I should like to see such an advertisement, I say, Sir! Now, what's the

use of using the words that belonged with the thumb-screws, and the

Blessed Virgin with the knives under her petticoats and sleeves and

bodice, and the _dry pan and gradual fire_, if we can't have the things

themselves, Sir? What's the use of _painting_ the fire round a poor

fellow, when you think it won't do to kindle one under him,--as they did

at Valencia or Valladolid, or wherever it was?

--What story is that?--I said.

Why,--he answered,--at the last _auto-da-fé_, in 1824 or '5, or

somewhere there,--it's a traveller's story, but a mighty knowing

traveller he is,--they had a "heretic" to use up according to the

statutes provided for the crime of private opinion. They couldn't quite

make up their minds to burn him, so they only _hung_ him in a hogshead

painted all over with flames!

No, Sir! when a man calls you names because you go to the ballot-box and

vote for your candidate, or because you say this or that is your

opinion, he forgets in which half of the world he was born, Sir! It

won't be long, Sir, before we have Americanized religion as we have

Americanized government; and then, Sir, every soul God sends into the

world will be good in the face of all men for just so much of His

"inspiration" as "giveth him understanding"!--None of my words, Sir!

none of my words!

--If Iris does not love this little gentleman, what does love look like

when one sees it? She follows him with her eyes, she leans over toward

him when he speaks, her face changes with the changes of his speech, so

that one might think it was with her as with Christabel,--

That all her features were resigned

To this sole image in her mind.

But she never looks at him with such intensity of devotion as when he

says anything about the soul and the soul's atmosphere, religion.

Women are twice as religious as men;--all the world knows that. Whether

they are any _better_, in the eyes of Absolute Justice, might be

questioned; for the additional religious element supplied by sex hardly

seems to be a matter of praise or blame. But in all common aspects they

are so much above us that we get most of our religion from them,--from

their teachings, from their example,--above all, from their pure

affections.

Now this poor little Iris had been talked to strangely in her childhood.

Especially she had been told that she hated all good things,--which

every sensible parent knows well enough is not true of a great many

children, to say the least. I have sometimes questioned whether many

libels on human nature had not been a natural consequence of the

celibacy of the clergy, which was enforced for so long a period.

The child had met this and some other equally encouraging statements as

to her spiritual conditions, early in life, and fought the battle of

spiritual independence prematurely, as many children do. If all she did

was hateful to God, what was the meaning of the approving or else the

disapproving conscience, when she had done "right" or "wrong"? No

"shoulder-striker" hits out straighter than a child with its logic. Why,

I can remember lying in my bed in the nursery and settling questions

which all that I have heard since and got out of books has never been

able to raise again. If a child does not assert itself in this way in

good season, it becomes just what its parents or teachers were, and is

no better than a plaster image.--How old was I at the time? I suppose

about 5823 years old,--that is, counting from Archbishop Usher's date of

the Creation, and adding the life of the race, whose accumulated

intelligence is a part of my inheritance, to my own. A good deal older

than Plato, you see, and much more experienced than my Lord Bacon and

most of the world's teachers.--Old books are books of the world's youth,

and new books are fruits of its age. How many of all these old folios

round me are like so many old cupels! The gold has passed out of them

long ago, but their pores are full of the dross with which it was

mingled.

And so Iris--having thrown off that first lasso, which not only fetters,

but _chokes_ those whom it can hold, so that they give themselves up

trembling and breathless to the great soul-subduer, who has them by the

windpipe--had settled a brief creed for herself, in which love of the

neighbor, whom we have seen, was the first article, and love of the

Creator, whom we have not seen, grew out of this as its natural

development, being necessarily second in order of time to the first

unselfish emotions which we feel for the fellow-creatures who surround

us in our early years.

The child must have some place to worship. What would a young girl be

who never mingled her voice with the songs and prayers that rose all

around her with every returning day of rest? And Iris was free to

choose. Sometimes one and sometimes another would offer to carry her to

this or that place of worship; and when the doors were hospitably

opened, she would often go meekly in by herself. It was a curious fact,

that two churches as remote from each other in doctrine as could well be

divided her affections.

The Church of Saint Polycarp had very much the look of a Roman Catholic

chapel. I do not wish to run the risk of giving names to the

ecclesiastical furniture which gave it such a Romish aspect; but there

were pictures, and inscriptions in antiquated characters, and there were

reading-stands, and flowers on the altar, and other elegant

arrangements. Then there were boys to sing alternately in choirs

responsive to each other, and there was much bowing, with very loud

responding, and a long service and a short sermon, and a bag, such as

Judas used to hold in the old pictures, was carried round to receive

contributions. Everything was done not only "decently and in order,"

but, perhaps one might say, with a certain air of magnifying their

office on the part of the dignified clergymen, often two or three in

number. The music and the free welcome were grateful to Iris, and she

forgot her prejudices at the door of the chapel. For this was a church

with open doors, with seats for all classes and all colors alike,--a

church of zealous worshippers after their faith, of charitable and

serviceable men and women, one that took care of its children and never

forgot its poor, and whose people were much more occupied in looking out

for their own souls than in attacking the faith of their neighbors. In

its mode of worship there was a union of two qualities,--the taste and

refinement, which the educated require just as much in their churches as

else where, and the air of stateliness, almost of pomp, which impresses

the common worshipper, and is often not without its effect upon those

who think they hold outward forms as of little value. Under the

half-Romish aspect of the Church of Saint Polycarp, the young girl found

a devout and loving and singularly cheerful religious spirit. The

artistic sense, which betrayed itself in the dramatic proprieties of its

ritual, harmonized with her taste. The mingled murmur of the loud

responses, in those rhythmic phrases, so simple, yet so fervent, almost

as if every tenth heartbeat, instead of its dull _tic-tac_, articulated

itself as "Good Lord, deliver us!"--the sweet alternation of the two

choirs, as their holy song floated from side to side,--the keen young

voices rising like a flight of singing-birds that passes from one grove

to another, carrying its music with it back and forward,--why should she

not love these gracious outward signs of those inner harmonies which

none could deny made beautiful the lives of many of her

fellow-worshippers in the humble, yet not inelegant Chapel of Saint

Polycarp?

The young Marylander, who was born and bred to that mode of worship, had

introduced her to the chapel, for which he did the honors for such of

our boarders as were not otherwise provided for. I saw them looking over

the same prayer-book one Sunday, and I could not help thinking that two

such young and handsome persons could hardly worship together in safety

for a great while. But they seemed to mind nothing but their

prayer-book. By-and-by the silken bag was handed round.--I don't believe

she will;--so awkward, you know;--besides, she only came by invitation.

There she is, with her hand in her pocket, though,--and sure enough, her

little bit of silver tinkled as it struck the coin beneath. God bless

her! she hasn't much to give; but her eye glistens when she gives it,

and that is all Heaven asks.--That was the first time I noticed these

young people together, and I am sure they behaved with the most charming

propriety,--in fact, there was one of our silent lady-boarders with

them, whose eyes would have kept Cupid and Psyche to their good

behavior. A day or two after this I noticed that the young gentleman had

left his seat, which you may remember was at the corner diagonal to that

of Iris, so that they have been as far removed from each other as they

could be at the table. His new seat is three or four places farther down

the table. Of course I made a romance out of this, at once. So stupid

not to see it! How could it be otherwise?--Did you speak, Madam? I beg

your pardon. (To my lady-reader.)

I never saw anything like the tenderness with which this young girl

treats her little deformed neighbor. If he were in the way of going to

church, I know she would follow him. But his worship, if any, is not

with the throng of men and women and staring children.

I, the Professor, on the other hand, am a regular church-goer. I should

go for various reasons, if I did not love it; but I am happy enough to

find great pleasure in the midst of devout multitudes, whether I can

accept all their creeds or not. One place of worship comes nearer than

the rest to my ideal standard, and to this it was that I carried our

young girl.

The Church of the Galileans, as it is called, is even humbler in outside

pretensions than the Church of Saint Polycarp. Like that, it is open to

all comers. The stranger who approaches it looks down a quiet street and

sees the plainest of chapels,--a kind of wooden tent, that owes whatever

grace it has to its pointed windows and the high, sharp roof,--traces,

both, of that upward movement of ecclesiastical architecture which

soared aloft in cathedral-spires, shooting into the sky as the spike of

a flowering aloe from the cluster of broad, sharp-wedged leaves below.

This suggestion of mediæval symbolism, aided by a minute turret in which

a hand-bell might have hung and found just room enough to turn over, was

all of outward show the small edifice could boast. Within there was very

little that pretended to be attractive. A small organ at one side, and a

plain pulpit, showed that the building was a church; but it was a church

reduced to its simplest expression.

Yet when the great and wise monarch of the East sat upon his throne, in

all the golden blaze of the spoils of Ophir and the freights of the navy

of Tarshish, his glory was not like that of this simple chapel in its

Sunday garniture. For the lilies of the field, in their season, and the

fairest flowers of the year, in due succession, were clustered every

Sunday morning over the preacher's desk. Slight, thin-tissued blossoms

of pink and blue and virgin white in early spring, then the

full-breasted and deep-hearted roses of summer, then the velvet-robed

crimson and yellow flowers of autumn, and in the winter delicate exotics

that grew under skies of glass in the false summers of our crystal

palaces without knowing that it was the dreadful winter of New England

which was rattling the doors and frosting the panes,--the whole year

told its history of life and growth and beauty from that simple desk.

There was always at least one good sermon,--this floral homily. There

was at least one good prayer,--that brief space when all were silent,

after the manner of the Friends at their devotions.

Here, too, Iris found an atmosphere of peace and love. The same gentle,

thoughtful faces, the same cheerful but reverential spirit, the same

quiet, the same life of active benevolence. But in all else how

different from the Church of Saint Polycarp! No clerical costume, no

ceremonial forms, no carefully trained choirs. A liturgy they have, to

be sure, which does not scruple to borrow from the time-honored manuals

of devotion, but also does not hesitate to change its expressions to its

own liking.

Perhaps the good people seem a little easy with each other;--they are

apt to nod cheerfully, and have even been known to whisper before the

minister came in. But it is a relief to get rid of that old

Sunday--no,--_Sabbath_ face, which suggests the idea that the first day

of the week is commemorative of some most mournful event. The truth is,

these people meet very much as a family does for its devotions, not

putting off their humanity in the least, considering it on the whole

quite a cheerful matter to come together for prayer and song and good

counsel from kind and wise lips. And if they are freer in their demeanor

than some very precise congregations, they have not the air of a worldly

set of people. Clearly they have _not_ come to advertise their tailors

and milliners, nor for the sake of exchanging criticisms on the literary

character of the sermon they may hear. There is no restlessness and no

restraint among this quiet, cheerful people. One thing that keeps them

calm and happy during the season so evidently trying to many

congregations is, that they join very generally in the singing. In this

way they get rid of that accumulated nervous force which escapes in all

sorts of fidgety movements, so that a minister trying to keep his

congregation still reminds one of a boy with his hand over the nose of a

pump which another boy is working,--this spirting impatience of the

people is so like the jets that find their way through his fingers, and

the grand rush out at the final Amen! has such a wonderful likeness to

the gush that takes place when the boy pulls his hand away, with such

immense relief, as it seems, to both the pump and the officiating

youngster.

How sweet is this blending of all voices and all hearts in one common

song of praise! Some will sing a little loud, perhaps,--and now and then

an impatient chorister will get a syllable or two in advance, or an

enchanted singer so lose all thought of time and place in the luxury of

a closing cadence that he holds on to the last semibreve upon his

private responsibility; but how much more of the spirit of the old

Psalmist in the music of these imperfectly trained voices than in the

academic niceties of the paid performers who take our musical worship

out of our hands!

I am of the opinion that the creed of the Church of the Galileans is not

quite so precisely laid down as that of the Church of Saint Polycarp.

Yet I suspect, if one of the good people from each of those churches had

met over the bed of a suffering fellow-creature, or for the promotion of

any charitable object, they would have found they had more in common

than all the special beliefs or want of beliefs that separated them

would amount to. There are always many who believe that the fruits of a

tree afford a better test of its condition than a statement of the

composts with which it is dressed,--though the last has its meaning and

importance, no doubt.

Between these two churches, then, our young Iris divides her affections.

But I doubt if she listens to the preacher at either with more devotion

than she does to her little neighbor when he talks of these matters.

What does he believe? In the first place, there is some deep-rooted

disquiet lying at the bottom of his soul, which makes him very bitter

against all kinds of usurpation over the right of private judgment. Over

this seems to lie a certain tenderness for humanity in general, bred out

of life-long trial, I should say, but sharply streaked with fiery lines

of wrath at various individual acts of wrong, especially if they come in

an ecclesiastical shape, and recall to him the days when his mother's

great-grandmother was strangled on Witch Hill, with a text from the Old

Testament for her halter. With all this, he has a boundless belief in

the future of this experimental hemisphere, and especially in the

destiny of the free thought of its northeastern metropolis.

--A man can see further, Sir,--he said one day,--from the top of Boston

State-House, and see more that is worth seeing, than from all the

pyramids and turrets and steeples in all the places in the world! No

smoke, Sir; no fog, Sir; and a clean sweep from the Outer Light and the

sea beyond it to the New Hampshire mountains! Yes, Sir,--and there are

great truths that are higher than mountains and broader than seas, that

people are looking for from the tops of these hills of ours,--such as

the world never saw, though it might have seen them at Jerusalem, if its

eyes had been open!--Where do they have most crazy people? Tell me that,

Sir!

I answered, that I had heard it said there were more in New England than

in most countries, perhaps more than in any part of the world.

Very good. Sir,--he answered.--When have there been most people killed

and wounded in the course of this century?

During the wars of the French Empire, no doubt,--I said.

That's it! that's it!--said the little gentleman;--where the battle of

intelligence is fought, there are most minds bruised and broken! We're

battling for a faith here, Sir.

The divinity-student remarked, that it was rather late in the world's

history for men to be looking out for a new faith.

I didn't say a new faith,--said the little gentleman;--old or new, it

can't help being different here in this American mind of ours from

anything that ever was before; the _people_ are new, Sir, and that makes

the difference. One load of corn goes to the sty, and makes the fat of

swine,--another goes to the farm-house, and becomes the muscle that

clothes the right arms of heroes. It isn't where a pawn stands on the

board that makes the difference, but what the game round it is when it

is on this or that square.

Can any man look round and see what Christian countries are now doing,

and how they are governed, and what is the general condition of society,

without seeing that Christianity is the flag under which the world

sails, and not the rudder that steers its course? No, Sir! There was a

great raft built about two thousand years ago,--call it an ark,

rather,--the world's great ark! big enough to hold all mankind, and made

to be launched right out into the open waves of life,--and here it has

been lying, one end on the shore and one end bobbing up and down in the

water, men fighting all the time as to who should be captain and who

should have the state-rooms, and throwing each other over the side

because they could not agree about the points of compass, but the great

vessel never gelling afloat with its freight of nations and their

rulers;--and now, Sir, there is and has been for this long time a fleet

of "heretic" lighters sailing out of Boston Bay, and they have been

saying, and they say now, and they mean to keep saying, "Pump out your

bilge-water, shovel over your loads of idle ballast, get out your old

rotten cargo, and we will carry it out into deep waters and sink it

where it will never be seen again; so shall the ark of the world's hope

float on the ocean, instead of sticking in the dock-mud where it is

lying!"

It's a slow business, this of getting the ark launched. The Jordan

wasn't deep enough, and the Tiber wasn't deep enough, and the Rhone

wasn't deep enough, and the Thames wasn't deep enough,--and perhaps the

Charles isn't deep enough; but I don't feel sure of that, Sir, and I

love to hear the workmen knocking at the old blocks of tradition and

making the ways smooth with the oil of the Good Samaritan. I don't know,

Sir,--but I do think she stirs a little,--I do believe she slides;--and

when I think of what a work that is for the dear old three-breasted

mother of American liberty, I would not take all the glory of all the

greatest cities in the world for my birthright in the soil of little

Boston!

--Some of us could not help smiling at this burst of local patriotism,

especially when it finished with the last two words.

And Iris smiled, too. But it was the radiant smile of pleasure which

always lights up her face when her little neighbor gets excited on the

great topics of progress in freedom and religion, and especially on the

part which, as he pleases himself with believing, his own city is to

take in that consummation of human development to which he looks

forward.

Presently she looked into his face with a changed expression,--the

anxiety of a mother that sees her child suffering.

You are not well,--she said.

I am never well,--he answered.--His eyes fell mechanically on the

death's-head ring he wore on his right hand. She took his hand as if it

had been a baby's, and turned the grim device so that it should be out

of sight. One slight, sad, slow movement of the head seemed to say, "The

death-symbol is still there!"

A very odd personage, to be sure! Seems to know what is going on,--reads

books, old and new,--has many recent publications sent him, they tell

me,--but, what is more curious, keeps up with the every-day affairs of

the world, too. Whether he hears everything that is said with

preternatural acuteness, or whether some confidential friend visits him

in a quiet way, is more than I can tell. I can make nothing more of the

noises I hear in his room than my old conjectures. The movements I

mention are less frequent, but I often hear the plaintive cry,--I

observe that it is rarely laughing of late;--I never have detected one

articulate word, but I never heard such tones from anything but a human

voice.

There has been, of late, a deference approaching to tenderness, on the

part of the boarders generally, so far as he is concerned. This is

doubtless owing to the air of suffering which seems to have saddened his

look of late. Either some passion is gnawing at him inwardly, or some

hidden disease is at work upon him.

--What's the matter with Little Boston?--said the young man John to me

one day.--There a'n't much of him, anyhow; but 't seems to me he looks

peakeder than ever. The old woman says he's in a bad way, 'n' wants a

nuss to take care of him. Them nusses that take care of old rich folks

marry 'em sometimes,--'n' they don't commonly live a great while after

that. _No, Sir!_ I don't see what he wants to die for, after he's taken

so much trouble to live in such poor accommodations as that crooked body

of his. I should like to know how his soul crawled into it, 'n' how it's

goin' to get out. What business has he to die, I should like to know?

Let Ma'am Allen (the gentleman with the _diamond_) die, if he likes, and

be (this is a family-magazine); but we a'n't goin' to have _him_ dyin'.

Not by a great sight. Can't do without him anyhow. A'n't it fun to hear

him blow off his steam?

I believe the young fellow would take it as a personal insult, if the

little gentleman should show any symptoms of quitting our table for a

better world.

--In the mean time, what with going to church in company with our young

lady, and taking every chance I could get to talk with her, I have found

myself becoming, I will not say intimate, but well acquainted with Miss

Iris. There is a certain frankness and directness about her that perhaps

belong to her artist nature. For, you see, the one thing that marks the

true artist is a clear perception and a firm, bold hand, in distinction

from that imperfect mental vision and uncertain touch which give us the

feeble pictures and the lumpy statues of the mere artisans on canvas or

in stone. A true artist, therefore, can hardly fail to have a sharp,

well-defined character. Besides this, many young girls have a strange

audacity blended with their instinctive delicacy. Even in physical

daring many of them are a match for boys; whereas you will find few

among mature women, and especially if they are mothers, who do not

confess, and not unfrequently proclaim, their timidity. One of these

young girls, as many of us hereabouts remember, climbed to the top of a

jagged, slippery rock lying out in the waves,--an ugly height to get up,

and a worse one to get down, even for a bold young fellow of sixteen.

Another was in the way of climbing tall trees for crows' nests,--and

crows generally know about how far boys can "shin up," and set their

household establishments above high-water-mark. Still another of these

young ladies I saw for the first time in an open boat, tossing on the

ocean ground-swell, a mile or two from shore, off a lonely island. She

lost all her daring, after she had some girls of her own to look out

for.

Many blondes are very gentle, yielding in character, impressible,

unelastic. But the _positive_ blondes, with the golden tint running

through them, are often full of character. They come from those

deep-bosomed German women that Tacitus portrayed in such strong colors.

The _negative_ blondes, or those women whose tints have faded out as

their line of descent has become impoverished, are of various blood, and

in them the soul has often become pale with that blanching of the hair

and loss of color in the eyes which makes them approach the character of

Albinesses.

I see in this young girl that union of strength and sensibility which,

when directed and impelled by the strong instinct so apt to accompany

this combination of active and passive capacity, we call _genius_. She

is not an accomplished artist, certainly, as yet; but there is always an

air in every careless figure she draws, as it were of upward

aspiration,--the _elan_ of John of Bologna's Mercury,--a lift to them,

as if they had on winged sandals, like the herald of the gods. I hear

her singing sometimes; and though she evidently is not trained, yet is

there a wild sweetness in her fitful and sometimes fantastic

melodies,--such as can come only from the inspiration of the

moment,--strangely enough, reminding me of those long passages I have

heard from my little neighbor's room, yet of different tone, and by no

means to be mistaken for those weird harmonies.

I cannot pretend to deny that I am interested in the girl. Alone,

unprotected, as I have seen so many young girls left in boarding-houses,

the centre of all the men's eyes that surround the table, watched with

jealous sharpness by every woman, most of all by that poor relation of

our landlady, who belongs to the class of women that like to catch

others in mischief when they are too mature for indiscretions, (as one

sees old rogues turn to thief-catchers,) one of Nature's _gendarmerie_,

clad in a complete suit of wrinkles, the cheapest coat-of-mail against

the shafts of the great little enemy,--so surrounded, Iris spans this

commonplace household-life of ours with her arch of beauty, as the

rainbow, whose name she borrows, looks down on a dreary pasture with its

feeding flocks and herds of indifferent animals.

These young girls that live in boarding-houses can do pretty much as

they will. The female _gendarmes_ are off guard occasionally. The

sitting-room has its solitary moments, when any two boarders who wish to

meet may come together accidentally, (_accidentally_, I said, Madam, and

I had not the slightest intention of Italicizing the word,) and discuss

the social or political questions of the day, or any other subject that

may prove interesting. Many charming conversations take place at the

foot of the stairs, or while one of the parties is holding the latch of

a door,--in the shadow of porticos, and especially on those outside

balconies which some of our Southern neighbors call "stoops," the most

charming places in the world when the moon is just right and the roses

and honeysuckles are in full blow,--as we used to think in eighteen

hundred and never mention it.

On such a balcony or "stoop," one evening, I walked with Iris. We were

on pretty good terms now, and I had coaxed her arm under mine,--my left

arm, of course. That leaves one's right arm free to defend the lovely

creature, if the rival--odious wretch!--attempt to ravish her from your

side. Likewise if one's heart should happen to beat a little, its mute

language will not be without its meaning, as you will perceive when the

arm you hold begins to tremble,--a circumstance like to occur, if you

happen to be a good-looking young fellow, and you two have the "stoop"

to yourselves.

We had it to ourselves that evening. The Koh-i-noor, as we called him,

was in a corner with our landlady's daughter. The young fellow John was

smoking out in the yard. The _gendarme_ was afraid of the evening air,

and kept inside. The young Marylander came to the door, looked out and

saw us walking together, gave his hat a pull over his forehead and

stalked off. I felt a slight spasm, as it were, in the arm I held, and

saw the girl's head turn over her shoulder for a second. What a kind

creature this is! She has no special interest in this youth, but she

does not like to see a young fellow going off because he feels as if he

were not wanted.

She had her locked drawing-book under her arm.--Let me take it,--I said.

She gave it to me to carry.

This is full of caricatures of all of us, I am sure,--said I.

She laughed, and said,--No,--not all of you.

I was there, of course?

Why, no,--she had never taken so much pains with me.

Then she would let me see the inside of it?

She would think of it.

Just as we parted, she took a little key from her pocket and handed it

to me.--This unlocks my naughty book,--she said,--you shall see it. I am

not afraid of you.

I don't know whether the last words exactly pleased me. At any rate, I

took the book and hurried with it to my room. I opened it, and saw, in a

few glances, that I held the heart of Iris in my hand.

* * * * *

--I have no verses for you this month, except these few lines suggested

by the season.

MIDSUMMER.

Here! sweep these foolish leaves away,--

I will not crush my brains to-day!--

Look! are the southern curtains drawn?

Fetch me a fan, and so begone!

Not that,--the palm-tree's rustling leaf

Brought from a parching coral-reef!

Its breath is heated;--I would swing

The broad gray plumes,--the eagle's wing.

I hate these roses' feverish blood!--

Pluck me a half-blown lily-bud,

A long-stemmed lily from the lake,

Cold as a coiling water-snake.

Rain me sweet odors on the air,

And wheel me up my Indian chair,

And spread some book not overwise

Flat out before my sleepy eyes.

--Who knows it not,--this dead recoil

Of weary fibres stretched with toil,--

The pulse that flutters faint and low

When Summer's seething breezes blow?

O Nature! bare thy loving breast

And give thy child one hour of rest,--

One little hour to lie unseen

Beneath thy scarf of leafy green!

So, curtained by a singing pine,

Its murmuring voice shall blend with mine,

Till, lost in dreams, my faltering lay

In sweeter music dies away.

REVIEWS AND LITERARY NOTICES.

_Life and Liberty in America_: or Sketches of a Tour in the United

States and Canada in 1857-8. By CHARLES MACKAY, LL.D., F.S.A. London:

Smith, Elder, & Co. 1859.

"Let him come back and write a book about the 'Merrikins as'll pay all

his expenses and more, if he blows 'em up enough," urged Mr. Anthony

Weller, by way of climax to his scheme for Mr. Pickwick's liberation from

the Fleet Prison. Whether Mr. Dickens, in putting forth this suggestion

through one of his favorite characters, had or had not a view to

subsequent operations of his own, has long been a sore question among

his admirers on this side of the Atlantic. We believe that he had not;

and that such "blowing-up" as he imparted to the people of this country

was wholly unpremeditated and spontaneous, besides being of so harmless

a nature that the patriot of most uneasy virtue need have been nowise

distressed in consequence. The language can show few more amusing books

than the "American Notes," especially the serious parts thereof.

Mr. Dickens had plenty of objects besides his future self at which to

aim his satirical shot. At the time he discharged it, the literary

market of England was overstocked with books on America, the authors of

which had apparently tasked the best energies of their lungs in

incessant "blowings-up" of all that came within range of their breath.

Up to that period, though viewing America from various stand-points,

they had seldom failed to recognize this one essential element of

success. Since then, however, attempts have been made to satisfy the

prejudices of all sides,--in which the bitter and the sweet have been

deftly mingled, with the obvious belief that persons aggrieved, while

suffering from the authors' stings, would derive comfort from the

consciousness of accompanying honey. These hopes generally proved

fallacious, and the authors, falling to the ground between the two

stools of American sensitiveness and British asperity, were regarded in

the light of stern warnings by many of their successors, who straightway

became pitiless.

The critical works on America by English writers, published during the

last fifty years, may be numbered by hundreds. Of these, nearly half

have at different times been reprinted in this country. Most of them are

now unknown, having passed to that oblivion of letters from whose bourn

no short-sighted and narrow-minded traveller ever ought to return. The

annual harvest began to appear about a half-century ago, when little

more than descriptions of scenery and geographical statistics were

ventured upon,--although one quaint explorer, John Lambert, vouchsafed,

in 1810, some sketches of society, from which we learn, among other

interesting facts, that a species of Bloomerism pervaded New York, and

flourished on Broadway, even at that early day. Our visitors very soon

enlarged the sphere of their observations, and entered upon the widest

discussions of republican manners and morals. Slavery, as was to be

expected, received immediate attention. In the course of ten years,

"American Tours" had set in with such rigor, that one writer felt called

upon to apologize for adding another to the already profuse supply. This

was in 1818. For the next fifteen years, the principle of unlimited

mockery was quite faithfully observed. The Honorable De Roos, who made a

naval examination in 1826, and satisfied himself that the United States

could never be a maritime power,--Colonel Maxwell, who entered upon a

military investigation, and came to a similar conclusion respecting our

prospects as to army, and who gained great credit for independent

judgment by pronouncing Niagara a humbug,--Mrs. Kemble, frisky and

fragmentary, excepting when her father was concerned, and then filially

diffuse,--Mrs. Trollope, who refused to incumber herself with amiability

or veracity,--Mr. Lieber, who was principally troubled by a camp meeting

at which he assisted,--Miss Martineau, who retailed too much of the

gossip that had been decanted through the tunnel of her trumpet,--and

Captain Marryatt, who was simply clownish,--afford fair examples of the

style which dominated until about 1836 or 1837. Then works of a better

order began to appear. America received scientific attention. It had

been agriculturally worked up in 1818 by Cobbett, whose example was now

followed by Shirreff and others. In 1839, George Combe subjected us to

phrenological treatment, and had the frankness to acknowledge that it

was impossible for an individual to properly describe a great nation.

Afterwards came Lyell, the geologist, who did not, however, confine

himself to scientific research, but also analyzed the social deposits,

and ascertained that Slavery was triturable. The manufacturers of

gossip, meanwhile, had revolutionized the old system. Mr. Dickens blew

hot and cold, uniting extremes. Godley, in 1841, disavowed satire, and

was solemnly severe. Others evinced a similar disposition, but the

result was not triumphant. Alexander Mackay, in 1846, returned to

ridicule; and Alfred Bunn, a few years after, surpassed even Marryatt in

his flippant falsehood. Mr. Arthur Cunynghame, a Canadian officer,

entertained his friends, in 1850, with a dainty volume, in which the

first personal pronoun averaged one hundred to a page, and the manner of

which was as stiff as the ramrods of his regiment. Of our more recent

judges, the best remembered are Lady Emmeline Stuart Wortley who gave to

the world the details of her private experiences,--Mr. Chambers, of

whose book there is really nothing in particular to say,--Mr. Baxter,

who considered Peter Parley a shining light of American

literature,--Miss Murray, who sacrificed her interests at St. James's

upon the shrine of Antislavery,--Mr. Phillipps, scientific,--Mr.

Russell, agricultural,--Mr. Jobson, theological,--and Mr. Colley

Grattan, who may be termed the Sir Anthony Absolute of American censors,

insisting that the Lady Columbia shall be as ugly as he chooses, shall

have a hump on each shoulder, shall be as crooked as the crescent, and

so forth.

Last of all comes Mr. Charles Mackay's book. Before proceeding to the

few general words we have to say of it, let us look for a moment at a

question which he, like a number of his predecessors, has considered

with some attention. Why it is that the people of the United States

manifest such acute sensibility to the strictures of English writers,

and receive their criticisms with so much suspicion, Mr. Mackay is

unable fully to determine. He is forced to believe that it is only their

anxiety "to stand well in English opinion which causes them to wince";

particularly as "French and Germans may condemn, and nobody cares what

they say." This is but a part of the truth. Unquestionably, Americans

do, as Mr. Mackay says, "attach undue importance to what English

travellers may say"; but this does not account for the universal feeling

of mortification which follows the appearance of each new tourist's

story. Americans have not failed to observe, that, of the hundreds of

writers who come over, only a few of the most prominent of whom we have

mentioned above, not one in fifty is animated by a sincere impulse of

honest good-will. They have learned to mistrust them all, as triflers

with our reputation, if not predetermined calumniators. They have

witnessed over and over again the childish ignorance, the discourtesy,

the vulgar deceptions of this class of bookmakers. They are not blind to

these repeated struggles to digest a mass of mental food for years, in

days or weeks. They know their nation cannot be understood by these

chance viewers, feebly glancing through greenest spectacles, any more

than the Atlantic can be sounded with a seven-fathom line. They have

become familiar with the English traveller only to regard him with

contempt. Each new production has opened the old wound. Each new

announcement awakens only derisive expectations. As for "French and

Germans," with them it is very different; and Mr. Mackay ought to know

it. They commonly write, if not with comprehensive vision, at least with

integrity of purpose. The best works on America are by Frenchmen. What

Englishman has shown the sincerity and fairness of De Tocqueville or

Chevalier? Knowing, then, that absurd malice and a capacity for

microscopic investigation of superficial irregularities in a society not

yet defined are the principal, and in many cases the only,

qualifications deemed necessary to accomplish an English book on

America, is it matter for wonder that Americans should hesitate to kiss

the clumsy rods so liberally dispensed?

We hasten to say that Mr. Charles Mackay's "Life and Liberty in America"

is unusually free from the worst of these faults. Hasty judgments,

offences against taste, inaccuracies, occasional revelations of personal

pique it has; but it is not malicious. Sometimes it is even affecting in

its tenderness. It breathes a spirit of paternal regard. But it is,

perhaps, the dullest of books. If not "icily regular," it is "splendidly

null." The style is as oppressive as a London fog. It is marked, to use

the author's own words, by "elegant and drowsy stagnation." After the

first few pages, it is with weariness that we follow him. We are

inclined to think Mr. Mackay has written too much, Mr. Squeers had milk

for three of his pupils watered up to the necessities of five. Mr.

Mackay's experiences might have sustained him through a single small

volume, but he has diluted them to the requirements of two large ones.

This would injure the prospects of his work in America, but may not

interfere with them in England. Minute details of toilet agonies,

pecuniary miseries, laundry tribulations, and anxieties of appetite may

possess an interest abroad which we are unable to appreciate here. We

are not excited by the intelligence that Mr. Mackay had an altercation

with a negro servant on board a Sound steamer, because he could not have

lager-beer at table. Such things have been noticed before. We do not

shed a sympathetic tear over the two dollars which he once had to

disgorge in New York, in payment for a ride of two miles; nor do we

mourn for the numerous other dollars with which he reluctantly parted to

satisfy the rapacity of hack-drivers all over the Union. We do not

thrill with indignation, when we learn that he was, on a certain

occasion, swept by crinolines into the middle of Broadway. Neither are

we in any way stirred by such information as, that he, like an English

lord of whom he tells, was accustomed to eat oysters every night in New

York; or that he "was pervaded, permeated, steeped, and bathed in a

longing desire to behold Niagara," and that, when he beheld it, his

"feelings were not so much those of astonishment as of an overpowering

sense of Law"; or that a peddler in a railroad-car sold nine bottles of

quack medicine at a dollar a bottle; or that he had eight pages of

interview with a Baltimore madman, who proved his insanity by

perpetually calling Mr. Mackay the "Prince of the Poets of England." The

dreary solemnity with which these incidents are narrated renders them

doubly tedious. A flash of humor might enliven them, but we never see a

spark. Mr. Mackay's comic stories, too, of which there are not a few,

are most lamentable specimens of wit, suggesting forcibly the

poppy-seeds spoken of by Mr. Pillicoddy, which are soporific in

tendency, and which, if taken incessantly for a period of three weeks,

produce instant death.

Mr. Mackay's experiences were not of a startling character. He travelled

leisurely, and recorded discreetly. His blunders on a large scale are

not numerous; but of minor facts, he announces many which may be classed

among the remarkable discoveries of the season. He states that New York,

New Jersey,(!) and Brooklyn form one city; that Broadway, N.Y., is

decorated with elms, willows, and mountain-ashes, "drooping in green

beauty"; that persons with decent coats and clean shirts in Boston may

be safely put down as lecturers, Unitarian ministers, or poets; that

Maryland and Virginia are one commonwealth; that eighteen months before

every Presidential election, a cause of quarrel is made with England by

both the principal political parties, for the purpose of securing the

Irish rote; that measly pork is caused by too hasty insertion in brine

after killing, and consequent rapid fermentation; that the people of

the United States, unless they have travelled in Europe, are quite

unable to appreciate wit. [Mr. Mackay's wit? If so, certainly.] These

are but random pluckings from a rich blossoming.

The subject upon which the author has labored most earnestly is that of

Slavery. If the views he sets forth are the result of his own

investigation, he is entitled to credit for unusual exactness. There is

nothing new about them, to be sure; but there is also nothing absurd,

which is a great point. He maintains the argument against Slavery, that

it is to be practically considered in its injurious influences on the

white people of the Slave States, and, through them, on the nation at

large. When he undertakes an emotional view of the "institution," he

becomes feeble again. He thus describes his sensations while visiting a

slave-market in New Orleans:--"I entertained at that moment such a

hatred of slavery, that, had it been in my power to abolish it in an

instant off the face of the earth by the mere expression of my will,

slavery at that moment would have ceased to exist,"--an avowal which

will hardly be likely to confound the American people by its boldness.

The statistical information in these volumes is as accurate as that of

ordinary gazetteers. In most cases, the author appears to have drawn his

information from proper sources. The principal exceptions to this are

shown in one or two statements which he makes on the authority of his

Pylades, Colonel Fuller, and in his remarks upon Canada, which are

colored with excessive warmth. Mr. Mackay rests greater hopes upon the

future of Canada than upon that of the United States. He considers the

Canadians as the rivals in energy, enterprise, and industry of the

people of the United States. His testimony differs from that of Lord

Durham, who had good opportunities for knowing something about the

matter when he had charge of Canadian affairs, and who declared, that

"on the American side of the frontier all is activity and bustle," etc.,

"on the British side all seems waste and desolate."

Mr. Mackay gives correctly the most prominent names of American

literature, but his list of artists is very imperfect. The little that

he says about American music is all wrong. The first opera by an

American was produced in 1845; and it is not true that this is a

solitary example. Were it possible for us to pursue them, we should run

down more errors of this kind than a prudent man would have put into

print.

Altogether, while we readily admit that Mr. Mackay has honestly, and, in

general, good-naturedly, performed his duty as an American chronicler,

renouncing in a great measure the old principle of "blowing-up," and

that his essays do not reek with ignorance, like those of many of his

predecessors, it is yet proper to say that he has achieved a stupendous

bore. His two volumes are to us a melancholy remembrance. Their life is

spiced with no variety. The same dead level of dry personal detail

speaks through each chapter; or if occasional relief is afforded, it is

"in liquid lines mellifluously bland," and prosier than all the rest.

The one source of amusement that the reader will discover is the

complacent self-confidence which no assumption of modesty can hide. "A

controversy had been raging for at least a week" in Philadelphia about

the author's letters in the "Illustrated London News." His defender was

"one of the most influential and best-conducted papers of the Union";

his assailant behaved "scurvily." We cannot lavish examples. This is the

type of a hundred. Mr. Mackay seems to expect that his Jeremiad on

tobacco-chewing and spitting will act in America as St. Patrick's spells

did on the vermin of Ireland. Unfortunately, it will not. Mr. Dickens

attempted the same thing in a much better manner,--excepting where Mr.

Mackay has copied him exactly, as he has once or twice,--and even the

novelist's efforts were fruitless. On the other hand, the main source of

annoyance will be found in the needless elevation of minute evils, and

the determination to form general judgments from isolated experiences.

But of this we do not much complain. Rome derived some benefit from the

cackling of a goose. Possibly we may be made in some respects a wiser

and a better nation through Mr. Mackay's influence. For ourselves,

however, if our aspirations ever turn toward a literary Paradise, we

shall pray that it may be one where travellers cease from troubling and

dull tourists are at rest.

* * * * *

1. _The New and the Old_; or California and India in Romantic Aspects.

By J.W. PALMER, M.D. New York: Rudd & Carleton. 1859.

2. _Up and Down the Irawaddi_; being Passages of Adventure in the Burman

Empire. By the Same.

It has passed into a scornful proverb, that it needs good optics to see

what is not to be seen; and yet we should be inclined to say that the

first essential of a good traveller was to be gifted with eyesight of

precisely that kind. All his senses should be as delicate as eyes; and,

above all, he should be able to see with the fine eye of imagination,

compared with which all the other organs with which the mind grasps and

the memory holds are as clumsy as thumbs. The demand for this kind of

traveller and the opportunity for him increase as we learn more and more

minutely the dry facts and figures of the most inaccessible corners of

the earth's surface. There is no hope of another Ferdinand Mendez Pinto,

with his statistics of Dreamland, who makes no difficulty of impressing

"fourscore thousand rhinocerots" to draw the wagons of the King of

Tartary's army, or of killing eight hundred and fifty thousand men with

a flourish of his quill,--for what were a few ciphers to him, when his

inkhorn was full and all Christendom to be astonished?--but there is all

the more need of voyagers who give us something better than a census of

population, and who know of other exports from strange countries than

can be expressed by $----. Give us the traveller who makes us feel the

mystery of the Figure at Saïs, whose veil has a new meaning for every

beholder, rather than him who brings back a photograph of the uncovered

countenance, with its one unvarying granite story for all. There is one

glory of the Gazetteer with his fixed facts, and another of the Poet

with his variable quantities of fancy. The fixed fact may be unfixed

next year, like an almanac, but the hasty sketch of the true artist is

good forever.

Critics have a good-natured way of stigmatizing, for the initiated, all

poetry that is not poetry, by saying that it is "elegant," "harmonious,"

or, worse than all, "descriptive." This last commonly means that the

author has done for his readers precisely what they could do for

themselves,--that he has made a catalogue of the natural objects to be

found in a certain number of acres, which differs from the literary

efforts of an auctioneer only in this, that each line begins with a

capital and contains the same number of syllables. He counts the number

of cabbages in a field, of cows in a pasture, and tells us how many

times a squirrel ran up (or down) a given tree in a given time. He

informs us that the bark of the shagbark is shaggy, that the

sleep-at-noon slumbers at mid-day, that moss is apt to grow on fallen

tree-trunks in damp places,--treats us as the old alchemists do, who

give us a list of the materials out of which gold (if it had any moral

sense) would at once consent to be made, but somehow won't,--and leaves

us impressed with that very dead certainty, that things are so-and-so,

which is the result of verses that are only so-so.

Readers of the "Atlantic" need not be told that Dr. Palmer is not a

descriptive poet of this fashion. They have known how to appreciate his

sketches of East Indian life, so vivid, picturesque, and imaginative

that they could make "Griffins" feel twinges of liver-complaint, and so

true that we have heard them pronounced "incomparable" by men familiar

with India. Dr. Palmer is no mere describer; he sees with the eye of a

poet, touches only what is characteristic, and, while he seems to

surrender himself wholly to the Circe Imagination, retains the polished

coolness of the man of the world, and the _brownness_ of the man of the

nineteenth century. He not only knows how to observe, but how to

write,--both of them accomplishments rare enough in an age when

everybody is ready to contract for their display by the column. His

style is nervous and original, not harassingly pointed like a

chestnut-burr, but full of _esprit_ or wit diffused,--that Gallic leaven

which pervades whole sentences and paragraphs with an indefinable

lightness and palatableness. It is a thoroughly American style, too, a

little over-indifferent to tradition and convention, but quite free of

the _sic-semper-tyrannis_ swagger. Uncle Bull, who is just like his

nephew in thinking that he has a divine right to the world's oyster,

cannot swallow it properly till he has donned a white choker, and

refuses to be comforted when Jonathan disposes of it in his rapid way

with the shell for a platter. We confess that we prefer the

free-and-easy manner in its proper place to the diplomatic way of always

treating the reader with sentiments of the highest consideration, and

like a book all the more for having an Occidental flavor.

But it is not merely or chiefly as being among the cleverest and

liveliest of modern light literature that we value Dr. Palmer's books.

They have a true poetic value, and instruct as much as they entertain.

While he is telling us a San Francisco story, the truth of the

accessories and the skill with which they are grouped bring the

California of 1849 before us with unmatched vividness. We have been

getting knowledge and learning a deep moral without suspecting it, as if

by our own observation and experience. In the same way "Asirvadam the

Brahmin" is a prose poem that lets us into the secret of the Indian

revolt. It is seldom that we meet with volumes of more real power than

these, or whose force is so artistically masked under ease and

playfulness. We prefer the "Old" part of the book to the "New." It seems

to us to show a better style of handling. There is something of

melodrama in the style of the California stories,--a flavor of blue

lights and burnt cork. At the same time, we must admit that there is a

melodramatic taint in our American life:--witness the Sickles vulgarity.

Young America is _b'hoyish_ rather than boyish, and perhaps the "New"

may be all the truer to Nature for what we dislike in it.

"The New and the Old" is fittingly dedicated to the Autocrat of all the

Breakfast-Tables, than whom no man has done more to demonstrate that wit

and mirth are not incompatible with seriousness of purpose and

incisiveness of thought.

* * * * *

_Napoleonic Ideas_. By Prince NAPOLEON LOUIS BONAPARTE. Translated by

JAMES A. DORR. New York: D. Appleton & Company. 1859.

This publication has at least that merit which is one of the first in

literature,--it is timely. Though we look upon the Emperor of the French

as a kind of imperial Jonathan Wild, it does not the less concern us to

make a true estimate of his intellectual capacity. Nothing is more

unwise than to assume that a man's brain must be limited because his

moral sense is small; yet no mistake is more common. Napoleon the Third

may play an important part in History, though by no possibility an

heroic one. In reading this little volume, one cannot fail to be struck

with the presence of mind and the absence of heart of which it gives

evidence. It is the advertisement of a charlatan, whose sole inheritance

is the right to manufacture the Napoleonic pill, and we read with

unavoidable distrust the vouchers of its wonderful efficacy. We do not

fancy the Bonapartist grape-cure, nor believe in it.

Mr. Dorr's translation is excellent. He understands French, and is able

to do it into English elegantly and accurately without any trace of

foreign idiom. This is no easy thing; for our general experience has

been that translators read French like Englishmen and write English like

Frenchmen.

* * * * *

_Country Life_. By R. MORRIS COPELAND. Boston: John P. Jewett & Company.

1859.

In an article on "Farming Life in New England," published in a former

volume of the "Atlantic," a valued contributor drew attention to the

painful lack of beauty in the lives and homes of our rural population.

Some attempts were made to show that his statements were exaggerated;

but we are satisfied that they were true in all essential particulars.

The abolition of entails, (however wise in itself,) and the consequent

subdivision of estates, will always put country life, in the English

sense of the words, out of the question here. Our houses will continue

to be tents; trees, without ancestral associations, will be valued by

the cord; and that cumulative charm, the slow result of associations, of

the hereditary taste of many generations, must always be wanting. Age is

one of the prime elements of natural beauty; but among us the love of

what is new so predominates, that we have known the largest oak in a

county to be cut down by the selectmen to make room for a shanty

schoolhouse, simply because the tree was of "no account," being hollow

and gnarled, and otherwise delightfully picturesque. Our people are

singularly dead also to the value of beauty in public architecture; and

while they clear away a tree which the seasons have been two centuries

in building, they will put up with as little remorse a stone or brick

abomination that shall be a waking nightmare for a couple of centuries

to come. But selectmen are not chosen with reference to their knowledge

of Price or Ruskin.

Mr. Copeland's book is specially adapted to the conditions of a

community like ours. Its title might have been "Rural Æsthetics for Men

of Limited Means, or the Laws of Beauty considered in their Application

to Small Estates." It is a volume happily conceived and happily

executed, and meets a palpable and increasing want of our civilization.

Whatever adds grace to the daily lives of a people, and awakens in them

a perception of the beauty of outward Nature and its healthful reaction

on the nature of man,--whatever tends to make toil unsordid, and to put

it in relations of intelligent sympathy with the beautiful progression

of the seasons,--adds incalculably to the wealth of a country, though

the increase may not appear in the Report of the Secretary of the

Interior.

Mr. Copeland's volume is calculated to do this, and his own

qualifications for the task he has undertaken are manifold. Chief among

them we should reckon a true enthusiasm for the cause he advocates, and

a hearty delight in out-of-doors-life. He writes with the zeal and

warmth of a reformer; but these are tempered by practical knowledge, and

such a respect for the useful as will not sacrifice it to the merely

pretty. His volume contains not only suggestions in landscape-gardening,

guided always by the true principle of making Nature our ally rather

than attempting to subdue her, but minute directions for the greenhouse,

grapery, conservatory, farm, and kitchen-garden. One may learn from it

how to plant whatever grows, and to care for it afterwards. Engravings

and plans make clear whatever needs illustration. The book has also the

special merit of _not_ being adapted to the meridian of Greenwich.

We do not always agree with Mr. Copeland; we dissent especially from his

prejudice against the noble horsechestnut-tree, with its grand

thunder-cloud of foliage, its bee-haunted cones of bloom, and its

polished fruit so uselessly useful to children,--Bushy Park is answer

enough on that score; but we cordially appreciate his taste and ability.

His book will justify a warm commendation. It is laid out on true

principles of landscape-farming. The stiff and square economical details

are relieved by passages of great beauty and picturesqueness. The

cockney who owns a snoring-privilege in the suburbs will be stimulated

to a sense of latent beauty in clouds and fields; and the farmer who

looks on the cosmic forces as mere motive-power for the wheels of his

money-mill will find the truth of the proverb, that more water runs over

the dam than the miller wots of, and learn that Nature is as lavish of

Beauty as she is frugal in Use. Even to the editor, whose only fields

are those of literature, and whose only leaves grow from a

composing-stick, the advent of a book like this is refreshing. It

enables him to lay out with a judicious economy the gardens attached to

his Spanish manor-houses, and to do his farming without risk of loss, in

the most charming way of all, (especially in July weather,)--by proxy.

Without leaving our study, we have already raised some astonishing

prize-vegetables, and our fat cattle have been approvingly mentioned in

the committee's report. We have found an afternoon's reading in Mr.

Copeland's book almost as good as owning that "place in the country"

which almost all men dream of as an ideal to be realized whenever their

visionary ship comes in.

* * * * *

_High Life in New York_. By JONATHAN SLICK. Philadelphia: Peterson &

Brothers.

The advantages of a favorable introduction are very obvious. A person

who enters society fortified with eulogistic letters, giving assurance

of his trustworthiness, so far as respectability and good behavior are

concerned, is tolerably sure of a comfortable reception. But if, unable

to sustain the character his credentials ascribe to him, he immediately

begin to display bad manners, ignorance, and folly, he not only forfeits

the position to which he has gained accidental access, but also brings

discredit upon his too hasty indorser.

In literature it is not different. The collection of printed matter

which appears under the title of "High Life in New York" is accompanied

by a note, signed by the publishers, who are naturally supposed to know

something of the real value of the works they issue, in which "editors

are forewarned that it is a volume which, for downright drollery and

hearty humor, has never had its equal in the productions of any American

pen," and are otherwise admonished in various ways calculated to inspire

lofty expectations, and to fill the mind with exalted visions of coming

joy. But when it appears, on examination, that the book is as utterly

unworthy of these elaborate commendations as any book can possibly

be,--that it is from beginning to end nothing but a dead level of

stagnant verbiage, a desolate waste of dreary platitude,--the reader

cannot but regard the publishers' ardent expressions of approbation as

going quite beyond the license allowable in preliminary puffs.

"High Life in New York" represents a class of publications which has, of

late, in many ways, been set before the public with too great

liberality. The sole object seems to be to exhibit the "Yankee"

character in its traditional deformities of stupidity and

meanness,--otherwise denominated simplicity and shrewdness. Mr. Jonathan

Slick is in no respect different from the ordinary fabulous Yankee. An

illiterate clown he is, who, visiting New York, contrives by vice of

impudence, to interfere very seriously with certain conventionalities of

the metropolis. He overthrows, by his indomitable will, a great many

social follies. He eats soup with a knife and fork; wears no more than

one shirt a week; forces his way into ladies' chambers at unseemly

hours, to cure them of timidity; and introduces sundry other reforms,

all of which are recorded as evidences of glorious independence and a

true nobility of spirit. Sometimes he goes farther,--farther than we

care to follow him. It would be easy to show wherein he is offensive,

not to say disgusting; but we are not so disposed. It is not considered

necessary for the traveller who has dragged his way over a muddy road to

prove the nastiness of his pilgrimage by imparting the stain to our

carpets.

In this book, as in most of its class, the Yankee dialect is employed

throughout, the author evidently believing that bad spelling and bad

grammar are the legitimate sources of New England humor. This shows that

he mistakes means for ends,--just as one who supposes that Mr. Merryman,

in the circus, must, of necessity, be funny, because he wears the motley

and his nose is painted red. The Yankee dialect is Mr. Jonathan Slick's

principal element of wit; his second is the onion. The book is redolent

of onions. That odorous vegetable breathes from every page. A woman

weeps, and onions are invoked to lend aromatic fragrance to a stale

comparison. In one place, onions and education are woven together by

some extraordinary rhetorical machinery; in another, religion is

glorified through the medium of the onion; until at last the narrative

seems to resolve itself into a nauseating nightmare, such as might

torture the brain of some unhappy dreamer in a bed of onions.

Why such works are ever written at all, it is difficult to imagine; but

how it is, that, when written, they find publishers, is inconceivable.

* * * * *

_Great Auction-Sale of Slaves, at Savannah, Georgia_. New York:

Published by the American Anti-Slavery Society.

This little pamphlet, reprinted from the columns of the "New York

Tribune," possesses a double interest. It furnishes the best and most

minute description of an auction-sale of slaves that has ever been

published; and it admirably illustrates the enterprise and prompt energy

which often distinguish the journalism of America above that of any

other country.

The slave-sale of which it is a record took place on the second and

third days of March last, in the city of Savannah. For many reasons, it

had been looked forward to with more than usual interest. The position

of the owner, Mr. Pierce M. Butler, of Philadelphia, and the large

number (no less than four hundred and thirty-six) and superior quality

of the human chattels offered for sale, added to the importance of the

event. The "Tribune" had one of its best descriptive writers, Mr.

Mortimer Thomson, on the spot. The duty Mr. Thomson undertook was not

without danger; for a somewhat extensive notoriety as an _attaché_ of

the "Tribune" was not likely to insure him the most cordial reception at

the South. Had his presence been discovered, the temper of the people of

Savannah would speedily have betrayed itself; and had his purpose been

suspected, their wrath would assuredly have culminated in wreakages of a

nature unfavorable to his personal comfort. But with caution, and the

aid of Masonic influences, he escaped detection, and accomplished his

aim. The result of his observations was a report of considerable length,

in which every striking incident of the sale was narrated with accurate

fidelity. Although written mostly on the rail and against time, under

circumstances which would be fatal to the labors of any man not inured

by newspaper experience to all sorts of literary hardships, the style is

clear, distinct, and often eloquent. The scene and the transaction are

brought vividly to the reader's mind. The throng of eager

speculators,--the heavy-eyed and brutal drivers,--the sprightlier

representatives of Chivalry,--the unhappy slaves, abandoning hope as

they enter the mart, excepting in rare cases, where, grasping at straws,

they pray in trembling tones that their ties of love may remain

unsevered,--the operations of the sale,--the shrinking women, standing

submissively under the vile jests of the reckless crowd,--are portrayed

with all the emphasis of truth. One little episode in particular, the

love-story of Jeffrey and Dorcas, is a more affecting history than

romance can show.

The effect of this publication in the "Tribune" was prodigious. It was

widely circulated through all the journals of the North. The

Anti-Slavery Society preserved it in a pamphlet. The ire of a good

portion of the Southern journals was ludicrous to witness, and proved

how keenly the blow was felt. The report was republished in Great

Britain,--first in the London "Times," and subsequently, as a pamphlet,

in Edinburgh, in Glasgow, and in Belfast. In one publisher's

announcement, at least, it was advertised as "Greeley's Account of the

Great Slave-Sale."

* * * * *

_Popular Tales from the Norse_. By GEORGE WEBBE DASENT, D.C.L. With an

Introductory Essay on the Origin and Diffusion of Popular Tales. New

York: D. Appleton & Co. 12mo. pp. lxix., 379.

The tales of which this volume presents the first English

translation--though, as regards some of them, hardly the first English

version--appear to have been collected about twenty or twenty-five years

ago. Two gentlemen, Messrs. Asbjörnsen and Moe, (the name of the first

of whom begets much confidence in his ability for the task,) went out

among the most unlettered and rudest of the common folk of Norway and

Sweden, and there, from the lips of old women and little children,

gathered these stories of the antique time. Of what age the stories are,

nobody knows,--those who listened to them in their childhood, to relate

them in turn in their declining years, least perhaps of all. For they

are a part of the inheritance common to all the races that have sprung

from the Asiatic ancestor, who, at periods the nearest of which is far

beyond the ken of history, and at intervals of centuries, sent off

descendants to find a resting-place in Europe; and it is one great

object, if not the principal object, of the original collectors and the

translator of these tales to exhibit in them a bond of union among all

European peoples.

Indeed, the tales in their present form may be regarded as examples in

point appended to the translator's Essay which opens the volume. For

they will add little to our stock of available stories, for either

youthful or adult reading. The best of them already are a part of our

nursery lore, and are known to the English race under forms better

adapted to English taste and sympathies than those under which they are

here presented; and nearly all of those that are exceptions to this

remark are unfitted for "home consumption," either by the objectionable

nature of their subjects, by the still more objectionable tendency of

their teaching, or by a yet more fatal demerit,--their lack of interest.

They are in some respects notably tame and puerile,--with a puerility

which is not childish simplicity, but a lack of inventive fancy, and

which exhibits itself in bald repetition. The giant, for instance,

always complains of a smell of Christian blood, and is always answered

by the formula, that a crow flew over the chimney and must have dropped

a bone down it; the hero almost always meets three old women, or three

Trolls, or three enchanted beasts or birds, of whom he in that case

always asks the same questions, receiving the same replies, _verbatim_.

There is a reason for this sameness, which is indicative of the rude

condition of the people among whom the tales have been perpetuated; but

the sameness palls none the less upon more cultivated minds. Mr. Dasent

characterizes these people as "an honest and manly race,--not the race

of the towns and cities, but of the dales and fells, free and unsubdued,

holding its own in a country where there are neither lords nor ladies,

but simple men and women. Brave men and fair women," etc. (p. lxviii.)

And he says of the tales, that in no other collection is "the general

tone so chaste, are the great principles of morality better worked out,

and right and wrong kept so steadily in sight." (p. lxii.) We cannot

agree with him in this appreciation of the moral tone of the stories,

many of which certainly speak ill for the honesty and manliness of the

race among which they have been for centuries cherished

household-treasures. For in a large proportion of those that have a

successful hero, he obtains his success either by lying or some kind of

deceit or treachery, by stealing, or by imposing upon the credulity or

feebleness of age; and of those in which the hero is himself victorious

over oppression, we are not able to recollect one which exhibits the

beauty of moderation and magnanimity, not to say of Christian charity

and forgiveness. Mr. Dasent mentions it as an admirable trait of the

tales, that, "in the midst of every difficulty and danger, arises that

old Norse feeling of making the best of everything and keeping a good

face to the foe." Certainly the heroes of these tales do make the best

of everything, but they are not at all scrupulous as to their way of

making it; and they do also keep a good face to the foe, when (often by

craft, theft, or violence) they have obtained some implement or other

gift of supernatural power which places their opponents entirely at

their mercy and with no risk to themselves. But of a manful contest on

equal terms, or of a victory obtained over tyrannous power by a union of

patience, boldness, and honest skill, or even by undegrading stratagem,

the collection affords no instance that we remember.

The story of Shortshanks may be taken as a fair, and even a favorable

example of the tone of these Norse tales. Shortshanks and King Sturdy

are twin brothers, who set out to seek their fortunes within a few

minutes of their birth, driven thereto by a precocious perception of the

_res angustæ domi_. They part at two roads almost immediately, and the

story follows the fortunes of Shortshanks, the younger; for in these

miniature romances the elder is, as usual, continually snubbed, and the

younger is always the great man. Shortshanks has not gone far before he

meets "an old crook-backed hag," who has only one eye; and he commences

his career by gouging out or "snapping up" the single comfort of this

helpless creature. To get her eye back again, she gives Shortshanks a

sword that will put a whole army to flight; and he, charmed with the

result of his first manoeuvre, puts it in practice successively upon two

other decrepit, half-blind women, who, to get their eyes again, give

him, one, a ship that can sail over fresh water and salt water and over

high hills and deep dales, the other, the art how to brew a hundred

lasts of malt at one strike. The ship takes him to the king's palace, on

arriving at which he puts his vessel in his pocket, when he summons his

craft to his aid, and gets a place in the king's kitchen to carry wood

and water for the maid. The king's daughter has for some inscrutable

reason been promised to three ogres, who come successively to fetch her;

and a certain Ritter Red professes to be man enough to rescue her, but

on the approach of the first ogre proves to be a coward and climbs a

tree. But Shortshanks slips off from his scullery; and having a weapon

which can put a whole army to flight by a single stroke, he is very

brave, and keeps a remarkably good face to the foe, giving him with his

tongue as good as he sends, and, laughing the ogres' dubs to scorn, cuts

off the ogrous heads, (there are five on the first individual, ten on

the second, and fifteen on the third,) and carries off much treasure

from the ships in which his foes came to fetch their victim. Ritter Red

descends, and takes the lungs and the tongues of the ogres, (though, as

the latter were thirty in number and of gigantic size, he must have had

trouble in carrying them,) and wishes to pass them off as evidence that

he is the deliverer of the princess, of which they would seem to have

been very satisfactory proof: but the gold, silver, and diamonds carry

the day; Shortshanks has the princess and half the kingdom, and Ritter

Red is thrown into a pit full of snakes,--on the French general's

principle, we suppose, who hung his cowards "_pour encourager les

autres_." But the king has another daughter, whom an ogre has carried

off to the bottom of the sea. Shortshanks discovers her while the ogre

is out looking for a man who can brew a hundred lasts of malt at one

strike. He finds the man at home, of course, and puts him to his task.

Shortshanks gets the ogre and all his kith and kin to help the brew, and

brews the wort so strong, that, on tasting it, they all fall down dead,

except one, an old woman, "who lay bed-ridden in the chimney-corner,"

and to her our hero carries his wort and kills her too. He then carries

off the treasure of the ogres, and gives this princess and the other

half of the kingdom to his brother Sturdy.

Now we have no particular fault to find with such stories as these, when

they are produced as characteristic specimens of the folk-lore of a

people; as such, they have a value beside their intrinsic interest;--but

when we are asked to receive them as part of the evidence that that

people is an honest and manly race, and as an acceptable addition to our

stock of household tales, we demur. The truth is, that the very worth of

these tales is to be found not only in the fact that they form a part of

the stock from which our own are derived, but in the other fact that

they represent that stock as it existed at an earlier and ruder stage of

humanitarian development. They were told by savage mothers to savage

children; and although some of them teach the few virtues common to

barbarism and civilization, they are filled with the glorification of

savage vice and crime;--deceit, theft, violence, even ruthless vengeance

upon a cruel parent, are constantly practised by the characters which

they hold up to favor. Such humor as they have, too, is of the coarsest

kind, and is expressed chiefly in rude practical jokes, or the bloody

overreaching of the poor thick-headed Trolls, who are the butts of the

stories and the victims of their heroes. There is good ethnological and

mythological reason why the Trolls should be butts and victims, it is

true; but that is not to the present purpose.

But although this judgment must be passed upon the collection,

considered merely as tales to be told and read at this stage of the

world's progress, there are several notable exceptions to it,--tales

which are based upon healthy instincts, and which appeal to sympathies

that are never entirely undeveloped in the breasts of human beings above

the grade of Bushmen, or in which the fun does not depend upon the

exhibition of unexpected modes of inflicting death, pain, or discomfort.

It is not, however, in these that we are to look for the chief

attraction and compensating value of the collection. Those are to be

found, as we have already hinted, in the relative aspects of the tales,

which the general reader might consider for a long time fruitlessly,

save for the help of Mr. Dasent's Introductory Essay. This is at once an

acute and learned commentary upon the tales themselves, and a thoroughly

elaborated monograph upon mythology in its ethnological relations. We

know no other essay upon this subject that is so comprehensive, so

compact, so clear, and so well adapted to interest intelligent readers

who have little previous knowledge on the subject, as Mr. Dasent's,

although, of necessity, it presents us with results, not processes. A

perusal of this Essay will give the intelligent and attentive reader so

just a general notion of the last results of philological and

ethnological investigation into the history of the origin and progress

of the Indo-European races, that he can listen with understanding to the

conversation of men who have made that subject their special study, and

appreciate, in a measure at least, the value of the many references to

it which he meets in the course of his miscellaneous reading. And should

he be led by the contagion of Mr. Dasent's intelligent enthusiasm to

desire a more intimate acquaintance with a topic which rarely fails to

fascinate those whose tastes lead them to enter at all upon it, he may

start from this Essay with hints as to the plan and purpose of his

reading which will save him much otherwise blind and fruitless labor.

This, however, is not all. It is but right also to say that the readers

whose religion is one of extreme orthodoxy, that is, who deem it their

bounden duty to believe exactly and literally as somebody else believed

before them,--such readers will find their orthodoxy often shocked by

the tales which Mr. Dasent has translated, and yet oftener and more

violently by conclusions which Mr. Dasent draws from a comparison of

these stories with others that bear the same relation to other races

which these do to the Norsemen. The man who believes that Hell is a

particular part of the universe, filled with flames and melted

brimstone, into which actual devils, with horns, hoofs, and tails, dip,

or are to dip, wicked people, whom, for greater convenience, they have

previously perforated with three-tined pitchforks,--such a man will be

puzzled by the story, "Why the Sea is Salt," and horrified with this

comment in Mr. Dasent's Essay:--

"The North had its own notion on this point. Its mythology

was not without its own dark powers; but though they, too,

were ejected and dispossessed, they, according to that

mythology, had rights of their own. To them belonged all the

universe that had not been seized and reclaimed by the

younger race of Odin and Æsir; and though this upstart

dynasty, as the Frost-Giants in Æschylean phrase would have

called it, well knew that Hel, one of this giant progeny, was

fated to do them all mischief, and to outlive them, they took

her and made her queen of Niflheim, and mistress over nine

worlds. There, in a bitterly cold place, she received the

souls of all who died of sickness or old age; care was her

bed, hunger her dish, starvation her knife. Her walls were

high and strong, and her bolts and bars huge. 'Half blue was

her skin, and half the color of human flesh. A goddess easy

to know, and in all things very stern and grim.' But though

severe, she was not an evil spirit. She only received those

who died as no Norseman wished to die. For those who fell on

the gory battle-field, or sank beneath the waves, Valhalla

was prepared, and endless mirth and bliss with Odin. Those

went to Hel who were rather unfortunate than wicked, who died

before they could be killed. But when Christianity came in

and ejected Odin and his crew of false divinities, declaring

them to be lying gods and demons, then Hel fell with the

rest,--but, fulfilling her fate, outlived them. From a person

she became a place; and all the Northern nations, from the

Goth to the Norseman, agreed in believing Hell to be the

abode of the Devil and his wicked spirits, the place prepared

from the beginning for the everlasting torments of the

damned. One curious fact connected with this explanation of

Hell's origin will not escape the reader's attention. The

Christian notion of Hell is that of a place of heat; for in

the East, whence Christianity came, heat is often an

intolerable torment,--and cold, on the other hand, everything

that is pleasant and delightful. But to the dweller in the

North heat brings with it sensations of joy and comfort, and

life without fire has a dreary outlook; so their Hel ruled in

a cold region, over those who were cowards by implication,

while the mead-cup went round, and huge logs blazed and

crackled, for the brave and beautiful who had dared to die on

the field of battle. But under Christianity the extremes of

heat and cold have met, and Hel, the cold, uncomfortable

goddess, is now our Hell, where flames and fires abound, and

where the devils abide in everlasting flame."

Still more will orthodoxy be shocked by Mr. Dasent's neglect to except

Christianity from the conclusion, (no new one, it need hardly be said,

to those who know anything of the subject,) that the mythologies or

personal histories of all religions have been evolved the one from the

other, or grafted the one upon the other,--and by his intimation, that

Christianity, keeping pure in its spirit and undiverted from its

purpose, has yet not hesitated to adapt its outward forms to the tough

popular traditions which it found deeply rooted in the soil where it

sought to grow, thus making itself "all things to all men, that it might

by all means save some."

It will be seen that this book is not milk for babes, but meat for

strong men. Among the tales are some--and those, perhaps, the most

interesting--which Mr. Dasent justly characterizes as "intensely

heathen," and yet in which the Saviour of the world or his apostles

appear as interlocutors or actors, which alone unfits the volume for the

book-table of the household room. We are led to insist upon this trait

of the collection the more, because the translator's choice of language

often seems to be the result of a desire to adapt himself to very

youthful readers,--though why should even they be led to believe that

such phrases as the following are correct by seeing them in

print?--"Tore it up like nothing"; "ran away like anything"; "it was no

good" [_i.e._ of no use]; "in all my born days"; "after a bit" [_i.e._ a

little while]; "she had to let him in, and when he was, he lay," etc.;

"the Giant got up cruelly early." These, and others like them, are

profusely scattered through the tales, apparently from the mistaken

notion that they have some idiomatic force. They jar upon the ear of the

reader who comes to them from Mr. Dasent's admirably written

Introductory Essay.

The book is one which we can heartily recommend to all who are

interested in popular traditions for their own sake, or in their

ethnological relations.

* * * * *

_Love_, From the French of M.J. Michelet. Translated from the Fourth

Paris Edition, by J.W. Palmer, M.D., Author of "The New and The Old,"

"Up and Down the Irawaddi," etc.

M. Michelet perhaps longs, like Anacreon, to tell the story of the

Atrides and of Cadmus, but here we find him singing only of Love. It is

a surprise to us that the historian should have chosen this

subject;--the book itself is another surprise. It starts from a few

facts which it borrows from science, and out of them it builds a

poem,--a drama in five acts called _Books_, to disguise them. Two

characters figure chiefly on the stage,--a husband and a wife. The unity

of time is not very strictly kept, for the pair are traced from youth to

age, and even beyond their mortal years. Moral reflections and

occasional rhapsodies are wreathed about this physiological and

psychological love-drama.

Here, then, is a book with the most taking word in the language for its

title, and one of the most distinguished personages in contemporary

literature for its author. It has been extensively read in France, and

is attracting general notice in this country. Opinions are divided among

us concerning it; it is extravagantly praised, and hastily condemned.

On the whole, the book is destined, we believe, to do much more good

than harm. Admit all its high-flown sentimentalism to be

half-unconscious affectation, such as we pardon in writers of the Great

Nation,--admit that the author is wild and fanciful in many of his

statements, that he talks of a state of society of which it has been

said that the law is that a man shall hate his neighbor and love his

neighbor's wife,--admit all this and what lesser faults may be added to

them, its great lessons are on the side of humanity, and especially of

justice to woman, founded on a study of her organic and spiritual

limitations.

_Woman is an invalid_. This is the first axiom, out of which flow the

precepts of care, bodily and mental, of tenderness, of consideration,

with which the book abounds. To show this, M. Michelet has recourse to

the investigations of the physiologists who during the present century

have studied the special conditions which according to the old axiom

make woman what she is. As nothing short of this can by any possibility

enable us to understand the feminine nature, we must not find fault with

some details not commonly thought adapted to the general reader. They

are given delicately, but they are given, and suggest a certain reserve

in introducing the book to the reading classes. Not only is woman an

invalid, but the _rhythmic character of her life_, "as if scanned by

Nature," is an element not to be neglected without total failure to read

her in health and in disease. There is a great deal relating to this

matter, some of it seeming fanciful and overwrought, but not more so

than the natures of many women. For woman herself is an hyperbole, and

the plainest statement of her condition is a figure of speech. Some of

those chapters that are written, as we might say, in hysteric

paragraphs, only more fitly express the extravagances which belong to

the nervous movements of the woman's nature.

_The husband must create the wife_. Much of the book is taken up with

the precepts by which this new birth of the woman is to be brought

about, M. Michelet's "entire affection" hateth those "nicer hands" winch

would refuse any, even the humblest offices. The husband should be at

once nurse and physician. He should regulate the food of the body, and

measure out the doses of mental nourishment. All this is kind and good

and affectionate; but there is just a suspicion excited that _Madame_

might become slightly _ennuyée_, if she were subjected to this minute

surveillance over her physical and spiritual hygiene. Everything must

depend on individual tendencies and aptitudes; we have known husbands

that were born for nurses,--and others, not less affectionate, that

worried more than they helped in that capacity.

We cannot follow M. Michelet through his study of the reaction of the

characters of the husband and wife upon each other, of the influence of

maternity on conjugal relations, of the languishing of love and its

rejuvenescence. Still less can we do more than remotely allude to those

chapters in which his model woman is represented as ready on the

slightest occasion to prove the name of her sex synonymous with frailty.

We really do not know what to make of such things. The cool calculations

of temptation as certain, and failure as probable,--the serious advice

not to strike a wife under any circumstances,--such words have literally

no meaning to most of our own American readers. Our women are educated

to self-reliance,--and our men are, at least, too busy for the trade of

tempters.

In a word, this book was written for French people, and is adjusted to

the meridian of Paris. We must remember this always in reading it, and

also remember that a Frenchman does not think English any more than he

_talks_ it. We sometimes flatter ourselves with the idea that we as a

people are original in our tendency to extravagance of thought and

language. It is a conceit of ours. Remember Sterne's _perruquier_.

"'You may immerge it,' replied he, 'into the ocean, and it will stand.'

"'What a great scale is everything upon, in this city!' thought I. 'The

utmost stretch of an English periwig-maker's ideas could have gone no

farther than to have dipped it into a pail of water.'"

* * * * *

How much such experiences as the following amount to we must leave to

the ecclesiastical bodies to settle.

"The Church is openly against her, [woman,] owing her a grudge for the

sin of Eve."

"It is very easy for us, educated in the religion of the indulgent God

of Nature, to look our common destiny in the face. But she, impressed

with the dogma of eternal punishment, though she may have received other

ideas from you, still, in her suffering and debility, has painful

foreshadowings of the future state."

But here are physiological statements which we take the liberty to

question on our own responsibility.

"A French girl of fifteen is as mature as an English one of eighteen."

What will Mr. Roberton of Manchester, who has exploded so many of our

fancies about the women of the East, say to this?

"A wound, for which the German woman would require surgical aid, in the

French woman cures itself." We must say of such an unproved assertion as

the French General said of the charge at Balaklava,--"_C'est magnifique,

mais ce n'est pas la_"--_médecine_.

"Generally, she [woman] is sick from love,--man, from indigestion." What

a pity Nature never makes such pretty epigrams with her facts as wits do

with their words!

We have enough, too, of that self-assertion which Carlyle and Ruskin and

some of our clerical neighbors have made us familiar with, and which

gives flavor to a work of genius. "I was worth more than my writings,

more than my discourses. I brought to this teaching of philosophy and

history a soul as yet entire,--a great freshness of mind, under forms

often subtle,--a true simplicity of heart," etc.

M. Michelet does not undervalue the importance of his work. He thinks he

has ruined the dancing-gardens by the startling revelations respecting

woman contained in his book. He announces a still greater triumph:--"I

believe I have effectually suppressed old women. They will no longer be

met with." M. Michelet has not seen the columns of some of our weekly

newspapers.

These are scales from the husk of his book, which, with all its

fantasies, is a generous plea for woman. Wise persons may safely read

it, though they be not Parisians.

The translation is, and is generally considered, excellent. We notice

two errors,--_Jerres_, instead of _Serres_,--and _would_, for _should_,

after the Scotch and Southern provincial fashion;--with some

questionable words, as _reliable_, for which we have Sir Robert Peel's

authority, which cannot make it as honest a word as _trustworthy_,--

_masculize_, which is at least intelligible,--and _fast_, used as

college-boys use it in their loose talk, but not with the meaning which

sober scholars are wont to give it. With these slight exceptions, the

translation appears to us singularly felicitous, notwithstanding the

task must have been very difficult, which Dr. Palmer has performed with

such rare success.

* * * * *

_Farm-Drainage_. The Principles, Processes, and Effects of Draining

Land, with Wood, Stones, Ploughs, and Open Ditches, and especially with

Tiles; including Tables of Rainfall, Evaporation, Filtration,

Excavation, Capacity of Pipes; Cost, and Number to the Acre, of Tiles,

etc., etc.; and more than One Hundred Illustrations. By HENRY E. FRENCH.

New York: A.O. Moore & Co. 1859. 8vo. pp. 384.

We remember standing, thirty years ago, upon the cupola of a court-house

in New Jersey, and, while enjoying the whole panorama, being

particularly impressed with the superior fertility and luxuriance of one

farm on the outskirts of the town. We recollect further, that, on

inquiry, we found this farm to belong to a Judge of the Court of Common

Pleas, who also exercised the trade of a potter, and underdrained his

land with tile-drains. His neighbors attributed the improvement in his

farm to manure and tillage, and thought his attempts to introduce

tile-drains into use arose chiefly from his desire to make a market for

his tiles. Thirty years have made a great change; and a New Hampshire

Judge of the Court of Common Pleas gives us a book on Farm-Drainage

which tells us that in England twenty millions of dollars have been

loaned by the government to be used in underdraining with tile!

We believe that Judge French has given the first practical guide in

draining to the American farmer,--indeed, the first book professing to

be a complete practical guide to the farmers of any country. His right

to speak is derived from successful experiments of his own, from a visit

to European agriculturists, and from a personal correspondence with the

best drainage-engineers of England and America, as well as from the

study of all available magazines and journals. No one could handle the

subject in a more pleasant and lucid style; flashes of wit, and even of

humor, are sparkling through every chapter, but they never divert the

mind of the reader from the main purpose of elucidating the subject of

deep drainage. The title-page does not promise so much as the book

performs; and we feel confident that its reputation will increase, as

our farmers begin to understand the true effects of deep drainage on

upland, and seek for a guide in the improvement of their farms.

The rain-tables, furnished by Dr. E. Hobbs, of Waltham, afford some very

interesting statistics, by which our climate may be definitely compared

with that of our mother country. In England, they have about 156 rainy

days _per annum_, and we but 56. In England, one inch in 24 hours is

considered a great rain; but in New England six inches and seven-eighths

(6.88) has been known to fall in 24 hours. In England, the annual fall

is about 21,--in New England, 42 inches. The experiments on the

retention of water by the soil are also interesting; showing that

ordinary arable soil is capable of holding nearly six inches of water in

every foot of soil.

Not the least valuable portion of the book is a brief discussion of some

of the legal questions connected with drainage; the rights of

land-owners in running waters, and in reference to the water in the

soil; the rights of mill-owners and water-power companies; and the

subject of flowage, by which so many thousand acres of valuable arable

land are ruined to support unprofitable manufacturing companies. The

rights of agriculturists, and the interests of agriculture, demand the

care of our governments, and the hearty aid of our scientific men; and

we are glad to find a judge who, at least when off the bench, speaks

sound words in their behalf.

Agriculture in the Atlantic States is beginning to attract the attention

which its great importance demands. Thorough draining is, as yet, little

used among us, but a beginning has been made; and Judge French's book

will, doubtless, be of value in extension of the practice. If any reader

has not yet heard what thorough draining is, we would say, in brief,

that it consists in laying tile-pipes, from one and a half to three

inches in diameter, four feet under ground, at from twenty to sixty feet

apart, so inclined as to drain out of your ground all the water that may

be within three feet of the surface. This costs from $30 to $60 per

acre, and is in almost all kinds of arable land an excellent investment

of capital,--making the spring earlier, the land warmer, rain less

injurious, drought less severe, the crops better in quality and greater

in quantity. In short, thorough draining is, as our author says,

following Cromwell's advice, "trusting in Providence, but keeping the

powder dry."

* * * * *

_The Novels of James Fenimore Cooper_. Illustrated with Steel Engravings

from Drawings by Darley. New York: W.A. Townsend & Co.

The British Museum, it is said, has accumulated over twenty-seven

thousand novels written since the publication of "Waverley." With the

general diffusion of education the ambition of authorship has had a

corresponding increase; and people who were not inspired to make rhymes,

nor learned enough to undertake history, philosophy, or science, as well

as those who despaired of success in essays, travels, or sermons, have

all thought themselves capable of representing human life in the form of

fiction. Very few of the twenty-seven thousand, probably, are wholly

destitute of merit. Each author has drawn what he saw, or knew, or did,

or imagined; and so has preserved something worthy, for those who live

upon his plane and see the world with his eyes. The difficulty is, that

the vision of most men is limited; they observe human nature only in a

few of its many aspects; they cannot so far lift themselves above the

trivial affairs around them as to take in the whole of humanity at a

glance. Even when rare types of character are presented to view, it is

only a genius who can for the time assimilate himself to them, and so

make their portraits life-like upon his canvas. In every old-fashioned

town there are models for new Dogberrys and Edie Ochiltrees; our

seaports have plenty of Bunsbys; every great city has its Becky Sharpe

and Major Pendennis. One has only to listen to a group of Irish laborers

in their unrestrained talk to find that the delicious _non sequitur_,

which is the charm of the grave-diggers' conversation in "Hamlet," is by

no means obsolete. But who can write such a colloquy? It would be

easier, we fancy, for a clever man to give a sketch of Lord Bacon, with

all his rapid and profound generalization, than to follow the slow and

tortuous mental processes of a clodhopper.

To secure the attention of his readers, the novelist must construct a

plot and create the characters whose movements shall produce the

designed catastrophe, and, by the incidents and dialogue, exhibit the

passions, the virtues, the aspirations, the weaknesses, and the villany

of human nature. It is needless to say that most characters in fiction

are as shadowy as Ossian's ghosts; the proof is, that, when the

incidents of the story have passed out of memory, the persons are

likewise forgotten. Of all the popular novelists, not more than half a

dozen have ever created characters that survive,--characters that are

felt to be "representative men." After Shakspeare and Scott, Dickens

comes first, unquestionably; although, in analysis, philosophy, force,

and purity of style, he is far inferior to Thackeray. Parson Adams will

not be forgotten, nor that gentle monogamist, the good Vicar of

Wakefield. But as for Bulwer, notwithstanding his wonderful art in

construction and the brilliancy of his style, who remembers a character

out of his novels, unless it be Doctor Riccabocca?

After this rather long preamble, let us hasten to say, that Cooper, in

spite of many and the most obvious faults, has succeeded in portraying a

few characters which stand out in bold relief,--and that his works,

after years of criticism and competition, still hold their place, on

both continents, among the most delightful novels in the language. Other

writers have appeared, with more culture, with more imagination, with

more spiritual insight, with more attractiveness of style; but

Leatherstocking, in the virgin forest, with the crafty, painted savage

retreating before him, and the far-distant hum of civilization following

his trail, is a creation which no reader ever can or would forget,--a

creation for which the merely accomplished writer would gladly exchange

all the fine sentences and word-pictures that he had ever put on paper.

It is also due to Cooper to say, that "The Pilot" was the first, and

still is the best, of nautical novels; we say this in fell recollection

of its trace of stupid heroines. The very air of the book is salt. As

you read, you hear the wind in the rigging,--a sound that one never

forgets. The form and motion of waves, the passing of distant ships, the

outlines of spars and cordage against the sky, the blue above and the

blue below, all the scenery of the sea, here for the first time found an

appreciative artist.

We have not space to mention these novels separately. We are glad to see

an edition which is worthy of the author's genius,--each volume graced

with the designs of Darley. The style in which the work has been issued

is creditable to the publishers, and cannot fail to be remunerative.

* * * * *

_Ettore Fieramosca; or, the Challenge of Barletta_. The Struggles of an

Italian against Foreign Invaders and Foreign Protectors. By MASSIMO D'

AZEGLIO. Boston: Phillips, Sampson, & Co. 16mo.

The recent war led to the publication of a great number of books upon

the state of Italy and the relative positions of the contending powers;

now that the wave has receded, all these are left high and dry. This

novel, however, does not depend upon any transient interest in the

affairs of Italy for its success. As the production of an eminent

author, who is also one of the first of Italian statesmen, it demands a

respectful consideration. The condition of the country in the sixteenth

century presents a striking counterpart to that of the present year: two

foreign monarchs were at war in the Peninsula; and then, as now, it was

a question whether unhappy Italy had not as much to fear from her allies

as from her invaders.

The scene of the story is laid in the little town of Barletta, on the

Adriatic coast, in the present kingdom of Naples. The action turns upon

the fortunes of the day in a contest _à l'outrance_, wherein a dozen

French knights, the flower of the invading army, were met and vanquished

by an equal number of Italians, of whom the hero, Ettore Fieramosca, was

the chief. The English reader will not expect to find in this book any

of the traits with which he is familiar in the novels of our own

authors. There is little scenery-painting, few wayside reflections, and

no attempt at portraying the comic side of human nature, or even the

ordinary gayety of domestic life. The times did not suggest such topics;

and if they did, we suspect that the Italian novelists would turn from

such commonplace affairs to the more stirring events with which History

has been heretofore concerned. But the story before us has no lack of

incident. When the persons of the drama are fairly brought upon the

stage, the action begins at once; surprise follows surprise, plot is

matched by plot, until the fortunes of the actors are entwined

inextricably. The portraits of the famous Colonna and of the infamous

Cæsar Borgia (the latter being the arch "villain" of the story) are

drawn in sharp and decisive lines. The tournament which forms the scene

of the catastrophe is a brilliant picture, though not a pleasing one for

a Friend or a member of the Peace Society.

Of course the element of Love is not wanting; two golden threads run

through the crimsoned web; but whether they meet before Atropos comes

with the fatal shears, it is not best to say. When the modern

novel-reader can answer the momentous question, "Did they marry?" the

charm of the most exciting story, for him, is gone.

Aside from the interest which one feels in the changing fortunes of the

hero, the book is especially valuable for the light it throws upon that

period of Italian history, and upon the subtilties of Italian character.

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