback upon Portia’s strength and substantial dignity of

character, that her nature is all overflowing with romance; rather, this

it is that glorifies her and breathes enchantment about her; it adds

that precious seeing to the eye which conducts her to such winning

beauty and sweetness of deportment, and makes her the ‘rich-souled’

creature that Schlegel describes her to be.”

The introductions to All’s Well that Ends Well, and The Taming of the

Shrew, are replete with shrewd remark and acute analysis, but both are

inferior to the criticism of As You Like It. The woodland sweetness of

this play tasks all the subtlety and all the enthusiasm of Mr. Hudson to

do it justice. An exquisite ideal beauty casts its sweet and satisfying

charm over the whole of this matchless comedy, and we envy Shakspeare’s

delight in its composition more than Campbell envied his happiness in

bodying forth A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Even Le Beau, the courtier of

Frederic, is an ideal courtier; on inborn gentlemanliness, of the finest

kind, stealing out from him in performing his most ungracious duties.

This character is commonly performed on the stage by the worst actor the

manager has in his company, but we have always noticed that the feeblest

performer became lifted into dignity by simply pronouncing one golden

sentence in the first act. It is where Le Beau expresses at once his

loyal duty to Frederic and his admiration for Orlando’s brave and gentle

qualities. As his master has chosen to be Orlando’s enemy, he cannot

obey his impulse to be Orlando’s friend, and his parting words to the

latter are touchingly noble:

“Sir, fare you well:

Hereafter in a better world than this,

I shall desire more love and knowledge of you.”

Mr. Hudson says very acutely of the characters of As You Like It, that,

“diverted by fortune from all their cherished plans and purposes, they

pass before us in just that _moral and intellectual dishabille_, which

best reveals their indwelling graces of heart and mind.” This, it seems

to us, touches the inmost secret of the delight all mankind have in this

play. There is a complete absence of restraint upon expression, and the

tongues of all run of their own sweet will, in a region of perfect

freedom. It is whim exalted into poetry. Of Touchstone, our critic

remarks, that though he never touches so deep a chord as the poor fool

in Lear, that “he is the most entertaining of Shakspeare’s privileged

characters. . . . It is curious to observe how the poet takes care to

let us know from the first, that beneath the affectations of his calling

some precious sentiments have been kept alive; that far within the fool

_there is a secret reserve of the man_, ready to leap forth and combine

with better influences as soon as the incrustations of art are thawed

and broken up.” Passing over some keen observations on Jaques and the

class of character to which he belongs, we come to Mr. Hudson’s

exquisite description of Rosalind, the style of which would alone tempt

one to extract it. The ideal merriment of Rosalind—and after listening

to her for an hour, it seems a misuse of the word merriment to apply it

to glee less graceful, light and lark-like than her own—has rarely been

touched with so delicate an analysis. “For wit,” he says, “this strange,

queer, lovely being is fully equal, perhaps superior to Beatrice, yet

nowise resembling her. A soft, subtle, nimble essence, consisting in one

knows not what, ‘and springing up one can hardly tell how,’ her wit

neither stings nor burns, but plays briskly and airily over all things

within its reach, enriching and adorning them, insomuch that one could

ask no greater pleasure than to be the continual theme of it. In its

irrepressible vivacity it waits not for occasion, but runs on forever,

and we wish it to run on forever: we have a sort of faith that her

dreams are made of cunning, quirkish, graceful fancies. And her heart

seems a perennial fountain of affectionate cheerfulness; no trial can

break, no sorrow chill her flow of spirits; even her deepest sighs are

breathed forth in a wrappage of innocent mirth; an arch, roguish smile

irradiates her saddest tears. Yet beneath all her playfulness we feel

that there is a firm basis of thought and womanly dignity, so that she

never laughs away our respect.”

An edition of Shakspeare, edited so admirably as this—so convenient in

its form, so elegant in its execution, and so cheap in its price—will,

we hope, have a circulation over the country corresponding to its great

merits.

* * * * *

_Utterance; or, Private Voices to the Public Heart. A Collection

of Home Poems. By Caroline A. Briggs. Boston: Phillips, Sampson

& Co. 1 vol. 12mo._

Our first impression of this volume we received from its title, and that

impression was, of course, unfavorable, as the title certainly smacks of

affectation. But it requires but a slight examination of the book to

dissipate such a prejudice. It is a thoroughly genuine expression of a

sensitive, thoughtful, artless, affectionate, and fanciful nature, and

readily wins its way into the reader’s esteem. Even those passages which

evince a sort of innocent ignorance of the conventions of society and

letters, have a _naïveté_ which charms while it amuses. The volume is a

collection of short poems, ranged under the general titles of Voices of

Affection, Voices of Grief, Voices of Cheer, Sacred Voices, and Voices

of the Way, and one powerful Voice for the Poor, written in a measure

whose movement has something of the fitful swiftness of the cold, wild

wind, whose cruelty it deprecates. The following lines convey a vivid

picture of desolation; the verse itself seeming to shudder in sympathy

with the objects it holds up to pity:

Oh, the Poor!

The poor and old,

On the moor

And on the wold—

How desolate they are to-night and cold!

—I peeped into the broken panes,

Where the snow, and sleet, and rains

Of many a weary year have stolen,

Till the sashes are smeared, and soaked and swollen.

Little children with tangled hair,

And lips awry and feet half bare,

Huddled around the smouldering fire,

Like beasts half crouching in their lair;

While each, the while, by stealth drew nigher,

_Covetous of the other’s share._

Oh! ’twas a pitiful sight to see!

And mothers too were there,

With infants shivering on their knee,

Or closer held with a mother’s care,

Or laid to rest with a hurried prayer,

A moan, half hope and half despair,

A muttered, “Pitiless Storm, forbear!”

When we say that there is in this volume some poems that an austere

taste would have omitted, we merely say what we suspect is the truth,

that the poetess is young, and that this is her first introduction to

the public. We might object to a piece, here and there, that the feeling

outruns the thought and fancy, and that commonplace lines occasionally

glide stealthily in to meet the demands of the rhyme; but the faults

which criticism might exhibit are few in comparison with the merits

which shine forth of their own light on almost every page. The general

impression which the whole book leaves on the memory is very pleasing.

The defect of all young poets, that of expansiveness, is continually

apparent; but it is a natural result of the movement of a nature so full

of sensibility that it refuses to submit to the restraints of

condensation, but pours itself out of its own sweet will. As a natural

result of this extreme sensitiveness, the volume is comparatively

destitute of those electric flashes of impassioned imagination, which

come, swift, sure, and smiling from moods of the mind in which thought

is condensed as well as animated by passion; but it still exhibits so

genial a love of nature, a flow of feeling so kindly and sympathetic, so

much beauty, and purity and sweetness of fancy, and withal so much

richness of promise, and such a ready yielding of the mind to the

poetical aspects of things, that we trust it will meet with the success

due to its native excellencies of heart and brain.

* * * * *

_The Snow-Image, and other Twice-Told Tales. By Nathaniel

Hawthorne. Boston: Ticknor, Reed & Fields. 1 vol. 16mo._

This is a collection of Mr. Hawthorne’s Sketches and Stories which have

not been included in any previous collection, and comprise his earliest

and latest contributions to periodical literature. It can hardly add to

his great reputation, though it fully sustains it. “The Snow-Image,”

with which the volume commences, is one of those delicate creations

which no imagination less etherial and less shaping than Hawthorne’s

could body forth. “Main Street,” a sketch but little known, is an

exquisite series of historical pictures, which bring the persons and

events in the history of Salem, vividly home to the eye and the fancy.

“Ethan Brand,” one of the most powerful of Hawthorne’s works, is a

representation of a man, tormented with a desire to discover the

unpardonable sin, and ending with finding it in his own breast. “The

Great Stone Face,” a system of philosophy given in a series of

characterizations, contains, among other forcible delineations, a full

length of Daniel Webster. The volume contains a dozen other tales, some

of them sunny in sentiment and subtle in humor, with touches as fine and

keen as Addison’s or Steele’s: and others dark and fearful, as though

the shadow of a thunder-cloud fell on the author’s page as he wrote. All

are enveloped in the atmosphere, cheerful or sombre, of the mood of mind

whence they proceeded, and all convey that unity of impression which

indicates a firm hold on one strong conception. As stories, they arrest,

fasten, fascinate attention; but, to the thoughtful reader they are not

merely tales, but contributions to the philosophy of the human mind.

* * * * *

_Memories of the Great Metropolis: or London from the Tower to

the Crystal Palace. By F. Sanders. New York: Geo. P. Putnam. 1

vol. 12mo._

This elegant volume, sumptuous in its binding and finely printed and

illustrated, meets a want both in the traveled and the untraveled

public. The work of a gentleman who knows every nook and corner of the

empire city by personal observation, and who, by his large acquaintance

with English authors and English literary history, is enabled to point

out all the localities consecrated by genius and heroism; it is full of

interesting and attractive matter to all readers. As a guide to London,

it will be found a genial as well as a knowing companion to the tourist.

We have been especially pleased with those portions which describe the

shops of the booksellers and the residences of the authors. The volume

is exceedingly well written, and though crammed with facts, betrays

neither the dryness nor confusion too often characteristic of similar

books. The author’s “memories” are never dull, but sparkle with

animation and point.

* * * * *

_Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli. Boston: Phillips, Sampson &

Co. 2 vols. 12mo._

This biography is the work of three “eminent hands”—William H.

Channing, James Freeman Clarke, and Ralph Waldo Emerson, each writing

that portion of Margaret’s life most familiar to himself. The result is

one of the most curious, attractive and stimulating books of the season.

The impression it conveys of the subject of the memoirs, is of a woman

“large in heart and brain,” of great vigor and depth of nature,

accomplished in many literatures, with an understanding capacious and

masculine, and with a sensibility somewhat irregular and chaotic, in

which powerful passions, delicate emotions and vague aspirations, seem

never to have been harmonized into unity. The character, however, in

spite of many limitations and some petty traits, was generally large and

noble, and its essential excellence is not only demonstrated by the

private journals and correspondence contained in these volumes, but by

the fact that she merited the esteem and admiration of three such men as

her biographers. Her defects are promptly admitted by all three, but in

the opinion of all three they were superficial in comparison with the

real graces and powers of her mind. In all those letters and journals in

which her soul finds adequate expression, in which her most secret

thoughts and most genuine aspirations are revealed, she is invariably

true and noble; egotism, satire and pique have in them no place.

Mr. Emerson’s portion of these memoirs is done with his usual felicity

of phrase and sharpness of statement, and is as attractive as any of his

essays. He writes in a kindly spirit, and is evidently a genuine admirer

of his subject, but his friendship is unaccompanied with exaggeration,

and is combined with his usual austere but graceful honesty in stating

his whole opinion. Thus, he gives the first impression which Miss Fuller

made on him in these unflattering words: “Her extreme plainness—a trick

of incessantly opening and shutting her eyelids—the nasal tone of her

voice—all repelled; and I said to myself we shall never get far. It is

to be said that Margaret made a disagreeable first impression on most

persons, including those who became afterward her best friends, to such

an extreme that they did not wish to be in the same room with her. This

was partly the effect of her manners, which expressed an overweening

sense of power and slight esteem of others, and partly the prejudice of

her fame. She had a dangerous reputation for satire, in addition to her

great scholarship. The men thought she carried too many guns, and the

women did not like one who despised them.” He also gives some amusing

instances of her self-esteem. “Margaret at first astonished and repelled

us by a complacency that seemed the most assured since the days of

Scaliger. . . . She occasionally let slip, with all the innocence

imaginable, some phrase betraying the presence of a rather mountainous

ME, in a way to surprise those who knew her good sense. She could say,

as if she were stating a scientific fact, in enumerating the merits of

somebody, ‘He appreciates ME.’”

Mr. Emerson accounts for this egotism partly on the ground of hereditary

organization, and partly on “an ebullient sense of power, which she felt

to be in her, and which as yet had found no channels.” In further

illustration of this he adds, that in conversation she seldom, “except

as a special grace, admitted others upon an equal ground with herself.”

She was exceedingly tender, when she pleased to be, and most cherishing

in her influence; but to elicit this tenderness, it was necessary to

submit first to her personally. When a person was overwhelmed by her and

answered not a word, except ‘Margaret, be merciful to me a sinner,’ then

her love and tenderness would come like a seraph’s, and often an

acknowledgment that she had been too harsh, and even a craving for

pardon, with a humility—which, perhaps, she had caught from the other.

But her instinct was not humility—that was an after thought.

This peculiarity, so honestly stated by Mr. Emerson, probably made

Margaret Fuller all her enemies; and it is a fault which every person is

bound to resent, though it appeared in an angel or archangel. It cannot

be justified though it may be accounted for; and by those who knew her

best, it was explained on principle! which relieved it of positive

offensiveness. Some of her intellectual dependents, persons who gloried

in wearing her mental livery, and were delighted with the servitude she

enforced, might say very naively, in explanation, that Margaret was the

greatest woman that ever was, and that Margaret was very sincere, and

that being sincere it was very proper that she should not conceal her

knowledge even of her own greatness.

In our opinion this egotism was the result of the vigor of her nature,

which, in conversation, broke all conventional bounds, and came out in

its whole wealth of thought and acquisition, eager for controversy or

ravenous for sympathy, and communicating to her mind a bright and strong

sense of individual power which at the time almost palliated its

excesses. The excitement of her mind produced that effect which we often

see in persons who are enraged—a condition in which expressions,

regretted afterward for their extravagance, seem at the time too weak to

convey the hot feeling of wrong which burns beneath them. In her

journals, where she sharply scrutinises what she is and what she has

produced, and where there is no excitement to stimulate her powers, she

is sufficiently humble, acutely feels her imperfections, and the

“mountainous me” dwindles into a mole-hill. She seems to have had the

aspirations and the ambitions of great genius, had sufficient breadth of

mind to take in the wide varieties of human power in history and

literature, and had a corresponding scorn for the little and the common

in mental effort; but she lacked a creative imagination, and was

incapable of producing anything which at all realized the intimations of

her nature. In conversation she rose instantly into sympathetic

companionship with creative minds, and in the heat of the moment mistook

it for a companionship and community in power. In this mood she might

despise many who were her superiors in the shaping power of genius,

though her inferiors in its loftiest aspirations.

These volumes are full of instances of her sincerity, her geniality, her

love of the beautiful in nature and art, her fine critical powers, her

enthusiasm for great measures of reform in America and Europe, and the

noble scale on which she conducted her mental and moral culture. Though

many may take exception to the generosity of the praise which her

biographers lavish on her various graces and gifts of mind, every one

must acknowledge the extreme richness of the materials which are frankly

exhibited, to enable the reader to judge for himself. We doubt if there

is any other American biography in which the whole interior truth

relating to the character of the subject is so completely set forth, or

which presents to the curious in mental organization so interesting a

study in psychology.

* * * * *

_Ravenscliffe. By the author of “The Old Men’s Tales,” etc. etc.

New York: Harper & Brother._

In this novel the authoress puts forth her whole resources of passion

and power in delineating hatred and revenge. The story sweeps on like a

deep stream harrying to the sea, and the firm grasp of the writer on the

reader’s arrested attention is not loosed for a moment. The influence of

the same passion on the two characters of Randal Langford and Marcus

Fitzroy, is exhibited with masterly skill. The motto of the book should

have been taken from Shelley’s tremendous quatrain:

“Revenge and wrong bring forth their kind;

The foul cubs like their parents are;

Their den is in the human mind,

And conscience feeds them with despair.”

The vice of the novel is its continuous intensity, a peculiarity which

characterizes all of Mrs. Marsh’s novels. The characters are only seen

in their passionate moods, and the leading quality of their natures is

developed with the consistency of a logical deduction. Though this gives

emphasis to the ethical intent of the authoress, she sacrifices to it

some of the most important principles of the true method of

characterization. Her persons are apt to slide into personified

passions.

* * * * *

_A Popular Account of Discoveries at Nineveh. By Austin Henry

Layard, D. C. L. New York: Harper & Brothers. 1 vol. 12mo._

This is an abridgment, by the author himself, of his larger work on

Nineveh, which has obtained such extraordinary success. It is

illustrated by a number of well executed wood-cuts, and is beautifully

printed. The matter, it is needless to say, is full of interest and

attractiveness, and will well repay all readers who may be repelled by

the size of the original work.

* * * * *

_Women of Christianity, Exemplary for Acts of Piety and Charity.

By Julia Kavanagh, author of “Nathalie,” etc. New York: D.

Appleton & Co. 1 vol. 12mo._

Christian women of this and all past ages would seem to be under

especial obligations to the Messrs. Appletons for bringing their virtues

and heroism before the public. The Women of the Old and New Testament,

the Women of Early Christianity, and now the Christian Women of all

Ages, witness their chivalrous devotion to the very best examples of the

sex. Miss Kavanagh’s book gives short but admirable sketches of a great

number of eminent devotees, from the virgins of the primitive church to

Hannah More and Elizabeth Fry. Though her space hardly allows her to do

full justice to the subject, she uses her materials so skillfully, and

writes her condensed biographies with such fervor and power, that she

escapes the imputation of meagreness.

* * * * *

_The Broken Bud; or, Reminiscences of a Bereaved Mother. New

York: Robert Carter & Brothers. 1 vol. 16mo._

_Blossoms of Childhood. Edited by the author of “The Broken

Bud”. New York: Robert Carter & Brothers. 1 vol. 16mo._

The first of these little volumes is the record of a child, who died

just as her mind was expanding into affection and intelligence; and it

is the most notable book of the kind we have ever seen. As giving the

psychology of a mother’s feelings, it is well worthy of attention. It is

written close to the heart of the matter, and is full of examples of

that searching pathos which calls up instinctive tears. Rarely have we

read a work of more affectionate intensity, or one in which a mournful

experience, tempered by religious faith, is expressed with such genuine

simplicity and truth to inward emotion. There are passages whose

eloquence is so identical with the things it celebrates, that the reader

sees and feels with hardly the consciousness of the agency of words. The

other volume is a collection of poetry relating to children, in which

the mother’s heart, so constantly present in the previous volume, ranges

over the whole field of poetry, hoarding the precious lyrics which bring

consolation by inspiring religious trust. Both works are of a peculiar

character, indicating the presiding influence of one overmastering

feeling, and striking at the very sources of emotion.

* * * * *

_The Standard Speaker; containing exercises in Prose and Poetry

for Declamation in Schools, Academies, Lyceums, Colleges. Newly

Translated or Compiled from Celebrated Orators, Authors, and

Popular Debaters, Ancient and Modern. A Treatise on Oratory and

Elocution. Notes Explanatory and Biographical. By Epes Sargent.

1 vol., large 12mo. 558 pages. Philadelphia: Thomas,

Cowperthwait & Co._

Mr. Sargent has here given us a “Speaker” far more comprehensive in

design and elaborate in execution than any that has yet appeared. The

great feature of the work is the completeness of the Senatorial

Department, in which he has introduced not only passages of rare beauty

and effect from Chatham, Burke, Grattan, Shell, Macaulay, and many

others—all the passages of the right length for speaking—but has given

some translations from Mirabeau, Victor Hugo, and other great speakers

of France, which will become great favorites in Schools and Elocutionary

Classes. The dramatic and poetical departments are also well filled,

many new and striking pieces for Declamation and Recitation being

introduced. No sectional favoritism seems to have been exercised in the

compilation. All parts of the country, and indeed all countries are

fairly represented in their contributions to all the forms of eloquence

suitable for the purpose of the book. A great amount of original

research and labor seems to have been expended on this volume, which—

“Is not the hasty product of a day,

But the well-ripened fruit of sage delay.”

In his position as Editor of a daily journal, the editor has had a more

favorable opportunity than many enjoy to make collections for a work of

this kind, and with what success he has availed himself of it, a cursory

glance will show. While he has preserved all the old, indispensable

masterpieces, he has placed side by side with them a majority of new

ones, that promise to become equally celebrated. The work cannot fail to

claim the prompt and favorable attention of Students and Teachers. It is

issued in excellent style, by Messrs. Thomas, Cowperthwait & Co.

* * * * *

Bangs, Brother & Co., New York, have sent us fine editions of “Gibbon’s

Greece,” “Ancient History of Herodotus,” Randall’s “Sheep Husbandry,”

and an excellent edition of the “Tatler and Guardian,” with biographical

memoranda by Thomas Babington Macaulay, all of which we will notice in

future numbers.

* * * * *

Pretty Strong.—We do not charge Peterson any thing for the following as

an advertisement. It is a better joke than has appeared in the

Small-Talk:

It has been for years the cherished wish of the writer of this work, to

make “THE TOWER OF LONDON,” the proudest monument of antiquity,

(considered with reference to its historical associations,) _in the

known world_—the groundwork of a Romance; and it is no slight

satisfaction to him, that circumstances at length have enabled him to

carry into effect his favorite project, in conjunction with the

inimitable artist, whose _Ninety-eight Original Designs and Engravings

of all the Principal Objects of Attraction and Interest_ to the reader,

accompany the work.

The author has exhibited in this work, the “Tower of London” in the

light of a Palace, a Prison, and a Fortress, and he has also contrived

such a series of incidents as to introduce every relic of the old

pile—its Towers, Chapels, Halls, Chambers, Gateways, Arches and

Drawbridges—so that no part of this, the most venerable and interesting

building _in the known world_, should remain unillustrated to the

reader.

It is beyond all doubt one of the most interesting works ever published

_in the known world_, and can be read and re-read with pleasure and

satisfaction by every body. We advise all persons to get it and read it,

for there is much to learn and valuable information to be gained from

its pages, which cannot be obtained in any other work published _in the

known world_. Published and for sale by

T. B. PETERSON.

We shall look with great interest for Top’s first book from the

_unknown_ world, and have a right to expect something good. We only hope

that the author will not “_contrive_ such a series of incidents about

Drawbridges,” as to let us down without fair warning.

* * * * *

Fitzgerald’s City Item.—This is the name of a weekly paper, now in its

fifth year, published in this city by Fitzgerald & Co., at Two Dollars

per annum. This journal enjoys the reputation of being undoubted

authority upon all Literary, Musical, Fine Art, and Dramatic Matters. It

has been conducted from the beginning by Mr. Fitzgerald, and we have

often admired his good-nature, his frankness, and his ability. Untiring

industry has established The City Item upon a firm basis. Fitzgerald &

Co. offer as a premium to new subscribers, an admirable life-size

portrait of the Hungarian patriot, Kossuth. Graham’s Magazine and The

City Item may be secured for Four Dollars.

* * * * *

GRAHAM’S SMALL-TALK.

Held in his idle moments, with his Readers, Correspondents and Exchanges.

Our Small-Talk has afforded food for infinite jest to a few unfledged

wits and cubs of critics, clever word-snappers, who keep reiterating the

joke that the Small-Talk _is_ small—_very_. Of course it is, goslings!

it was so called and set down originally in the bills. So do not imagine

that you are discoverers, and set yourselves off to the Polar regions in

search of Sir John Franklin. The Small-Talk is more than _small_—it is

pert, impudent, audacious, outrageous, insolent, and, cool. More than

that, it is—“to be continued.”

* * * * *

Ah! now, isn’t this delightful? We were wondering whether we should

_ever_ get another love-letter, when lo! in comes the mail, from which

we extract the following delicious epistle from a young lady, who, we

know, would love us, if we _were_ only a bachelor:

“To Graham.

“A ‘bachelor,’ thou sayest?—ha-ha—have a care—

A target too tempting—I bid thee beware!

Now stand and deliver, thou ‘knave of the heart!’

Thy ‘clubs’ shall not parry the aim of my dart.

“Thy armor—thy pleading, and dodging is vain,

Wry faces uncalled for! ’tis hymenial chain

We wish to throw round thee—surrender! I bid—

All woven of roses, the thorns are quite hid.

“A net-work of love shall enshroud thee forever—

(‘Enshroud’ is too icy, it makes Cupid shiver—

_Imprison_ is better—I like the word best—)

When the heart’s taken captive the spirit’s at rest.

“Two short little weeks, out of fifty or more,

Is all we can claim—and one year out of four—

We must make up in speed, what we lack for in time,

And make a bold push or have no Valentine.

“An abrupt, ringing laugh, from a friend standing near,

And—‘I read you it wrong!’ he says, ‘_Benedict_!’ do ye hear?

How _horrid provoking_ to play me this game!

I don’t care, I will send it subscribed with my name.”

H. H.

We wont give the name in full, or we should never receive another love

token. But—what have we here? as we live—another Valentine! and with a

sprig of geranium, too, pressed loving between the paper—and love

verses! No—we will not print these, they are too confidingly tender and

hardly “allowable” rhyme.

But here comes one, with a full, round superscription, for all the world

like the hand of a lady we used to love when we were a boy—adoringly,

wildly, _most_ insanely. She was _older_ than we were, and didn’t take

the matter so much to heart. Some other fellow took her off—a cadet, or

something of that sort from West Point—and she never returned our love

letter. But what _is_ this? Ha! $3— there is something in this, that is

a cure for the twinges of an old love wound:

“_Fort Meade, Florida, Feb. 10th, 1852._

“Dear Graham—The February number of your Magazine has this day

come to hand, and acting on the hint you give in your

Small-Talk, _i. e._ ‘Money is worth 2 per cent. a month,’ I

herewith inclose the $3 for this year’s subscription to your

book. I showed that portion of your Small-Talk(?) headed ‘That

bill again,’ to my wife; and what do you think? Why, instead of

calling you a good-for-nothing-impertinent man, she said, ‘Why

_don’t_ you give the man his money? Graham is a dear, good

fellow and he deserves it,’ etc. Of course, I had to back down,

and here is the tin.

“Truly yours,

G. D.”

Now we like that woman, and will bet she was just the girl that _would_

go off with a soldier—full of all brave and good thoughts, and loving

as a southern wind in an orange grove. If we ever do go to Florida, we

shall stop at the Fort and see this lady, and shake hands all round with

the G. D.’s.

* * * * *

Thanks.—Our space is limited, in this number, although we have much to

say to our friends and readers; but we shall take room enough to thank

most sincerely and heartily, the many editors who have sent us clubs and

single subscribers for the year 1852. We had intended to notice, by

letter, the many kind expressions of regard for our business welfare,

but so many and rapidly sent were these missives of good-will, that we

abandoned the undertaking, and must here content ourself with

saying—_to one and all_—_Thanks_!

We can get up no theatrical speech for the occasion, and can only

promise to devote such abilities as we have been blessed with, be they

poor or rich, to making “Graham”—what we hope it can be made, under our

administration—“_the best Magazine in the country_.” We can only say,

that our whole time and thought are freely bestowed upon the work—that

we have no other avocation, similar, or adverse, to distract our

attention, and if we fail to realize our aim, in the opinion of our

readers and friends, that our ability comes short of our ambition. So

said—_so done_. This number is a fair sample of what we can do; and we

think we can do better, and shall _try_.

* * * * *

The Saturday Gazette.—This well-known Family Paper is now under the

charge of Alexander Cummings and Mrs. Joseph C. Neal, and has been, both

in typographical execution and in literary excellence, much improved.

Mrs. Neal’s delightful Letters from the South, are a very decided

addition to the intellectual attractions of the Gazette—the Foreign

Correspondence is more complete than ever, and the Stories and Essays to

be found in its ample pages are of the very highest order.

A prospectus of the paper, setting forth in detail the advantages of the

Gazette, will be found upon the third page of our cover, and a specimen

copy of the paper will be sent to such of our readers as desire to see

it, upon application to A. Cummings & Co.

* * * * *

The News-Letter, at Galesburg, gives us a notice of a column, full of

all sorts of hits and good things. The Cynthiana News and the Rifle must

buck up or they will lose the stakes. Although the metal of Rifle is

good, and the bore perfect, we can beat the editor with pistols, at ten

paces, _for a Turkey_! We send Atkinson of the News a sheet—Wilcox will

supply and suit you—cash or approved paper—samples forwarded. We

accept the Sandy Hill Herald’s invitation! said shall look at those

“acres” until our heart aches.

* * * * *

TEMPERANCE.

“Shall the Maine question now be put?” is the great inquiry that

agitates the country, and stirs, in all true hearts, a lively

affirmative. The _people_ are “ready for the question.” Graham himself

is ready, and having in times past been a good judge of the various

brands, he believes that one and all corrupt and destroy the brain and

conscience. So he is down upon King Alcohol and his cohorts. We do not

propose to give a temperance _lecture_ upon the present “interesting

occasion”—but if any body can read the following ode by Brown—the

accomplished translator of Spanish literature, and feel no misgiving

about Rum, his sensibilities are fire-proof. “The English language

contains nothing more forcibly and terribly eloquent than this unique

lexicon of horrors.”

* * * * *

ODE TO RUM.

BY WILLIAM C. BROWN.

“Oh, thou invisible spirit of Rum! if thou hadst no name by

which to know thee, we would call thee—devil.”—Shakspeare.

Let thy devotee extol thee,

And thy wondrous virtues sum;

But the worst of names I’ll call thee,

O, thou hydra monster, Rum!

Pimple-maker, visage-bloater,

Health-corrupter, idler’s mate;

Mischief breeder, vice promoter,

Credit spoiler, devil’s bait.

Almshouse builder, pauper maker,

Trust betrayer, sorrow’s source;

Pocket emptier, Sabbath breaker,

Conscience stiller, guilt’s resource.

Nerve enfeebler, system shatterer,

Thirst increaser, vagrant thief;

Cough producer, treacherous flatterer,

Mud bedauber, mock relief.

Business hinderer, spleen instiller,

Wo begetter, friendship’s bane;

Anger heater, Bridewell filler,

Debt involver, toper’s chain.

Memory drowner, honor wrecker,

Judgment warper, blue-faced quack;

Feud beginner, rags bedecker,

Strife enkindler, fortune’s wreck.

Summer’s cooler, winter’s warmer,

Blood polluter, specious snare;

Mob collector, man transformer,

Bond undoer, gambler’s fare.

Speech bewrangler, headlong bringer,

Vitals burner, deadly fire;

Riot mover, firebrand flinger,

Discord kindler, misery’s sire.

Sinews robber, worth depriver,

Strength subduer, hideous foe;

Reason thwarter, fraud contriver,

Money waster, nations’ wo.

Vile seducer, joy dispeller,

Peace disturber, blackguard guest;

Sloth implanter, liver sweller,

Brain distracter, hateful pest.

Wit destroyer, joy impairer,

Scandal dealer, foul-mouthed scourge;

Senses blunter, youth ensnarer,

Crime inventor, ruin’s verge.

Virtue blaster, base deceiver,

Spite displayer, sot’s delight;

Noise exciter, stomach heaver,

Falsehood spreader, scorpion’s bite.

Quarrel plotter, rage discharger,

Giant conqueror, wasteful sway;

Chin carbuncler, tongue enlarger,

Malice venter, death’s broadway.

Household scatterer, high-hope dasher,

Death’s forerunner, hell’s dire brink;

Ravenous murderer, windpipe slasher,

_Drunkard’s lodging, meat and drink_!

Well—what are the arguments of the opponents of the “Maine Law!” We

have heard them—having been present at the grand gathering of

Distillers, Rum-sellers, and Drinkers at Tripler Hall, on Friday

evening, the 27th of February. About as precious a set of “jolly

fellows” as we ever saw in all our life, were there assembled to listen

to the advantages of dying by slow poison. We give a picture, which sets

forth the point and moral of the matter.

[Illustration: Arguments of the opponents of the Maine

law—_illustrated_.]

This was the pith and marrow of the whole affair. “Rum was”—Well, what?

Why—“Rum!” Every body was enlightened and saw clearly. There was not a

shadow of doubt about the matter. Its character was not in the least

altered—it was the same devil, only painted a little red—not at all

improved either, by the artists—in fact, Mr. Camp made him rather more

hideous by attempting to make him a facetious, jolly sort of a devil,

without any evil quality, but much given to poetry, philosophy, and

particularly, mechanics. His _inventive_ powers, however, were not

brought out quite as clearly as Mr. Camp’s own, who, with a fine

delivery and sonorous ring of voice, did all that it was possible for

man to do in a bad cause—still he did not _do_—at least, not the

majority there assembled. The whole affair was a horrible jest—it

was—Yes! it was a Rum-joke—and nothing else.

No one was hardy enough to attempt to _prove_, that Rum ever made a

great man greater—or improved the mental calibre of a small one. Ever

warmed the heart of a miser to do an unrepented act of generosity—or

enlarged the soul to permanent and consistent acts of lofty heroism for

the welfare of mankind. Ever filled the cottage with smiling faces and

happy hearts, permanently—shed plenty upon the tables of the poor, or

made a wife happier or children more respected—ever, in short, carried

any thing but a concealed curse in its bright bubbles and brilliant

hues.

We came away with no change of opinion as to the deleterious effects of

Rum as a beverage. Taken either at the social board, with jolly good

fellows, or among wits, poets and philosophers—it carries the same

horror on its front, the same death in its smile. Even the

sounding-boards, from which the notes of Jenny Lind floated out, almost

divinely, gave no music to the voice of Rum’s advocate—the best joke

had a croak—and the laughter a horribly consumptive sound.

* * * * *

“THE SOCIAL GLASS.”

[Illustration: “A little tipple will do us no harm.”]

* * * * *

“JOLLY GOOD FELLOWS.”

[Illustration]

“We wont go home till morning,

We wont go home till morning,

Till daylight doth appear.”

* * * * *

“A SPIRIT-KNOCKER.”

[Illustration: A very sudden call by a very ugly customer.]

* * * * *

SWEET SUNNY ISLE.

OR “MY BOYHOOD’S HOME.”

[Illustration]

COMPOSED BY JOHN H. TAYLOR.—DEDICATED TO MISS ELIZABETH TAYLOR, BARBADOES,

W. I.

Published by permission of LEE & WALKER, 188 Chestnut Street,

Philadelphia,

_Publishers and Importers of Music and Musical Instruments_.

[Illustration: musical score]

Sweet sunny Isle! my native land!

How dear thou art to me,

Were all the world at

[Illustration: musical score]

my command,

I still would cling to thee.

My boyhood’s home could I forget?

Though I might be forgot;

For those I love are living yet,

In that dear cherish’d spot.

For those I love are living yet

In that dear cherish’d spot.

Sweet sunny Isle! though now a man,

Wherever I may roam,

My heart I know it never can

Forget my boyhood’s home.

One only hope one only care

Next that of Heaven above,

That I might once again be there—

Once more with those I love.

Those kindred hearts, those loving friends,

And all my boyish pets,

Would welcome me and make amends

For all long past regrets.

But ah! I fear ’twill never prove

Again my happy lot;

Then all I ask of those I love,

One thought—“Forget me not.”

* * * * *

Transcriber’s Notes:

Table of Contents has been added for reader convenience. Archaic

spellings and hyphenation have been retained. Obvious typesetting and

punctuation errors have been corrected without note. Other errors have

been corrected as noted below. For illustrations, some caption text may

be missing or incomplete due to condition of the originals available for

preparation of the eBook.

page 364, children where the ==> children were the

page 372, and author’s were ==> and authors were

page 404, read in Saronis’ Musical ==> read in Saroni’s Musical

page 405, Rappresentatione del Animo e del ==> Rappresentatione di Anima e

di

page 405, Cavaliere, of Rome, ==> Cavalieri, of Rome,

page 405, title “_Dell Animo e del_ ==> title “_Dell_ _Anima e di_

page 405, of Cavaliere. But it ==> of Cavalieri. But it

page 414, feet, are not ==> feet, they are not

page 440, those horrid Affgaun’s ==> those horrid Affgauns

[End of Graham’s Magazine, Vol. XL, No. 4, April 1852]