"I wonder what James _would_ think," passed through her head; for Mary

had never changed a ribbon, or altered the braid of her hair, or pinned

a flower in her bosom, that she had not quickly seen the effect of the

change mirrored in those dark eyes. It was a pity, of course, now she

had found out that she ought not to think about him, that so many

thought-strings were twisted round him.

So while Miss Prissy turned over her papers, and read out of others

extracts about Lord Caermarthen and Sir Clement Cotterel Dormer and the

Princess Royal and Princess Augusta, in black and silver, with a silver

netting upon the coat, and a head stuck full of diamond pins,--and Lady

Salisbury and Lady Talbot and the Duchess of Devonshire, and scarlet

satin sacks and diamonds and ostrich-plumes, and the King's kissing Mrs.

Adams,--little Mary's blue eyes grew larger and larger, seeing far off

on the salt green sea, and her ears heard only the ripple and murmur of

those waters that earned her heart away,--till, by-and-by, Miss Prissy

gave her a smart little tap, which awakened her to the fact that she was

wanted again to try on the dress which Miss Prissy's nimble fingers had

basted.

So passed the day,--Miss Prissy busily chattering, clipping,

basting,--Mary patiently trying on to an unheard-of extent,--and Mrs.

Scudder's neat room whipped into a perfect froth and foam of gauze,

lace, artificial flowers, linings, and other aids, accessories, and

abetments.

At dinner, the Doctor, who had been all the morning studying out his

Treatise on the Millennium, discoursed tranquilly as usual, innocently

ignorant of the unusual cares which were distracting the minds of his

listeners. What should he know of dress-makers, good soul? Encouraged

by the respectful silence of his auditors, he calmly expanded and

soliloquized on his favorite topic, the last golden age of Time, the

Marriage-Supper of the Lamb, when the purified Earth, like a repentant

Psyche, shall be restored to the long-lost favor of a celestial

Bridegroom, and glorified saints and angels shall walk familiarly as

wedding-guests among men.

"Sakes alive!" said little Miss Prissy, after dinner, "did I ever hear

any one go on like that blessed man?--such a spiritual mind! Oh, Miss

Scudder, how you are privileged in having him here! I do really think it

is a shame such a blessed man a'n't thought more of. Why, I could just

sit and hear him talk all day. Miss Scudder, I wish sometimes you'd just

let me make a ruffled shirt for him, and do it all up myself, and put a

stitch in the hem that I learned from my sister Martha, who learned it

from a French young lady who was educated in a convent;--nuns, you know,

poor things, can do _some_ things right; and I think _I_ never saw such

hemstitching as they do there;--and I should like to hemstitch the

Doctor's ruffles; he is _so_ spiritually-minded, it really makes me love

him. Why, hearing him talk put me in mind of a real beautiful song of

Mr. Watts,--I don't know as I could remember the tune."

And Miss Prissy, whose musical talent was one of her special _fortes_,

tuned her voice, a little cracked and quavering, and sang, with a

vigorous accent on each accented syllable,--

"From _the_ third heaven, where God resides,

That holy, happy place,

The New Jerusalem comes down,

Adorned with shining grace.

"Attending angels shout for joy,

And the bright armies sing,--

'Mortals! behold the sacred seat

Of your descending King!'"

"Take care, Miss Scudder!--that silk must be cut exactly on the bias";

and Miss Prissy, hastily finishing her last quaver, caught the silk and

the scissors out of Mrs. Scudder's hand, and fell down at once from

the Millennium into a discourse on her own particular way of covering

piping-cord.

So we go, dear reader,--so long as we have a body and a soul. Two worlds

must mingle,--the great and the little, the solemn and the trivial,

wreathing in and out, like the grotesque carvings on a Gothic

shrine;--only, did we know it rightly, nothing is trivial; since the

human soul, with its awful shadow, makes all things sacred. Have not

ribbons, cast-off flowers, soiled bits of gauze, trivial, trashy

fragments of millinery, sometimes had an awful meaning, a deadly power,

when they belonged to one who should wear them no more, and whose

beautiful form, frail and crushed as they, is a hidden and a vanished

thing for all time? For so sacred and individual is a human being, that,

of all the million-peopled earth, no one form ever restores another.

The mould of each mortal type is broken at the grave; and never, never,

though you look through all the faces on earth, shall the exact form you

mourn ever meet your eyes again! You are living your daily life among

trifles that one death-stroke may make relics. One false step, one

luckless accident, an obstacle on the track of a train, the tangling of

the cord in shifting a sail, and the penknife, the pen, the papers, the

trivial articles of dress and clothing, which to-day you toss idly and

jestingly from hand to hand, may become dread memorials of that awful

tragedy whose deep abyss ever underlies our common life.

CHAPTER XIII.

THE PARTY.

Well, let us proceed to tell how the eventful evening drew on,--how

Mary, by Miss Prissy's care, stood at last in a long-waisted gown

flowered with rose-buds and violets, opening in front to display a white

satin skirt trimmed with lace and flowers,--how her little feet were

put into high-heeled shoes, and a little jaunty cap with a wreath of

moss-rose-buds was fastened over her shining hair,--and how Miss Prissy,

delighted, turned her round and round, and then declared that she must

go and get the Doctor to look at her. She knew he must be a man of

taste, he talked so beautifully about the Millennium; and so, bursting

into his study, she actually chattered him back into the visible world,

and, leading the blushing Mary to the door, asked him, point-blank, if

he ever saw anything prettier.

The Doctor, being now wide awake, gravely gave his mind to the subject,

and, after some consideration, said, gravely, "No,--he didn't think he

ever did." For the Doctor was not a man of compliment, and had a habit

of always thinking, before he spoke, whether what he was going to say

was exactly true; and having lived some time in the family of President

Edwards, renowned for beautiful daughters, he naturally thought them

over.

The Doctor looked innocent and helpless, while Miss Prissy, having

got him now quite into her power, went on volubly to expatiate on the

difficulties overcome in adapting the ancient wedding-dress to its

present modern fit. He told her that it was very nice,--said, "Yes,

Ma'am," at proper places,--and, being a very obliging man, looked at

whatever he was directed to, with round, blank eyes; but ended all with

a long gaze on the laughing, blushing face, that, half in shame and

half in perplexed mirth, appeared and disappeared as Miss Prissy in her

warmth turned her round and showed her.

"Now, don't she look beautiful?" Miss Prissy reiterated for the

twentieth time, as Mary left the room.

The Doctor, looking after her musingly, said to himself,--"'The king's

daughter is all glorious within; her clothing is of wrought gold; she

shall be brought unto the king in raiment of needlework.'"

"Now, did I ever?" said Miss Prissy, rushing out. "How that good man

does turn everything! I believe you couldn't get anything, that he

wouldn't find a text right out of the Bible about it. I mean to get the

linen for that shirt this very week, with the Miss Wilcox's money; they

always pay well, those Wilcoxes,--and I've worked for them, off and on,

sixteen days and a quarter. To be sure, Miss Scudder, there's no

real need of my doing it, for I must say you keep him looking like a

pink,--but only I feel as if I must do something for such a good man."

The good Doctor was brushed up for the evening with zealous care and

energy; and if he did _not_ look like a pink, it was certainly no fault

of his hostess.

Well, we cannot reproduce in detail the faded glories of that

entertainment, nor relate how the Wilcox Manor and gardens were

illuminated,--how the bride wore a veil of real point-lace,--how

carriages rolled and grated on the gravel works, and negro servants, in

white kid gloves, handed out ladies in velvet and satin.

To Mary's inexperienced eye it seemed like an enchanted dream,--a

realization of all she had dreamed of grand and high society. She had

her little triumph of an evening; for everybody asked who that beautiful

girl was, and more than one gallant of the old Newport first families

felt himself adorned and distinguished to walk with her on his arm.

Busy, officious dowagers repeated to Mrs. Scudder the applauding

whispers that followed her wherever she went.

"Really, Mrs. Scudder," said gallant old General Wilcox, "where have you

kept such a beauty all this time? It's a sin and a shame to hide such a

light under a bushel."

And Mrs. Scudder, though, of course, like you and me, sensible reader,

properly apprised of the perishable nature of such fleeting honors, was,

like us, too, but a mortal, and smiled condescendingly on the follies of

the scene.

The house was divided by a wide hall opening by doors, the front one

upon the street, the back into a large garden, the broad central walk

of which, edged on each side with high clipped hedges of box, now

resplendent with colored lamps, seemed to continue the prospect in a

brilliant vista.

The old-fashioned garden was lighted in every part, and the company

dispersed themselves about it in picturesque groups.

We have the image in our mind of Mary as she stood with her little hat

and wreath of rose-buds, her fluttering ribbons and rich brocade, as it

were a picture framed in the door-way, with her back to the illuminated

garden, and her calm, innocent face regarding with a pleased wonder the

unaccustomed gayeties within.

Her dress, which, under Miss Prissy's forming hand, had been made to

assume that appearance of style and fashion which more particularly

characterized the mode of those times, formed a singular, but not

unpleasing, contrast to the sort of dewy freshness of air and mien which

was characteristic of her style of beauty. It seemed so to represent

a being who was in the world, yet not of it,--who, though living

habitually in a higher region of thought and feeling, was artlessly

curious, and innocently pleased with a fresh experience in an altogether

untried sphere. The feeling of being in a circle to which she did not

belong, where her presence was in a manner an accident, and where she

felt none of the responsibilities which come from being a component part

of a society, gave to her a quiet, disengaged air, which produced all

the effect of the perfect ease of high breeding.

While she stands there, there comes out of the door of the bridal

reception-room a gentleman with a stylishly-dressed lady on either arm,

with whom he seems wholly absorbed. He is of middle height, peculiarly

graceful in form and moulding, with that indescribable air of

high breeding which marks the polished man of the world. His

beautifully-formed head, delicate profile, fascinating sweetness of

smile, and, above all, an eye which seemed to have an almost mesmeric

power of attraction, were traits which distinguished one of the most

celebrated men of the time, and one whose peculiar history yet lives

not only in our national records, but in the private annals of many an

American family.

"Good Heavens!" he said, suddenly pausing in conversation, as his eye

accidentally fell upon Mary. "Who is that lovely creature?"

"Oh, that," said Mrs. Wilcox,--"why, that is Mary Scudder. Her father

was a family connection of the General's. The family are in rather

modest circumstances, but highly respectable."

After a few moments more of ordinary chit-chat, in which from time to

time he darted upon her glances of rapid and piercing observation, the

gentleman might have been observed to disembarrass himself of one of the

ladies on his arm, by passing her with a compliment and a bow to another

gallant, and, after a few moments more, he spoke something to Mrs.

Wilcox, in a low voice, and with that gentle air of deferential

sweetness which always made everybody well satisfied to do his will. The

consequence was, that in a few moments Mary was startled from her calm

speculations by the voice of Mrs. Wilcox, saying at her elbow, in a

formal tone,--

"Miss Scudder, I have the honor to present to your acquaintance Colonel

Burr, of the United States Senate."

(To be continued.)

THE WALKER OF THE SNOW.

Speed on, speed on, good master!

The camp lies far away;--

We must cross the haunted valley

Before the close of day.

How the snow-blight came upon me

I will tell you as we go,--

The blight of the shadow hunter

Who walks the midnight snow.

To the cold December heaven

Came the pale moon and the stars,

As the yellow sun was sinking

Behind the purple bars.

The snow was deeply drifted

Upon the ridges drear

That lay for miles between me

And the camp for which we steer.

'Twas silent on the hill-side,

And by the solemn wood

No sound of life or motion

To break the solitude,

Save the wailing of the moose-bird

With a plaintive note and low,

And the skating of the red leaf

Upon the frozen snow.

And said I,--"Though dark is falling,

And far the camp must be,

Yet my heart it would be lightsome,

If I had but company."

And then I sang and shouted,

Keeping measure, as I sped,

To the harp-twang of the snow-shoe

As it sprang beneath my tread.

Nor far into the valley

Had I dipped upon my way,

When a dusky figure joined me,

In a capuchon of gray,

Bending upon the snow-shoes

With a long and limber stride;

And I hailed the dusky stranger,

As we travelled side by side.

But no token of communion

Gave he by word or look,

And the fear-chill fell upon me

At the crossing of the brook.

For I saw by the sickly moonlight,

As I followed, bending low,

That the walking of the stranger

Left no foot-marks on the snow.

Then the fear-chill gathered o'er me,

Like a shroud around me cast,

As I sank upon the snow-drift

Where the shadow hunter passed.

And the otter-trappers found me,

Before the break of day,

With my dark hair blanched and whitened

As the snow in which I lay.

But they spoke not, as they raised me;

For they knew that in the night

I had seen the shadow hunter,

And had withered in his blight.

Sancta Maria speed us!

The sun is falling low,--

Before us lies the Valley

Of the Walker of the Snow!

REVIEWS AND LITERARY NOTICES.

_A New History of the Conquest of Mexico._ In which Las Casas'

Denunciations of the Popular Historians of that War are fully

vindicated. By ROBERT ANDERSON WILSON, Counsellor at Law; Author of

"Mexico and its Religion," etc., Philadelphia: James Challen & Son.

Boston: Crosby, Nichols, & Co.

(SECOND NOTICE.)

According to the well-authenticated legend of the martyrdom of Saint

Lawrence, the Saint, as he lay upon the grid-iron, conscious that he

had been sufficiently done on one side, begged the cooks, if it were

a matter of indifference to them, to turn him on the other. Common

humanity demanded compliance with so reasonable a request. We fancy that

we hear Mr. Wilson, preferring a similar petition; and we hope we are

too good-natured to be insensible to the appeal. We cannot, at this

moment, indeed, think of him otherwise than good-naturedly. With many

things in his book we have been highly pleased. The number, the

novelty, and the variety of his blunders have given us a very favorable

impression of his ingenuity, and have afforded us constant entertainment

in what we feared was to be a drudgery and a task. We had intended to

cull some of these beauties for the amusement of our readers and

the personal gratification of Mr. Wilson himself. But, as children,

gathering shells on the sea-shore, resign, one after another, the

treasures which they have collected, and grasp at newer, and, therefore,

more pleasing specimens, which are abandoned in their turn, so we,

finding our stores accumulate beyond our means of transportation, and

tantalized by a richness that made the task of selection an impossible

one, have been forced to relinquish the prize and come away with empty

hands. If there be, in the compass of what the author calls "these

volumes,"--though to us, perhaps from inability to distinguish between

unity and duality, his work appears to be comprised in a single tome,--a

sentence decently constructed, a foreign name correctly spelt, a

punctuation-mark rightly placed, a fact clearly and accurately stated,

or an argument that is not capable of an easy reduction to the absurd,

we have not been so unfortunate as to discover it. Mr. Wilson is a man

who, to use Carlyle's favorite expression, has "swallowed all formulas."

The principles that have generally been held to govern the use of

language appear to him mere arbitrary rules, invented by the "sevenfold

censorship" and the Spanish Inquisition, for the purpose of preventing

the free communication of ideas. All such trammels he rejects; and,

accordingly, we have to thank him, so far as mere style is concerned,

for an uninterrupted flow of pleasure in the perusal of his book,

adorned as it is with "graces" that are very far indeed "beyond the

reach of Art."

We come now to those important questions which Mr. Wilson was not,

indeed, the first to agitate, but which he has awakened from their

profound slumbers in the bosom of the Hon. Lewis Cass and the pages

of the "North American Review." We are not to be tempted into writing

another "New History of the Conquest of Mexico"; but we shall endeavor

to state with clearness those points on which the world has had the

temerity to differ from the "high authorities" we have named. It has

been, then, commonly asserted, and is, we fear, by the great mass of

our readers still superstitiously believed, that, at the time of the

discovery of this continent, there existed, in certain portions of it,

nations not wholly barbarous, and yet not civilized, according to our

notions of that term,--nations which had regular governments and

systems of polity, many correct notions in regard to morals, and some

acquaintance with Art and with the refinements of life,--but which were

yet, in a great measure, ignorant of the true principles of science,

little skilled in mechanics, and addicted to the practice of idolatrous

rites. This assertion would seem to have some _primâ-facie_ evidence in

its favor. The regions in which these nations are said to have existed

lie within the tropics; and it is a well-established principle, that a

genial climate, a fertile soil, the consequent facilities for obtaining

a subsistence, and the stimulus thus given to the increase of

population, are the first elements of an advance from a savage to a

civilized state, of the abandonment of rude freedom and nomadic habits,

and of the development of a regular social system. This principle is

clearly set forth and elaborately illustrated by Mr. Buckle; and we the

more readily refer to this author, because he stands high in the esteem

of Mr. Wilson, who, in order to prove his own especial fitness for

historical composition, and the incompetence of all who have preceded

him in the attempt, refers to a passage in Buckle, containing an

enumeration of the qualifications which he considers indispensable for

the historian. This enumeration includes all the attainments that have

ever been in the common possession of the human family. Mr. Buckle

remarks, with indisputable truth, that one historian has lacked some of

these qualifications, another historian has lacked others of them. Mr.

Wilson states that "each and every writer" who has preceded him has

lacked them all. Mr. Buckle, by implication, excepts one person, as

uniting in himself all the qualifications he demands. Mr. Wilson thinks

_he_ is the exception; but we are quite sure that the exception intended

by the author was--Henry Thomas Buckle.

In the Old World, civilization, as all admit, had its origin in tropical

regions. Across the whole extent of the Eastern Continent, races are

found inhabiting the warmer latitudes, which are now, or formerly were,

in what is popularly called a semi-civilized condition. No one, we

believe, has ever been foolish enough to account for this fact by

supposing that a single people or tribe, having attained some degree of

culture, had diffused the germs of knowledge over so large a portion

of the globe. Chinese civilization differs almost as much from that

of Hindostan as from that of England or of France. The Assyrian

civilization was indigenous on the borders of the Euphrates, and the

Egyptian on the borders of the Nile. What is remarkable in these and

in all the other cases that might be cited is, that in those regions

civilization never reached the high point which it has attained in other

parts of the world, less favored at the outset; that it exhibited a

grotesque union of refined ideas and strangely artificial institutions,

with customs, manners, and creeds that seem to the European mind

abhorrent and ridiculous; and that, the internal impulse with which it

started having been exhausted, it either remained stationary, without

further development, or sank into decay, or fell before the hostile

attacks of races that had never yielded to its influence. Now the

civilization which is described as having once existed in America

exhibits these general characteristics, while it has, like each of the

others, its own peculiar traits. If the discoverers had made a different

report, we might have been led to suppose that some such state of things

as we have described had previously existed, but had perished before

their arrival.

Mr. Wilson, however, does not reason in this manner. He has found, from

his own observation,--the only source of knowledge, if such it can

be called, on which he is willing to place much reliance,--that the

Ojibways and Iroquois are savages, and he rightly argues that their

ancestors must have been savages. From these premises, without any

process of reasoning, he leaps at once to the conclusion, that in no

part of America could the aboriginal inhabitants ever have lived in any

other than a savage state. Hence he tells us, that, in all statements

regarding them, everything "must be rejected that is inconsistent

with well-established Indian traits." The ancient Mexican empire was,

according to his showing, nothing more than one of those confederacies

of tribes with which the reader of early New England history is

perfectly familiar. The far-famed city of Mexico was "an Indian village

of the first class,"--such, we may hope, as that which the author saw

on his visit to the Massasaugus, where, to his immense astonishment, he

found the people "clothed, and in their right minds." The Aztecs, he

argues, could not have built temples, for the Iroquois do not build

temples. The Aztecs could not have been idolaters or offered up human

sacrifices, for the Iroquois are not idolaters and do not offer up human

sacrifices. The Aztecs could not have been addicted to cannibalism, for

the Iroquois never eat human flesh, unless driven to it by hunger. This

is what Mr. Wilson means by the "American standpoint"; and those who

adopt his views may consider the whole question settled without any

debate.

But there are some slight difficulties to be overcome, before we can

embrace these views. Putting human testimony aside, there are witnesses

of the past that still give their evidence to the fact, that parts of

this continent were once inhabited by races who had other pursuits

besides hunting and fishing, and whose ideas and manners differed

widely from those of the "red men" of the North. Ruined cities, defaced

temples, broken statues,--relics such as on the Eastern Continent, from

the Straits of Gibraltar to the shores of the Ganges, mark the sites of

fallen empires and extinct civilizations,--relics such as we should have

expected, from _a priori_ reasoning, to meet with in the corresponding

latitudes of the New World,--lie scattered through their whole extent,

proclaiming themselves the works of men who lived in settled communities

and under regular forms of government, who had some knowledge of

architecture and some rude notions of the beautiful and the sublime, who

had strong feelings and vivid conceptions in regard to the agency of

supernal powers in the control of human affairs, but who clothed their

conceptions in uncouth forms, and worshipped their deities with absurd

and debasing rites. Some of these remains being known to Mr. Wilson,

on the evidence of the only pair of eyes in the universe which, in his

estimation, have the faculty of seeing, he cannot treat them, according

to his usual method in such cases, as fabrications of Spanish priests

and lying chroniclers. How, then, does he account for them? He unfolds

a theory on the subject, which he has stolen from the "monkish

chroniclers" whom he treats with so much contempt, and which has long

ago been exploded and set aside. He tells us, that these relics have no

connection with the history of the American Aborigines,--that they have

a different origin and a far greater antiquity,--that they are proofs,

not to be gainsaid, of the discovery of this continent, at a very early

date, by Phoenician adventurers, and of the establishment, in the

regions where they are found, of Phoenician colonies. These ruins, he

tells us, were Phoenician temples, these statues are the representations

of Phoenician gods. In the comparison of facts by which he endeavors to

support this theory, we have been surprised to find him admitting

the testimony of other explorers. But they are, it seems, reluctant

witnesses. Their inferences from the facts which they have themselves

collected are directly opposite to his. "Proving our case," he says, "by

such testimony, we have admitted their statement of fact, only rejecting

their conclusions." Their proper business, it would appear, was to

amass the materials which our author alone was competent to use. He

encountered, indeed, a solitary difficulty; but this, in the most

astonishing manner, has been removed. "Thus far," he writes, "had we

carried the argument, but had here been compelled to stop, for want of

further evidence; and the very stereotype plate that at first occupied

this page, expressed our regrets that we were not able more completely

to identify the Palenque statue as Hercules. At our publishers',

however, the eyes of that distinguished Orientalist, the Rev. Mr.

Osborn, chanced to fall upon a proof of the American goddess in the

fourth note to this chapter, which he at once recognized as Astarte,

represented according to an antique pattern. Her head-dress, he

insisted, was in the ancient form of the mural crown, without the

crescent, the prototype of that worn by Diana of the Ephesians, and so

too, he insisted, was her necklace of 'two rows.'" Thus the chain of

evidence was complete, and, for once, Mr. Wilson derived assistance from

eyes not placed in his own head.

But, whatever distinguished Orientalists may say, undistinguished

Occidentalists may be pardoned for inquiring when it was that this

stream of Phoenician emigration flowed to the American shores, in what

manner such an enormous body of colonists as the hypothesis necessarily

supposes were conveyed hither, and what has become of their descendants.

With an uncommon indulgence to our weakness of faith, Mr. Wilson

condescends to meet these obvious questions. The time he cannot exactly

fix; but it was "thousands of years ago,"--"before the time of Moses."

To the query in regard to the means of conveyance, he answers, that at

that remote period sailing ships were in common use,--as is proved by

representations of them found in Egyptian tombs,--although they were

afterwards superseded by galleys propelled by oars alone. The reason

assigned by Mr. Wilson for this change makes a valuable addition to the

stores of Biblical commentary. "The Greeks," he says, "appear to have

been selected from their imitative powers, to perpetuate such of the

arts and civilization of the elder world, as were to be preserved from

that decree of extermination, pronounced by the Almighty against its

nations. _Commerce had been the chief cause of the total demoralization

of antiquity_, and of this, they were permitted to preserve only a boat

navigation." Coeval with the decline of commerce and the extermination

of sailing ships was the cessation of this Phoenician emigration to

America. The colonists, having no longer any communication with the

mother country, soon dwindled away and perished, in accordance with a

well-known law of Nature. "Extinction is the doom of every immigrant

population in an uncongenial climate (habitat) when migration ceases to

keep up and renew the original stock." The same fate is impending over

us. "In our own country various causes have been assigned for the

recognized delicacy, which is steadily advancing in what may be called

the pure American. The growing smallness of the hands and feet, the

shortening of the jawbones, the diminution in the number of the teeth

and their rapid decay, are matters of daily comment." In like manner,

the Caucasian race is melting away in the colonies of Great Britain,

in South Africa, Australia, and the West Indies. "In these uniform

consequences the most obtuse cannot fail to recognise the operation of

a universal law, whose primary effects are to diminish migration, and

whose ultimate results are the extinction of the exotic population." We

suppose none of our readers are obtuse enough not to be aware of the

gradual shortening of their jawbones, a phenomenon especially noticeable

in members of Congress and popular lecturers. As for the diminution in

the number of our teeth, and their rapid decay, we need, alas! no Wilson

to remind us of these melancholy facts.

What we may call the physical evidence in favor of the Aztec

civilization having been thus disposed of by Mr. Wilson, we come now to

his treatment of the written and traditional testimony, the accounts

that have been handed down to us of the Spanish conquest of Mexico, and

of the condition of the country at the time when that conquest was made.

Mr. Wilson opens his "Chapter Preliminary" with the statement, that, "in

this work, the standard Spanish authorities have been followed as long

as they followed the truth." This declaration excited, we confess,

painful misgivings in our mind; for, if Mr. Wilson was already in

possession of the truth, independently of historical research,--whether

by communications from the spirits of the _Conquistadores_, or by any

other of the easy and popular methods of solving obscure problems,--what

need was there of his consulting the standard authorities at all? But we

were somewhat cheered, when, a little farther on, we found him stating,

that the writer who enters into these discussions must "con musty folios

innumerable"; that "it will not do to denounce in general terms the

venerable precedents [?] so constantly quoted by our annalists," but

that "their defects and their errors must be shown in detail." For

it does appear to us, that, if a great historical question is to be

opened,--if a series of extraordinary events, hitherto believed by the

world to have really happened, are to be denounced as fabulous,--if

numerous writers, whose statements and relations have been regarded

in the main as worthy of credit, are now to be rejected as liars

and impostors,--it is indispensable that the works containing these

relations should be carefully examined, that the statements should be

compared and subjected to the severest scrutiny, and that the refutation

should proceed, step by step, inch by inch, over the whole field of

debate. Has Mr. Wilson taken this course? Has he met with clear and

resolute argument the accounts which he denounces as "fabrications"? Has

he diligently and carefully examined the "standard Spanish authorities"?

Has he "conned musty folios innumerable"? Has he read all the works in

question? _Has he ever seen them?_

We may divide these works into three classes,--not with reference to

their different degrees of merit and importance, but as regards their

accessibility and the relative ease with which they may be consulted.

The first class comprises two or three works which have been translated

into English; and these translations may be procured with facility and

read by any one who has some acquaintance with the English language,

though not acquainted with any other. In the second class we may place a

considerable number of works which have been published indeed, but only

in the original Spanish, or, in a few instances, in French or Italian

translations. Some of them are rare, and difficult to meet with; others

may be found in several of our best libraries. The third class embraces

relations and documents which have never been translated, which have

never been published, of which the originals repose in the Spanish

archives at Simancas or the Escorial, or in private collections,

jealously guarded, in Mexico or Madrid, and of which the only copies

known to exist in this country are in the collection formed, with so

much trouble and at so great cost, by Mr. Prescott. Now the writings

which come under our first category Mr. Wilson has both seen and

read,--to what purpose and with what profit we shall hereafter show. The

publications comprised in the second class we feel very confident he

has never read. The manuscripts, which come under the last head, we are

morally certain he has never seen. That he has not seen them is capable

of the strongest proof, short of absolute demonstration. That he had

no acquaintance with Mr. Prescott's collection is a matter within our

personal knowledge. Had he been in a position to obtain copies for

himself, and had he availed himself of that circumstance, he would not

have failed to proclaim the fact in his loudest and shrillest tones. Nor

does he pretend that he has ever visited Spain, and had access to the

originals. Indeed, we do not think he would have ventured upon such

a step. He tells us, that, "besides the reasons already given for

distrusting the correctness of Spanish statements, there is another,

more secret in character, but not less potent than all combined--fear of

incurring the displeasure of that tribunal which punished unbelief

with fire, torture, and confiscation." If Mr. Wilson, as his language

implies, stands in fear of "fire, torture, and confiscation," and if

this is his most potent reason for distrusting the correctness of

Spanish statements, we can readily understand why he should have chosen

to remain on his native soil and write the history of the Conquest of

Mexico from "the American stand-point." Lastly, Mr. Wilson makes no

allusions to matter contained in the manuscripts which had not been

reproduced in the pages of Prescott. He is careful, indeed, to tell us

very little of the contents of these works; but he talks _about_ them

with the most gratifying candor, and in his choicest phraseology. He

informs us, that "Sarmiento's History of the Peruvian Incas altogether

surpasses that of Dr. Johnson's Rasselas and the Happy Valley." The

history of Dr. Johnson's "Rasselas" is related, we believe, by Boswell.

The great moralist composed his beautiful and philosophical, but

somewhat gloomy romance, in the evenings of a single week, in order to

obtain the means of defraying the expenses of his mother's funeral. The

story is a touching one; but Mr. Wilson's comparison is so inapt, that

we cannot help suspecting him of having had in his mind, not the history

of Johnson's "Rasselas," but Johnson's history of Rasselas. We think it

rather hard, that, having, in general, such a limited amount of meaning

to express, Mr. Wilson should have followed the maxim of Talleyrand, and

employed language chiefly as a means of concealing his thoughts.

Mr. Wilson nowhere asserts, in so many words, that he has had access to

manuscript authorities. His mode of speaking of them, however, implies

as much, and he evidently intends that this inference should be drawn by

his readers. In a printed note, addressed to his publishers, disclaiming

any intention of "assailing the memory of the dead,"--a disclaimer

which was not needed to suggest the reason why his book, loaded with

typographical blunders, was hurried through the press,[A]--he "insists

on the lawyer's privilege of sifting the evidence--a labor which Mr.

Prescott was incapable of performing, from a physical infirmity"; and he

undertakes to prove that Mr. Prescott's "books and manuscripts were not

reliable authorities." Now even "the lawyer's privilege" does not extend

to sifting evidence which he has never heard; and if Mr. Prescott was

"incapable, from a physical infirmity," of properly scrutinizing his

authorities, it was the more necessary that Mr. Wilson, with his own

wonderful eyes, should undertake the task. There is one manuscript which

he might be supposed to have had a strong desire to examine. His book

professes to be a vindication of "Las Casas' denunciations of the

popular historians" of the Conquest. The work of Las Casas, supposed to

contain these denunciations, is his History of the Indies. Mr. Wilson

acknowledges that he has never seen this work; it has, he says, "been

wholly suppressed"; and he is terribly severe on the censorship and the

Inquisition for having been guilty of this suppression. But the only

suppression in the case is, that the book has never been printed. The

original manuscript may be consulted at Madrid. A copy of the most

important parts of it is in Mr. Prescott's collection. Mr. Wilson might

have seen that copy, had he expressed the wish. He did not, however,

give himself this trouble; and we think he was right. The truth is,

that, of all the Spanish historians of the Conquest of Mexico, Las Casas

is the one who has indulged most largely in hyperbole. Writing, with

little personal knowledge, in support of a theory which required him

to magnify the ruin accomplished by the _Conquistadores_, he has

exaggerated the population of the Mexican empire, the number and size of

its towns, and the evidences of its civilization. It was on this very

account that Navarrete, who examined the work with a view to its

publication, came to the decision not to print it. We have little doubt

as to the propriety of that decision; and Mr. Wilson, we think, also did

well in sticking to Cass and "suppressing" Las Casas.[B]

[Footnote A: Author, compositor, and proof-reader were evidently engaged

in a "stampede,"--the (Printer's) Devil having strict orders to make

seizure of the hindmost. Part of a Spanish poem, borrowed, without

acknowledgment, from Prescott, seems to have gone to "pie" on the

imposing-stone, and been suffered to remain in that state.]

[Footnote B: Mr. Wilson would have been less unfortunate, if he

could have "suppressed" the work of Mr. Gallatin to which he has the

effrontery to refer as an authority for his ridiculous assertion, that

the "so-called picture-writing" of the Aztecs was a Spanish invention.

As Mr. Gallatin's essay is within the reach of any of our readers who

may be inclined to consult it, we shall content ourselves with a single

remark on the subject. That learned writer, who had made a real and

thorough study of the Mexican civilization, (having obtained from Mr.

Prescott the books necessary for the purpose,) was so far from denying

that hieroglyphical painting was practised by the Aztecs, or that

authentic copies, and even actual specimens of it, have been preserved,

that he himself constructed a Mexican chronology which has no other

foundation than these same picture-writings. There is one remark in Mr.

Gallatin's work on which Mr. Wilson would have done wisely to ponder. It

is this:--"The conquest of Mexico is an important event in the history

of man. _Mr. Prescott has exhausted the subject._"]

Our reason for believing that Mr. Wilson has never read the works,

relating to his subject, which have been published only in the original

Spanish or in translations into other foreign languages, is a very

simple one. He produces no evidence that he has ever read them. Some of

them he does not even mention. From none of them does he glean a single

fact that was not ready to his hand in the pages of Prescott. Except in

two or three instances, where he filches a reference from the citations

made by the latter historian, he brings forward no statement contained

in any of these books, either to support his own positions or to refute

theirs. Why did he take from Prescott--to whom on this occasion he

confesses his indebtedness--the facts in relation to the early life of

Cortés, (we would he had borrowed the language as well as the matter!)

if he had himself the means of consulting the works from which

Prescott's account was derived? But it is unnecessary to pursue the

argument; Mr. Wilson acknowledges that he knows nothing of the works in

question. "For our purpose," he writes, "the standard histories of the

conquest might as well be blank paper." We believe him; but had

his purpose been, not "to denounce in general terms the venerable

_precedents_ so constantly quoted by our annalists, but to show their

defects and their errors in detail," he would hardly have used them, as

he has done, as mere wadding for the great gun which he was loading,

and which has exploded with such terrible effect. His objection to

the "standard histories" is, that their authors were Spaniards,

ecclesiastics, royal historiographers,--that they wrote under the eye of

the Inquisition and the censorship. Like objections would apply to the

whole field of Spanish history. The reigns of Ferdinand and Isabella,

Charles the Fifth, and Philip the Second must, therefore, be as fabulous

as the conquests of Mexico and Peru. Accordingly, Mr. Wilson, when he

wishes to study the history of Spain, declines to have recourse to

Spanish writers. He goes to writers of other countries, and has a very

natural preference for such as speak the English tongue. Besides that

valuable work known among mortals as the "Encyclopaedia Britannica,"

but usually cited by Mr. Wilson, in an off-hand and familiar way, as

"Britannica," he draws much upon a treasure of his own discovery, "a

ponderous folio" of the seventeenth century, written in English by one

Grimshaw, and containing a full and veritable history of Spain from

the earliest epochs. He makes much of Grimshaw, styling him "our

chronicler." He pats the volume fondly, and calls it "my old

folio,"--just as Mr. Collier pats and fondles _his_ celebrated old

folio. To judge from some specimens which Mr. Wilson gives us, the

venerable Grimshaw cannot have the merit of being very easy of

comprehension. Here is an extract, just as we find it:--"About the year

756, at which time there were great troops of Turks beginne to disperse

themselves over all Armenia, the which did overrunne and spoil the

Sarrazin's country." And here is another:--"Over common, then, in Spain,

and elsewhere, which nevertheless chastise the world in such sort, but

that this sinne is at this day more in use than ever it was, to the

dishonor of our God, contempt of his laws, and confusion of all good

order." Apparently, Mr. Wilson, besides writing in a singular style

himself, is the cause of singularities in the writings of other men.

What is more worthy of note is the credulity with which he swallows the

fabulous inventions of the "monkish chroniclers" when set before him

in English earthenware. We would undertake, for a very trifling

consideration, to furnish him with the Spanish originals of the stories

of "Hispan" and "Hercules," and all the other absurdities with which his

old folio has supplied him. From what source does he imagine them to

have been derived? Does he think they belong to the stock of traditions

in possession of the Anglo-Saxon race,--that Grimshaw got them from

Bagshaw, and Bagshaw from Bradshaw?

Our argument in regard to Mr. Wilson's ignorance of most of the

"standard authorities" will be strengthened by a review of the works

which he actually has used,--or, to speak more correctly, misused,--and

an examination of his reasons for selecting them. They are two in

number. He can hardly be said to overrate the importance of one of

these works,--the celebrated Letters of Cortes. For the events of

the Conquest, and the first impressions made upon the minds of the

discoverers by the aspect of the country, we could have no evidence of

equal value with the dispatches written by the great adventurer from the

field of his enterprises and during the course of the operations. Mr.

Wilson does not, however, consult the original letters. His strong

prejudice against everything Spanish would not allow him to do so. He

has studied them through the medium of a translation; and the reason he

assigns for his preference of this version is, that "it is _better_ than

the original." We have no doubt that it _is_ better for Mr. Wilson's

"purpose"; indeed, we fear, that, had it not been for the labors of the

translator, Mr. George Folsom, the letters of Cortes would, like "most

of the standard histories," have been regarded by Mr. Wilson as "no

better than so much blank paper." Lockhart, by translating the chronicle

of Bernal Diaz, has saved it from similar condemnation,--but only that

it might incur a still more terrible fate. Mr. Wilson's theory in

regard to the origin and character of this work is no less subtile than

startling. According to the common belief, Bernal Diaz was a soldier in

the army of Cortés, accompanied him throughout his campaigns, and, at a

late period of his life, composed a narrative of the memorable events

in which he had participated as an actor or an eye-witness. Writers who

knew him in his old age have left us descriptions of his appearance

and character. Mr. Wilson, however, holds that he never existed. The

chronicle which bears the name is, according to him, a work of fiction,

written by some Spanish De Foe, who had read the common narratives of

the conquest of Mexico, but who had no personal knowledge of the scene

in which his story is laid. What first excited Mr. Wilson's suspicions

was the charming simplicity and apparent truthfulness which, in common

with all readers of Bernal Diaz, he has found to be the distinguishing

characteristics of the narrative. "A striking feature," he tells us,

"in Spanish literature, is the plausibility with which it has carried

a fictitious narrative through its most minute details, completely

captivating the _uninitiated_. If its supporters were not permitted to

write truth, they succeeded in getting up a most excellent imitation. In

Bernal Diaz the alleged individual affairs of private soldiers are so

artfully interwoven with the general history as to give the effect of

truth to the whole. There being no fear of contradiction, this practice

of inventing familiar details could be indulged in to any extent, while

the beauty and simplicity of such a style fixes at once the doubting."

"Ah! si Molière avait connu l'autre!"--

Oh that Fielding had known Mr. Wilson! Partridge, a mere unsophisticated

booby, thought simplicity the characteristic of Nature, and therefore

out of place in Art. Mr. Wilson, a transcendental Partridge, thinks

simplicity the characteristic of Art, and therefore out of place in

Nature. He is more than ordinarily severe on Mr. Prescott for not having

detected in Bernal Diaz these "striking marks of the _counterfeit_

instead of the _common soldier_." "We differ," he says, "decidedly from

Mr. Prescott." The difference seems to be, that Prescott regarded the

_appearance_ of truthfulness in the narrative of Bernal Diaz as _primâ

facie_ evidence of its truthfulness, while Mr. Wilson regards the same

appearance as the most complete evidence of its untruthfulness.

But we have been anxious to discover some more definite and substantial

grounds for Mr. Wilson's hypothesis. In a couple of closely-printed

pages, devoted to the subject, he asks himself, again and again, the

questions,--"Who, then, was Bernal Diaz?"--"Who, then, wrote the

history of Bernal Diaz?" Failing to extract any reply from the singular

individual to whom these queries are addressed, he winds up with the

solemn and emphatic declaration, "On the evidence hereafter to be

presented, we have with much deliberation concluded to _denounce_ Bernal

Diaz as a _myth_." For the evidence here promised we have searched

with a patience of investigation which, if applied to the problem of

perpetual motion or squaring the circle, could not, we humbly think,

have been wholly unproductive; and these are the results. "The author of

'Bernal Diaz' says the march to Jalapa was accomplished in one day;--a

proof that he never saw the country.... Cortez makes the ascent the work

of three days, and says he did not reach Sienchimalen until the fourth

day." The main discrepancy here is Mr. Wilson's own handiwork, as he

has confounded the "Sienchimalen" of Cortés with Jalapa, instead of

identifying it with the "Socochima" of Bernal Diaz. But so far as there

is any real discrepancy, it may be sufficient to remark, in explanation

of it, that Bernal Diaz professes to have written many years after the

events which he narrates, and at a distance from the scene, while the

letters of Cortés were written in the country, and while the events were

taking place. On another occasion, Bernal Diaz represents the Tlascalans

as complaining that they could "get no cotton for their clothing." "If

this writer," says Mr. Wilson, "had really been acquainted with the

tribes of the table-land, he must have known that the fibres of the

_maguey_ were, among them, substitutes for that article, and are even

now used at the city of Mexico in the manufacture of some fine fabrics."

We do not see how Bernal Diaz could be expected to know that the fibres

of the _maguey_ are now used in Mexican manufactures; neither can we

comprehend how his statement, that the Tlascalans had _no_ cotton, is at

variance with Mr. Wilson's assertion, that they used the _maguey_ as a

substitute. We can imagine, however, that an old soldier, writing for

the "uninitiated," might prefer to speak of cotton, for which he had a

Spanish word, rather than enter into explanations in regard to an Indian

substitute for cotton, resembling it in appearance; while it is not easy

to believe, on Mr. Wilson's bare assertion, that an article in

common use throughout the Valley of Mexico was wholly unknown to the

inhabitants of the table-land.

These, and, so far as we can discover, these alone, are the proofs on

which Mr. Wilson convicts Bernal Diaz of being a nonentity,--of having,

like Rosalind in "As you like it," merely "counterfeited to be a _man_."

As a natural _sequitur_ to this delicious train of reasoning, he

proceeds to take this nonentity, this "myth," as his guide throughout

the narrative of the Conquest. "We may safely follow Diaz," he remarks,

"in unimportant particulars"; and the "particulars" of the Conquest

being, in Mr. Wilson's narration of them, all equally "unimportant," he

is so far consistent in following Diaz throughout. Surely the Grecian

fables will never grow old; here again we have blind Polyphemus groping

in pursuit of cunning [Greek: Outis]. But we must be allowed to ask Mr.

Wilson why he has not rather preferred to take Gomara as his guide.

It is true that he entertains a strong loathing, a rooted

aversion, for this harmless old chronicler, whom he calls always

"Gomora,"--associating him, apparently, by some confusion of ideas, with

the ancient city of bad fame, buried with Sodom beneath the waters of

the Dead Sea. But, at least, he does not deny that Gomara had an actual

existence, that he was a veritable somebody,--a reality, and not a

"myth,"--that he was the chaplain of Cortés, that he had access to the

papers of the great commander, that he wrote a history of the Conquest,

and that this history is still extant. Mr. Wilson himself asserts that

the dispatches of Cortés "and the work of Gomora are the only original

documents touching the Conquest of Mexico, its people, its civilization,

its difficulties, and its dangers." After this declaration, it is

somewhat remarkable, that, throughout his narrative of the Conquest,

while continually quoting from Diaz, he makes not a single reference to

Gomara; and he even censures Mr. Prescott for having pursued a different

course. How shall we explain this fact? Alas for Gomara! he wrote in his

native Castilian, no Lockhart or Folsom had done him into English, and

so he missed his chance of having his statements cited, and, possibly

even,--though we should not like to hazard an assertion on this

point,--of having his name correctly spelt, by the author of the "New

History of the Conquest of Mexico."

It remains only that we should notice, as briefly as possible, the use

which Mr. Wilson has made of his two authorities, the translations of

Bernal Diaz and Cortés, which, rejecting all assistance from other

quarters, he takes for the basis of his narrative. That narrative is

constructed on a plan which, we venture to say, is without a parallel

in literature. Like whatever else is strikingly original, it cannot be

described; we can only hope to convey a faint idea of it by some random

illustrations. To nearly every statement which he notices in the works

before him Mr. Wilson offers a flat contradiction. When these statements

relate to numbers, his method of treating them is a systematic one.

He has picked out of Bernal Diaz, who wrote in an avowed spirit of

hostility to Gomara, a pettish remark, that the exaggerations of the

latter are so great, that, when he says eighty thousand, we may read

one thousand. This piece of rhetoric Mr. Wilson receives literally,

and makes it a rule of measurement, applying it with more or less

exactness,--not, however, to the statements of Gomara, with whose work

he is acquainted only at second hand, but to those of Cortés and of

Bernal Diaz himself! Thus, in every computation of the number of the

enemy's forces, or of the Indian allies who joined the Spaniards in

their contest with the Aztecs, Mr. Wilson "takes the liberty," to use

his own phrase, of "dropping" one or more ciphers from the amount. This

mode of adapting the narrative to his own conceptions he calls "reducing

it to reality." When Cortés--not Gomara, be it remembered--computes the

number of his allies at eighty thousand, Mr. Wilson says, "Let us drop

the thousands, and _assume_ eighty as the actual number. _We must do so

often._" When Cortés writes "thirty-five thousand," Mr. Wilson prefers

to say "three hundred or so." When Diaz writes "twelve thousand," Mr.

Wilson suggests that we should read "five hundred." Cortés says that he

caused a canal to be dug twelve _feet_ deep. Mr. Wilson, speaking as

if he had been an eye-witness, says the canal was only twelve _inches_

deep. In another place he writes, "Accordingly a force of thirteen

horse, two hundred foot, and three hundred--not thirty thousand--Indian

allies were sent to relieve that village"; merely leaving his readers to

the inference that the number placed between dashes is the one given by

Cortés. In a single instance, he admits the estimate of Bernal Diaz, who

puts the loss sustained by the Indians in a battle at eight hundred;

while Las Casas, whose corrections of other writers Mr. Wilson professes

to "vindicate," says the loss of the Indians on this occasion amounted

to thirty thousand. Las Casas also reckons the number of natives who

fell victims to Spanish cruelty in America at forty millions. This wild

estimate has been often quoted. Mr. Wilson, instead of "vindicating" it,

as he was bound to do, triumphantly refutes it. "There never probably

existed," he most justly remarks, "more than forty millions of savage

races at one time on our globe."

It is not merely the arithmetic of his authorities that Mr. Wilson

undertakes to rectify. When they describe a pitched battle, he asserts

that it was a mere skirmish. When they speak of a large town, he tells

us it was a rude hamlet. When they portray the magnificence of the city

of Mexico, he says that they are "painting wild _figments_"--whatever

that may mean,--and that Montezuma's capital was a mere collection of

huts. Cortés tells us, that, in his retreat, he lost a great portion

of his treasure. Mr. Wilson writes, "The _Conquistador_ was too good a

soldier to hazard his gold; it was _therefore_, in the advance, and came

safely off." Cortés states, that, in a certain battle, he retired from

the front in order to make a new disposition of his rear. Mr. Wilson

replies, that Cortés did _not_ go to the rear, because, though his

presence was greatly needed there, the press must have been too great to

allow of his reaching it. The presents which Cortés, while at Vera Cruz,

received from Montezuma, he transmitted to the Emperor Charles the

Fifth, sending, at the same time, an inventory of the articles, among

which was "a large wheel of gold, with figures of strange animals on it,

and worked with tufts of leaves,--weighing three thousand eight hundred

ounces." The original inventory is still in existence. We have the

evidence of persons who were then at the imperial court of the reception

of these presents, of the sensation which they produced, and of the

ideas which they suggested in regard to the wealth and civilization

of the New World; and we have minute descriptions of the different

articles, including the wheel of gold, from persons who saw them at

Seville and at Valladolid. Mr. Wilson,--without making the least

allusion to this testimony, which we cannot help regarding as of the

strongest possible kind, intimates that the presents were of very little

value,--represents the workmanship, which excited the admiration of the

best European artificers, as a mere specimen of "savage ingenuity,"--and

as for the wheel of gold, tells us that it "never existed but in the

fertile fancy of Cortez."

In general, Mr. Wilson contents himself with the barest, though

broadest, denial of the statements of his authorities, or with silently

substituting his own version of the facts in place of theirs. But he

sometimes condescends to argue the point. His logic is ingenious, but

singularly monotonous. His arguments are all drawn from one source,

namely, his own personal experience. The Tlascalan wall, described by

Cortés and Diaz, can never have been in existence, for Mr. Wilson has

been on the very spot and found no remains of a wall. Other travellers,

it may be remarked, have been more fortunate. Cortés states, that, in

a march across the mountains, some of his Indian allies perished of

thirst. This Mr. Wilson pronounces "impossible," because he himself

travelled over the same route, and did _not_ perish of thirst, as

neither did his horse, though the "sufferings of both," from that or

some other cause, were great. One of the most remarkable acts in the

career of Cortés was his voluntary destruction of the vessels which had

brought his little army to the Mexican coast, in order, as he avers,

that his men might stand committed to follow the fortunes of their

leader, whatever might be the dangers of the enterprise. "This event,"

says Mr. Wilson, "has been the subject of eloquent eulogies for

centuries. Among these Robertson is of course pre-eminent." We are

here left in doubt whether Robertson is to be regarded as a preëminent

century or a pre-eminent eulogy. However this may be, our author denies

that the stranding of the vessels was the voluntary act of the Spanish

general. He is confident that they were cast away in a storm. His "most

potent" reason is, that he himself has "witnessed, not only hereabout,

but elsewhere, upon this tideless shore, wrecks by the grounding of

vessels at anchor." This he calls "submitting the narrative to the

ordeal of proof."

However, as we have already intimated, it is seldom that his authorities

are submitted to this "ordeal," which we admit to be a trying one.

Usually they are informed that their assertions "rest on air,"--that

they are "foolish" and "baseless,"--"wild figments," or "intolerable

nonsense." Cortés states that some of his men, who had been taken

prisoners by the Mexicans, were offered up as sacrifices to the Aztec

deities. Mr. Wilson, after telling that their hearts were cut out, and

their bodies "tumbled to the ground," complains that "to this most

probable act of an Indian enemy, is _foolishly_ added--it was done in

sacrifice to their idols, though the very existence of Indian idols is

_still_ problematical!" Cortés, who had seen too many Indian idols to

entertain any doubts of their existence, ought, nevertheless, not

to have mentioned them, because to Mr. Wilson the matter is still a

problem. Whenever that gentleman finds it inconvenient to "reduce" the

statements of the Spanish historians to "realities," he omits them

altogether. Thus, he says not a word of those fearful spectacles which

struck horror to the hearts of the Spaniards in their visit to the

_teocallis_,--the pyramidal mound garnished with human skulls, the

hideous idols and the blood-stained priests, the chapels drenched with

gore, and other evidences of a diabolical worship. Not unfrequently he

fills up what he considers as gaps in the ordinary narratives. Thus,

he pictures the dying Cuitlahua as "stoically wrapping himself in

his feathered mantle," and "rejoicing at his expected welcome to the

celestial hunting-grounds," where he "felt that he was worthy a name

among the immortal braves." This "wild figment" from Mr. Wilson's

"fertile fancy" was, perhaps, suggested by Theobald's famous emendation

in the description of Falstaff's death-scene,--"a babbled o' green

fields." On such occasions, Mr. Wilson explains that he is relating

the occurrences "as they are understood by one familiar with Indian

affairs." A remarkable example of this method of narration shall close

our citations from his work.

The reader is, doubtless, acquainted with the tradition, said to have

been preserved among the Mexicans, of a fair-complexioned deity, with

flowing beard, who had once ruled over them and taught them the arts

of peace, and, being subsequently driven from the country, promised to

return at some future time. Predictions of his reappearance lingered

amongst them, and were supposed to be accomplished in the arrival of the

Spaniards. Mr. Wilson tells us that "too much stress" has been laid on

this tradition; but we know of no modern writer who has laid any stress

on it except himself. It has been usually supposed to be one of those

myths in which nations partially civilized embalm the memory of their

heroes. Mr. Wilson does not believe the Mexicans to have been partially

civilized. He regards them merely as a horde of savages. Nevertheless,

he believes that among these savages "tradition [in the form here

noticed] had handed down, through untold generations, from a remote

antiquity," the establishment in America of Phoenician colonies, their

history, and their subsequent extinction. Nor is this the whole story.

In order to strengthen his argument, he gives a new and corrected

version of this tradition. "It told," he writes, "that _pale faces_ had

once before occupied the _hot country_, coming from beyond the _great

water_. _Perhaps_ with this were coupled also tales of suffering and

wrongs; _perhaps_ how cruelly they, the natives, had been forced, by

these hard task-masters, to labor upon the truncated pyramids and their

crowning chapels. With unrequited Indian toil, these men had builded

cities and public works which still preserved their memory, though they

themselves had long since perished, having fulfilled their allotted

centuries. But with their decaying monuments they left a fearful

prophecy, and thus it ran: that _floating houses_ would again return to

the eastern coast, wafted by like winds, and filled with the same race,

to teach the same religion, and to practise the same cruelties, until

they again finished their cycle, and gave place to others, such as the

laws of climate and population might determine." When the reader, after

perusing this extraordinary relation, recovers his breath, he naturally

casts his eye towards the bottom of the page, in the hope of finding

some explanation of it. He accordingly discovers a note, in which Mr.

Wilson states that he has "given a _little different shading_ to the

famous tradition," but that "such, _translated into Indian phraseology_,

would be the popular accounts." Now he had a perfect right to

_interpret_ the tradition as he pleased. He was at liberty to conjecture

that it related to the Phoenicians, as the Spaniards were at liberty to

conjecture that it related to St. Thomas. Of the two interpretations, we

prefer the latter. Mr. Wilson, were he consistent, would have done so

too; for how could the Aztecs, when they saw the Spaniards desecrating

the Phoenician temples and destroying the Phoenician idols, suppose that

these people were of the "same race," and had come "to teach the same

religion"? We care little for his inconsistencies; but the feat which

he has here performed, by his "shadings," his "translations into Indian

phraseology," and his medley of "pale faces," "great waters," "floating

houses," "truncated pyramids," "hard taskmasters," "winds," "climates,"

"religions," and "laws of population," we believe to be unsurpassed

by anything ever perpetrated in prose or rhyme, by Grecian bard or

mediaeval monk.

He appears to think himself justified in taking these liberties with the

Muse of History by his anxiety to construct a narrative that should not

overstep the bounds of probability. As if all history were not a chain

of improbabilities, and what is most improbable were not often that

which is most certain! But if, at Mr. Wilson's summons, we reject as

improbable a series of events supported by far stronger evidence than

can be adduced for the conquests of Alexander, the Crusades, or the

Norman conquest of England, what is it, we may ask, that he calls upon

us to believe? His skepticism, as so often happens, affords the measure

of his credulity. He contends that Cortés, the greatest Spaniard of the

sixteenth century, a man little acquainted with books, but endowed with

a gigantic genius and with all the qualities requisite for success in

warlike enterprises and an adventurous career, had his brain so filled

with the romances of chivalry, and so preoccupied with reminiscences

of the Spanish contests with the Moslems, that he saw in the New World

nothing but duplicates of those contests,--that his heated imagination

turned wigwams into palaces, Indian villages into cities like Granada,

swamps into lakes, a tribe of savages into an empire of civilized

men,--that, in the midst of embarrassments and dangers which, even on

Mr. Wilson's showing, must have taxed all his faculties to the utmost,

he employed himself chiefly in coining lies with which to deceive his

imperial master and all the inhabitants of Christendom,--that, although

he had a host of powerful enemies among his countrymen, enemies who were

in a position to discover the truth, his statements passed unchallenged

and uncontradicted by them,--that the numerous adventurers and explorers

who followed in his track, instead of exposing the falsity of his

relations and descriptions, found their interest in embellishing the

narrative,--that a similar drama was performed by other actors and on a

different stage,--that the Peruvian civilization, so analogous to that

of the Aztecs and yet so different from it, was, like that, the baseless

fabric of a vision,--that the whole intellect, in short, of the

sixteenth century was employed in fashioning a gorgeous fable, and that

to this end continents were discovered, nations exterminated, countries

laid waste, evidences forged, and witnesses invented. And this theory

is to be swallowed in one solid and indigestible lump, unleavened with

logic, unmoistened with grammar, unsweetened with rhetoric. Let those

whose appetites are strong, and whose olfactory nerves are not too

delicate, sit down to the repast.

For our own part, we are quite satisfied with the bare contemplation of

the fare. Our readers, also, we suspect, have long ago been satiated.

They have dropped off, one by one, and left us alone with our kind

entertainer. What more we have to say must therefore be bestowed upon

his private ear. We shall speak with the greater freedom. We know

the exquisite pleasure we have given him. We are sure that he is not

ungrateful. When his book comes to a second edition,--with a _change of

title-page_ corresponding to some change in the popular sentiment,--we

shall have to submit to the same honors which he has inflicted on Mr.

Prescott and "Rousseau de St. Hilaire"; he will reprint our article

as "a flattering notice,"--as the "Atlantic Monthly's estimate of his

researches." We beg to call his attention to our closing remarks, which,

indeed, may serve as a digest of the whole. When he has "translated

them into Indian phraseology," (we regret that we cannot save him this

trouble,) and "reduced them to reality," we shall take our leave of

him, not without a mournful presentiment that the separation is to be

eternal.

There are many points of difference between his work and Mr. Prescott's

"History of the Conquest of Mexico"; but the chief distinction, we

think, may be thus stated. If the foundations on which Mr. Prescott's

narrative is built should ever be overthrown,--a contingency which as

yet we do not apprehend,--that narrative would still rank among the

masterpieces of our literature. It could no longer be received as a

truthful relation of what had actually happened in the past; but it

would be received as a most faithful and graphic relation of what had

been asserted, of what was once universally _believed_, to have so

happened. If the reality appears strange, how much stranger would

appear the fiction! The truth of such a story may seem improbable;

the invention of such a story would be little short of miraculous.

Prescott's work, if removed from its place among histories, must stand

in the first rank among works of imagination,--must be classed with the

"Odyssey" and the "Arabian Nights' Entertainments."

But this book of Wilson's must, under all conditions, and in any

contingency, be regarded as worthless. Be the story of the Conquest true

or false, this contains no relation of it, this contains no refutation

of it. Not content with vilifying his authorities, with impugning

their faith, denying their existence, and mangling their names, he has

disfigured their statements, corrupted their narrative, and substituted

gross absurdities for what was at least beautiful and coherent, whether

it was fiction or reality. His book is in every sense a fabrication.

It is no record of the truth; it is not a romance or a fable, artfully

constructed and elegantly told; it is--to use that plain language

which the occasion authorizes and demands--a barefaced, but awkward

falsification of history,--so awkward, that it has cost us little

trouble to detect it,--so barefaced, that it has been a duty, though, of

course, a painful one, to expose it.

_Mothers and Infants, Nurses and Nursing._ Translated from the French

of _A Treatise_, etc., by DR. AL. DONNÉ, late Head of the Clinical

Department of the Faculty of Paris, etc., etc. Boston: Phillips,

Sampson, & Co. 1859.

When the young Count of Paris was at the tender age which requires the

food that only mothers and their substitutes can supply, M. Donné, the

author of this work, was called in consultation at the royal palace. He

had a new way of examining milk through the microscope, and deciding

upon its healthy and nutritive qualities or its defects, as the case

might be. The whole world was full of the great question just then,--for

the deep-bosomed dame of Normandy or Picardy who should be selected

was to be the nurse not of a child only, but of a dynasty. So thought

short-sighted mortals, at least, in those days,--little dreaming what

cradle would be under the square dome of the Tuileries before twenty

years were past!

M. Donné, as we said, was the man selected from all men for the task

of choosing a nurse for the most important baby of his time. This is a

voucher for his position at that period in the great medical world

of Paris. He is known, also, to the scientific world by a number of

treatises, with some of which we have long been familiar, as, for

instance, the "Cours de Microscopic," with the remarkable Atlas copied

from daguerreotypes taken by the aid of the camera. The present work is

of a somewhat more popular character than his previous productions.

Little "Nursing" America is the father of Young America that is to be.

And there is no denying that our new vital conditions on this side of

the planet suggest some very grave questions,--such as these:--Whether

there be not a gradual deterioration of the primitive European stock

under these influences; and, Whether it is not possible that the

imported human breed may run out here, so that, some time or other, the

resuscitated tribes of Algonquins and Hurons may show a long shank of

the extinct Yankee, as they show the Dodo's foot at the British Museum.

It is this contingency against which many intelligent and worthy persons

are now trying to provide. The indefatigable Dr. Bowditch has made a map

of this State of Massachusetts, showing the distribution of consumption

in its different localities. That is the first thing,--_where_ to live.

We have been told an alleged fact with reference to a certain large New

England town, which, if it were true, would raise the value of real

estate in that place a million of dollars, perhaps, in twenty-four

hours. We do not tell it, though mentioned to us by a celebrated

practitioner and professor, simply because we are afraid it is too good

to be true. At any rate, attention is beginning to be thoroughly awake

as to the point of _where_ we shall live. Now, then, _how_ shall we

live?

It is just as well to begin early. Infancy is too late. If men were

dealt with like other live stock, a contractor might undertake to

deliver at Long Wharf a cargo of three-year old human colts and fillies

of almost any required standard of development and health, in five years

from date. If only a cheap article were required, such and such parents

would be selected; if the young animals were to be of prime quality, he

must know it long enough beforehand, and be particular in his choice.

This is plain speaking, but true,--as everybody knows, who studies the

laws of life. _Ex nihilo nihil fit_. Given a half-starved dyspeptic

and a bloodless negative blonde as parents, Hercules or Apollo is

an impossibility in their progeny. Yet people look with infinite

expectations of health, strength, beauty, intellect, as the product of

$0 times {-1}$. The late Colonel Jaques, of the "Ten Hills Farm," knew

ever so much better;--what a pity so much sound physiology should have

been confined to "Caelobs," and "Dolly Creampot," and the likes of them!

Granted a sound, fair baby,--_viable_, as the French say,--liveable, or

life-capable, and life-worthy. What shall we do with it?

A baby answers to the lively definition of an animal as "a stomach

provided with organs." It lives to feed. It does not know much, but in

its speciality it is unrivalled. The way in which it helps itself from

the sources of life is a masterpiece of hydraulic skill. Once let it

lose the Heaven-imparted art of haustion, and all the arts and academies

of the world can never teach it again.

To manage this little feeding organism, with its wondrous instinct and

capacity of imbibition, is the first great question after that of race

is settled. Shall the mother's blood continue to flow through its

fast-throbbing heart, and all the subtile affinities that bind the two

lives be continued until reason and affection take up the chain where

the link of bodily dependence is broken? Or shall it cleave no more to

her bosom, but transfer its endearing dependence to a stranger, or learn

to call a bottle its mother?

These are some of the questions learnedly, and yet familiarly, discussed

in M. Donné's book. He has laid down many excellent rules for the

physical and moral management of the infant, which the young mother can

readily learn and put in practice. For the physician, his work contains

many interesting facts with reference to the quality and the microscopic

appearances of milk, as obtained from various sources and under

different circumstances.

On one or two points our American experience would somewhat modify the

rules commonly accepted in Paris. The nurse from the French provinces is

evidently a different being from our Milesian milky mothers. So, too,

the rules given by our own venerable and sagacious observer, Dr. James

Jackson, as to the period of separating the infant from its mother or

nurse, should be borne in mind, as laid down in his admirable "Letters

to a Young Physician."

But there is a great deal of information applicable to children and

their mothers in all civilized regions; and as we wish to start fair

with the next generation, we are very glad to have so intelligent a

guide for the management of our infant citizens.

_Street Thoughts._ By the Rev. Henry M. Dexter, Pastor of Pine-Street

Church, Boston. With Illustrations by Billings. Boston: Crosby, Nichols,

& Co. 1859.

If a profusion of introductory mottoes were any indication of the

excellence of a book, this volume would be indeed a _chef-d'oeuvre_. On

the page usually devoted to the Dedication, we have no less than six

more or less appropriate quotations: a Greek one from Julian, a Latin

one from Quintilian, a dramatic one from Shakspeare, a metrical one from

Young, a ponderous philosophical one from Dr. Johnson, and a commonplace

one from Bryant. In consideration of the number and learnedness of these

certificates of character, we approach the lucubrations of the Reverend

Mr. Dexter with profound respect.

In the days when controversial literature was fashionable in England,

and the strife between Protestantism and Catholicism possessed some

interest for the public, we remember with considerable amusement the

manner in which the champions on either side conducted the attack. The

Romish warrior would this month issue a formidable volume entitled "A

Conversation between a Roman Catholic English Nobleman and an Irish

Protestant." In this work the Roman Catholic lord had it all his own

way; the Irish Protestant was accommodatingly weak in all his arguments,

and the noble Papist battered him famously. But the Episcopal side

was on hand next month with a volume entitled "A Dialogue between a

Protestant Peer and an Irish Papist." Here the whole thing was reversed.

The noble was still victorious, but he had changed his religion; and

this time the Roman Catholic was feeble, and the Protestant stalwart. It

is worthy of remark, however, that in both cases the nobleman was on the

right side.

The Reverend Mr. Dexter thoroughly comprehends this ingenious method of

attack. Does he, for instance, desire to impress upon the mind of his

reader that it is in the highest degree criminal to wear kid gloves in

the street, he, by a happy accident, encounters on his way to the

office two persons conversing upon that important topic. He innocently

eavesdrops. The individual who advocates the wearing of gloves is (of

course) frivolous, fashionable, and feeble. His companion, who despises

such vanities, is poor, though honest,--brawny and impregnable. It is

wonderful how stupidly the kid-glove advocate reasons. The honest son

of toil overwhelms him in a few moments. When a man talks so splendidly

about the hard palm of labor being more useful to the world than the

silken fingers of the aristocrat, who would have the courage to reply?

The feeble aristocrat is (very properly) discomfited, and the curtain

falls amid applause from the gallery.

The reverend gentleman seems to combine with his talent for

eavesdropping a most remarkable good-fortune in the contrasts afforded

by the various interlocutors whose conversation he overhears. Whether

he is in a shop, or an omnibus, or on the sidewalk, he is certain to

encounter a foolish person and a sensible person (according to Mr.

Dexter's idea of sense) discussing some important social topic,--such

as, Whether dancing is criminal, or, Whether people should wear

stove-pipe hats. At the end of the discussion, the reverend listener

appears in a paragraph as the _deus ex machinâ_ of the drama, pats the

victorious sensible boy on the head, and treats the foolish boy with

silent contempt. It does not take much to win Mr. Dexter's approval. He

goes into rhapsodies over a rich man who insists on carrying home his

own bundle; while another purchaser, who is villain enough to desire his

parcel to be sent to his house, meets with all the scorn that he merits.

Our author takes cheerful views of life. He goes into State Street,

and, struck with the great crowds of people, asks the solemn question,

"Whither are they going?"--"To the open grave!" is his jocund reply. He,

in fact, sees nothing but a job for the undertaker in all the health and

life by which he is surrounded; and a file of schoolboys out for a

walk would doubtless to him be nothing more than the beginning of a

procession to Mount Auburn. The shop-keepers should beware of Mr.

Dexter. He is the avowed enemy of nice coats, kid gloves, silk dresses,

fine houses, and his proof-reader knows what other _et ceteras_ which

ignorant people have been in the habit of looking on as commodities

useful in helping trade, and consequently forwarding civilization.

We really thought that this shallow philosophy had completely died out,

and that every educated person had been brought to comprehend the uses

of Beauty and Luxury. Mr. Dexter's "Street Thoughts" is a silly proof

that there are men yet living whose theory of social ethics may

apparently be summed up thus: Live meanly, be afraid of God, and listen

at keyholes.

_The Mathematical Monthly_. Edited by J.D. RUNKLE, A.M., A.A.S. Nos.

I.-VII. October, 1858, to April, 1859. Cambridge: John Bartlett. 4to.

pp. 284.

The title of Mr. Runkle's Monthly is much drier than its table of

contents. He has aimed at interesting all classes of mathematicians, has

introduced problems and discussions intelligible to scholars in our High

Schools, and has also published contributions to the highest departments

of the science. Educational questions have great prominence on the pages

of his journal; he gives frequent notes upon the best modes of teaching

the elementary branches, and proposes to publish in a serial form

treatises adapted to use in the school-room. Every number of the

"Monthly" contains five prize problems for students. Nor are its pages

confined to topics strictly mathematical. The number for February

introduces a problem by a quotation from Longfellow's "Hiawatha";

another gives a list of fifty-five of the Asteroid group, with their

orbits, and the circumstances of their discovery. The March number

explains an ingenious holocryptic cipher, written with the English

alphabet, with no more letters than would be required for ordinary

writing, yet so curiously complicated, that, while with the key easy to

understand, it is without the key absolutely undecipherible, even to the

inventor of the plan; and the key is capable of so many variations, that

every pair of correspondents in Christendom may have their own cipher

practically different from all others. In the November and December

numbers, a popular account of Donati's Comet was given by Geo. P. Bond,

then assistant, now chief director of the Observatory at Cambridge. This

paper has been issued separately, very finely illustrated by twenty-one

cuts, and by two beautiful engravings. No papers, readily accessible to

the public, contain, in a form so entirely devoid of technicalities, and

so clearly illustrated to the eye, so much information relative to the

nature of cornels in general, and in particular to the phenomena of this

most beautiful comet of the present century.

The purely mathematical articles are all original, many are of great

value, and some are, to those who understand their secret meaning,

peculiarly interesting. A note of Peirce's, for example, in the number

for February, proposes two new symbols, one for the mystic ratio of

the circumference to the diameter, a second for the base of Napier's

logarithms,--and then, by joining them in an equation with the imaginary

symbol, expresses in a single sentence the mutual relation of the three

great talismans in the magic of modern science. Another article, in the

April number, by Chauncey Wright, contains a new view of the law of

Phyllotaxis, approaching it from an _a priori_ stand-point, and showing

that the natural arrangement of leaves about the stems of plants is

precisely that which will keep the leaves most perfectly distributed for

the reception of light and air.

We are glad to learn that a constantly increasing subscription-list,

both at home and abroad, shows, not only that Mr. Runkle judged wisely

in thinking such a journal needed, but also that the editorial office

has fallen upon the right man.

_Memoir and Letters of the late Thomas Seddon, Artist_, By his BROTHER.

London: 1858.

Associations are fast gathering round the English Pre-Raphaelites. Those

that come with honors and with death already belong to them. A permanent

influence is assured to the new school by a continuance of vigor, and by

the space which it already occupies in the history of Art. This little

volume is of interest as being the first of its biographies. Mr. Seddon

attained no wide reputation during his life, but he left a few pictures

of enduring value; and his early death was felt, by those who best knew

his powers and purposes, to be a great loss to Art.

He was the son of a cabinet-manufacturer, and was born in London in

1821. After receiving a good school-education, at the age of sixteen he

entered his father's work-rooms. He had already shown a decided love of

drawing. He had a quick perception of beauty, and excellent power of

observation. His disposition was serious, and his conscience sensitive;

but he had a pleasant vein of humor, and a generous nature. After some

years of irksome work, he was sent to Paris to perfect himself in the

arts of ornamentation, and his residence there seems to have confirmed

his taste for painting, to the practice of which he desired to devote

his life. But for the next ten years he was engaged in business, giving,

however, his evenings and his few vacations to the study and practice of

Art, and becoming more and more eager to leave an employment which was

wholly uncongenial to him. At length, in his thirtieth year, he was able

to begin his career as a professional artist. His experiences at first

differed but little from those of the common run of young painters; but

his fidelity in work, his conscientious rendering of the details of

Nature, and his sincerity of purpose, gave real worth even to his

earlier pictures, and brought him into relations of cordial

friendship with Holman Hunt, Madox Brown, and others of the heads of

Pre-Raphaelitism. After making a long visit, in company with Hunt,

for the purposes of study, to Egypt and Palestine, and painting a few

remarkable pictures, he returned home, and was married. Some months

afterward he set out again for the East, but had hardly reached Cairo

before he was seized with fatal illness. He died on the 23d of November,

1856,--just as he was grasping the fruit of years of labor and waiting.

The best part of the volume of memoirs is made up of Seddon's letters

from the East. They exhibit his character in a most agreeable light,

while, apart from any personal interest, they have a charm, as natural,

vivid delineations of Eastern scenery and modes of life. He saw with

a painter's eye, and he described what he saw clearly and vigorously,

showing in his letters the same traits which he displayed in his

pictures. Writing from his camping-ground on the edge of the Desert,

he says,--"The Pyramids and Sphinxes, in ordinary daylight, are merely

ugly, and do not look half as large as they ought to look from their

real size; but in particular effects of light and shade, with a fine

sunset behind them, for example, or when the sky lights up again, a

quarter or half an hour afterwards,--when long beams of rose-colored

light shoot up like a glory from behind the middle one into a sky of

the most lovely violet,--they then look imposing, with their huge black

masses against the flood of brilliant light behind."

Here is the first sight of Jerusalem:--"At length, about five o'clock,

after expecting, for the last half-hour, that every hill-side we climbed

would be the last, we came suddenly in full view of Jerusalem.--Few, I

think, however careless, have looked for the first time on this scene,

without some feelings of solemn awe. We read the accounts of all that

passed within or around these walls with something of the vagueness that

always veils the history of times that have gone by two thousand years

ago; but however soon the feeling may wear off or be cast away, it is

impossible, with the very spot before you where your Saviour lived and

died, not to feel vividly impressed with the actual reality of what we

have read of, and its intimate connection with ourselves.--But soon I

was struck with the very erroneous idea I had had of Jerusalem. From the

west it does not look at all like a city built on a hill; for, rather

below you, at the farther end of a barren plain, you see nothing but the

embattled walls of a feudal town, with one or two large buildings and a

minaret alone visible above them. To the right the ground dips into the

Valley of Hinnom,--but to the left it is level with the city-walls, and

its surface is covered with bare ribs of rock running along it; and it

is from this side that the Romans and Crusaders attacked. Behind the

city, rather to the north, lay the Mount of Olives, and the long,

straight lines of the Moab Mountains beyond the Dead Sea, stretching

from horizon to horizon, half-shadowy and veiled in mist, through which

they shone rosy in the evening's sunlight."

We have no space for further descriptions, excellent as they are. But

we make one or two extracts relating more immediately to Art and to

Seddon's views of the duties of an artist.

"I am sure that there is a great work to do, which wants every

laborer,--to show that Art's highest vocation is, to be the handmaid to

religion and purity, instead of to mere animal enjoyment and sensuality.

This is what the Pre-Raphaelites are really doing in various degrees,

but especially Hunt, who takes higher ground than mere morality, and

most manfully advocates its power and duty as an exponent of the higher

duties of religion."

"I hope I may be able to return to this place; for, to assist in

directing attention to Jerusalem, and thus to render the Bible more

easily understood, seems to me to be a humble way in which, perhaps, I

may aid in doing some good."

Here is a portion of a letter written in England:--"The railway from

Farnborough went through a most beautiful country,--by Guildford,

Dorking, and Boxhill. While I was at Farnborough, on the bridge,

sketching, a respectably-dressed man came up and touched his hat. After

standing a minute or two, he said, 'So you are doing something in my

line, Sir?'--'What!' said I, 'are you an artist?'--'Well, Sir, I cannot

venture to call myself an artist, but I gets my living by making

drawings. I makes 'em in pencil.'--I asked him if he took portraits.--'I

does every line, portraits and all; but I don't get many portraits since

the daguerreotype came in. No, Sir, my drawings are principally in the

sporting line. I does portraits of gentlemen going over a fence or a

five-barred gate. I does 'em all in pencil, and puts a little color on

their faces, but all the rest in pencil,--d'ye see?'--'Yes; but do you

make a good living?'--'Well, not much of that; I used to earn a good

deal more money when I did portraits at sixpence each than I do now.'--I

said, 'I suppose you begin to see that you can do better, and it takes

you longer.'--'That's just it; you've hit it, Sir. I used to knock them

off in a quarter or half an hour, and now it takes me seven or eight

days to do a sporting piece.'--So I told the poor man that I would

willingly give him advice, but I was afraid it would ruin him

completely, for that afterwards he would have to take two or three

months.--'Yes, Sir, I sees that; but I am too old now to learn a new

line. But I find trees very hard; I can't manage them.'--So I sat down,

and drew a branch of a tree, which he said was very much in his style;

and I gave him some advice which I thought might help him, and the good

man went away so much obliged."

When the news of Mr. Seddon's death reached England, it was at once felt

by his friends that it was due to his memory that the public should be

made better acquainted with the excellence of his works. An exhibition

of them was accordingly made, and a subscription raised for the benefit

of his widow, by purchasing his large picture of Jerusalem, to be

presented to the National Gallery. The subscription was successful, and

Seddon's fame is secure.

"Mr. Seddon's works," says Mr. Ruskin, "are the first which represent

a truly historic landscape Art; that is to say, they are the first

landscapes uniting perfect artistical skill with topographical

accuracy,--being directed with stern self-restraint to no other purpose

than that of giving to persons who cannot travel trustworthy knowledge

of the scenes which ought to be most interesting to them. Whatever

degrees of truth may have been attempted or attained by previous artists

have been more or less subordinate to pictorial or dramatic effect. In

Mr. Seddon's works, the primal object is to place the spectator, as far

as Art can do, in the scene represented, and to give him the perfect

sensation of its reality, wholly unmodified by the artist's execution."

Mr. Ruskin's judgment will not be questioned by those who have seen

Seddon's pictures. But it might also be added, that such accuracy as he

attained is by no means the result of mere laborious and conscientious

copying, but implies and requires the possession of strong and

well-balanced imagination.

We trust that the extracts we have given may lead lovers of Art to read

the whole of the little volume from which they are taken.

_Passages from my Autobiography_. By SYDNEY, LADY MORGAN. New York: D.

Appleton & Co. 1859.

Aged sportiveness is not seductive, and we do not become slaves at the

tap of a fan, when the hand that holds it is palsied and withered. We

have in the volume before us the melancholy spectacle of an aged female

of quality setting her cap at everybody.

When an old woman makes up her mind to be young, she invariably overdoes

it. The gypsy horse-dealers, when they have a particularly ancient horse

to dispose of administer a nostrum to the animal, which has the effect

of keeping him continually in motion, and bestowing on him a temporary

vivacity which a colt would hardly exhibit. Lady Morgan is unnecessarily

frisky. The gypsy's horse, when the effect of the medicine has passed

off, becomes more aged and infirm than ever. What a terrible reaction

must have been the lot of this old lady, after all the capers she had

cut in these passages from her autobiography!

A great, great, great, long time ago, as the story-tellers say, when

novels were few and far between, and an Irish novel was a thing almost

unheard of, a smart, self-educated Irish girl, of, we believe, rather

humble origin, discovered that she had a knack at writing, and, having

published a cleverish novel, called "The Wild Irish Girl," was taken

up by great people, exploited, made the fashion, and had Sir Charles

Morgan, a physician of some standing, given her for a husband. She

continued to write. Her work on France made some noise, on account of

its having been prohibited by the French government; and her subsequent

book on Italy, if not profound, was at least sprightly. Her Irish novels

were, however, her best productions. There is considerable observation,

and some feeling, displayed in them. Her knowledge of Irish society

is very exact, and her pictures of it very slightly exaggerated. "The

O'Briens and O'Flahertys" and "Florence MacCarthy" are, perhaps, the

best of her works of fiction. At this period, Lady Morgan possessed a

rather interesting appearance, great audacity, and a certain reckless

style of conversation, which was found to be piquant by the jaded

gossips of the metropolis. She was taken up by London society,--which

must always be taking up something, whether it be a chimney-sweep that

composes music, or an elephant that dances the _valse à deux temps_;

and she fluttered from party to party, a sort of Tom Moore in

petticoats,--with this difference, that Moore left his meek little wife

at home, while Lady Morgan trotted her husband out after her on all

occasions. It is amusing to observe what pains the poor woman takes to

persuade us that Sir Charles is a monstrous clever man. Betsy Trotwood

never labored harder to convince the world of the merits of Mr. Dick,

than Lady Morgan does to obtain a place for her husband as a learned

philosopher who was in advance of his age, or, as she prettily expresses

it in French; (she likes to parade her French, this excellent wife,)

"_il devançait son siècle_." This mania for inlaying her writing with

French scraps rises with her Ladyship to a species of insanity. "_Est

il possible_ that I am going to Italy?" she exclaims. How much more

forcible is this than the vulgar "Is it possible?" When the Duke of

Sussex comes into a party, he does not excite anything so common-place

as a great sensation; no,--it is a "_grand mouvement_!" Praise bestowed

on her is an "_éloge_." She would not condescend to speak of such things

as folding-doors,--they are better as "_grands battants_." A change of

scene is a "_changement de décoration_." Mrs. Opie, whom she sees at a

party, is not in full dress, but "_en grand costume_." The three Messrs.

Lygon look very "_hautain_." And while driving with Lady Charleville,

instead of having a charming conversation on the road, her Ladyship

has it "_chemin faisant_." _Allons_, mi lady! you prefer that style of

writing. _Chacun à son gout!_ _Mais_ we, _nous autres_, love _mieux_ the

plain old Saxon _langue_.

If Lady Morgan had called this volume "Passages from my Card-Basket,"

there would have been some harmony between the title and the contents.

The three hundred and eighty-two pages are for the most part taken up

with frivolous notes from great people, either inviting her Ladyship to

parties or apologizing for not having called. These are interspersed

with a number of philoprogenitive letters to Lady Clarke,--her

Ladyship's sister,--in which, being childless herself, she expends all

her bottled-up maternity on her nephews and nieces. The little pieces of

autobiography scattered here and there are painfully vivacious. The poor

old lady smirks and capers and ogles, until one becomes sick of this

sexagenarian agility. Paris beheld no more melancholy spectacle than

that of poor old Madame Saqui dancing on the tight-rope for a living at

the age of eighty-five, and displaying her withered limbs and long

white hair to a curious public. We do not feel any particular degree

of veneration for that Countess of Desmond "who lived to the age of a

hundred and ten, and died of a fall from a cherry-tree then," as Mr.

Thomas Moore sings. Well, Lady Morgan dances on any amount of literary

tight-ropes, and climbs any number of intellectual cherry-trees. It is

a sight more surprising than pleasant; and her Ladyship must not be

astonished that the critics should not treat her with the respect due to

her age, when she herself labors so hard to make them forget it.

_Bitter-Sweet. A Poem_. By J.G. HOLLAND, Author of "The Bay Path,"

"Titcomb's Letters," etc. New York: Charles Scribner, 124 Grand Street.

pp. 220. 1859.

Unexpectedness is an essential element of wit,--perhaps, also, of

pleasure; and it is the ill-fortune of professional reviewers, not only

that surprise is necessarily something as rare with them as a June

frost, but that loyalty to their extemporized omniscience should forbid

them to acknowledge, even if they felt, so fallible an emotion.

Unexpectedness is also one of the prime components of that singular

product called Poetry; and, accordingly, the much-enduring man whose

finger-ends have skimmed many volumes and many manners of verse may be

pardoned the involuntary bull of not greatly expecting to stumble

upon it in any such quarter. Shall we, then, be so untrue to our

craft,--shall we, in short, be so unguardedly natural, as to confess

that "Bitter-Sweet" has surprised us? It is truly an original poem,--as

genuine a product of our soil as a golden-rod or an aster. It is as

purely American,--nay, more than that,--as purely New-English,--as the

poems of Burns are Scotch. We read ourselves gradually back to our

boyhood in it, and were aware of a flavor in it deliciously local and

familiar,--a kind of sour-sweet, as in a _frozen-thaw_ apple. From

the title to the last line, it is delightfully characteristic. The

family-party met for Thanksgiving can hit on no better way to be jolly

than in a discussion of the Origin of Evil,--and the Yankee husband (a

shooting-star in the quiet heaven of village morals) about to run away

from his wife can be content with no less comet-like vehicle than

a balloon. The poem is Yankee, even to the questionable extent of

substituting "locality" for "scene" in the stage-directions; and we feel

sure that none of the characters ever went to bed in their lives, but

always sidled through the more decorous subterfuge of "retiring."

We could easily show that "Bitter-Sweet" was not this and that and

t'other, but, after all said and done, it would remain an obstinately

charming little book. It is not free from faults of taste, nor from a

certain commonplaceness of metre; but Mr. Holland always saves himself

in some expression so simply poetical, some image so fresh and natural,

the harvest of his own heart and eye, that we are ready to forgive

him all faults, in our thankfulness at finding the soul of Theocritus

transmigrated into the body of a Yankee.

It would seem the simplest thing in the world to be able to help

yourself to what lies all around you ready to your hand; but writers

of verse commonly find it a difficult, if not impossible, thing to do.

Conscious that a certain remoteness from ordinary life is essential in

poetry, they aim at it by laying their scenes far away in time, and

taking their images from far away in space,--thus contriving to be

foreign at once to their century and their country. Such self-made

exiles and aliens are never repatriated by posterity. It is only here

and there that a man is found, like Hawthorne, Judd, and Mr. Holland,

who discovers or instinctively feels that this remoteness is attained,

and attainable only, by lifting up and transfiguring the ordinary and

familiar with the _mirage_ of the ideal. We mean it as very high praise,

when we say that "Bitter-Sweet" is one of the few books that have found

the secret of drawing up and assimilating the juices of this New World

of ours.

_The Mustee; or, Love and Liberty_. By B.F. PRESBURY. Boston: Shepard,

Clark, & Brown. 12mo.

The plot of this novel is open to criticism, and we might take exception

to some of the opinions expressed in it; but it is evidently the work of

a thoughtful and scholarly mind and benevolent heart,--is exceedingly

well written, shows a great deal of power in the delineation both of

ideal and humorous character, and includes some scenes of the most

absorbing dramatic interest. The character of Featherstone is admirably

drawn, and Bill Frink is a positive addition to the literature of

American low life. We commend him to our Southern friends, as an example

of one of the most peculiar products of their peculiar institution. The

author of the novel has lived at the South, and his descriptions of

slavery display accurate observation, candid judgment, and a vivid power

of pictorial representation. The scenes in New Orleans are all good; and

in few novels of the present day is there a finer instance of animated

narration than the account of Flora's escape from slavery. The incidents

are so managed that the reader is kept in breathless suspense to the

end, with sympathies excited almost to pain, as one circumstance after

another seems to threaten the capture of the beautiful fugitive. Though

the book belongs to the class of anti-slavery novels, it is not confined

to the subject of slavery, but includes a consideration of almost all

the "exciting topics" of the day, and treats of them all with singular

conscientiousness of spirit and vigor of thought.

_Rowse's Portrait of Emerson_. Published in Photograph. Boston: Williams

& Everett.

_Durand's Portrait of Bryant_. Engraved by Schoff & Jones. New York:

Published by the Century Club.

_Barry's Portrait of Whittier_. Published in Photograph. Boston:

Brainard.

Almost one of the lost arts is that of portraiture. Raised by Titian and

his contemporaries to the position of one of the noblest walks of Art,

and in the generations following depressed to the position of minister

to vanity and foolish pride, it has remained, during the most of the

years since, one of the lowest and least reputable of the fields

of artistic labor. The lost vein was broken into by Reynolds and

Gainsborough, who left a golden glory in all they did for us; but no

one came to inherit, and in England no one has since appeared worthy of

comparison with them. In all Europe there is no school of portraiture

worth notice; the so-called portrait-painters are only likeness-makers,

comparing with the true portraitist as a topographical draughtsman does

with a landscape artist. The intellectual elements of the artistic

character, which successful portraiture insists on, are some of its very

greatest,--if we admit, as it seems to us that we must, that imagination

is not strictly intellectual, but an inspiration, an exaltation of the

whole nature. To paint a great man, one must not merely comprehend

that he is great, but must in some sense rise up by the side of, and

sympathize with, his greatness,--must enter into and identify himself

with some essential quality of his character, which quality will be the

theme of his portrait. So it inevitably follows that the greatness of

the artist is the limitation of his art,--that he expresses in his work

himself as much as his subject, but no more of the latter than he can

comprehend and appreciate.

The distinction between the true and the false portraitist is that

between expression of something felt and representation of something

seen; and as the subtilest and noblest part of the human soul can only

be felt, as the signs of it in the face can be recognized and translated

only by sympathy, so no mere painter can ever succeed in expressing in

its fulness the character of any great man. The lines in which holiest

passion, subtilest thought, divinest activity have recorded in the face

their existence and presence, are hieroglyphs unintelligible to one who

has not kindled with that passion, been rapt in that thought, or swept

away in sympathy with that activity; he may follow the lines, but must

certainly miss their meaning. A successful portrait implies an equality,

in some sense, between the artist and his original. The greatest of

artists fail most completely in painting people with whom they have no

sympathy, and only the mechanical painter succeeds alike with all,--the

fair average of his works being a general levelling of his subjects; the

great successes of the genuine artist being as surely offset (if one

success _can_ find offset in a thousand failures) by as absolute and

extreme failure.

As regards portraiture in general, the public may, without injury to Art

or history, employ the painters who make the prettiest pictures of them;

it doesn't matter to the future, if Mr. Jenkins, or even the Hon. Mr.

Twaddle, has employed the promising Mr. Mahlstock to perpetuate him

with a hundred transitory and borrowed graces,--if the talented young

_littérateur_, Mr. Simeah, has been found by his limner to resemble

Lord Byron amazingly, and has in consequence consented to sit for a

half-length, to be done _à la Corsair_, etc., etc.; but for our men of

thought, for those whose works will stand to all time as the signals

pointing out the road a nation followed, whose presence and acts shall

be our intellectual history,--it is of some little moment that these

should be given to us in such visible form, that men shall not

conjecture, a thousand years hence, if Emerson were really a man, or

a name under which some metaphysical club chose to publish their

philosophies. In psychological history, portraits are as necessary

as dates; and one of the most valuable gifts to an age is a great

portrait-painter,--a Titian, a Gainsborough, a Reynolds, or a

Page,--which last has more of the Titianesque character than any one who

has painted since the great Venetians lived, and few, indeed, are the

generations so endowed.

Beside this full insight and representation of character, which makes

the ideal portraiture, we have the less complete, but only in degree

less valuable, apprehension which results from a point of sympathy,

a likeness of liking in one or more fields of thought, a common

sensitiveness, a common interest; and the rarer sympathy between artist

and subject, of that intimacy and complete understanding of personal

character, which, even where no great talent exists in the artist, gives

a unique value to his work, but which, where the intimacy is that of

great minds, gives us works on which no dilettanteism, even, makes a

criticism,--as in that portrait of Dante by Giotto, to our mind the

portrait _par excellence_ of past time.

In the three admirable portraits whose titles stand at the head of our

notice, we have in one way and another all of the conditions we have

spoken of fulfilled. Rowse's portrait of Emerson is one of the most

masterly and subtile records of the character of a signal man, nay,

the most masterly, we have ever seen. Those who know Emerson best

will recognize him most fully in it. It represents him in his most

characteristic mood, the subtile intelligence mingling with the kindly

humor in his face, thoughtful, cordial, philosophic. The portrait is not

more happy in the comprehension of character than in the rendering of

it, and is as masterly technically as it is grandly characteristic. An

eminent English poet, who knows Emerson well, says of it, justly,--"It

is the best portrait I have ever seen of any man"; and we say of it,

without any hesitation, that no living man, except, _perhaps_, William

Page, is capable, at his best moment, of such a success.

In Barry's portrait of Whittier it is easy to see the points of contact

between the characters of the artist and the poet-subject, in the

sensitiveness shown in the lines of the mouth in the drawing, in the

delicacy of organization which has wasted the cheek and left the eye

burning with undimmed brilliancy in the sunken socket, the fervent,

earnest face, defying age to affect its expressiveness, as the heart it

manifests defies the chill of time. It is an exceedingly interesting

drawing, and one by which those who love the poet are willing to have

him seen by the future. It must remain as the only and sufficient record

of Whittier's _personnel_.

In the portrait of Bryant we have the results of an intimacy of the most

cordial kind, of years' duration,--an almost absolute unity of sentiment

and similarity of habits of regarding the things most interesting to

each. Of nearly the same age, Bryant and Durand have grown old together,

loving the same Nature, and regarding it with the same eyes,--the

painter catching inspiration from the poet's themes, and the poet in

turn getting new insight into the mystery of the outer world through the

painter's eyes. Bryant's face has been a Sphinx's riddle to our best

painters; none have succeeded in rendering its severe simplicity, and

clear, self-disciplined expression, until Durand tried it with a

success which renders the picture interesting evermore as a tribute of

friendship as well as a solution of a difficult problem. The artist's

hand was directed by a more than ordinary understanding of the lines it

drew; it has not varied in a line from reverence for the verisimilitude

the world had a right to insist on; it has not flattered or softened,

but is simply, completely, absolutely, true. Bryant's face has an

immovable tranquillity, a reserve and impassiveness, which yet are not

coldness; the clear gray eye calmly looks through and through you, but

permits no intelligence of what is passing behind it to come out to you.

It is such a face as one of the old Greek kings might have had, as he

sat administering justice. All this, it seems to us, Durand's picture

gives. It looks out at you impassive, penetrating, as though it would

hear all and tell nothing,--a strong, self-continent, completely

balanced character,--unshrinking, unyielding, yet without being

unsensitive,--concentrated, justly poised, and intense, without being

passionate. The head is admirably engraved, though we do not at all

fancy the way in which the background is done; it is heavy, formal, and

unartistic,--but this may be matter of choice.

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[Transcriber's note: Final page missing in original.]