_History of the Romans under the Empire._ By CHARLES MERIVALE,
B. D., late Fellow of St. John's College, Cambridge. From the Fourth
London Edition. With a Copious Analytical Index. New York: D. Appleton &
Co. 8vo. Vols. I. & II.
People of the last century had a very easy time with their Roman
history, and any gentleman could pick up enough of it "in course of his
morning's reading" to answer the demands of a lifetime. Men read and
believed. They had no more doubt of the existence of Romulus and Remus
than of the existence of Fairfax and Cromwell. As to the story of those
dropped children being nursed by a she-wolf, had it not been established
that wolves did sometimes suckle humanity's young? and why should it be
supposed that no lupine nursery had ever existed at the foot of the
Palatine Hill? After swallowing the wolf-story, everything else was
easy; and the history of the Roman Kings was as gravely received as the
history of the Roman Emperors. The Brutus who upset the Tarquins was as
much an historical character as the Brutus who assassinated Cæsar and
killed himself. Tullia had lived and sinned, just like Messallina. The
Horatii were of flesh and blood, like the Triumvirs. So was it with
regard to the Empire. The same short work that was made with Regal Rome
and the early Republican period was applied to the Imperial age. Julius
Cæsar was the destroyer of Roman liberty, and Pompeius was the unlucky
champion of his country's constitution. With few exceptions, the
Emperors were the greatest moral monsters that ever had lived and
reigned. It is true that two or three critical writers had so handled
historical subjects as to create some doubts as to the exact correctness
of the popular view of Roman history; but those doubts were monopolized
by a few scholars, and by no means tended to shake the faith which even
the educated classes had in the vulgar view of the actions of the mighty
conquering race of antiquity.
But all has been changed. For half a century, learned men have been
busily employed in pulling down the edifice of Roman history, until they
have unsettled everybody's faith in that history. No one now pretends,
seriously, to believe anything that is told of the Romans farther back
than the time of Pyrrhus. Clouds and darkness rest over the earlier
centuries, and defy penetration. What Sir Thomas Browne says of Egypt is
not inapplicable to early Rome. History mumbleth something to the
inquirer, "but what it is he heareth not." Not even the story of Curtius
now finds believers. He must have been a contractor, who made an
enormous fortune at the time of the secession of the plebs, and ruined
himself by the operation. So far as relates to early Roman history, want
of faith is very natural; for what documents have we to go upon in
making up an opinion concerning it? None to speak of. But it is strange,
at the first thought, that there should be any difficulty in making up a
judgment concerning the history of the last century or two of the
Republic, and of the Imperial period. Of those times much that was then
written still survives, and many of the works that were familiar to the
Romans are even more familiar to the moderns. Yet there is a wide
difference of sentiment as to the character of the Roman Revolution, and
the objects and the actions of the eminent men who figured in that
Revolution are yet in dispute; and the contention is almost as fierce,
at times, as it was in the days of Pharsalia and Philippi. There are
Pompeians and Cæsarians now, as there were nineteen centuries ago, only
that the pen with them is indeed mightier than the sword. Cæsar's case
has been reviewed, and the current of opinion is now setting strongly in
his favor. Instead of being looked upon as a mere vulgar usurper, who
differed from other usurpers only in having a greater stage, and talents
proportioned to that stage, he is held up as the man of his times, and
as the only man who could fulfil the demands of the crisis that existed
after the death of Sulla. According to Mr. Merivale, who is a very
moderate Cæsarian, Cæsar was "the true captain and lawgiver and prophet
of the age" in which he lived. When such an assertion can be made by an
English gentleman of well-balanced mind, we may form some idea of the
intensity of that Cæsarism which prevails in fiercer minds, and which is
intended to have an effect on contemporary rule. For the controversy
which exists relative to the merits of Romans "dead, and turned to
clay," is not merely critical and scholastic, but is enlivened by its
direct bearing upon living men and contending parties. Cæsarism means
Napoleonism. The Bonaparte family is the Julian family of to-day.
Napoleon I. stood for the great Julius, and Napoleon III. is the modern
(and very Gallic) Cæsar Augustus, the avenger of his ill-used uncle, and
the crusher of the Junii and the Crassi, and all the rest of the
aristocrats, who overthrew him, and caused his early death. It is not
necessary to point out the utter absurdity of this attempt to justify
modern despotism by referring to the action of men who lived and acted
in the greatest of ancient revolutions; and those men who admire Julius
Cæsar, but who are not disposed to see in his conduct a justification of
the conduct of living men, object to the French Imperial view of his
career. Mommsen, whose admiration of Cæsar is as ardent as his knowledge
of Roman history is great, speaks with well-deserved scorn of the
efforts that are made to defend contemporary usurpation by
misrepresentation of the history of antiquity. One of his remarks is
curious, read in connection with that history which daily appears in our
journals. Writing before our civil war began, he declared, that, if ever
the slaveholding aristocracy of the Southern States of America should
bring matters to such a pass as their counterparts in the Rome of Sulla,
Cæsarism would be pronounced legitimate there also by the spirit of
history,--an observation that derived new interest from the report that
General Lee was to be made Dictator of the Confederacy, and Mr. Davis
allowed to go into that retirement which is so much admired and so
little sought by all politicians. Mommsen, after the remark above
quoted, proceeds to say, that, whenever Cæsarism "appears under other
social conditions, it is at once a usurpation and a caricature. History,
however, will not consent to curtail the honor due to the true Cæsar,
because her decision, in the presence of false Cæsars, may give occasion
to simplicity to play the fool and to villany to play the rogue. She,
too, is a Bible, and if she can as little prevent herself from being
misunderstood by the fool and quoted by the Devil, she ought as little
to be prejudiced by either." Strong words, but very natural as coming
from a learned German who finds his own theory turned to account by the
supporters of a house which Germany once helped to overthrow, and which
she would gladly aid in overthrowing again. Perhaps Dr. Mommsen will
soon have an opportunity to speak more at length of French Cæsarism, for
the first two volumes of Napoleon III.'s "Life of Julius Cæsar" are
announced as nearly ready for publication, and their appearance cannot
fail to be the signal for a battle royal, as few scholars, we presume,
will be content to take historical law from an Emperor. The modern
master of forty legions will not be as fortunate as Hadrian in finding
philosophers disinclined to question his authority in letters; and he
may fare even worse at their hands than he fared at those of Mr.
Kinglake. The republic of letters is not to be mastered by a _coup
d'état_.
The opponents of Cæsarism have not been silent, and it would be neither
uninteresting nor unprofitable, did time permit, to show how well they
have disposed of most of the arguments of their foes. The question is
not the old one, whether the party of Cæsar or that of Pompeius was the
better one, for at bottom the two were very much the same, the struggle
being for supremacy over the whole Roman dominion; and it is certain
that there would have been no essential change of political procedure,
had the decision at Pharsalia been reversed. On that field Cæsar was the
nominal champion of the liberal faction, and Pompeius was the nominal
champion of the _optimates_. Had Cæsar lost the day, the plebeian
Pompeian house would have furnished an imperial line, instead of that
line proceeding from the patrician Julii. Pompeius would have been as
little inclined to abandon the fruits of his victory to the aristocrats
as Cæsar showed himself to set up the rule of the Forum-populace, to
whose support he owed so much. It was to free himself from the weight of
his equals that Pompeius selected the East for the seat of war, when
there were so many strong military reasons why he should have proceeded
to the West, to Romanized Spain, where he had veteran legions that might
under his lead have been found the equals of Cæsar's small, but most
efficient army. He wished to get out of the Republican atmosphere, and
into a country where "the one-man power" was the recognized idea of
rule. He acted as a politician, not as a soldier, when he sailed from
Brundisium to the East, and the nobility were not blind to the fact, and
were not long in getting their revenge; for it was through their
political influence that Pompeius was forced to deliver battle at
Pharsalia, when there were strong military reasons for refusing to
fight. That they were involved in their chief's fall was only in
accordance with the usual course of things, there being nothing to equal
the besotted blindness of faction, as our current history but too
clearly proves.
As between Cæsar and Pompeius, therefore, it is natural and just that
modern liberals should sympathize with the former, and contemplate his
triumph with pleasure, as he was by far the abler and better man, and
did not stain his success by bloodshed and plunder, things which the
Pompeians had promised themselves on a scale that would have astonished
Marius and Sulla, and which the Triumvirs never thought of equalling.
But when we are asked to behold as the result of the Roman Revolution
the deliverance of the provincials, and that as of purpose on the part
of the victor, we are inclined, in return, to ask of the Cæsarians
whether they think mankind are such fools as not to be able to read and
to understand the Imperial history. That Cæsar's success was beneficial
to Rome's subjects we do not dispute; but that the change he effected
was of the sweeping character claimed for it, or that Cæsar ever thought
of being the reformer that his admirers declare him to have been, are
things yet to be proved. The change that came from the substitution of
the Imperial polity for the Republican was the result of circumstances,
and it was of slow growth. Imperialism was an Octavian, not a Julian
creation, as any reader will be able to understand who goes through the
closing chapters of Mr. Merivale's third volume. The first Cæsar's
imperial career was too short, and too full of hard military work, to
admit of much being done by him of a political character; nor would it
have been possible for him, had he been a much younger man, and had he
lived for years, to accomplish what was effected by Augustus. The
terrible crisis that followed his death, and which lasted until the
decision of "the world's debate" at Actium gave a master to the Roman
world, prepared the way for the work that was done by his grand-nephew
and adopted son. The severe discipline which the Romans went through
between the day of Munda and that of Actium made them more acquiescent
in despotism than they would have been found, if Julius Cæsar's mild
sway had been continued through that interval. It has been said that the
Triumvirate converted Cæsar's sword into daggers, and the expression is
by no means too strong, as the world has never witnessed such another
reign of terror as followed from the union of Octavius, Antonius, and
Lepidus. If that union was formed for the purpose of reconciling men to
despotic rule, it must be allowed the merit that belongs to a perfect
invention. Without it the Roman Empire might never have had an
existence.
Mr. Merivale's work may be considered as forming the text-book of
moderate Cæsarism. An Englishman, he cannot be an advocate of despotism;
but he sees that the time had come for a change, and that under Cæsar's
direction the change could be better made than under that of Pompeius or
his party. This is something very different from blind advocacy of
Cæsarism; and we can follow him through his clear and vigorous narrative
of the events of the Revolution with general acquiescence in his views.
His first and second volumes, which are immediately under consideration,
may be said to form the history of the career of Cæsar, and to present
the best account of that career which has been published in our
language. Introductory matter apart, his book opens with the appearance
of the first Emperor on the political stage, and the second volume
closes at the date of his assassination. His various political actions,
his achievements in Gaul and Britain, his marvellous exploits in Italy,
Spain, Macedonia, Greece, and Africa in the Civil War, and the character
of his legislation, are here told and set forth in a manner that comes
very near to perfection. There is a vividness in the narrative, and a
bringing-out of individual portraits, that make the work read like a
history of contemporary events. Nor does the author's just admiration of
Cæsar's extraordinary intellect and wonderful deeds cause him to be
unjust to the eminent men on the other side, though as a rule he deals
severely with those Romans whom the world admires, when treating of the
effects of their conduct. It has been objected to his history, that he
speaks with freedom of Cicero's conduct on many occasions, but we think
that he has not exceeded the bounds of just criticism when considering
the course of the Roman orator; and in his third volume, when summing up
his character, he employs the most generous and lofty language in
speaking of him. "After all the severe judgments we are compelled to
pass on his conduct," he says, "we must acknowledge that there remains a
residue of what is amiable in his character and noble in his teaching
beyond all ancient example. Cicero lived and died in faith. He has made
converts to the belief in virtue, and had disciples in the wisdom of
love. There have been dark periods in the history of man, when the
feeble ray of religious instruction paled before the torch of his
generous philanthropy. The praise which the great critic pronounced upon
his excellence in oratory may be justly extended to the qualities of his
heart; and even in our enlightened days it may be held no mean advance
in virtue to venerate the master of Roman philosophy." An intelligent
admirer of the most illustrious victim of the Triumvirate will consider
these words something far better than anything that can be found in
Middleton's "lying legend in honor of St. Tully." It may be observed
that admiration of Cicero and sympathy with the Roman aristocratical
party mostly go together; and yet the Roman aristocracy disliked Cicero,
and their writers treated him harshly, while he received kind treatment
from writers on the other side. Livy, whom Augustus himself called the
_Pompeian_, says of Cicero that "he bore none of his calamities as a man
should, except his death"; and "Lucan denounces his perverse impolicy."
Mr. Merivale, in a note, observes that it can hardly be accidental that
Tacitus, in his historical works, never mentions him, and adds, "The
most glowing tribute to Cicero's merits is the well-known passage in
Juvenal, and this is written in the spirit of a Marian, or
anti-oligarch." Velleius, who is generally spoken of as a sort of
literary flunky of the Cæsars, warmly panegyrizes Cicero. Had the
Pompeians triumphed, Cicero would not have found Italy the safe place
that it was to him under Cæsar's rule. He would have fared as badly at
their hands as he did at those of the Clodian rabble, and Pompeius might
have been to him what Antonius became after Cæsar's death.
The portrait which Mr. Merivale has drawn of Cato does not meet with the
approval of those persons who admire old Roman virtue, of which Cato
was the impersonation; but they would find it difficult to show that he
has done that stubborn Stoic any injustice. Cato modelled himself on his
great-grandfather, Cato the Censor, a mean fellow, who sold his old
slaves in order that they might not become a charge upon him; but, as
our author remarks, the character of the Censor had been simple and true
to Nature, while that of his descendant was a system of elaborate,
though unconscious affectations. Cato behaved as absurdly as an American
would behave who should attempt to imitate his great-grandfather, the
old gentleman having died a loyal subject of George II. He was an honest
man, according to the Roman standard of honesty, which allowed a great
margin for the worst villany, provided it were done for the public good,
or what was supposed to be the public good. Like some politicians of our
time, he thought, that, when he had made it appear that a certain course
would be in accordance with ancient precedent, it should be
adopted,--making no allowance for the thousand disturbing causes which
the practical politician knows must be found on any path that may be
selected. Of all the men whose conduct brought about the Civil War, he
was the most virtuous, and he had the sagacity to oppose a resort to
arms; though how he succeeded in reconciling his aversion to war with
his support of a policy that led directly to its existence is one of the
mysteries of those days. The Pompeians found him a bore, and, had they
been victorious, would have saved him the trouble of killing himself, by
cutting off his head. Cato was one of the very few persons for whom
Cæsar felt a strong dislike; but he would not have harmed him, had he
got his own consent to live. From Cato he had experienced no such insult
as he had met with from M. Marcellus, and Marcellus received permission
to return to Rome; but Cato was of an unmalleable nature, and preferred,
to an ignoble silence in Italy, the noble silence of the grave. He died
"after the high Roman fashion." Suicide might be called the natural
death of a Roman leader of that age, and nothing but the violence of
enemies could dispute the title with it. Cato, Brutus, Cassius,
Antonius, and others fell by their own hands, or by the hands of persons
who acted by their orders. Cæsar, Pompeius, Cicero, and Crassus were
murdered. Nothing serves more to show how much Augustus differed from
most Romans of his century than the fact that he died in his bed at
extreme old age.
That Mr. Merivale's Cæsarism does not prevent him from doing justice to
the opponents of Cæsar is proved by his portrait of Q. Lutatius Catulus,
the best leader of the _optimates_, and whom he pronounces to have been
the most moderate and disinterested of all the great men of his
day,--"indeed," he adds, "there is perhaps no character in the history
of the Commonwealth which commanded more general esteem, or obtained
more blameless distinction in political life." Yet Catulus was one of
those men with whom Cæsar came earliest in collision, each as the
representative of his party on vital points of difference. Our
historian's estimate of the life, labors, purposes, and character of
Pompeius is singularly correct, when we consider the temptation that he
has to underrate the man with whom Cæsar has stood in direct opposition
for nineteen centuries. There are few more emphatic passages in the
historical literature of our language than the account which is given in
Vol. II. ch. 18, of the last days and death of Pompeius, and which is
followed by a most judicious summing-up of his history and position as a
Roman leader. The historian's mind appears to be strongly affected by
the fate of the Pompeian house, as much so as was the imagination of the
Romans, which it seems to have haunted. This is in part due, we presume,
to the free use which he has made of Lucan's "Pharsalia," a work of
great value to those who would understand how the grand contest for
supremacy was viewed by the beaten party in after times. That poem is
the funeral wail of the Roman aristocracy, and it embodies the ideas and
traditions of the vanquished as they existed far down into the Imperial
age. It testifies to the original vitality of the aristocratical
faction, when we find a youthful contemporary of Nero dedicating his
genius to its service more than a century after the contest had been
decided on the battlefield. Whether Lucan was a patriot, or a selfish,
but disappointed courtier, we may feel certain that he never could have
written in the Pompeian spirit, if that spirit was not still dominant
in the minds of a large number of those men and women who formed the
most cultivated portion of Roman society. To a critical historian, such
as Mr. Merivale is, his poem must be very useful, though it would be
dangerous authority in unskilful hands.
The leading merit of this history is that it supplies a want, and
supplies it effectually. Opening about sixty years before the beginning
of the Christian era, it terminates with the death of M. Aurelius
Antoninus, the point where Gibbon's work begins. We still need a work
beginning with the close of the Second Punic War and ending with the
death of Sulla, to connect Merivale with Arnold; but Mr. George Long is
about to supply the want, at least in part. The first two volumes, as we
have said, end at the date of Cæsar's death. The third and fourth
embrace the long period in which Augustus was the principal character,
and when the Roman Empire was formed. The fifth and sixth cover the
reigns of Tiberius, Caligula, Claudius, Nero, Galba, Otho, and
Vitellius, and a portion of the reign of Vespasian. The seventh and last
volume is devoted to the first Flavian house,--Vespasian, Titus, and
Domitian,--and to those "five good Emperors"--Nerva, Trajan, Hadrian,
and the Antonines--whose reigns are renowned in the history of monarchy
for their excellence. The materials of the work are, for the most part,
ample, and they have been well employed by the historian, a man of
extensive scholarship and of critical sagacity. Whether we subscribe to
his opinions or not, there can be no doubt of his having presented a
brilliant picture of the civilized world during about two and a half
eventful centuries. His is the only readable work that we have which
affords a continuous narrative of the history of Rome from the
appearance of Cæsar to the appearance of Commodus. Had it no other claim
upon us, this alone would justify us in recommending it to the closest
attention of all who desire to become acquainted with the facts that
make up the sum of Roman Imperial history. But it has other claims to
the consideration of readers. It makes Roman Imperial history thoroughly
intelligible, because events are philosophically treated, and their
bearing upon each other is rendered clear. It is written with vivacity,
force, and elegance. The style is the style of a gentleman, and the
sentiments are those of a Christian scholar. There is not a paragraph in
it which we could wish to see omitted, or essentially changed. It has
won for its author a place in the list of first-rate English historians,
and he is to be ranked with Macaulay, Grote, Hallam, Froude, Kinglake,
and others of those great writers who have done so much to illustrate
the English name and to advance the cause of humanity. Being familiar
with the work from the time that the first and second volumes were
published in England, in 1850, we have always desired that it should be
placed before the American reading public, confident that here its high
merits would secure for it a great and deserved popularity; and it is
with a sense of personal gratification that we have seen its publication
begun in New York, in a form that pleases the eye and gratifies good
taste.
_Church Pastorals_: Hymns and Tunes for Public and Social Worship.
Collected and Arranged by NEHEMIAH ADAMS, D. D. Boston: Ticknor
& Fields.
The Rev. Dr. Bushnell, in August, 1852, delivered an address upon
"Religious Music" before the Beethoven Society of Yale College at the
opening of their new organ. In the peroration of this address, after
remarking upon the great assistance which Christian feeling receives in
the praise of God from "things without life giving sound," he goes on to
say,--"Let me suggest, also, in this connection, the very great
importance of the cultivation of religious music. Every family should be
trained in it; every Sunday or common school should have it as one of
its exercises. The Moravians have it as a kind of ordinance of grace for
the children: not without reason; for the powers of feeling and
imagination, and the sense of spiritual realities, are developed as much
by a training of childhood in religious music as by any other means. We
complain that choirs and organs take the music to themselves in our
churches, and that nothing is left to the people but to hear their
undistinguishable piping, which no one else can join or follow or
interpret. This must always be the complaint, till the congregations
themselves have exercise enough in singing to make the performance
theirs. As soon as they are able to throw in masses of sound that are
not barbarous, but Christian, and have a right enjoyment of their
feeling in it, they will have the tunes and the style of the exercise in
their own way,--not before.... The more sorrowful is it, that, in our
present defect of culture, there are so many voices which are more
incapable of the right distinctions of sound than things without life,
and which, when they attempt to sing, contribute more to the feeling of
woe than of praise."
These words are as true to-day as when they were uttered twelve years
ago. Congregations which do not desire, or cannot afford, to resign the
musical portion of their service to professional singers, have something
more to do than to complain that the music is bad, or that they do not
like paid vocalists to troll out psalmody for them. They must go to work
and make their own music,--real music; for in these days unharmonious
sounds are almost as much out of place in the worship of God as an
uncatholic spirit and an heretical doctrine. The truth of this principle
many societies admit, and some, like the Rev. Henry Ward Beecher's, have
already put it into practice; the majority, however, wait for help to
free themselves from the customs which have kept them listeners when
they should be creators of vocal praise. The great obstacle to
congregational singing has been that the range of tunes already familiar
was very limited, while the providing a whole society with the
paraphernalia of music-books involved great expense to small purpose,
since a large portion of the tunes contained in these books are
unavailable for such use, being prepared with a view to the wants of
thoroughly trained singers; besides which, the reference to two books,
one for the words and the other for the music, is to many persons
perplexing, and to all inconvenient.
"Church Pastorals" is an attempt to overcome this obstacle, and to
extend that help which is wanted. Other attempts have been made before,
but we regard this as the most successful, and consider that Dr. Adams
has prepared the best hymn-and-tune-book that has yet been issued, as we
propose briefly to illustrate by a recapitulation of his plan and his
manner of executing it.
The hymns, which are nine hundred and eighty-eight in number, are
selected from the great mass of hymn-writers; although Watts and the
Wesleys furnish the foundation, and the materials of the superstructure
are largely drawn from Doddridge, Cowper, Toplady, Montgomery, and
others of kindred spirit, yet many beautiful things have been added from
the later religious poetry, which are no less fervid in feeling, while
less pronounced in doctrinal expression. These hymns are arranged in
judicious general divisions, which are again analytically separated into
special topics placed in logical sequence. After the hymns follow
thirty-eight doxologies, the editor having added to the short list of
common ones others which are fine enough to become standard at once.
But it is less as a hymn- than as a tune-book that "Church Pastorals"
merits the notice of societies and individuals who are truly interested
in religious music, and we pass at once to our remarks upon this portion
of the work. The compiler, although holding himself personally
responsible for every selection, has availed himself of the advice and
assistance of persons professionally eminent in sacred music, one of
whom placed at his disposal a library which is unique in this country,
containing works of which few Americans have owned or seen duplicates,
such as rare "Choral-Bücher" of German cathedrals, and curious
collections of English ecclesiastical compositions, a partial list of
which is included in the volume, for the benefit of those who are
curious in such matters, or wish to know how far Dr. Adams's researches
have led him. To ascertain how many new melodies of the purest
devotional character have been derived from these rich sources a careful
examination is necessary, as also to comprehend with what skill the
harmony has been preserved or adapted, in order to secure the two
desirable results,--absolute freshness and beauty of treatment, and
practicability for ordinary use; but a casual inspection will give
sufficient indication of the spirit in which the work was undertaken,
and of the faithfulness with which it has been completed.
While originality has been properly sought, the old, familiar elements
have not been neglected, and those simple songs which were upon the lips
of our parents and grandparents, and are yet dear to us from association
and intrinsic worth, are set in among the newer strains. The first
lines only are given of such as need merely to be recalled to the memory
of any who ever sing; but of others, equally prized, but less likely to
be remembered, the full score is given.
The doxologies are for the most part set to noble chorals of such
strong, straightforward character that they cannot fail to become
friends and intimates at once. In them, as in all the tunes, the compass
of ordinary voices has been considered; and although nothing has been
left undone which could give beauty to melody or scholarly variousness
to harmony, the whole has been brought within the range of all singers.
A novel and peculiar feature of the book is its "Stanzas to be sung
_impromptu_." Occasions often arise at social meetings or special
services, when it becomes desirable to sing a portion, or even the
whole, of some homely, hearty hymn, but, while "the spirit moves," the
opportunity is lost in the search for the words or the fit air, or in an
attempt to "set the tune." To meet this want, Dr. Adams has brought
together a variety of such stanzas, suited to all times and places, and,
coupled with each, the first line of a familiar melody, that the
propitious moment may be enjoyed and improved.
It will of course be understood that the tune appointed for each hymn is
printed directly above it, all four parts being given at length, the two
trebles printed in a not unusual way upon one staff, the tenor and bass
having each separate lines. Therefore no difficulty in singing the hymns
can be felt even by the inexperienced, especially as one stanza is
printed with the notes to show the exact adaptation.
In fine, "Church Pastorals" is a work worthy of an extended circulation
and capable of great usefulness. It can serve every purpose of public
worship, for it embraces all services of the Sabbath congregation or the
week-day gathering, and it touches upon all thoughts and feelings of
religious assemblies; it is not above the tastes and abilities of an
earnest congregation, nor beneath the notice and use of the independent
choir. More than this, it has a particular value for the home and the
fireside. Every household knows some quiet hour when the family-voices
seek to join in the happy harmony of some unpretending hymn, and when
the only limit to such grateful music is the failure of memory or the
meagreness of the library, which furnishes only the hymns, or, giving
the tunes, supplies only a part of the words,--for few families possess
both sorts of books in plenty for their convenient use. This volume
offers all,--the hymn, solemn, hopeful, sad, or jubilant, and united to
it a tune, perhaps remembered from recollection's earliest days, perhaps
unknown and untried, but suiting well the spirit of the words, and ready
at an instant's desire to express the sentiment or emotion that rises
for utterance. If "Church Pastorals" had no other merit, this alone
would make it worth possessing by all who love and ever practise sacred
music.
A thorough and elaborate index includes in one ingenious list all
references, whether to hymns, tunes, or metres; and the inaccuracies
which will creep into even as handsome typography as this are
unimportant, and rectified as quickly as observed. The size is
convenient, and the shape comely.
_Illustrations of Progress_: A Series of Discussions by HERBERT
SPENCER. With a Notice of Spencer's "New System of Philosophy." New
York: D. Appleton & Co.
Mr. Herbert Spencer is already a power in the world. Yet it is not the
vulgar apprehension of power which is associated with notoriety that we
claim for him. He holds no position of civil authority, neither
do his works compete with Miss Braddon's poorest novel in the
circulating-libraries. But he has already influenced the silent life of
a few thinking men whose belief marks the point to which the
civilization of the age must struggle to rise. In America, we may even
now confess our obligations to the writings of Mr. Spencer, for here
sooner than elsewhere the mass feel as utility what a few recognize as
truth. The reader acquainted with the admirable papers upon Education,
which have been republished and extensively circulated in this country,
has recognized their author's fresh and vigorous spirit, his power of
separating the essential from the accidental, as well as his success in
grasping the main features of a subject divested of frivolous and
subordinate details. That he possesses a thinking faculty of rare
comprehensiveness, as well as acuteness, will be allowed by all who will
study his other works now in course of republication in New York.
Mr. Spencer is at present engaged in an heroic attempt to construct a
sufficing system of philosophy, which shall include Biology, Psychology,
Sociology, and Morality. The great interest to mankind of the discussion
proposed, as well as Mr. Spencer's claims to be intrusted with it, are
set forth with singular clearness and felicity in the essay which
introduces the present volume. Whatever success the latest discoveries
in science render possible to solid intellectual force assisted by the
keenest instruments of logic will doubtless be attained. As far as the
frontiers of knowledge where the intellect may go, there is no living
man whose guidance may more safely be trusted. Mr. Spencer represents
the scientific spirit of the age. He makes note of all that comes within
the range of sensuous experience, and declares whatever may be derived
therefrom by a careful induction. As a philosopher he does not go
farther. Yet beyond this the heart of humanity must ever penetrate. Let
it be true, as it doubtless is, that, when the understanding by process
of logic seeks to demonstrate the Cause of All, it finds a barren
abstraction destitute of personality. It is no less true that God
reveals Himself to the human feeling without intermediate agency. For
the religious _sentiment_ Mr. Spencer finds an indestructible
foundation. While maintaining that man can grasp and know only the
finite, he yet holds that science does not fill the whole region of
mental activity. Man may realize in consciousness what he may not grasp
in thought.
Of the other doctrines of Mr. Spencer we attempt no exposition. His
attitude towards theology is to us more satisfactory than that of any
recent thinker of the first class. But whatever his conclusions, every
true man will respect and encourage that rectitude of mind which follows
the issues of its reasoning at any cost. It was not the philosopher in
his brain, but the fool _in his heart_, who said, "There is no God." It
is of little matter what inappropriate name narrow people may have
chosen for Mr. Spencer. Here is a conscientious investigator who finds
duty everywhere, who labors to give men truths which shall elevate and
reform their lives; but he believes that the hope of humanity was
potentially shut in an egg, and never in an ark. And there is the
"reader upon the sofa,"--church-member he may be,--who tosses aside
"Vanity Fair" with the reflection that a gossiping of London snobs is
human life, and that the best thing to be done is to pay pew-rates and
lie still and gird at it. Which of these two, think you, is the modern
representative of King David's "fool"?
We would not be charged with the superfluity of commending to scholars
the writings of Mr. Spencer. They have long ago found them out. It is to
the mass of working men and women who make time for a solid book or two
in the course of the year that we submit their claims. While those who
have the leisure and training to realize Mr. Spencer's system as a
developed unity must necessarily be few, no reader of tolerable
intelligence can fail to find much of interest and suggestion in its
several parts. With a common allowance for the abstruse nature of the
subjects of which he treats, Mr. Spencer may be called a _popular_
writer. His philosophical terminology will not be found troublesome in
those of his writings which will first attract the reader. The "Social
Statics," the "Essays," and the treatise on "Education" are very
clearly, as well as most gracefully, written. And after these have been
mastered, most readers will not be repelled by the less easy reading of
the "Principles of Psychology," and the "New System of Philosophy." All
these works are rich in materials for forming intelligent opinions, even
where we are unable to agree with those put forward by the author. Much
may be learnt from them in departments in which our common educational
system is very deficient. The active citizen may derive from them
accurate, systematized information concerning his highest duties to
society, and the principles on which they are based. He may gain clearer
notions of the value and bearing of evidence, and be better able to
distinguish between facts and inferences. He may find common things
suggestive of wiser thought--nay, we will venture to say, of truer
emotion--than before. For Mr. Spencer is not of that school of
"philosophy" which teaches the hopelessness of human effort, and, by
implication, the abandonment of moral dignity. From profound
generalizations upon society, he rises to make the duty of the
individual most solemn and imperative. Above all, he has this best
prerogative of really great thinkers,--he is able to change sentiments
to convictions.
If we have not particularized the claims of the single volume whose
title is at the head of our notice, it is because all that Mr. Spencer
has written moves towards one end and is equally worthy of attention.
The essays here given are selected from two series, the first published
in 1857, the second in 1863. The present arrangement has been chosen by
the author as more suitable to develop the general purpose which governs
his work. While the doctrine of Evolution is more or less illustrated in
each of these papers, the variety of subjects discussed must touch at
some point the taste and pursuit of any reader. From "Manners and
Fashion" to "The Nebular Hypothesis" is a sweep bold enough to include
most prominent topics with which we are concerned. Indeed, we can recall
no modern volume of the same size which so thoroughly credits its author
with that faculty of looking about him which Pope thought it was man's
business to exercise. There are the current phrases, "seeing life," and
"knowing the world," which generally used to signify groping in the
dirtiest corners of the one and fattening lazily upon the other; but if
it were possible to rescue such expressions from their vulgar
associations, we think that a candid reader would apply the best
conceptions they suggested to the writer of the discussions here
collected. The world as it is to-day is seen by Mr. Spencer as by few
living men. The sciences, which taken singly too often seem only good to
expel the false, have been summoned together to declare the true. Not
Nature alone, but Humanity, which is greater than Nature, must be
interrogated for answers that shall satisfy the ripest reason of the
age. By the rare gifts of comparison which turn to account his wide
observations, Mr. Spencer has already established principles which,
however compelled for a time to compromise with prejudices and vested
interests, will become the recognized basis of an improved society.
Our only interest in recommending this author to our countrymen comes
from the conviction that he is peculiarly capable of impressing for good
the present condition of our national character. By giving us fuller
realizations of liberty and justice his writings will tend to increase
our self-reliance in the great emergency of civilization to which we
have been summoned. "Our Progressive Independence," so brilliantly
illustrated by Dr. Holmes, emancipating us from foreign fine-writing,
leaves us free to welcome the true manhood and mature wisdom of Europe.
In the time of our old prosperity, amusing a leisure evening over
Kingsley or Ruskin, we were tempted to exclaim, with Sir Peter Teazle,
"There's nothing half so noble as a man of sentiment!" But in these
latter days we have seen "Mr. Gradgrind" step from Dickens's wretched
caricature to bring his "facts" to the great cause of humanity, while
"Joseph Surface" reserved his "sentiments" for the bloody business by
which Slavery sought to subject all things to herself. We have seen the
belles-lettres literature of England more deeply disgraced than when it
smirked before the harlots of the second Charles, or chanted a
blasphemous benediction over George IV. But the thought and science of
the Old World it is still our privilege to recognize. And it can hardly
be necessary to say that the sympathies of Mr. Spencer, like those of
Mill and Cochin, have been with the government and loyal people of the
United States. And so we take especial pleasure in mentioning that a
considerable interest in the American copyright of his writings has been
secured to the author, and also, despite the facilities of reading-clubs
and circulating-libraries, that they are emphatically _books to own_.
_Poems._ By FREDERICK GODDARD TUCKERMAN. Boston: Ticknor and
Fields.
These poems show by internal evidence that they are the productions of a
man of refined organization and delicate sensibility to beauty, who has
lived much in solitude and tasted of the cup of sorrow. Of decided
originality in intellectual construction it cannot be said that they
give emphatic proof: the poet, as Schiller has said, is the child of his
age, and Mr. Tuckerman's poetry not unfrequently shows that he has been
a diligent student of those masters in his art who have best caught and
reproduced the spirit of the times in which we dwell. It has one quality
to a high degree,--and that is, a minute knowledge of the peculiarities
of the natural world as it appears in New England. In his long woodland
walks, he has kept open an eye of observation as practised as that of
the naturalist. The trees, the shrubs, the flowers of New England are
known to him as they are to few. He is tempted to draw too largely upon
this source of interest: in other words, there is too much of
description in his volume. Life is hardly long enough for such elaborate
painting. We may admire the skill of the delineation, but we cannot
pause sufficiently before the canvas to do full justice to the painter.
Those poems in which Mr. Tuckerman expresses the emotions of bereavement
and sorrow are those which have the highest merit in point of thought
and expression. They are full of tenderness and sensibility; but the
poet should bear in mind that strings which vibrate such music should be
sparingly struck.
It may be somewhat paradoxical to say so, but it appears to us that the
poetry of Mr. Tuckerman would be improved, if it had more of prose in
it. It does not address itself to common emotions and every-day
sympathies. His flour is bolted too fine. One must almost be a poet
himself to enter into full communion with him. In intellectual
productions the refining process should not be carried too far: beyond a
certain point, what is gained in delicacy is lost in manliness and
power.
_Possibilities of Creation; or, What the World might have been._ A Book
of Fancies. London: Simpkin, Marshall, & Co.
The author describes his work as a treatise of the Bridgewater class. We
should rather describe it as a _reductio ad absurdum_ in Natural
Philosophy. A great deal of humor, ingenuity, and information are
brought into play to turn the world upside-down, for the very laudable
purpose of demonstrating that it is better to be right side up,--a
method of demonstration curious and interesting enough, if comprised in
a single essay, but rather long-drawn-out, when spread over four hundred
pages. Suppose, for instance, is the writer's mode of argument, a
malicious demon let loose, with power to set the earth topsy-turvy, on
condition of keeping it still an earth. With what exultation does he
bestride the Himalayas to watch the convulsions which he causes! How
does he kick his heels against the mountain-flanks, in ecstasy at seeing
men bleached and blistered with the chlorine or nauseated with the
sulphuretted hydrogen which he has substituted for our wholesome and
pleasant air! Or what should we do, if potato-roots had happened to be
moistened with gin instead of water? What if men, instead of standing
god-like erect, had been great balls of flesh, rolling along the ground
as best they could,--if Young's poetical figure had been a practical
truth, and this globe were the Bedlam of the universe,--if the fixity of
Nature had been shattered, and we sat down at our feasts to find the
soup bitter as strychnine, the wine changed into vinegar, and mild ale
fiery as vitriol? What if wrinkles and gray hairs came in the twinkling
of an eye,--if children were born with matured minds,--if no one were
capable of anger,--and men started at the same point to arrive at the
same conclusions? In short,--
"If all the world was apple-pie,
And all the sea was ink,
And all the trees were bread and cheese,
What should we have for drink?"
To all which startling inquiries we are fain to say, that, if Merrie
England sits under her present squally skies in such a frame of bliss
that she must have recourse to her imagination, when she wishes to
contemplate a nice little _imbroglio_, she must be awarded the palm for
being what Mark Tapley would call "jolly under creditable
circumstances." For ourselves, we frankly confess that we find quite
trouble enough in steering among the realities of creation, without
caring to venture far out among its possibilities.