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THE
INTERNATIONAL
MONTHLY
MAGAZINE
Of Literature, Science, and Art.
VOLUME II.
DECEMBER TO MARCH, 1850-51.
NEW-YORK:
STRINGER & TOWNSEND, 222 BROADWAY.
FOR SALE BY ALL BOOKSELLERS.
BY THE NUMBER, 25 CTS.; THE VOLUME, $1; THE YEAR, $3.
PREFACE.
On completing the second volume of the International Magazine, the
publishers appeal to its pages with confidence for confirmation of all
the promises that have been made with regard to its character. They
believe the verdict of the American journals has been unanimous upon the
point that the _International_ has been the best journal of literary
intelligence in the world, keeping its readers constantly advised of the
intellectual activity of Great Britain, Germany, France, the other
European nations, and our own country. As a journal of the fine arts, it
has been the aim of the editor to render it in all respects just, and as
particular as the space allotted to this department would allow. And its
reproductions of the best contemporary foreign literature bear the names
of Walter Savage Landor, Mazzini, Bulwer, Dickens, Thackeray, Barry
Cornwall, Alfred Tennyson, R.M. Milnes, Charles Mackay, Mrs. Browning,
Miss Mitford, Miss Martineau, Mrs. Hall, and others; its original
translations the names of several of the leading authors of the
Continent, and its anonymous selections the titles of the great Reviews,
Magazines, and Journals, as well as of many of the most important new
books in all departments of literature. But the _International_ is not
merely a compilation; it has embraced in the two volumes already issued,
original papers, by Bishop Spencer of Jamaica, Henry Austen Layard,
LL.D., the most illustrious of living travellers and antiquaries, G.P.R.
James, Alfred B. Street, Bayard Taylor, A.O. Hall, R.H. Stoddard,
Richard B. Kimball, Parke Godwin, William C. Richards, John E. Warren,
Elizabeth Oakes Smith, Mary E. Hewitt, Alice Carey, and other authors of
eminence, whose compositions have entitled it to a place in the first
class of original literary periodicals. Besides the writers hitherto
engaged for the _International_, many of distinguished reputations are
pledged to contribute to its pages hereafter; and the publishers have
taken measures for securing at the earliest possible day the chief
productions of the European press, so that to American readers the
entire Magazine will be as new and fresh as if it were all composed
expressly for their pleasure.
The style of illustration which has thus far been so much approved by
the readers of the _International_, will be continued, and among the
attractions of future numbers will be admirable portraits of Irving,
Cooper, Bryant, Halleck, Prescott, Ticknor, Francis, Hawthorne, Willis,
Kennedy, Mitchell, Mayo, Melville, Whipple, Taylor, Dewey, Stoddard, and
other authors, accompanied as frequently as may be with views of their
residences, and sketches of their literary and personal character.
Indeed, every means possible will be used to render the _International
Magazine_ to every description of persons the most valuable as well as
the most entertaining miscellany in the English language.
CONTENTS:
VOLUME II. DECEMBER TO MARCH, 1850-51.
Adams, John, upon Riches, 426
Ambitious Brooklet, The.--_By A.O. Hall_, 477
Accidents will Happen.--_By C. Astor Bristed_, 81
Anima Mundi.--_By R.M. Milnes_, 393
Astor Library, The. (Illustrated,) 436
Attempts to Discover the Northwest Passage, On the, 166
Audubon, John James.--_By Rufus W. Griswold_, 469
Age, Old.--_By Alfred B. Street_, 474
_Arts, The Fine._--Munich and Schwanthaler's "Bavaria," 26.--Art in
Florence, 27.--W.W. Story's Return from Italy, 27.--Les Beautes de la
France, 27.--History of Art Exhibitions, 28.--Enamel Painting at
Berlin, 28.--Portrait of Sir Francis Drake, 28.--The Vernets,
28.--Leutze, Powers, &c., 28.--Kaulbach, 28.--Illustrations of Homer,
28.--Old Pictures, 29.--Michael Angelo, 29.--Conversations by the
Academy of Design, 29.--David's Napoleon Crossing the Alps, 29.--Gift
from the Bavarian Artists to the King, 190.--Charles Eastlake,
190.--New Picture by Kaulbach, 190.--Russian Porcelain, 190.--Mr.
Healey, 191.--Von Kestner on Art, 191.--Russian Music in Paris,
191.--The Goethe Inheritance, 191.--Art Unions; their True Character
Considered, 191.--Waagner's "Art in the Future," 313.--Thorwaldsen,
313.--Heidel's "Illustrations of Goethe," 313.--A New Art,
313.--Albert Durer's Illustrations of the Prayer Book, 313.--Moritz
Rugendus, and his Sketches of American Scenery, 314.--An Art Union in
Vienna, 314.--New Picture by Kaulbach, 314.--Powers's "America,"
314.--Dr. Baun's Essay on the two Chief Groups of the Friese of the
Parthenon, 314.--Victor Orsel's Paintings in the Church of Notre Dame
de Lorelle, 314.--Ehninger's Illustrations of Irving, 314.--Wolff's
Paris, 314.--M. Leutze's "Washington Crossing the Delaware,"
460.--Discovery of a Picture by Michael Angelo, 460.--The Munich Art
Union, 460.
_Authors and Books._--A Visit to Henry Heine, 15.--Dr. Zirckel's
"Sketches from and concerning the United States," 16.--Aerostation,
17.--New Works by M. Guizot, 17.--Works on the German Revolution,
18.--Dr. Zimmer's Universal History, 18.--Schlosser, 18.--MS. of Le
Bel Discovered, 19.--M. Bastiat alive, and plagiarizing,
19.--Caesarism, 19.--Songs of Carinthia, 20.--Mr. Bryant, 20.--Dr.
Laing, 20.--French Reviewal of Mr. Elliot's History of Liberty,
20.--Dr. Bowring, 21.--Henry Rogers and Reviews, 21.--Rabbi Schwartz
on the Holy Land, 21.--Mr. John R. Thompson, 21.--German Reviewal of
"Fashion," 22.--Ruskin's New Work, 21.--Oehlenschlager's Memoirs,
22.--Planche on Lamartine, 22.--Prosper Merimee, his Book on America,
&c., 22.--Hawthorne, 22.--Matthews, the American Traveller,
23.--Professor Adler's Translation of the Iphigenia in Taurus,
23.--The Pekin Gazette, 23.--New Book by the author of "Shakespeare
and his Friends," 23.--Vaulabelle's French History, 23.--Sir Edward
Belcher, 23.--Guizot an Editor again, 23.--Life of Southey,
23.--Bulwer's _Ears_, 23.--The Count de Castelnau on South America,
23.--Diplomatic and Literary Studies of Alexis de Saint Priest,
24.--Mrs. Putnam's Review of Bowen, 24.--Herr Thaer, 24.--New Work
announced in England, 24.--"Sir Roger de Coverley; by the Spectator,"
25.--Memoir of Judge Story, 25.--Garland's Life of John Randolph,
25.--Sir Edgerton Brydges's edition of Milton's Poems, 25.--The
Keepsake, 25.--Gray's Poems, 25.--Rev. Professor Weir, 25.--Douglas
Jerrold's Complete Works, 25.--Memoirs of the Poet Wordsworth, by his
Nephew, 25.--New German books on Hungary, 173.--"Polish Population in
Galicia," 173.--Travels and Ethnological works of Professor Reguly,
174.--Works on Ethnology, published by the Austrian Government,
174.--Karl Gutzlow, 174.--Neandar's Library, 174.--Karl Simrock's
Popular Songs, 175.--Belgian Literature, 175.--Prof. Johnston's Work
on America, 175.--Literary and Scientific Works at Giessen,
175.--Beranger, 175.--The House of the "Wandering Jew," 176.--The
Count de Tocqueville upon Dr. Franklin, &c., 176.--Audubon's Last
Work, 176.--Book Fair at Leipsic, 176.--Baroness von Beck,
177.--Berghaus's Magazine, Albert Gallatin, &c., 177.--Auerback's
Tales, 177.--Baron Sternberg, 177.--"The New Faith Taught in Art,"
177.--Freiligrath, 177.--New Adventure and Discovery in Africa,
178.--French Almanacs, 178.--The _Algemeine Zeitung_ on Literary
Women, 178.--Cormenin on War, 178.--Writers of "Young France,"
179.--George Sand's Last Works, 179.--New Books on the French
Revolution, Mirabeau, Massena, &c., 179.--Cousin, 179.--Tomb of
Godfrey of Bouillon, 179.--Maxims of Frederic the Great, 179.--New
Poems by Elizabeth Barrett Browning, 180.--Rectorship of Glasgow
University, 180.--Tennyson, 180.--Mayhew, D'Israeli, Leigh Hunt, The
Earl of Carlisle, &c., 180.--New Work by Joseph Balmes, 180.--The late
Mrs. Bell Martin, 181.--The _Athenaeum_ on Mrs. Mowatt's Novels,
181.--New work by Mrs. Southworth, 181.--Charles Mackay, sent to
India, 182.--Pensions to Literary Men, 182.--German Translation of
Ticknor's History of Spanish Literature, 182.--David Copperfield,
183.--D.D. Field and the English Lawyers, 183.--Louisiana Historical
Collections, 183.--Elihu Burritt's Absurdities, 184.--John Mills,
184.--Dr. Latham's "Races of Men," 184.--Homoeopathic Review,
184.--Bohn's Publications, 184.--Professor Reed's Rhetoric, 185.--Mr.
Bancroft's forthcoming History, 185.--Dr. Schoolcraft, 185.--MS. of
Dr. Johnson's Memoirs, 185.--Literary "Discoveries," 185.--M.
Girardin, 185.--Vulgar Lying of the last English Traveller in America,
186.--The Real Peace Congress, 186.--Milton, Burke, Mazzini, Webster,
187.--Sir Francis Head, 187.--Dr. Bloomfield, 187.--New Book by Mr.
Cooper, 187.--Mr. Judd's "Richard Edney," 187.--E.G. Squier,
Hawthorne, &c., 187.--The Author of "Olive," on the Sphere of Woman,
188.--Flemish Poems, 188.--"Lives of the Queens of Scotland,"
188.--John S. Dwight, 188.--History of the Greek Revolution, 188.--New
Edition of the Works of Goethe, 188.--W.G. Simms, Dr. Holmes, &c.,
188.--The Songs of Pierre Dupont, 189.--Arago and Prudhon,
189.--Charles Sumner, 189.--"The Manhattaner in New Orleans,"
189.--"Reveries of a Bachelor," "Vala," &c., 189.--Of Personalities,
297.--Last Work of Oersted, 298.--New Dramas, 299.--German Novels,
300.--Hungarian Literature, 301.--New German Book on America,
301.--Ruckert's "Annals of German History," 301.--Zschokke's Private
Letters, 301.--Works by Bender and Burmeister, 301.--The Countess
Hahn-Hahn, 302.--"Value of Goethe as a Poet," 302.--Hagen's History of
Recent Times, 302.--Cotta's Illustrated Bible, 302.--Wallon's History
of Slavery, 302.--Translation of the Journal of the U.S. Exploring
Expedition into German, 302.--Richter's Translation of Mrs. Barbauld,
302.--Bodenstet's New Book on the East, 302.--Third Part of Humboldt's
"Cosmos," &c., 303.--Dr. Espe, 303.--The Works of Neander, 303.--Works
of Luther, 303.--_L'Universe Pittoresque_, 303.--M. Nisard,
303.--French Documentary Publications, 303.--M. Ginoux, 303.--M.
Veron, 304.--Eugene Sue's New Books, 304.--George Sand in the Theatre,
304.--Alphonse Karr, 304.--Various new Publications in Paris,
304.--The Catholic Church and Pius IX., 305.--Notices of Hayti,
305.--Work on Architecture, by Gailhabaud, 305.--Italian Monthly
Review, 305.--Discovery of Letters by Pope, 305.--Lord Brougham,
305.--Alice Carey, 305.--Mrs. Robinson ("Talvi"), 306.--New Life of
Hannah More, 306.--Professor Hackett on the Alps, 306.--Mrs. Anita
George, 307.--Life and Works of Henry Wheaton, 308.--R.R. Madden,
308.--Rev. E.H. Chapin on "Woman," 308.--Discovery of Historical
Documents of Quebec, 308.--Professor Andrews's Latin Lexicon,
309.--"Salander," by Mr. Shelton, 309.--Prof. Bush on Pneumatology,
309.--Satire on the Rappers, by J.R. Lowell, 309.--Henry C. Phillips
on the Scenery of the Central Regions of America, 310.--Sam. Adams no
Defaulter, 310.--Mr. Willis, 310.--Life of Calvin, 310.--Notes of a
Howadje, 310.--Mr. Putnam's "World's Progress," 310.--Mr. Whittier,
310.--New Volume of Hildreth's History of the United States, 311.--The
Memorial of Mrs. Osgood, 311.--Fortune Telling in Paris,
311.--Writings of Hartley Coleridge, 311.--New Books forthcoming in
London, 312.--Mr. Cheever's "Island World of the Pacific," 312.--Works
of Bishop Onderdonk, 312.--Moreau's _Imitatio Christi_, 312.--New
German Poems, 312.--Schroeder on the Jews, 312.--Arago on Ballooning,
312.--Books prohibited at Naples, 312.--Notices of Mazzini,
313.--Charles Augustus Murray, 313.--New History of Woman,
313.--Letters on Humboldt's Cosmos, 446.--German Version of the
"Vestiges of Creation," 447.--Hegel's _Aesthetik_, 447.--New Work in
France on the Origin of the Human Race, 448.--Lelewel on the Geography
of the Middle Ages, 448.--More German Novels, 448.--"Man in the Mirror
of Nature," 449.--Herr Kielhau, on Geology, 449.--Proposed Prize for a
Defence of Absolutism, 449.--Werner's Christian Ethics, 449.--William
Meinhold, 449.--Prize History of the Jews, 449.--English Version of
Mrs. Robinson's Work on America, 449.--Poems by Jeanne Marie,
449.--General Gordon's Memoirs, 449.--George Sand's New Drama,
449.--Other New French Plays, 451.--M. Cobet's History of France,
451.--Rev. G.R. Gleig, 451.--Ranke's Discovery of MSS. by Richelieu,
451.--George Sand on Bad Spelling, 451.--Lola Montes,
451.--Montalembert, 451.--Glossary of the Middle Ages, 451.--A Coptic
Grammar, 451.--The Italian Revolution, 452.--Italian Archaeological
Society, 452.--Abaddie, the French Traveller, 452.--The Vatican
Library, 452.--New Ode by Piron, 452.--Posthumous Works of Rossi,
452.--Bailey, the Author of "Festus," 453.--Clinton's _Fasti_,
453.--Captain Cunningham, 453.--Dixon's Life of Penn, 453.--Literary
Women in England, 453.--Miss Martineau's History of the Last Half
Century, 453.--The Lexington Papers, 453.--Captain Medwin, 453.--John
Clare, 454.--De Quincy's Writings, 454.--Bulwer's Poems,
454.--Episodes of Insect Life, 454.--Dr. Achilli, 454.--Samuel Bailey,
454.--Major Poussin, and his Work on the United States, 454.--French
Collections in Political Economy, 455.--Joseph Gales, 456.--Rev. Henry
T. Cheever, 456.--Job R. Tyson on Colonial History, 456.--Henry James,
456.--Torrey and Neander, 457.--Works of John C. Calhoun,
457.--Historic Certainties respecting Early America, 457.--Mr.
Schoolcraft, 457.--Dr. Robert Knox, 458.--Mr. Boker's Plays, 458.--The
_Literary World_ upon a supposed Letter of Washington, 458.--Dr.
Ducachet's Dictionary of the Church, 458.--Edith May's Poems,
458.--The American Philosophical Society, 458.--Professor Hows,
458.--Mr. Redfield's Publications, 458.--Rev. William W. Lord's New
Poem, 450.
Battle of the Churches in England, 327
Ballad of Jessie Carol.--_By Alice Carey_, 230
Barry Cornwall's Last Song, 392
Bereaved Mother, To a.--_By Hermann_, 476
Biographies, Memoirs, &c., 425
Black Pocket-Book, The, 89
Bombay, A View of.--_By Peter Leicester_, 130
Boswell, The Killing of Sir Alexander, 329
Bronte and her Sisters, Sketches of Miss, 315
Burke, Edmund, His Residences and Grave.--_By Mrs. S.C. Hall._
(Illustrated.) 145
Bunjaras, The, 377
Burlesques and Parodies, 426
Byron, Scott, and Carlyle, Goethe's Opinions of, 461
Camille Desmoulins, 326
Carey, Henry C.--_By Rufus W. Griswold_, 402
Castle in the Air, The.--_By R.H. Stoddard_, 474
Chatterton, Thomas. (Illustrated.) 289
Classical Novels, 161
Count Monte-Leone. Book Second, 45
" " " Third, 216
" " " Third, concluded, 349
" " " Fourth, 495
Cow-Tree of South America, The, 128
Correspondence, Original: A Letter from Paris, 170
Cyprus and the Life Led There, 216
Davis on the Half Century: Etherization, 317
Dacier, Madame, 332
Dante.--_By Walter Savage Landor_, 421
Death, Phenomena of, 425
_Deaths, Recent._--Hon. Samuel Young, 141.--Robinson, the
Caricaturist, 141.--The Duke of Palmella, 142.--Carl Rottmann,
142.--The Marquis de Trans, 142.--Ch. Schorn, 142.--Hon. Richard M.
Johnson, 142.--Wm. Blacker, 142.--Mrs. Martin Bell, 142.--Signor
Baptistide, 142.--Gen. Chastel, 142.--Dr. Medicus, and others,
142.--Rev. Dr. Dwight, 195.--Count Brandenburgh, 196.--Lord Nugent,
196.--M. Fragonard, 196.--M. Droz, 197.--Professor Schorn,
197.--Gustave Schwab, 197.--Francis Xavier Michael Tomie,
427.--Governors Bell and Plumer, 427.--Birch, the Painter,
427.--Professor Sverdrup, W. Seguin, Mrs. Ogilvy, 427.--W. Howison,
428.--H. Royer-Collard, 428.--Col. Williams, 428.--William Sturgeon,
428.--J.B. Anthony, 428.--Mr. Osbaldiston, 428.--Professor Mau,
428.--Madame Junot, Mrs. Wallack, &c., 428.--Herman Kriege,
429.--Madame Schmalz, 429.--George Spence, 429.--General Lumley,
429.--Robert Roscoe, 429.--Richie, the Sculptor, 429.--Martin d'Auch,
429.--Rev. Walter Colton, 568.--Major d'Avezac, 569.--M. Asser,
569.--M. Lapie, 569.--Professor Link, 569.--General St. Martin,
570.--Frederick Bastiat, 570.--Benjamin W. Crowninshield,
571.--Professor Anstey, 571.--Donald McKenzie, 572.--Horace Everett,
LL.D., 572.--James Harfield, 572.--Wm. Wilson, 572.--Professor James
Wallace, 572.--Joshua Milne, 572.--General Bem, 573.--T.S. Davies,
F.R.S., 573.--H.C. Schumacher, 573.--W.H. Maxwell, 573.--Alexander
McDonald, 573.
Dickens, To Charles.--_By Walter Savage Landor_, 75
Drive Round our Neighborhood, in 1850, A.--_By Miss Milford_, 270
Duty.--_By Alfred B. Street_, 332
Duchess, A Peasant, 169
Edward Layton's Reward.--_By Mrs. S.C. Hall_, 201
Editorial Visit, An, 421
Egypt under the Pharaohs.--_By John Kinrick_, 322
Encouragement of Literature by Governments, 160
Exclusion of Love from the Greek Drama, 123
Fountain in the Wood, The, 129
French Generals of To-Day, 334
Gateway of the Oceans, 124
Ghetto of Rome, 393
Gleanings from the Journals, 285
Grief of the Weeping Willow, 31
Haddock, Charles B., Charge d'Affaires to Portugal. (With a
Portrait on steel.) 1
Hecker, Herr, described by Madame Blaze de Bury, 30
_Historical Review._--The United States, 560.--Europe, 564.--Mexico,
565.--British America, 566.--The West Indies, 566.--Central America,
the Isthmus, 566.--South America, 567.--Africa, 567.
Hunt, Leigh, upon G.P.R. James, 30
Ireland in the Last Age: Curran, 519
Journals of Louis Philippe, 377
Kellogg's, Mr., Exploration of Mt. Sinai, 462
Kimball, Richard B., the Author of "St. Leger." (Illustrated.) 156
Layard's Recent Gifts from Nimroud. (Illustrated.) 4
Layard, Austen Henry, LL.D. (With a Portrait,) 433
Lafayette, Talleyrand, Metternich, and Napoleon.--_Sketched
by Lord Holland_, 465
Last Case of the Supernatural, 481
Lectures, Popular, 319
Life at a Watering Place.--_By C. Astor Bristed_, 240
Lionne at a Watering Place, The, 533
Lost Letter, The, 522
Mazzini on Italy, 265
Mackay, Charles, Last Poems by, 348
Marvel, Andrew. (Illustrated.) 438
Mother's Last Song, The.--_By Barry Cornwall_, 270
_Music and the Drama.--The Astor Place Opera, Parodi, 29.--Mrs. Oake
Smith's New Tragedy, 30.
Mystic Vial, The, Part i. 61
" " Part ii. 249
" " Part iii. 378
My Novel, Or Varieties in English Life.--_By Sir Edward
Bulwer Lytton_, Book II. Chapters i. to vi. 109
Book II. Chapters vii. to xii. 273
Book III. Chapters i. to xii. 407
Book III. Chapters xiii. to xxvii. 542
Murder Market, The, 126
New Tales by Miss Martineau--The Old Governess, 163
Novelist's Appeal for the Canadas, A, 443
Old Times in New-York, 320
Osgood, The late Mrs.--_By Rufus W. Griswold_, 131
Paris Fashions for December. (Illustrated.) 144
" " January. (Illustrated.) 286
" " February. (Illustrated.) 431
" " March. (Illustrated.) 567
Peace Society, The First, 321
Penn, (William,) and Macaulay, 336
Pleasant Story of a Swallow, 123
Poet's Lot, The.--_By the author of "Festus,"_ 45
Power's, Hiram, Greek Slave.--_By Elizabeth Barret Browning_, 88
Poems by S.G. Goodrich, A Biographical Review. (Illustrated.) 153
Public Libraries, Ancient and Modern, 359
Recent Deaths in the Family of Orleans, 122
Reminiscences of Paganini, 167
Responsibility of Statesmen, 127
Rossini in the Kitchen, 321
Scandalous French Dances in American Parlors, 333
_Scientific Miscellany._--Hydraulic Experiments in Paris,
430.--French Populations, 430.--African Exploring Expedition,
430.--The Hungarian Academy, 430.--Gas from Water, &c., 430.--The
French "Annuaire," 573.--Sittings of the Academy of Sciences,
573.--New Scientific Publications, 574.--Sir David Brewster, 574.
Sir Nicholas at Marston Moor.--_By Winthrop M. Praed_, 80
Sliding Scale of Inconsolables. From the French, 162
Smiths, The Two Miss.--_By Mrs. Crowe_, 76
Song of the Season.--_By Charles Mackay_, 128
Sounds from Home.--_By Alice G. Neal_, 332
Spencer, Aubrey George, LL.D., Bishop of Jamaica, 157
Spirit of the English Annuals for 1851, 197
Stanzas.--_By Alfred Tennyson_, 273
Statues.--_By Walter Savage Landor_, 126
Story Without a Name, A.--_By G.P.R. James_, 32
" " Chapters vi. to ix. 205
" " Chapters x. to xiii. 337
" " Chapters xiv. to xvii. 482
Story of Calais, A.--_By Richard B. Kimball_, 231
Story of a Poet, 88
Swift, Dean, and his Amours. (Illustrated.) 7
Temper of Women, 437
Theatrical Criticism in the Last Age, 334
To a Celebrated Singer.--_By R.H. Stoddard_, 86
To one in Affliction.--_By G.R. Thompson_, 541
Troost, of Tennessee, The Late Dr. 332
Twickenham Ghost, The, 60
Valetudinarian, The Confirmed.--_By Sir Edward Bulwer Lytton_, 203
Vampire, The Last.--_By Mrs. Crowe_, 107
Voltigeur.--_By W.H. Thackeray_, 197
Voisenen, The Abbe de, and his Times, 511
Wane of the Year, The, 129
Webster, LL.D., Horace, and the Free Academy. (Portrait.) 444
Wearing the Beard.--_Dr. Marcy_, 130
Wiseman, Dr., Cardinal Archbishop of Westminster (Illustrated.) 143
Wild Sports in Algeria.--_By Jules Gerard_, 121
Wolf Chase, The.--_By C. Whitehead_, 86
[Illustration: _C.B. Haddock_]
THE INTERNATIONAL MAGAZINE
of Literature, Art, and Science.
Vol. II. NEW YORK, DECEMBER 1, 1850. No. I.
OUR DIPLOMATIC SERVANTS.
CHARLES B. HADDOCK,
CHARGE D'AFFAIRES FOR PORTUGAL.
[With a Portrait, Engraved by J. Andrews.]
Old notions of diplomacy are obsolete. The plain, straightforward, and
masterly manner in which Daniel Webster and Lord Ashburton managed the
difficult affairs which a few years ago threatened war between this
country and England have taught mankind a useful lesson on this subject.
We perceive that the London _Times_ has been engaged in a controversy
whether there should be diplomatists or no diplomatists, whether, in
fact, the profession should survive; arguing from this case conducted by
our illustrious Secretary and Lord Ashburton, that negotiation in
foreign countries is plain sailing for great men, and that common agents
would do the necessary business on ordinary occasions. We are not
prepared to accept the doctrine of the _Times_, though ready enough to
admit that it is to be preferred to the employment of such persons as
many whom we have sent abroad in the last twenty years--many who now in
various capacities represent the United States in foreign countries.
Upon this question however we do not propose now to enter. It is one
which may be deferred still a long time--until the means of
intercommunication shall be greater than steam and electricity have yet
made them, or until the evils of unworthy representation shall have
driven people to the possible dangers of an abandonment of the system
without such a reason. We design in this and future numbers of the
_International_ simply to give a few brief personal sketches of the most
honorably distinguished of the diplomatic servants of the United States
now abroad, and we commence with the newly-appointed _Charge d'Affaires_
to Lisbon.
Charles Brickett Haddock was born at Salisbury (now Franklin), New
Hampshire, on the 20th of June, 1796. His father, William Haddock, was a
native of Haverhill, Massachusetts. His paternal grandfather removed
from Boston to Haverhill, and married a sister of Dr. Charles Brickett,
an eminent physician of that town. The family, according to a tradition
among them, are descended from Admiral Sir Richard Haddocke, one of ten
sons and eleven daughters of Mr. Haddocke, of Lee, in England. Richard
Haddocke was an eminent officer in the Royal Navy. He was knighted
before 1678, and returned a member of Parliament the same year, and
again in 1685. He died in 1713, and was buried in the family vault at
Lee, where there is a gravestone, with brass plates on which are
engraved portraits of his father, his father's three wives, and thirteen
sons and eleven daughters.
The mother of Dr. Haddock was Abigail Webster, a favorite sister of
Ezekiel and Daniel Webster, who, with Sarah, were the only children of
the Hon. Ebenezer Webster by his second wife, Abigail Eastman, who
survived her husband and all her daughters. Mrs. Haddock was a woman of
strong character, and greatly beloved in society. She died in December,
1805, at the age of twenty-seven, leaving two sons, Charles and William,
one about nine and the other seven years of age. Her last words to her
husband were, "I leave you two beautiful boys: my wish is that you
should educate them both." The injunction was not forgotten; both were
in due time placed at a preparatory school in Salisbury, both entered
Dartmouth College, and without an academic censure or reproof graduated
with distinction.
The younger, having studied the profession of the law, married a
daughter of Mills Olcott, of Hanover, and after a few years, rich in
promise of professional eminence, died of consumption at Hanover, in
1835.
The elder, Charles B. Haddock, was born in the house in which his
grandfather first lived, after he removed to the river, in Franklin;
though his childhood was chiefly spent at Elms Farms, in the mansion
built by his father, and now the favorite residence of his uncle, Daniel
Webster,--a spot hardly equaled for picturesque and tranquil beauty in
that part of New England. How much of his rural tastes and gentle
feelings the professor owes to the place of his nativity it is not for
us to determine. It is certain that a fitter scene to inspire the
sentiments for which he is distinguished, and which he delights to
refresh by frequent visits to these scenes, could not well be imagined.
Every hill and valley, every rock and eddy, seem to be familiar to him,
and to have a legend for his heart. His earliest distinct recollections,
he has often been heard to say, are the burial of a sister younger than
himself, his own baptism at the bedside of his dying mother, and the
death of his grandfather; and the first things that awakened a romantic
emotion were the flight of the night-hawk and the note of the
whippoorwill, both uncommonly numerous and noticeable there in summer
evenings.
From 1807 he was in the academy during the summer months, and attended
the common school in winter, until 1811, when, in his sixteenth year, he
taught his own first winter school. It had been his fortune to have as
instructors persons destined to unusual eminence: Mr. Richard Fletcher,
now one of the justices of the Superior Court of Massachusetts; Justice
Willard, of Springfield; the Rev. Edward L. Parker, of Londonderry; and
Nathaniel H. Carter, the well-known poet and general writer. It was
under Mr. Carter that he first felt a genuine love of learning; and he
has always ascribed more of his literary tastes, to his insensible
influence, as he read to him Virgil and Cicero, than to any other living
teacher. His earliest Latin book was the AEneid, over the first half of
which he had, summer after summer, fatigued and vexed himself, before
the idea occurred to him that it was an epic poem; and that idea came to
him at length not from his teachers, but from a question of his uncle,
Daniel Webster, about the descent of the hero into the infernal regions.
When a proper impression of its design was once formed, and some
familiarity with the language was acquired, Virgil was run through with
great rapidity: half a book in a day. So also with Cicero: an oration at
a lesson. There was no verbal accuracy acquired or attempted; but a
ready mastery of the current of discourse--a familiarity with the point
and spirit of the work. In August, 1812, he was admitted a freshman in
Dartmouth College. It was a small class, but remarkable from having
produced a large number of eminent men, among whom we may mention George
A. Simmons, a distinguished lawyer in northern New York, and one of the
profoundest philosophers in this country; Dr. Absalom Peters; President
Wheeler, of the University of Vermont; Governor Hubbard, of Maine; and
Professor Joseph Torrey, of the University of Vermont, since so
honorably known as the learned translator of Neander, and as being
without a superior among American scholars in a knowledge of the
profounder German literature. The late illustrious and venerated Dr.
James Marsh, the editor of Coleridge, and the only pupil of that great
metaphysician who was the peer of his master, was of the class below
his, and was an intimate companion in study.
From the beginning of his college life it was his ambition to
distinguish himself. By the general consent of his classmates, and by
the appointment of the faculty, he held the first place at each public
exhibition through the four years in which he was a student, and at the
last commencement was complimented with having the order of the parts,
according to which the Latin salutatory had hitherto been first, so
changed that he might still have precedence and yet have the English
valedictory. During his junior year, his mind was first decidedly turned
toward religion, and with Wheeler, Torrey, Marsh, and some forty others,
he made a public profession. The two years after he left college were
spent at Andover, in the study of divinity. While here, with Torrey,
Wheeler, Marsh, and one or two more, he joined in a critical reading of
Virgil--an exercise of great value in enlarging a command of his own
language, as well as his knowledge of Latin. At the close of the second
year he was attacked with hemorrhage of the lungs, and advised to try a
southern climate for the winter. He sailed in October, 1818, for
Charleston, and spent the winter in that city and in Savannah, with
occasional visits into the surrounding country. The following summer he
traveled, chiefly on horseback, and in company with the Rev. Pliny Fisk,
from Charleston home. To this tour he ascribes his recovery. He soon
after took his master's degree, and was appointed the first Professor of
Rhetoric and Belles-Lettres in Dartmouth College. From that time a
change was obvious in the literary spirit of the instruction given at
the institution. The department to which he was called became very soon
the most attractive in the college, and some of the most distinguished
orators of our country are pleased to admit that they obtained their
first impressions of true eloquence and a correct style from the
youthful professor. He introduced readings in the Scriptures, and in
Shakspeare, Milton, and Young, with original criticisms by his pupils on
particular features of the principal works of genius, as the hell of
Virgil, Dante, and Milton; and the prominent characters of the best
tragedies, as the Jew of Cumberland and of Shakspeare; and
extemporaneous discussions of aesthetical and political questions, as
upon the authenticity of Ossian, the authorship of Homer, the sincerity
of Cromwell, or the expediency of the execution of Charles. He also
exerted his influence in founding an association for familiar written
and oral discussions in literature, in which Dr. Edward Oliver, Dr.
James Marsh, Professor Fiske, Mr. Rufus Choate, Professor Chamberlain,
and others, acted a prominent part.
He retained this chair until August, 1838, when he was appointed to that
of Intellectual Philosophy and Political Economy, which he now holds,
but, which, of course, will be occupied by another during his absence in
the public service--the faculty having declined on any account to accept
his resignation or to appoint a successor.
Dr. Haddock has been invited to the professorship of rhetoric in
Hamilton College, and to the presidency of that institution, the
presidency and a professorship in the Auburn Theological Seminary, the
presidency of Bowdoin College, and, less formally, to that of several
other colleges in New England.
In public affairs, he has for four successive years been a
representative in the New Hampshire Legislature, and in this period was
active in introducing the present common school system of the State, and
was the first commissioner of common schools, originating the course of
action in that important office which has since been pursued. He was one
of the fathers of the railroad system in New Hampshire, and his various
speeches had the effect to change the policy of the State on this
subject. He addressed the first convention called at Lebanon to consider
the practicability of a road across the State, and afterward a similar
convention at Montpelier. For two years he lectured every Sabbath
evening to the students and to the people of the village, on the
historical portions of the New Testament. For several years he held
weekly meetings for the interpretation of Scripture, in which the ladies
of the village met at his house. And for twenty years he has constantly
preached to vacant parishes in the vicinity. He has delivered
anniversary orations before the Phi Beta Kappa Societies of Dartmouth
and Yale, the Rhetorical Societies of Andover and Bangor, the Religious
Society of the University of Vermont, the New Hampshire Historical
Society, and the New England Society of New York; numerous lyceum
lectures, in Boston, Lowell, Salem, Portsmouth, Manchester, New Bedford,
and other places; and of the New Hampshire Education Society he was
twelve or fifteen years secretary, publishing annual reports. The
principal periodicals to which he has contributed are the _Biblical
Repository_ and the _Bibliotheca Sacra_. A volume of his _Addresses and
Miscellaneous Writings_ was published in 1846, and he has now a work on
rhetoric in preparation.
He has been twice married--the last time to a sister of Mr. Kimball, the
author of "St. Leger," &c. He has three children living, and has buried
seven.
In agriculture, gardening, and public improvements of all kinds, he has
taken a lively interest. The rural ornaments of the town in which he
lives owe much to him. He may be said to have introduced the fruit and
horticulture which are now becoming so abundant as luxuries, and so
remarkable as ornaments of the village.
In 1843 he received the degree of D.D. from Bowdoin College. Of
Dartmouth College nearly half the graduates are his pupils. While
commissioner of common schools, he published a series of letters to
teachers and students which were more generally republished in the
various papers of the country than anything else of the kind ever before
written. Perhaps no one in this country has discussed so great a variety
of subjects. His essays upon the proper standard of education for the
pulpit, addresses on the utility of certain proposed lines of railway,
orations on the duties of the citizen to the state, lectures before
various medical societies, speeches in the New Hampshire House of
Representatives, letters written while commissioner of common schools,
contributions to periodicals, addresses before a great variety of
literary associations, writings on agriculture and gardening, yearly
reports on education, lectures on classical learning, rhetoric and
belles-lettres, and sermons, delivered weekly for more than twenty
years, illustrate a life of remarkable activity, and dedicated to the
best interests of mankind. Unmoved by the calls of ambition, which might
have tempted him to some one great and engrossing effort, his aim has
been the general good of the people.
The following extract from the dedication, to his pupils, of his
_Addresses and Miscellaneous Writings_, evinces something of his
purpose:
"It is now five-and-twenty years since I adopted the resolution never to
refuse to attempt anything consistent with my professional duties, in
the cause of learning, or religion, which I might be invited to do. This
resolution I have not at any time regretted, and perhaps I may say, I
have not essentially violated it. However this may be, I have never
suffered from want of something to do."
Professor Haddock's style is remarkable for purity and correctness. His
sentences are all finished sentences, never subject to an injurious
verbal criticism, without a mistake of any kind, or a grammatical error.
We have not written of Dr. Haddock as a politician; but he is a
thoroughly informed statesman, profoundly versed in public law, and
familiar with all the policy and aims of the American government. He is
of course a Whig. He has been educated, politically, in the school of
his illustrious uncle, and probably no man living is more thoroughly
acquainted with Mr. Webster's views, or more capable of their
application in affairs. It is therefore eminently suitable that he
should be on the list of our representatives abroad, while the foreign
department is under Mr. Webster's administration. The Whig party in New
Hampshire have not been insensible of Dr. Haddock's surpassing
abilities, of his sagacity, or his merits. Could they have done so, they
would have made him Governor, or a senator in Congress, on any of the
occasions in many years in which such officers have been chosen.
Considered without reference to party, we can think of no gentleman in
the country who would be likely to represent the United States more
worthily at foreign courts, or who by his capacities, suavity of manner,
or honorable nature, would make a more pleasing and desirable impression
upon the most highly cultivated society. Those who know him well will
assent to the justness of a classification which places him in the same
list of intellectual diplomats which embraces Bunsen, Guizot, and our
own Everett, Irving, Bancroft and Marsh.
[Illustration: No. I.--WINGED HUMAN-HEADED BULL.]
DR. LAYARD'S RECENT GIFTS FROM NIMROUD.
The researches of no antiquary or traveler in modern times have excited
so profound an interest as those of Austen Henry Layard, who has
summoned the kings and people of Nineveh through three thousand years to
give their testimony against the skeptics of our age in support of the
divine revelation. In a former number of _The International_ we
presented an original and very interesting letter from Dr. Layard
himself, upon the nature and bearing of his discoveries. Since then he
has sent to London, where they have arrived in safety, several of the
most important sculptures described in his work republished here last
year by Mr. Putnam. Among them are the massive and imposing statues of a
human-headed bull and a human-headed lion, of which we have engravings
in some of the London journals. The _Illustrated London News_ describes
these specimens of ancient art as follows:
"No. I. is the Human-Headed and Eagle-Winged Bull. This animal would
seem to bear some analogy to the Egyptian sphynx, which represents the
head of the King upon the body of the lion, and is held by some to be
typical of the union of intellectual power with physical strength. The
sphynx of the Egyptians, however, is invariably sitting, whereas the
Nimroud figure is always represented standing. The apparent resemblance
being so great, it is at least worthy of consideration whether the head
on the winged animals of the Ninevites may not be that of the King, and
the intention identical with that of the sphynx; though we think it more
probable that there is no such connection, and that the intention of the
Ninevites was to typify their god under the common emblems of
intelligence, strength and swiftness, as signified by the additional
attributes of the bird. The specimen immediately before us is of gypsum,
and of colossal dimensions, the slab being ten feet square by two feet
in thickness. It was situated at the entrance of a chamber, being built
into the side of the door, so that one side and a front view only could
be seen by the spectator. Accordingly, the Ninevite sculptor, in order
to make both views perfect, has given the animal five legs. The four
seen in the side view show the animal in the act of walking; while, to
render the representation complete in the front view, he has repeated
the right fore leg again, but in the act of standing motionless. The
countenance is noble and benevolent in expression; the features are of
true Persian type; he wears an egg-shaped cap, with three horns and a
cord round the base of it. The hair at the back of the head has seven
ranges of curls; and the beard, as in the portraits of the King, is
divided into three ranges of curls, with intervals of wavy hair. In the
ears, which are those of a bull, are pendent ear-rings. The whole of the
dewlap is covered with tiers of curls, and four rows are continued
beneath the ribs along the whole flank; on the back are six rows of
curls, and upon the haunch a square bunch, ranged successively, and down
the back of the thigh four rows. The hair at the end of the tail is
curled like the beard, with intervals of wavy hair. The hair at the knee
joints is likewise curled, terminating in the profile views of the limbs
in a single curl of the kind (if we may use the term) called _croche
coeur_. The elaborately sculptured wings extend over the back of the
animal to the very verge of the slab. All the flat surface of the slab
is covered with cuneiform inscription; there being twenty-two lines
between the fore legs, twenty-one lines in the middle, nineteen lines
between the hind legs, and forty-seven lines between the tail and the
edge of the slab. The whole of this slab is unbroken, with the exception
of the fore-feet, which arrived in a former importation, but which are
now restored to their proper place.
[Illustration: No. II.--WINGED HUMAN-HEADED LION.]
"No. II. represents the Human-Headed and Winged Lion--nine feet long,
and the same in height; and in purpose and position the same as the
preceding, which, however, it does not quite equal in execution. In this
relievo we have the same head, with the egg-shaped three-horned
head-dress, exactly like that of the bull; but the ear is human, and not
that of a lion. The beard and hair of the head are even yet more
elaborately curled than the last; but the hair on the legs and sides of
the animal represents that shaggy appendage of the animal. Round the
loins is a succession of numerous cords, which are drawn into four
separate knots; at the extremities are fringes, forming as many distinct
tassels. At the end of the tail, the claw--on which we commented in a
former article--is distinctly visible. The strength of both animals is
admirably and characteristically conveyed. Upon the flat surface of this
slab, as in the last, is a cuneiform inscription; twenty lines being
between the fore legs, twenty-six in the middle, eighteen between the
hind legs, and seventy-one at the back."
On the subject of Eastern languages, an understanding of which is
necessary to the just apprehension of these inscriptions, that most
acute antiquary, Major Rawlinson, remarks:
"My own impression is that hundreds of the languages at one time current
through Asia are now utterly lost; and it is not, therefore, to be
expected that philologists or ethnologists will ever succeed in making
out a genealogical table of language, and in affiliating all the various
dialects. Coming to the Assyrian and Babylonian languages, we were first
made acquainted with them as translations of the Persian and Parthian
documents in the trilingual inscriptions of Persia; but lately we have
had an enormous amount of historical matter brought to light in tablets
of stone written in these languages alone. The languages in question I
certainly consider to be Semitic. I doubt whether we could trace at
present in any of the buildings or inscriptions of Assyria and Babylonia
the original primitive civilization of man--that civilization which took
place in the very earliest ages. I am of opinion that civilization first
showed itself in Egypt after the immigration of the early tribes from
Asia. I think that the human intellect first germinated on the Nile, and
that then there was, in a later age, a reflux of civilization from the
Nile back to Asia. I am quite satisfied that the system of writing in
use on the Tigris and Euphrates was taken from the Nile; but I admit
that it was carried to a much higher state of perfection in Assyria than
it had ever reached in Egypt. The earliest Assyrian inscriptions were
those lately discovered by Mr. Layard in the north-west Palace at
Nimroud, being much earlier than anything found at Babylon. Now, the
great question is the date of these inscriptions. Mr. Layard himself,
when he published his book on Nineveh, believed them to be 2500 years
before the Christian era; but others, and Dr. Hincks among the number,
brought them down to a much later date, supposing the historical tablets
to refer to the Assyrian kings mentioned in Scripture--(Shalmaneser,
Sennacherib, &c.). I do not agree with either one of these calculations
or the other. I am inclined to place the earliest inscriptions from
Nimroud between 1350 and 1200 before the Christian era; because, in the
first place, they had a limit to antiquity; for in the earliest
inscriptions there was a notice of the seaports of Phoenicia, of Tyre
and Sidon, of Byblus, Arcidus, &c.; and it was well known that these
cities were not founded more than 1500 years before the Christian era.
We have every prospect of a most important accession to our materials,
for every letter I get from the countries now being explored announces
fresh discoveries of the utmost importance. In Lower Chaldea, Mr.
Loftus, the geologist to the commission appointed to fix the boundaries
between Turkey and Persia, has visited many cities which no European had
ever reached before, and has everywhere found the most extraordinary
remains. At one place (Senkereh) he had come on a pavement, extending
from half an acre to an acre, entirely covered with writing, which was
engraved upon baked tiles, &c. At Wurka (or Ur of the Chaldees), whence
Abraham came out, he had found innumerable inscriptions; they were of no
great extent, but they were exceedingly interesting, giving many royal
names previously unknown. Wurka (Ur or Orchoe) seemed to be a holy city,
for the whole country, for miles upon miles, was nothing but a huge
necropolis. In none of the excavations of Assyria had coffins ever been
found, but in this city of Chaldea there were thousands upon thousands.
The story of Abraham's birth at Wurka did not originate with the Arabs,
as had sometimes been conjectured, but with the Jews; and the Orientals
had numberless fables about Abraham and Nimroud. Mr. Layard in
excavating beneath the great pyramid at Nimroud, had penetrated a mass
of masonry, within which he _had discovered the tomb and statue of_
Sardanapalus, accompanied by full annals of the monarch's reign engraved
on the walls! He had also found tablets of all sorts, all of them being
historical; but the crowning discovery he had yet to describe. The
palace at Nineveh, or Koynupih, had evidently been destroyed by fire,
but one portion of the building seemed to have escaped its influence;
and Mr. Layard, in excavating in this part of the palace, had found a
large room filled with what appeared to be the archives of the empire,
ranged in successive tablets of terra cotta, the writings being as
perfect as when the tablets were first stamped. They were piled in huge
heaps from the floor to the ceiling. From the progress already made in
reading the inscriptions, I believe we shall be able pretty well to
understand the contents of these tablets; at all events, we shall
ascertain their general purport, and thus gain much valuable
information. A passage might be remembered in the book of Ezra where the
Jews, having been disturbed in building the Temple, prayed that search
might be made in the house of records for the edict of Cyrus permitting
them to return to Jerusalem. The chamber recently found there might be
presumed to be the house of records of the Assyrian kings, where copies
of the royal edicts were duly deposited. When these tablets have been
examined and deciphered, I believe that we shall have a better
acquaintance with the history, the religion, the philosophy, and the
jurisprudence of Assyria, 1500 years before the Christian era, than we
have of Greece or Rome during any period of their respective histories."
Besides the gigantic figures of which we have copied engravings in the
preceding pages, Dr. Layard has sent to the British Museum a large
number of other sculptures, some of which are still more interesting for
the light they reflect upon ancient Assyrian history. For these, as for
the Grecian marbles and Egyptian antiquities, a special gallery is being
fitted up.
[Illustration: JONATHAN SWIFT.]
DEAN SWIFT'S CHARACTER AND HIS AMOURS.
The name of Swift is one of the most familiar in English history. Of the
twenty octavo volumes in which his works are printed, only a part of one
volume is read; but this part of a volume is read by everybody, and
admired by everybody, though singularly enough not one in a thousand
ever thinks of its real import, or appreciates it for what are and what
were meant to be its highest excellences. As the author of "Gulliver's
Travels," Swift is a subject of general interest; and this interest is
deepened, but scarcely diffused, by the chain of enigmas which has
puzzled so many of his biographers.
The most popular life of Dean Swift is Mr. Roscoe's, but since that was
written several works have appeared, either upon his whole history or in
elucidation of particular portions of it: one of which was a careful
investigation and discussion of his madness, published about two years
ago. In the last number of _The International_ we mentioned the curious
novel of "Stella and Vanessa," in which a Frenchman has this year
essayed his defense against the common judgment in the matter of his
amours, and we copy in the following pages an article from the London
_Times_, which was suggested by this performance.
M. De Wailly's "Stella and Vanessa" is unquestionably a very ingenious
and brilliant fiction--in every sense only a fiction--for its hypotheses
are all entirely erroneous. Even Mr. Roscoe, whose Memoir has been
called an elaborate apology, and who, as might have been expected from a
man of so amiable and charitable a character, labors to put the best
construction upon all Swift's actions,--even he shrinks from the
vindication of the Dean's conduct toward Miss Vanhomrigh and Mrs.
Johnson. In treating of the charges which are brought against Swift
while he was alive, or that have since been urged against his
reputation, the elegant historian calls to his aid every palliating
circumstance; and where no palliating circumstances are to be found,
seeks to enlist our benevolent feelings in behalf of a man deeply
unfortunate, persecuted by his enemies, neglected by his friends, and
haunted all his life by the presentiment of a fearful calamity, by which
at length in his extreme old age he was assaulted and overwhelmed. On
some points Mr. Roscoe must be said to have succeeded in this advocacy,
so honorable alike to him and to its subject; but the more serious
charges against Swift remain untouched, and probably will forever remain
so, by whatever ability, or eloquence, or generous partiality, combated.
To speak plainly, Swift was an irredeemably bad man, devoured by vanity
and selfishness, and so completely dead to every elevated and manly
feeling, that he was always ready to sacrifice those most devotedly
attached to him for the gratification of his unworthy passion for power
and notoriety.
Swift's life, though dark and turbulent, was nevertheless romantic. He
concealed the repulsive odiousness of an unfeeling heart under manners
peculiarly fascinating, which conciliated not only the admiration and
attachment of more than one woman, but likewise the friendship of
several eminent men, who were too much dazzled by the splendor of his
conversation to detect the base qualities which existed in the
background. But these circumstances only enhance the interest of his
life. At every page there is some discussion which strongly interests
our feelings: some difficulty to be removed, some mystery to keep alive
curiosity. We neither know, strictly speaking, who Swift was, what were
the influences which raised him to the position he occupied, by what
intricate ties he was connected with Stella, or what was the nature of
that singular grief, which, in addition to the sources of sorrow to
which we have alluded, preyed on him continually, and at last
contributed largely to the overthrow of his reason. On this account it
is not possible to proceed with indifference through the circumstances
of his life, though very few careful examiners will be able to interpret
them in a lenient and charitable spirit.
Mr. Roscoe appears to believe that everybody who regards unfavorably
Swift's genius and morals, must be actuated by envy or party spirit, but
very few of the later or earlier critics are of his opinion. In the
first place, most honorable men would rather remain unknown through
eternity than accept the Dean's reputation. As Savage Landor says, he
was "irreverential to the great and to God: an ill-tempered, sour,
supercilious man, who flattered some of the worst and maligned some of
the best men that ever lived." Whatever services he performed for the
party from which he apostatized, there is nothing in his more permanent
writings which can be of the slightest advantage to English toryism.
Indeed, in politics and in morals, he appears never to have had any
fixed principles. He served the party which he thought most likely to
make him a bishop, and deserted it when he discovered that it was losing
ground. He studied government not as a statesman but as a partisan, as a
hardy, active, and unscrupulous Swiss, who could and would do much dirty
work for a minister, if he saw reason to anticipate a liberal
compensation. He however always extravagantly exaggerated his own
powers, and so have his biographers, and so has the writer of the
following article from _The Times_, who seems to have accepted with too
little scrutiny the estimate he made of himself. The complacency with
which he frequently refers to his supposed influence over the ministers
is simply ludicrous. He entirely loses sight of both his own position
and theirs. Shrewd as he shows himself under other circumstances, he is
here as verdant as the greenest peasant from the forest. "I use the
ministers like dogs," he says in a letter to Stella, but in reality the
ministers made a dog of him, employing him to fetch and carry, and bark,
and growl, and show his sharp teeth to their enemies; and when the noise
he had made had served their purpose,--when he had frightened away many
of their assailants, and by the dirt and stench he had raised had
compelled even their friends to stand aloof, they cashiered him, as they
would a mastiff grown toothless and incapable of barking. With no more
dirty work for him to do, they sent him over to Dublin, to be rid of his
presence.
When fairly settled down in a country which he had always hitherto
affected at least to detest, he began to feel perhaps some genuine
attachment for its people, and on many occasions he exerted himself
vigorously for their advantage; though it is possible that the real
impulse was a desire to vex and embarrass the administration, which had
so galled his self-conceit. Whatever the motive, however, he undoubtedly
worked industriously and with great effect, for the benefit of Ireland.
His style was calculated to be popular: it was simple, transparent, and
though copious, pointed and energetic. His pamphlets, in the midst of
their reasoning, sarcasm, and solemn banter, displayed an extent, a
variety and profundity of knowledge altogether unequaled in the case of
any other writer of that time. But the action of his extraordinary
powers was never guided by a spark of honorable principle. The giant was
as unscrupulous as the puniest and basest demagogue who coined and
scattered lies for our own last election. He would seem to be the model
whom half a dozen of our city editors were striving with weaker wing to
imitate. He never acknowledged any merit in his antagonists, he
scattered his libels right and left without mercy, threw out of sight
all the charities and even decencies of private life, and affirmed the
most monstrous propositions with so cool, calm and solemn an air, that
in nine cases out of ten they were sure to be believed.
Without further observation we proceed with the interesting article of
_The Times_, occasioned by M. Leon de Wailly's curious and very clever
romance of "Stella and Vanessa."
[Illustration: "VANESSA." (MISS VANHOMRIGH.)]
[From the London Times.]
THE AMOURS OF DEAN SWIFT.
Greater men than Dean Swift may have lived. A more remarkable man never
left his impress upon the age immortalized by his genius. To say that
English history supplies no narrative more singular and original than
the career of Jonathan Swift is to assert little. We doubt whether the
histories of the world can furnish, for example and instruction, for
wonder and pity, for admiration and scorn, for approval and
condemnation, a specimen of humanity at once so illustrious and so
small. Before the eyes of his contemporaries Swift stood a living
enigma. To posterity he must continue forever a distressing puzzle. One
hypothesis--and one alone--gathered from a close and candid perusal of
all that has been transmitted to us upon this interesting subject, helps
us to account for a whole life of anomaly, but not to clear up the
mystery in which it is shrouded. From the beginning to the end of his
days Jonathan Swift was more or less MAD.
Intellectually and morally, physically and religiously, Dean Swift was a
mass of contradictions. His career yields ample materials both for the
biographer who would pronounce a panegyric over his tomb and for the
censor whose business it is to improve one generation at the expense of
another. Look at Swift with the light of intelligence shining on his
brow, and you note qualities that might become an angel. Survey him
under the dark cloud, and every feature is distorted into that of a
fiend. If we tell the reader what he was, in the same breath we shall
communicate all that he was not. His virtues were exaggerated into
vices, and his vices were not without the savour of virtue. The
originality of his writings is of a piece with the singularity of his
character. He copied no man who preceded him. He has not been
successfully imitated by any who have followed him. The compositions of
Swift reveal the brilliancy of sharpened wit, yet it is recorded of the
man that he was never known to laugh. His friendships were strong and
his antipathies vehement and unrelenting, yet he illustrated friendship
by roundly abusing his familiars and expressed hatred by bantering his
foes. He was economical and saving to a fault, yet he made sacrifices to
the indigent and poor sternly denied to himself. He could begrudge the
food and wine consumed by a guest, yet throughout his life refuse to
derive the smallest pecuniary advantage from his published works, and at
his death bequeath the whole of his fortune to a charitable institution.
From his youth Swift was a sufferer in body, yet his frame was vigorous,
capable of great endurance, and maintained its power and vitality from
the time of Charles II. until far on in the reign of the second George.
No man hated Ireland more than Swift, yet he was Ireland's first and
greatest patriot, bravely standing up for the rights of that kingdom
when his chivalry might have cost him his head. He was eager for reward,
yet he refused payment with disdain. Impatient of advancement, he
preferred to the highest honors the State could confer the obscurity and
ignominy of the political associates with whom he had affectionately
labored until they fell disgraced. None knew better than he the stinging
force of a successful lampoon, yet such missiles were hurled by hundreds
at his head without in any way disturbing his bodily tranquillity.
Sincerely religious, scrupulously attentive to the duties of his holy
office, vigorously defending the position and privileges of his order,
he positively played into the hands of infidelity by the steps he took,
both in his conduct and writings, to expose the cant and hypocrisy which
he detested as heartily as he admired and practiced unaffected piety. To
say that Swift lacked tenderness would be to forget many passages of his
unaccountable history that overflow with gentleness of spirit and mild
humanity; but to deny that he exhibited inexcusable brutality where the
softness of his nature ought to have been chiefly evoked--where the want
of tenderness, indeed, left him a naked and irreclaimable savage--is
equally impossible. If we decline to pursue the contradictory series
further, it is in pity to the reader, not for want of materials at
command. There is, in truth, no end to such materials.
Swift was born in the year 1667. His father, who was steward to the
Society of the King's Inn, Dublin, died before his birth and left his
widow penniless. The child, named Jonathan after his father, was brought
up on charity. The obligation due to an uncle was one that Swift would
never forget, or remember without inexcusable indignation. Because he
had not been left to starve by his relatives, or because his uncle would
not do more than he could, Swift conceived an eternal dislike to all who
bore his name and a haughty contempt for all who partook of his nature.
He struggled into active life and presented himself to his fellow-men in
the temper of a foe. At the age of fourteen he was admitted into Trinity
College, Dublin, and four years afterward as _a special grace_--for his
acquisitions apparently failed to earn the distinction--the degree of
Bachelor of Arts was conferred upon him. In 1688, the year in which the
war broke out in Ireland, Swift, in his twenty-first year, and without a
sixpence in his pocket, left college. Fortunately for him, the wife of
Sir William Temple was related to his mother, and upon her application
to that statesman the friendless youth was provided with a home. He took
up his abode with Sir William in England, and for the space of two years
labored hard at his own improvement and for the amusement of his patron.
How far Swift succeeded in winning the good opinion of Sir William may
be learnt from the fact that when King William honored Moor Park with
his presence he was permitted to take part in the interviews, and that
when Sir William was unable to visit the King his _protege_ was
commissioned to wait upon His Majesty, and to speak on the patron's
authority and behalf. The lad's future promised better things than his
beginning. He resolved to go into the church, since preferment stared
him in the face. In 1692 he proceeded to Oxford, where he obtained his
Master's degree, and in 1694, quarreling with Sir William Temple, who
coldly offered him a situation worth L100 a year, he quitted his patron
in disgust and went at once to Ireland to take holy orders. He was
ordained, and almost immediately afterward received the living of
Kilroot in the diocese of Connor, the value of the living being about
equal to that of the appointment offered by Sir William Temple.
Swift, miserable in his exile, sighed for the advantages he had
abandoned. Sir William Temple, lonely without his clever and keen-witted
companion, pined for his return. The prebend of Kilroot was speedily
resigned in favor of a poor curate for whom Swift had taken great pains
to procure the presentation; and with L80 in his purse the independent
clergyman proceeded once more to Moor Park. Sir William welcomed him
with open arms. They resided together until 1699, when the great
statesman died, leaving to Swift, in testimony of his regard, the sum of
L100 and his literary remains. The remains were duly published and
humbly dedicated to the King. They might have been inscribed to His
Majesty's cook for any advantage that accrued to the editor. Swift was a
Whig, but his politics suffered severely by the neglect of His Majesty,
who derived no particular advantage from Sir William Temple's "remains."
Weary with long and vain attendance upon Court, Swift finally accepted
at the hands of Lord Berkeley, one of the Lords Justices of Ireland, the
rectory of Agher and the vicarages of Laracor and Rathbeggan. In the
year 1700 he took possession of the living at Laracor, and his mode of
entering upon his duty was thoroughly characteristic of the man. He
walked down to Laracor, entered the curate's house, and announced
himself "as his master." In his usual style he affected brutality, and
having sufficiently alarmed his victims, gradually soothed and consoled
them by evidences of undoubted friendliness and good will. "This," says
Sir Walter Scott, "was the ruling trait of Swift's character to others;
his praise assumed the appearance and language of complaint; his
benefits were often prefaced by a prologue of a threatening nature."
"The ruling trait" of Swift's character was morbid eccentricity. Much
less eccentricity has saved many a murderer in our days from the
gallows. We approach a period of Swift's history when we must accept
this conclusion or revolt from the cold-blooded doings of a monster.
During Swift's second residence with Sir William Temple he had become
acquainted with an inmate of Moor Park very different to the
accomplished man to whose intellectual pleasures he so largely
ministered. A young and lovely girl--half ward, half dependent in the
establishment--engaged the attention and commanded the untiring services
of the newly-made minister. Esther Johnson had need of education, and
Swift became her tutor. He entered upon his task with avidity,
condescended to the humblest instruction, and inspired his pupil with
unbounded gratitude and regard. Swift was not more insensible to the
simplicity and beauty of the lady than she to the kind offices of her
master; but Swift would not have been Swift had he, like other men,
returned everyday love with ordinary affection. Swift had felt tender
impressions in his own fashion before. Once in Leicestershire he was
accused by a friend of having formed an imprudent attachment, on which
occasion he returned for answer, that his "cold temper and unconfined
humor" would prevent all serious consequences, even if it were not true
that the conduct which his friend had mistaken for gallantry had been
merely the evidence "of an active and restless temper, incapable of
enduring idleness, and catching at such opportunities of amusement as
most readily occurred." Upon another occasion, and within four years of
the Leicestershire pastime, Swift made an absolute offer of his hand to
one Miss Waryng, vowing in his declaratory epistle that he would forego
every prospect of interest for the sake of his "Varina," and that "the
lady's love was far more fatal than her cruelty." After much and long
consideration Varina consented to the suit. That was enough for Swift.
He met the capitulation by charging his Varina with want of affection,
by stipulating for unheard-of sacrifices, and concluding with an
expression of his willingness to wed, "_though she had neither fortune_
_nor beauty_," provided every article of his letter was ungrudgingly
agreed to. We may well tremble for Esther Johnson, with her young heart
given into such wild keeping.
[Illustration: "STELLA." (ESTHER JOHNSON.)]
As soon as Swift was established at Laracor it was arranged that Esther,
who possessed a small property in Ireland, should take up her abode near
to her old preceptor. She came, and scandal was silenced by a
stipulation insisted upon by Swift, that his lovely charge should have a
matron for a constant companion, and never see him except in the
presence of a third party. Esther was in her seventeenth year. The vicar
of Laracor was on his road to forty. What wonder that even in Laracor
the former should receive an offer of marriage, and that the latter,
wayward and inconsistent from first to last, should deny another the
happiness he had resolved never to enjoy himself? Esther found a lover
whom Swift repulsed, to the infinite joy of the devoted girl, whose fate
was already linked for good or evil to that of her teacher and friend.
Obscurity and idleness were not for Swift. Love, that gradually consumed
the unoccupied girl, was not even this man's recreation. Impatient of
banishment, he went to London and mixed with the wits of the age.
Addison, Steele, and Arbuthnot became his friends, and he quickly proved
himself worthy of their intimacy by the publication in 1704 of his _Tale
of a Tub_. The success of the work, given to the world anonymously, was
decisive. Its singular merit obtained for its author everlasting renown,
and effectually prevented his rising to the highest dignity in the very
church which his book labored to exalt. None but an inspired madman
would have attempted to do honor to religion in a spirit which none but
the infidel could heartily approve.
Politicians are not squeamish. The Whigs could see no fault in raillery
and wit that might serve temporal interests with greater advantage than
they had advanced interests ecclesiastical; and the friends of the
Revolution welcomed so rare an adherent to their principles. With an
affected ardor that subsequent events proved to be as premature as it
was hollow, Swift's pen was put in harness for his allies, and worked
vigorously enough until 1709, when, having assisted Steele in the
establishment of the _Tatler_, the vicar of Laracor returned to Ireland
and to the duties of a rural pastor. Not to remain, however! A change
suddenly came over the spirit of the nation. Sacheverell was about to
pull down by a single sermon all the popularity that Marlborough and his
friends had built up by their glorious campaigns. Swift had waited in
vain for promotion from the Whigs, and his suspicions were roused when
the Lord-Lieutenant unexpectedly began to caress him. Escaping the
damage which the marked attentions of the old Government might do him
with the new, Swift started for England in 1710, in order to survey the
turning of the political wheel with his own eyes, and to try his fortune
in the game. The progress of events was rapid. Swift reached London on
the 9th of September; on the 1st of October he had already written a
lampoon upon an ancient associate; and on the 4th he was presented to
Harley, the new Minister.
The career of Swift from this moment, and so long as the government of
Harley lasted, was magnificent and mighty. Had he not been crotchety
from his very boyhood, his head would have been turned now. Swift
reigned; Swift was the Government; Swift was Queen, Lords, and Commons.
There was tremendous work to do, and Swift did it all. The Tories had
thrown out the Whigs and had brought in a Government in their place
quite as Whiggish to do Tory work. To moderate the wishes of the people,
if not to blind their eyes, was the preliminary and essential work of
the Ministry. They could not perform it themselves. Swift undertook the
task and accomplished it. He had intellect and courage enough for that,
and more. Moreover, he had vehement passions to gratify, and they might
all partake of the glory of his success; he was proud, and his pride
reveled in authority; he was ambitious, and his ambition could attain no
higher pitch than it found at the right hand of the Prime Minister; he
was revengeful, and revenge could wish no sweeter gratification than the
contortions of the great who had neglected genius and desert, when they
looked to them for advancement and obtained nothing but cold neglect.
Swift, single-handed, fought the Whigs. For seven months he conducted a
periodical paper, in which he mercilessly assailed, as none but himself
could attack, all who were odious to the Government and distasteful to
himself. Not an individual was spared whose sufferings could add to the
tranquillity and permanence of the Government. Resistance was in vain;
it was attempted, but invariably with one effect--the first wound
grazed, the second killed.
The public were in ecstasies. The laughers were all on the side of the
satirist, and how vast a portion of the community these are, needs not
be said. But it was not in the _Examiner_ alone that Swift offered up
his victims at the shrine of universal mirth. He could write verses for
the rough heart of a nation to chuckle over and delight in.
Personalities to-day fly wide of the mark; then they went right home.
The habits, the foibles, the moral and physical imperfections of
humanity, were all fair game, provided the shaft were tipped with gall
as well as venom. Short poems, longer pamphlets--whatever could help the
Government and cover their foes with ridicule and scorn, Swift poured
upon the town with an industry and skill that set eulogy at defiance.
And because they did defy praise, Jonathan Swift never asked, and was
ever too grand to accept it.
But he claimed much more. His disordered yet exquisite intellect
acknowledged no superiority. He asked no thanks for his labor, he
disdained pecuniary reward for his matchless and incalculable
services--he did not care for fame, but he imperiously demanded to be
treated by the greatest as an equal. Mr. Harley offered him money, and
he quarreled with the Minister for his boldness. "If we let these great
Ministers," he said, "pretend too much, _there will be no governing
them_." The same Minister desired to make Swift his chaplain. One
mistake was as great as the other. "My Lord Oxford, by a second hand,
proposed my being his chaplain, which I, by a second hand, refused. I
will be no man's chaplain alive." The assumption of the man was more
than regal. At a later period of his life he drew up a list of his
friends, ranking them respectively under the heads "Ungrateful,"
"Grateful," "Indifferent," and "Doubtful." Pope appears among the
grateful. Queen Caroline among the ungrateful. The audacity of these
distinctions is very edifying. What autocrat is here for whose mere
countenance the whole world is to bow down and be "grateful!"
It is due to Swift's imperiousness, however, to state that, once
acknowledged as an equal, he was prepared to make every sacrifice that
could be looked for in a friend. Concede his position, and for fortune
or disgrace he was equally prepared. Harley and Bolingbroke, quick to
discern the weakness, called their invulnerable ally by his Christian
name, but stopped short of conferring upon him any benefit whatever. The
neglect made no difference to the haughty scribe, who contented himself
with pulling down the barriers that had been impertinently set up to
separate him from rank and worldly greatness. But, if Swift shrank from
the treatment of a client, he performed no part so willingly as that of
a patron. He took literature under his wing and compelled the Government
to do it homage. He quarreled with Steele when he deserted the Whigs,
and pursued his former friend with unflinching sarcasm and banter, but
at his request Steele was maintained by the Government in an office of
which he was about to be deprived. Congreve was a Whig, but Swift
insisted that he should find honor at the hands of the Tories, and
Harley honored him accordingly. Swift introduced Gay to Lord
Bolingbroke, and secured that nobleman's weighty patronage for the poet.
Rowe was recommended for office, Pope for aid. The well-to-do, by
Swift's personal interest, found respect, the indigent, money for the
mitigation of their pains. At Court, at Swift's instigation, the Lord
Treasurer made the first advances to men of letters, and by the act made
tacit confession of the power which Swift so liberally exercised, for
the advantage of everybody but himself. But what worldly distinction, in
truth, could add to the importance of a personage who made it a point
for a Duke to pay him the first visit, and who, on one occasion,
publicly sent the Prime Minister into the House of Commons to call out
the First Secretary of State, whom Swift wished to inform that he would
not dine with him if he meant to dine late?
A lampoon directed against the Queen's favorite, upon whose red hair
Swift had been facetious, prevented the satirist's advancement in
England. The see of Hereford fell vacant in 1712. Bolingbroke would now
have paid the debt due from his Government to Swift, but the Duchess of
Somerset, upon her knees, implored the Queen to withhold her consent
from the appointment, and Swift was pronounced by Her Majesty as "too
violent in party" for promotion. The most important man in the kingdom
found himself in a moment the most feeble. The fountain of so much honor
could not retain a drop of the precious waters for itself. Swift, it is
said, laid the foundations of fortune for upward of forty families who
rose to distinction by a word from his lips. What a satire upon power
was the satirist's own fate! He could not advance himself in England one
inch. Promotion in Ireland began and ended with his appointment to the
Deanery of St. Patrick, of which he took possession, much to his disgust
and vexation, in the summer of 1713.
The summer, however, was not over before Swift was in England again. The
wheels of government had come to a dead lock, and of course none but he
could right them. The Ministry was at sixes and sevens. Its very
existence depended upon the good understanding of the chiefs,
Bolingbroke and Harley, and the wily ambition of the latter, jarring
against the vehement desires of the former, had produced jealousy,
suspicion, and now threatened immediate disorganization. A thousand
voices called the Dean to the scene of action, and he came full of the
importance of his mission. He plunged at once into the vexed sea of
political controversy, and whilst straining every effort to court his
friends, let no opportunity slip of galling their foes. His pen was as
damaging and industrious as ever. It set the town in a fever. It caused
Richard Steele to be expelled from the House of Commons, and it sent the
whole body of Scotch peers, headed by the Duke of Argyle, to the Queen,
with the prayer that a proclamation might be issued for the discovery of
their libeller. Swift was more successful in his assaults than in its
mediation. The Ministers were irreconcilable. Vexed at heart with
disappointment, the Dean, after his manner, suddenly quitted London, and
shut himself up in Berkshire. One attempt he made in his strict
seclusion to uphold the Government and save the country, and the
composition is a curiosity in its way. He published a proposition for
the exclusion of all Dissenters from power of every kind, for
disqualifying Whigs and Low Churchmen for every possible office, and for
compelling the presumptive heir to the throne to declare his abomination
of Whigs, and his perfect satisfaction with Her Majesty's present
advisers. Matters must have been near a crisis when this modest pamphlet
was put forth; and so they were. By his intrigues Bolingbroke had
triumphed over his colleagues, and Oxford was disgraced. The latter,
about to retire into obscurity, addressed a letter to Swift, entreating
him, if he were not tired of his former prosperous friend, "to throw
away so much time on one who loved him as to attend him upon his
melancholy journey." The same post brought him word that his own victory
was won. Bolingbroke triumphant besought his Jonathan, as he loved his
Queen, to stand by her Minister, and to aid him in his perilous
adventure. Nothing should be wanting to do justice to his loyalty. The
Duchess of Somerset would be reconciled, the Queen would be gracious,
the path of honor should lie broad, open, and unimpeded before him.
Bolingbroke and Harley were equally the friends of Swift. What could he
do in his extremity? What would a million men, taken at random from the
multitude, have done, had they been so situated, so tempted? Not that
upon which Swift in his chivalrous magnanimity, at once decided. He
abandoned the prosperous to follow and console the unfortunate. "I
meddle not with Lord Oxford's faults," is his noble language, "as he was
a Minister of State, but his personal kindness to me was excessive. He
distinguished and chose me above all men when he was great." Within a
few days of Swift's self-denying decision Queen Anne was a corpse,
Bolingbroke and Oxford both flying for their lives, and Swift himself
hiding his unprotected head in Ireland amidst a people who at once
feared and hated him.
During Swift's visit to London in 1710 he had regularly transmitted to
Stella, by which name Esther Johnson is made known to posterity, an
account of his daily doings with the new Government. The journal
exhibits the view of the writer that his conduct invariably presents. It
is full of tenderness and confidence, and not without coarseness that
startles and shocks. It contains a detailed and minute account, not only
of all that passed between Swift and the Government, but of his
changeful feelings as they arose from day to day, and of his physical
infirmities, that are commonly whispered into the ear of a physician. If
Swift loved Stella in the ordinary acceptation of the term, he took
small pains in his diary to elevate the sentiments with which she
regarded her hero. The journal is not in harmony throughout. Toward the
close it lacks the tenderness and warmth, the minuteness and
confidential utterance, that are so visible at the beginning. We are
enabled to account for the difference. Swift had enlarged the circle of
his female acquaintance whilst fighting for his friends in London. He
had become a constant visitor, especially, at the house of a Mrs.
Vanhomrigh, who had two daughters, the eldest of whom was about twenty
years of age, and had the same Christian name as Stella. Esther
Vanhomrigh had great taste for reading, and Swift, who seems to have
delighted in such occupation, condescended, for the second time in his
life, to become a young lady's instructor. The great man's tuition had
always one effect upon his pupils. Before Miss Vanhomrigh had made much
progress in her studies she was over head and ears in love, and, to the
astonishment of her master, she one day declared the passionate and
undying character of her attachment. Swift met the confession with a
weapon far more potent when opposed to a political foe than when
directed against the weak heart of a doting woman. He had recourse to
raillery, but, finding his banter of no avail, endeavored to appease the
unhappy girl by "an offer of devoted and everlasting friendship, founded
on the basis of virtuous esteem." He might with equal success have
attempted to put out a conflagration with a bucket of cold water. There
was no help for the miserable man. He returned to his deanery at the
death of Queen Anne with two love affairs upon his hands, but with the
stern resolution of encouraging neither, and overcoming both.
Before quitting England he wrote to Esther Vanhomrigh, or Vanessa, as he
styles her in his correspondence, intimating his intention to forget
everything in England and to write to her as seldom as possible. So far
the claims of Vanessa were disposed of. As soon as he reached his
deanery he secured lodgings for Stella and her companion, and reiterated
his determination to pursue his intercourse with the young lady upon the
prudent terms originally established. So far his mind was set at rest in
respect of Stella. But Swift had scarcely time to congratulate himself
upon his plans before Vanessa presented herself in Dublin, and made
known to the Dean her resolution to take up her abode permanently in
Ireland. Her mother was dead, so were her two brothers; she and her
sister were alone in the world, and they had a small property near
Dublin, to which it suited them to retire. Swift, alarmed by the
proceeding, remonstrated, threatened, denounced--all in vain. Vanessa
met his reproaches with complaints of cruelty and neglect, and warned
him of the consequences of leaving her without the solace of his
friendship and presence. Perplexed and distressed, the Dean had no other
resource than to leave events to their own development. He trusted that
time would mitigate and show the hopelessness of Vanessa's passion, and
in the meanwhile he sought, by occasional communication with her, to
prevent any catastrophe that might result from actual despair. But his
thoughts for Vanessa's safety were inimical to Stella's repose. She
pined and gradually sunk under the alteration that had taken place in
Swift's deportment toward her since his acquaintance with Vanessa.
Swift, really anxious for the safety of his ward, requested a friend to
ascertain the cause of her malady. It was not difficult to ascertain it.
His indifference and public scandal, which spoke freely of their
unaccountable connection, were alone to blame for her sufferings. It was
enough for Swift. He had passed the age at which he had resolved to
marry, but he was ready to wed Stella provided the marriage were kept
secret and she was content to live apart. Poor Stella was more than
content, but she overestimated her strength. The marriage took place,
and immediately afterward the husband withdrew himself in a fit of
madness, which threw him into gloom and misery for days. What the
motives may have been for the inexplicable stipulations of this wayward
man it is impossible to ascertain. That they were the motives of a
diseased, and at times utterly irresponsible, judgment, we think cannot
be questioned. Of love, as a tender passion, Swift had no conception.
His writings prove it. The coarseness that pervades his compositions has
nothing in common with the susceptibility that shrinks from disgusting
and loathsome images in which Swift reveled. In all his prose and
poetical addresses to his mistresses there is not one expression to
prove the weakness of his heart. He writes as a guardian--he writes as a
friend--he writes as a father, but not a syllable escapes him that can
be attributed to the pangs and delights of the lover.
Married to Stella, Swift proved himself more eager than ever to give to
his intercourse with Vanessa the character of mere friendship. He went
so far as to endeavor to engage her affections for another man, but his
attempts were rejected with indignation and scorn. In the August of the
year 1717 Vanessa retired from Dublin to her house and property near
Cellbridge. Swift exhorted her to leave Ireland altogether, but she was
not to be persuaded. In 1720 it would appear that the Dean frequently
visited the recluse in her retirement, and upon such occasions Vanessa
would plant a laurel or two in honor of her guest, who passed his time
with the lady reading and writing verses in a rural bower built in a
sequestered part of her garden. Some of the verses composed by Vanessa
have been preserved. They breathe the fond ardor of the suffering maid,
and testify to the imperturbable coldness of the man. Of the innocence
of their intercourse there cannot be a doubt. In 1720 Vanessa lost her
last remaining relative--her sister died in her arms. Thrown back upon
herself by this bereavement, the intensity of her love for the Dean
became insupportable. Jealous and suspicious, and eager to put an end to
a terror that possessed her, she resolved to address herself to Stella,
and to ascertain from her own lips the exact nature of her relations
with her so-called guardian. The momentous question was asked in a
letter, to which Stella calmly replied by informing her interrogator
that she was the Dean's wife. Vanessa's letter was forwarded by Stella
to Swift himself, and it roused him to fury. He rode off at once to
Cellbridge, he entered the apartment in which Vanessa was seated, and
glared upon her like a tiger. The trembling creature asked her visitor
to sit down. He answered the invitation by flinging a packet on the
table, and riding instantly away. The packet was opened; it contained
nothing but Vanessa's letter to Stella. Her doom was pronounced. The
fond heart snapped. In a few weeks the hopeless, desolate Vanessa was in
her grave.
Swift, agonized, rushed from the world. For two months subsequently to
the death of Vanessa his place of abode was unknown. But at the end of
that period he returned to Dublin calmer for the conflict he had
undergone. He devoted himself industriously again to affairs of State.
His pen had now a nobler office than to sustain unworthy men in
unmerited power. We can but indicate the course of his labors. Ireland,
the country not of his love, but of his birth and adoption, treated as a
conquered province, owed her rescue from absolute thraldom to Swift's
great and unconquerable exertions on her behalf. He resisted the English
Government with his single hand, and overcame them in the fight. His
popularity in Ireland was unparalleled even in that excited and
generous-hearted land. Rewards were offered to betray him, but a million
lives would have been sacrificed in his place before one would have
profited by the patriot's downfall. He was worshiped, and every hair of
his head was precious and sacred to the people who adored him.
In 1726 Swift revisited England, for the first time since the death of
Queen Anne, and published, anonymously as usual, the famous satire of
_Gulliver's Travels_. Its immediate success heralded the universal fame
that masterly and singular work has since achieved. Swift mingled once
more with his literary friends, and lived almost entirely with Pope.
Yet courted on all sides he was doomed again to bitter sorrow. News
reached him that Stella was ill. Alarmed and full of self-reproaches, he
hastened home to be received by the people of Ireland in triumph, and to
meet--and he was grateful for the sight--the improved and welcoming
looks of the woman for whose dissolution he had been prepared. In March,
1727, Stella being sufficiently recovered, the Dean ventured once more
to England, but soon to be resummoned to the hapless couch of his
exhausted and most miserable wife. Afflicted in body and soul, Swift
suddenly quitted Pope, with whom he was residing at Twickenham, and
reaching his home, was doomed to find his Stella upon the verge of the
grave. Till the last moment he continued at her bedside, evincing the
tenderest consideration, and performing what consolatory tasks he might
in the sick chamber. Shortly before her death part of a conversation
between the melancholy pair was overheard. "Well, my dear," said the
Dean, "if you wish it, it shall be owned." Stella's reply was given in
fewer words. "_It is too late._" "On the 28th of January," writes one of
the biographers of Swift, "Mrs. Johnson closed her weary pilgrimage, and
passed to that land where they neither marry nor are given in marriage,"
the second victim of one and the same hopeless and consuming passion.
Swift stood alone in the world, and for his punishment was doomed to
endure the crushing solitude for the space of seventeen years. The
interval was gloomy indeed. From his youth the Dean had been subject to
painful fits of giddiness and deafness. From 1736 these fits became more
frequent and severe. In 1740 he went raving mad, and frenzy ceased only
to leave him a more pitiable idiot. During the space of three years the
poor creature was unconscious of all that passed around him, and spoke
but twice. Upon the 19th of October, 1745, God mercifully removed the
terrible spectacle from the sight of man, and released the sufferer from
his misery, degradation, and shame.
The volumes, whose title is found below,[1] and which have given
occasion to these remarks, are a singular comment upon a singular
history. It is the work of a Frenchman who has ventured to deduce a
theory from the _data_ we have submitted to the reader's notice. With
that theory we cannot agree: it may be reconcilable to the romance which
M. de Wailly has invented, but it is altogether opposed to veritable
records that cannot be impugned. M. de Wailly would have it that Swift's
marriage with Stella was a deliberate and rational sacrifice of love to
principle, and that Swift compensated his sacrificed love by granting
his principle no human indulgences; that his love for Vanessa, in fact,
was sincere and ardent, and that his duty to Stella alone prevented a
union with Vanessa. To prove his case M. de Wailly widely departs from
history, and makes his hypothesis of no value whatever, except to the
novel reader. As a romance, written by a Frenchman, _Stella and Vanessa_
is worthy of great commendation. It indicates a familiar knowledge of
English manners and character, and never betrays, except here and there
in the construction of the plot, the hand of a foreigner. It is quite
free from exaggeration, and inasmuch as it exhibits no glaring
anachronism or absurd caricature, is a literary curiosity. We accept it
as such, though bound to reject its higher claims. The mystery of
Swift's amours has yet to be cleared up. We explain his otherwise
unaccountable behavior by attributing his cruelty to prevailing
insanity. The career of Swift was brilliant, but not less wild than
dazzling. The sickly hue of a distempered brain gave a color to his acts
in all the relations of life. The storm was brewing from his childhood;
it burst forth terribly in his age, and only a moment before all was
wreck and devastation, the half-distracted man sat down and made a will,
by which he left the whole of his worldly possessions for the foundation
of a lunatic asylum.
[1: _Stella and Vanessa: A Romance from the French. By Lady Duff
Gordon. In two vols. Bentley. 1850.]
AUTHORS AND BOOKS.
We find in the _Deutsche Zeitung aus Boehmen_, an account of a visit to
the great German satirist and poet Henry Heine, who lives at Paris,
where, as is known, he has long been confined to his bed with a
lingering illness. We translate the following for the _International_:--
"It is indeed a painful or rather a terrible condition in which Heine
now is and has been for the past year; though the paralysis has made no
progress, it has at least experienced no alleviation. He has now lain
near two years in bed, and during that time has not seen a tree nor a
speck of the blue sky. He cannot raise himself, and scarcely moves. His
left eye is blind, his right can just perceive objects, but cannot bear
the light of day. His nights are disturbed by fearful torments, and only
morphine can produce him the least repose. Hope of recovery has long
been given up, and he himself entertains no illusions on that subject.
He knows that his sufferings can end only with death. He speaks of this
with the utmost composure."
The writer goes on to contradict, as calumnious, the report that Heine
had become religious, saying, that he bears his tortures without "the
assistance of saints of any color, and by the inward power of the free
man." He does not regard himself as a sinner, and has nothing to repent
of, since he has but rejoiced like a child, in everything
beautiful--chasing butterflies, finding flowers by the way-side, and
making a holiday of his whole life. He has, however, often called
himself religious, by way of contradiction, and from antipathy to a
certain clique who openly proclaim themselves atheists, and under that
sonorous title seek to exercise a certain terror on others.
It seems that Heine has lost a great deal of property through various
speculators who have persuaded him to join in their schemes. The writer
says: "Heine's friends are enraged at many of these individuals, and
urge him to attack them publicly, and show them up in their true light.
He owes this satisfaction to himself and to us; at the same time it
would conciliate many who have not pardoned him the cavalier air with
which he has turned off the most respectable notabilities of literature
and patriotism, in order to amuse himself in the company of some
adventurer." By this love for out-of-the-way characters, the writer
thinks that Heine must have collected the materials for a humorous
novel, which could equal the best productions of Mendoza, Smollett, or
Dickens; his experiences in this line have cost him a great deal of
money. We translate the conclusion of the article:--
"We shall be asked if Heine really continues to write? Yes; he writes,
he works, he dictates poems without cessation; perhaps he was never in
his whole life as active as now. Several hours a day he devotes to the
composition of his memoirs which are rapidly advancing under the hand of
his secretary. His mind still resembles, in its wonderful fullness and
vigor, those fantastic ball-nights of Paris, which, under the open sky,
unfold an endless life and variety. There rings the music, there rushes
the dance, and the loveliest and grotesquest forms flit hither and
thither. There are silent arbors for tears of happiness and sorrow, and
places for dancing, with light, full of loud bold laughter. Rockets
after rockets mount skyward, scattering millions of stars, and endless
extravagance of art, fire, poesy, passion, flames up, showing the world
now in green, now in purple light, till at last the clear silver stars
come out, and fill us with infinite delight, and the still consciousness
of life's beauty. Yes, Heine lives and writes incessantly. His body is
broken, but not his mind, which, on the sick bed rises to Promethean
power and courage. His arm is impotent; not so his satire, which still
in its velvet covering bears the fearful knife that has flayed alive so
many a Maryas. Yes, his frame is worn away, but not the grace in every
movement of his youthful spirit. Along with his memoirs, a complete
volume of poems has been written in these two years. They will not
appear till after the death of the poet; but I can say of them that they
unite in full perfection all the admirable gifts which have rendered his
former poems so brilliant. So struggles this extraordinary man against a
terrible destiny, with all the weapons of the soul, never despairing in
this vehement suffering, never descending to tears--bidding defiance to
the worst. As I stood before that sick bed, it seemed as if I saw the
sufferer of the Caucasus bound in iron chains, tortured by the vulture,
but still confronting fate unappalled, and there alone on the sea-shore
caressed by sea-nymphs. Yes, this is the sick-bed and the death-bed of a
great and free man; and to have come near him is not only a great
happiness but a great instruction."
Heine has never been well known in this country. The only work
by him we have seen in English is his _Beitrage zur Deutschen
Literatur-Geschichte_, translated by Mr. G.W. Haven, and published in
Boston, in 1846. It is remarkably clever, and audacious, as the
productions of this German-Frenchman generally are. He is now
fifty-three years of age, having been born at Dusseldorff, in 1797. As
several wealthy bankers, and other persons of substance, in Paris, are
related to him, and he has a pension from the French Government, he is
not likely to suffer very much from the losses of property referred to
in the _Zeitung aus Boehmen_.
* * * * *
Dr. Otto Zirckel has just published at Berlin a volume called "Sketches
from and concerning the United States," which has some curious
peculiarities to the eyes of an American. It is intended as a guide for
Germans who wish either to emigrate to this country or to send their
money here for investment. It begins with a description of the voyage to
America and of the East, West and South of the Union; next it describes
the position of the farmer, physician, clergyman, teacher, jurist,
merchant, and editor, and the chance of the emigrant in each of these
professions. It is written with spirit and humor, and a good deal of
practical judgment and wisdom are concisely and clearly expressed. The
curious part is the advice given to speculators who wish to invest their
money here at a high rate of interest. The author seems to think America
a perfect Eldorado for money lenders, and his book cannot fail to
produce a considerable increase in the amount of German capital employed
in this country. The various state and national loans are described
correctly, showing that Dr. Zirckel might venture safely into the mazes
of Wall Street. The history of repudiation he has studied with care, and
the necessity of final resumption of payments even in Mississippi he
estimates with justice. He suggests as the safest means of managing
matters, that a number of wealthy families should combine their funds
and send over a special agent in whom they can confide, to manage the
same in shaving notes, speculating in land, lending on bond and
mortgage, and making money generally. Thus they can get a high return
and live comfortably in Europe on the toil of Americans, all of which
will be much more grateful to the capitalists than useful to this
country. Better for us to have no foreign capital at all than to have
the interest thereon carried away and consumed in Europe.
* * * * *
Emile Silvestre has sent forth a new volume, _Un Philosophe sous les
Toits_.
* * * * *
The work on Aerostation, by Mr. Green, recently published in
Philadelphia, has been much noticed in Europe, where--particularly in
France--the subject has attracted large attention, in consequence of the
death of Gale, (formerly a player at our Bowery Theater,) near Bordeaux,
and the recent wicked and ridiculous ascents with horses, ostriches, &c.
from the Hippodrome in Paris, and some experiments in ballooning at
Madrid. In an interesting paper in the _Revue des Deux Mondes_, for the
fifteenth of October, we have an account of numerous theories,
experiments, and accidents, constituting an entertaining _resume_ of the
whole matter. Few instances of intrepidity, danger, and escape, excite
livelier emotion than the crossing from England to France by Blanchard,
and Dr. Jeffries, an American, on the seventh of January, 1785. When, by
the loss of gas, the balloon descended rapidly over the channel, and
approached near the surface of the sea, after everything had been thrown
out, even to their clothes, Jeffries offered to leap into the sea, and
by thus lightening the balloon further, afford Blanchard a chance of
safety. "We must both be lost as the case is," said he; "if you think
your preservation is possible, I am ready to sacrifice my life." The
French military ascents are particularly described. Companies of
aeronauts were formed and trained, and Bonaparte took one of them with
him to Egypt, but the British captured all the apparatus for the
generation of gas. The First Consul caused ascents in picturesque
balloons to be made on occasions of public rejoicing for victories, in
order to strike the imaginations of the Egyptians, and an aerostatic
academy was established near Paris. The writer mentions that Lieutenant
Gale, like poor Sam Patch, so famous for a similar absurdity, and for a
similar and not less miserable end, had drank too much brandy for
self-possession in a dangerous predicament. He thinks that the problem
of the direction or government of balloons cannot possibly be solved
with the mechanical means which science now commands; and that, as they
may be usefully employed for the study of the great physical laws of the
globe, all experiments should be restricted to the object of advancing
science. He dwells on what might be accomplished toward ascertaining the
true laws of the decrease of temperature in the elevated regions of the
air, of the decrease of density of the atmosphere, of the decrease of
humidity according to atmospheric heights, and of the celerity of sound.
After all the experiments, and all that has been written upon the
subject, we are confident that the direction of a balloon is quite
impossible, except by a process which we have never yet seen suggested;
that is, by the rapid decomposition of the air in its way, so that a
tube extended in the direction in which it is desired to move, shall
open continually a vacuum into which the pressure of the common
atmosphere shall impel the carriage.
* * * * *
The _Journal des Debats_ announces for publication two works from the
pen of Guizot. The hero of the first is General Monk. Its title is _The
Downfall of the Republic in England in 1660, and the Reestablishment of
the Monarchy: A Historic Study_. It may be regarded as new, though part
has been published before in the form of articles in the _Revue
Francaise_. These articles appeared in 1837. M. Guizot has carefully
revised them, and added a great deal of new matter. The work is also to
be enriched with a number of curious documents never before published,
such as a letter from Richard Cromwell to General Monk, and seventy
dispatches from M. de Bordeaux, then French Ambassador at London, to
Cardinal Mazarin. These dispatches have been found in the archives of
the Foreign Office at Paris. The work has a new preface, which the
_Debats_ says will prove to be no less important in a political than a
historical point of view. The second book is that so well known in this
country upon Washington. We do not understand that anything new is added
to it. It was in the first place issued as the introduction of the
translation into French of Sparks's _Life of Washington_, which the
French journalist says is the most exact and complete work yet published
on the war of independence and the foundation of the United States.
"Monk and Washington," adds the _Debats_: "on the one side a republic
falling and a monarchy rising again into existence, on the other a
monarchy giving birth to a republic; and M. Guizot, formerly the prime
minister of our monarchy, now amid the perplexities of our own republic
the historian of these two great men and these two great events! Were
contrasts ever seen more striking, and more likely to excite a powerful
interest?"
This is very well for the _Debats_. But the omissions by Mr.
Sparks--sometimes from carelessness, sometimes from ignorance, and
sometimes from an indisposition to revive memories of old feuds, or to
cover with disgrace names which should be dishonored; and his occasional
verbal alterations of Washington's letters prevent that general
satisfaction with which his edition of Washington would otherwise be
regarded. We are soon to have histories of the Revolution, from both
Sparks and Bancroft, in proper form. The best documentary history is
not, as the _Debats_ fancies, this collection of Washington's letters,
but Mr. Force's "Archives,"--of which, with its usual want of sagacity
or regard for duty, Congress is publishing but one tenth of the edition
necessary, since every statesman in our own country, and every writer on
American history at home or abroad, needs a copy of it, and from its
extent and costliness it will never be reprinted.
* * * * *
The Rabbi Cahen has published at Paris the Book of Job, which concludes
his learned version of the Hebrew Bible.
* * * * *
Works on the German Revolution and German Politics.--An excellent book
on the Prussian revolution is now being published at Oldenburg. It is
from the pen of Adolf Stahr, a writer of remarkable force and clearness.
He belongs to the party most bitterly disappointed by the turn affairs
have taken in Germany. We mean the democratic monarchists, who labored
under the illusion that they might see Prussia converted into a sort of
republic with a hereditary chief, like Belgium. They desired a monarchy,
with a parliament elected by universal suffrage, and democratic
institutions of every kind. Stahr's book breathes all the bitterness of
their rage at the success of absolutism in snatching from them every
slightest vestige of hope. His book is published serially, four parts
having already been issued. As a record of facts it deserves the praise
of great industry and lucidity in collection and arrangement, while on
every page there glows in suppressed eloquence the indignation of a
generous and manly heart. Of course Stahr cannot be called a historian
in the usual sense of the term. He is rather a political pamphleteer,
maintaining at length the ideas and chastising the foes of his party.
Another and a more permanently valuable work on this subject is the
_Revolutions-Chronik_ (Revolutionary Chronicle) of Dr. Adolf Wolff,
published by Hempel of Berlin. This is a collection of authentic
documents, such as proclamations, placards, letters, legislative acts,
&c., connected with the revolution. They are not only arranged in due
order, but are combined with a clear and succinct narrative of the
events and circumstances to which they relate. We know of no man more
competent than Dr. Wolff to the successful execution of so important an
undertaking. Without being a partisan, his sympathies are decidedly on
the popular side, and the clearness of his judgment cannot be blinded by
any of the feints and stratagems in which the period abounded. He is now
engaged upon the revolution in Prussia, but intends to treat all the
manifestations of the time throughout Germany in the same thorough and
reliable manner. His work will be invaluable to future historians of
this eventful period; at the same time it reads like a romance, not only
from the nature of the events, but from the spirit and keenness of the
style.
Two other striking contributions to the history of this stormy epoch
have been made by Bruno Bauer, the well known rationalist. Bauer treats
the political and religious parties of modern Germany with the same
scornful satire and destructive analysis which appear in his theological
writings. He delights in pitting one side against the other and making
them consume each other. His first book is called the _Buergerliche
Revolution in Deutschland_, (the Burghers' Revolution in Germany); it
was published above a year ago, and attracted a great deal of attention
from the fact that it took neither side, but with a sort of
Mephistophelian superiority, showed that every party had been alike
weak, timid, hesitating, short-sighted, and useless. The New-Catholics
of Ronge's school were especially treated with unsparing severity. Bauer
has now just brought out his second book, which is particularly devoted
to the Frankfort Parliament. In this also the Hegelian Logic is applied
with the same result. The author proves that all that was done in that
body was worth nothing and produced nothing. There is not a particle of
sympathetic feeling in the whole book; but only cold and contemptuous
analysis. It has not made very much of an impression in Germany. Both
these works, and, indeed, the whole school of ultra-Hegelian skeptics
generally, are a singular reaction upon the usual warmth and
sentimentality of German character and literature. They are the very
opposite extreme, and so a very natural product of the times. For our
part we like them quite as well as the other side of the contrast.
* * * * *
Germany is the richest of all countries in historical literature.
Nowhere have all the events of human experience been so variously,
profoundly, or industriously investigated. Ancient history especially
has been most exhaustively treated by the Germans. One of the best and
most comprehensive works in this category is that of Dr. Zimmer, the
seventh edition of which, revised and enlarged, has just been published
at Leipzic. Dr. Zimmer does not proceed upon the hypotheses of Niebuhr
and others, but conceives that the writing of history and romance ought
to be essentially different. The whole work is in one volume of some 450
pages, and of course greatly condensed. It discusses the history of
India, China, and Japan; the western Asiatic States, Assyria, Babylonia,
Syria, Phoenicia, India, down to the fall of Jerusalem; the other
parts of Asia; Egypt to the battle of Actium, with a dissertation on
Egyptian culture; Carthage; Greece to the fall of Corinth; Rome under
the emperors down to the year 476; and concludes with an account of the
literature of classical antiquity.
As we have no manual of this sort in English, that is written up to the
latest results of scholarship, we hope to see some American undertaking
a version of Dr. Zimmer's book. There is considerable learning and
talent in the two octavos on the same subject by Dr. Hebbe, and
published last year by Dewitt & Davenport; but we strongly dislike some
of the doctrines of the work, which are _not_ derived from a thorough
study.
* * * * *
The seventh volume of Professor Schlosser's History of the Eighteenth
Century, and of the Nineteenth till the overthrow of the French Empire,
appeared, in translation, in London, on the first of November. Volume
eighth, completing the work, with a copious index, is preparing for
early publication.
* * * * *
The Discovery of a lost MS. of Jean Le Bel is mentioned in the Paris
papers, as having been made by M. Polain, keeper of the Archives at
Liege, among the MSS. in the _Bibliotheque de Bourgogne_, at Brussels.
It is on the eve of publication, and will be comprised in an octavo
volume, in black letter. This work was supposed to be irretrievably
lost. It was found by M. Polain, transcribed and incorporated into a
prose _Chronicle de Liege_, by Jean des Pres, dit _d'Ontremeuse_. It
comprises a period between 1325 and 1340, which are embraced in one
hundred and forty-six chapters of the first book of _Froissart_. It
therefore contains only the first part of Le Bel's Chronicle:
nevertheless it is a fragment of much importance. Froissart cannot be
considered as a contemporary historian of the events recorded in his
first book, but Le Bel was connected with the greater portion of them,
and was acquainted with them either from personal knowledge or through
those who had authentic sources of information.
* * * * *
Monsieur Bastiat, the political economist, (who has shown more economy
in the matter of credit for the best ideas in his books, than in
anything else we know of,) is not dead, as in the last _International_
was stated. The _Courier and Enquirer_ correspondent says:
"I am glad to say that the report which reached Paris from Italy,
of the death of F. Bastiat, a noted writer on political economy, is
unfounded. That gentleman is recovering his health, and it is now
believed will be able, at the opening of the session, to resume his
seat in the Assembly."
Since his return from Italy he has published at Paris a new edition of
his latest production, the _Harmonies Economiques_, in which he has
availed himself in so large a degree and in so discreditable a manner of
the ideas of Mr. Henry C. Carey, of New Jersey, who, since he first gave
to the public the essentials of M. Bastiat's performance, has himself,
in a volume, entitled _The Harmony of Interests_, published some three
or four months ago in Philadelphia, largely and forcibly illustrated his
just and admirable doctrines. In the _Harmonies Economiques_ M. Bastiat
seeks to prove that the interests of classes and individuals in society,
as now constituted, are harmonious, and not antagonistic as certain
schools of thinkers maintain. Commercial freedom he avers, instead of
urging society toward a state of general misery, tends constantly to the
progressive increase of the general abundance and well being. In
sustaining this proposition M. Bastiat teaches the optimism of the
socialists, and holds that injustice is not a necessary thing in human
relations, that monopoly and pauperism are only temporary, and that
things must come right at last. The powers of nature, the soil,
vegetation, gravitation, heat, electricity, chemical forces, waters,
seas, in short the globe and all the endowments with which God has
enriched it, are the common property of the entire race of man, and in
proportion as society advances this common property is more equally
distributed and enjoyed. Capital assists men in their efforts to improve
this magnificent inheritance; competition is a powerful lever with which
they set in movement and render useful the gratuitous gifts of God; the
social instinct leads them to make a continual exchange of services; and
even now, though the powers of nature enter into these services, those
who receive them pay only for the labor of their fellows, not for
natural products; and the accumulation of capital constantly diminishes
the rate of interest and enables the laborer to derive a greater return
from his toil. M. Bastiat also gives a new definition of value, which he
says is _the relation of two services exchanged_. This is all, we
believe, that he _claims_ to offer as perfectly new,--the main part of
his book appearing as a clearer exposition of the doctrine of Adam
Smith. It will be seen that the theory of the book is infinitely
superior to that of Ricardo or Malthus; it has borrowed truths from the
advanced thinkers of the age; but he would be a bold critic who should
affirm that it had not mingled far-reaching errors with them.
* * * * *
M. Romieu's book in defense of despotism, (lately published in France,)
sounds as if it had been written for the _North American Review_, but it
never could have been sent to its editor, or it would have been adopted
and published by him. It is entitled "The Era of the Caesars," and its
argument is, that history, ancient and modern, and the situation of the
contemporary world, prove that force, the sword, or _Caesarism_, has
ultimately decided, and will prevail, in the affairs of the nations.
Representative assemblies, Monsieur Romieu considers ridiculous, and
mischievous, and in the end fatal: such, at least, he contends, is the
experience of France; and as for the liberty of the press, it means a
form of tyranny which destroys all other liberty. At the beginning of
the century, M. de Fontanes said what (he thinks) multitudes of the
soundest minds would reecho, "I shall never deem myself free in a
country where freedom of the press exists." He would convert all
journals into mere chronicles, and have them strictly watched. Force, he
says, is the only principle, even in governments styled free. He
includes Switzerland and the United States. The condition and destinies
of France he handles with special hardihood. Caesarism is here already
desired and inaugurated--not monarchy, which requires faith in it, nor
constitutional government, which is an expedient and an illusion, but a
supreme authority capable of maintaining itself, and _commanding_
respect and submission. Mr. Walsh reviews the work in one of his letters
to the _Journal of Commerce_; and judging from Mr. Walsh's
correspondence on the recent attempts to establish free institutions in
Europe, we might suspect him of a hearty sympathy with M. Romieu, whom
he describes as an erudite, conscientious personage, formerly a prefect
of a department, and a member of the Assembly.
* * * * *
The German poet, Anastasius Gruen, has just published, at Leipzic a
collection of the _popular songs of Carinthia_, translated from the
original. Carinthia, as, perhaps, all our readers are not aware, is one
of the southerly provinces of the Austrian empire, on the borders of
Turkey; and, during all the wars of Austria with the Moslems, had to
bear the brunt of the fighting. And even after peace was concluded the
Carinthians kept up a sort of minor war on their own account, being
constantly exposed to incursions from the other side of the frontier.
Thus for centuries their country was one extended fortification, and the
whole population in constant readiness to rush to arms when the signal
fires blazed upon the hills. Then every house was a fortress, and even
the churches were surrounded with palisades and ditches, behind which
the women and children sought refuge with their movables when the alarm
came too near. From this period of constant and savage warfare the
popular songs of the country date their origin. Curious to say, many of
their heroes are borrowed from the traditions and history of neighboring
lands. Thus the Servian champion Marko figures a good deal in this
poetry, while the figure which has more importance than all the others
is a foreign and almost fabulous being, called King Mathias; wherever
this mystic personage can be laid hold of and historically identified,
he appears to be Mathias Corvin, king of Hungary. The Carinthians
attribute to him not only all the exploits of a variety of notable
characters, but also the vices of some celebrated illustrations of
immorality. Nor is his career accomplished; according to the tradition
of the southern Slavonians, King Mathias is not yet dead, but sleeps in
a grotto in the interior of Hungary, waiting for the hour of waking,
like Frederick the Redbeard in the Kyffhaeuser, Charlemagne in the
Untersberg at Salzburg, Holger the Dane near Kronburg, and King Arthur
in a mountain of his native country. There sits King Mathias with his
warriors, by a table under a linden tree. Another song makes him, like
Orpheus with Eurydice, go down to hell with his fiddle in his hand to
bring thence his departed bride. But he has no better luck than Orpheus;
on the way out she breaks the commanded silence by saying a word to her
companion, and so is lost forever. These songs are still sung by the
Carinthian soldiers at night, around their watch-fires. There are others
of more modern origin, but they are weak and colorless compared with
these relics of the old heroic time.
* * * * *
Mr. Bryant's delightful "Letters of a Traveler," of which we have
heretofore spoken, has been issued by Mr. Putnam in a new and very
beautiful edition, enriched with many exquisite engravings, under the
title of "The Picturesque Souvenir." It is a work of permanent value,
and in the style of its publication is hardly surpassed by any of the
splendid volumes of the season.
* * * * *
Dr. Laing, one of those restless English travelers who have printed
books about the United States, is now a prominent personage in
Australia, where he has been elected a member of the newly instituted
Legislature, for the city of Sidney. Upon the conclusion of the canvass
he made a speech, after which he was dragged home in his carriage by
some of the more energetic of his partisans, the horses having been
removed by them for that purpose. He is opposed to the Government.
* * * * *
The History of Liberty, by Mr. Samuel Elliot, of Boston, is examined at
considerable length and in a very genial spirit, in the last number of
the _Revue des Deux Mondes_--a review, by the way, in which much more
attention appears to be paid to our literature than it receives in the
_North American_. The writer observes, in the beginning, that the two
initial volumes of Mr. Elliot's great work, now published, in which the
_Liberty of Rome_ is treated, would be a superhuman performance, if
Niebuhr, Muller, Heeren, Grote, and Thirlwall, had not written, and
compares the work of our countryman with the poem on the same subject by
Thomson, the author of "The Seasons." He says:
"Mr. Elliot's work breathes a lofty morality; a grave and masculine
reserve; a deep and constant fear of not having done the best. He
may be subject,--like other Americans more or less _ideologists_
and system-mongers,--to illusions; but he has the true remedy: his
_ideal_ is well placed; he can sympathize fervently with all the
pursuits and employments of human activity; he cherishes a profound
respect for prudence, and moderation; for an enlarging survey and
indulgence of human necessities; for that generosity and virtue
which is tender above all of what has life, and seeks to conciliate
a complete transformation in the ideas of men. Until now, it would
have been difficult to find a thinker who, in judging the Romans,
would not have celebrated their inordinate patriotism, as their
chief glory. Their heroes were admired precisely for the ardor with
which they sacrificed everything--even their children or their
conscience--to the interests of country or party. Mr. Elliot, on
the contrary, discovers in this heroism only a lamentable
deficiency of true virtue and honor; of a sound moral sense and
equitable liberality. To our apprehension, a great reform--an
historical event--is to be recognized in this new moral
repugnance--this new tendency to deem the spirit of _party_ an evil
and a danger. Formerly, nothing was conceived to be nobler than to
serve your party, without stint or reservation;--nothing more
disgraceful than to abandon it even when you could not entertain
the same opinions. The condemnation and reversal of this doctrine
would be a moral advancement more important for human futurity,
than many of the occurrences or the revolutions of the last sixty
years, that have made the most noise."
We believe Mr. Elliot's leisure is not to be seriously interrupted by
public employments, and trust, therefore, that he will proceed, with as
much rapidity as possible, with his grand survey of the advance of
Liberty, down even to our own day--which it is not unlikely will
conclude a very important era of his subject.
* * * * *
Dr. Bowring, who is now, we believe, British Consul at Canton, was the
editor of the last and only complete edition of Jeremy Bentham's works;
he has been one of the most voluminous contributors to the Westminster
Review, and he is eminent as a linguist, though if we may judge by some
of his performances, not very justly so. He translated and edited
specimens of the poetry of several northern nations, and it has often
been charged as an illustration of his dishonesty, that he omitted a
stanza of the sublime hymn of Derzhaven, a Russian, to the Deity,
because it recognized the divinity of Christ, as it is held by
Trinitarians--the Doctor being a Unitarian. He is sharply satirized, and
treated frequently with extreme and probably quite undeserved contempt,
in the Diaries and Correspondence of the late Hugh Swinton Legare.
* * * * *
Mr. Henry Rogers, of Birmingham, has published in London two stout
volumes of his contributions to the _Edinburgh Review_. They are not the
best things that ever appeared under the old "buff and blue," though
they are neat and very readable. Hitherto Professor Rogers has not been
known in literature, except by an edition of the works of Burke. The
reviewals or essays in this collection are divided into biographical,
critical, theological, and political. The first volume consists
principally of a series of sketches of great minds,--in the style,
half-biographical, half-critical, of which so many admirable specimens
have adorned the literature of this age. Indeed, such _demonstrations_
in mental anatomy have been a favorite study in all ages. Among Mr.
Rogers's subjects, are Pascal, Luther, Leibnitz, and Plato, and he
promises sketches of Descartes, Malabranche, Hobbes, Berkeley, and
Locke. The first article, on Thomas Fuller, may look rather dry at
first; but the interest increases, we admire the quaintness of old
Fuller, and not less the fine, accurate, and complete picture given of
his life, character, and works. In this, as in the other biographical
articles, Mr. Rogers tells his story fluently. If he has not the wit of
Sydney Smith, nor the brilliance of Macaulay, he has not the prosiness
of Alison, nor the bitterness of Gifford. He is witty with Fuller,
sarcastic with Marvell, energetic with Luther, philosophical and precise
with Leibnitz, quietly satirical with Pascal, and reflective and
intellectual with Plato. "Dead as a last year's reviewal" is no longer
among the proverbs. Books are too numerous to be read, and people make
libraries of the quarterlies,--thanks to the facilities afforded by Mr.
Leonard Scott! And reviews, properly written,--evincing some knowledge
of the books which furnish their titles, are very delightful and useful
reading, frequently more so than the productions which suggest them, of
which they ought always to give an intelligible description. And this
condition is fulfilled almost always by the reviews published in London
and Edinburgh. Our _North American_ sometimes gives us tolerably
faithful abstracts, and its readers would be glad if its writers would
confine themselves to such labors. But we read an article in it not long
ago, under the title of Mr. Carey's "Past and Present," which contained
no further allusion to this book, nor the slightest evidence that the
"reviewer" had ever seen it. On the other hand, the last number contains
a paper on the Homeric question, purporting to have been occasioned by
Mr. Grote's History of Greece, but deriving its learning, we understand,
altogether from Mr. Mure's History of Greek Literature, a work so
extensive that it is not likely to be reprinted, or largely imported.
This custom which now obtains, of reprinting reviewals, we believe was
begun in this country, where Mr. Emerson brought out a collection of
Carlyle's Essays, Andrews Norton one of Macaulay's, Dr. Furness one of
Professor Wilson's, Mr. Edward Carey one of Lord Jeffrey's, &c. several
years before any such collections appeared in England.
* * * * *
Respecting the Holy Land, no work of so much absolute value has appeared
since Dr. Robinson's, as the Historical and Geographical Sketch by Rabbi
Joseph Schwartz, in a large and thick octavo, with numerous
illustrations, lately published in Philadelphia by Mr. Hart. Rabbi
Schwartz resided in Palestine sixteen years, and he is the only Jew of
eminence who has written of the country from actual observation, since
the time of Benjamin of Tudela. The learned author wrote his work in
Hebrew, and it has been translated by Rabbi Isaac Leeser, one of the
ablest divines in Philadelphia. It is addressed particularly to Jewish
readers, to whom the translator remarks in his preface, "It is hoped
that it may contribute to extend the knowledge of Palestine, and rouse
many to study the rich treasures which our ancient literature affords,
and also to enkindle sympathy and kind acts for those of our brothers
who still cling to the soil of our ancestors and love the dust in which
many of our saints sleep in death, awaiting a glorious resurrection and
immortality."
* * * * *
Mr. John R. Thompson, the accomplished and much esteemed editor of the
_Southern Literary Messenger_, whose genuine and intelligent love of
literature is illustrated in every number of his excellent magazine, has
just published a wise and eloquent address on the present state of
education in Virginia, which was delivered before the literary societies
of Washington College, at Lexington. It discloses the causes of the
ignorance of reading and writing by seventy thousand adults in Virginia,
and forcibly and impressively urges the necessity of a thorough literary
culture to the common prosperity.
* * * * *
A New Play by Mr. Marston, founded on the story of Philip Augustus of
France and Marie de Meranie, has been put into rehearsal at the Olympic
Theater in London.
* * * * *
The Leipzic _Grenzboten_ notices Mrs. Maberly's new romance of "Fashion"
(which we believe has not yet been republished in America) with great
praise, as a work of striking power and artistic management.
Nevertheless, says the critic, this romance has excited in England as
much anger as attention, and this he attributes to the truth with which
the authoress has depicted the aristocratic world. He then makes the
following remarks, which are curious enough to be translated: "The
meaning of the word 'fashion' cannot be rendered in a foreign language.
_La mode_ and its tyranny approach somewhat to the sense, but still it
remains unintelligible to us Germans, because we have no idea of the
capricious, silly, and despotic laws of fashion in England. They do not
relate, as with us, to mere outward things, as clothes and furniture,
but especially to position and estimation in high society. In order to
play a part on that stage it is necessary to understand the mysterious
conditions and requirements which the goddess Fashion prescribes. High
birth and riches, wit and beauty, find no mercy with her if her
whimsical laws are not obeyed. In what these laws consist no living soul
can say: they are double, yes three-fold, the _je ne sais quoi_ of the
French. The exclusiveness of English society is well known, a
peculiarity in which it is only excelled by its copyist the American
society of New York and Boston. But it is not enough to have obtained
admission into the magic circle: there, too, fashion implacably demands
its victims, and to her as to Moloch earthly and heavenly goods, wealth,
and peace of soul, are offered up."
* * * * *
John Ruskin, who has written of painting, sculpture and architecture, in
a manner more attractive to mere amateurs than any other author, will
soon publish his elaborate work, "The Authors of Venice."
Notwithstanding his almost blind idolatry of Turner, and his other
heresies, Ruskin is one of the few writers on art who open new vistas to
the mind; vehement, paradoxical, and one-sided he may be, but no other
writer _clears_ the subject in the same masterly manner--no other writer
suggests more even to those of opposite opinions.
* * * * *
The first two volumes of Oehlenschlager's _Lebens Erinnerungen_ have
appeared at Vienna, and attract more observation than anything else in
the late movements in the German literature. The poet's early struggles
give one kind of interest to this work, and his friendship with
illustrious litterateurs another. Madame de Stael, Goethe, Schiller, the
Schlegels, Steffens, Hegel, and other representatives of German thought,
pass in succession through these pages, mingled with pictures of Danish
life, and criticisms on the Danish drama. Like most German biographies,
this deals as much with German literature as with German life.
* * * * *
Gustave Planche, a clever Parisian critic, has in the last number of _La
Revue des Deux Mondes_, an article on Lamartine's novels and
Confessions, issued within the year. He spares neither the prose nor
poetry of the romantic statesman. He classes the _History of the
Girondists_ with the novels. On the whole he thinks there is less of
fact, or more of transmutation of fact, than in Sir Walter Scott's
Waverley series: as in Scott's Life of Napoleon there was less of
veracity than in any even of his professed fictions founded upon
history. These romancists are never to be trusted, except in their own
domains.
* * * * *
Prosper Merimee, known among the poets by his _Theatre de Clara Gazul_,
and who by his _Chronique du Temps de Charles IX._ and _Colomba_, was
entitled to honorable mention in literature, has written a very clever
book about the United States--the fruit of a visit to this country last
year--which an accomplished New-Yorker is engaged in translating. His
last previous performance was a Life of Pedro the Cruel, which has been
translated and published in London, and is thus spoken of in the
_Literary Gazette_:--
"The subject hardly yields in romantic variety, strange turns of
fortune, characters of strong expression, and tragedies of the
deepest pathos, to anything created by the imagination. Within the
period and in the land which was marked by the fortunes of Pedro of
Castile, the scene is crowded with figures over which both history
and song have thrown a lasting interest. The names of Planche of
France, Inez de Castro of Portugal, Du Guesclin,--the Black Prince,
the White Company--belong alike to romance and to reality. The very
'Don Juan' of Mozart and Byron plays his part for an hour as no
fabulous gallant at the court of Seville; Moors and Christians join
in the council or in the field here, as well as in the strains of
the Romancero; and the desperate game played for a crown by the
rival brothers whose more than Theban strife was surrounded by such
various objects of pity, admiration or terror, wants no incident,
from its commencement to its climax, to fill the just measure of a
tragic theme. One more striking could scarcely have been desired by
a poet; yet M. Merimee, who claims that character, has handled it
with the judgment and diligence of an historian."
* * * * *
Nathaniel Hawthorne, the greatest living American writer born in the
present century, has just published, through Ticknor, Reed and Fields, a
volume for juvenile readers, in the preface to which he says:
"It has not been composed without a deep sense of responsibility.
The author regards children as sacred, and would not for the world
cast anything into the fountain of a young heart that might
embitter and pollute its waters. And even in point of the literary
reputation to be aimed at, juvenile literature is as well worth
cultivating as any other. The writer, if he succeed in pleasing his
little readers, may hope to be remembered by them till their own
old age--a far longer period of literary existence than is
generally attained by those who seek immortality from the judgments
of full grown men."
* * * * *
An attentive correspondent of the _International_, at Vienna, mentions
that letters have been received there from the eccentric but daring and
intelligent American, Dr. Mathews, formerly of Baltimore, who, some
years since, assumed the style of the Arabs, with a view to discovery in
Northern and Central Africa. We hope to obtain further information of
Dr. Mathews, respecting whose adventures there has not hitherto been
anything in the journals for several years.
* * * * *
Professor G.J. Adler, of the New York University, the learned author of
the German and English Dictionary, is now printing a translation which
he has just completed, of the _Iphigenia in Taurus_, by Goethe. Of the
eighteen that remain of the sixty to ninety plays of Euripides, the
_Iphigenia at Tauri_ is one of the most remarkable. When Goethe returned
from Italy, his spirit was infused with the love of ancient art, and his
ambition tempting him to a rivalry of its masters, he selected this
subject, to which he brought, if not his finest powers, his severest
labor; and the drama of Iphigenia--which is in many respects very
different from that of Euripides,--is, next to Faust, perhaps the
noblest of his works. We are not aware that it has hitherto appeared in
English. The forthcoming translation, (which is in the press of the
Appletons,) strikes us very favorably. It is exact, and is generally
flowing and elegant.
* * * * *
The Official Paper of China has a name which means the _Pekin Gazette_.
It is impossible to ascertain when its publication was first commenced,
but it seems to be the oldest newspaper in the world. There is a
tradition that it began under the Sung dynasty in the latter part of the
tenth century. It is originally a sort of handbill, containing official
notices, posted up on the walls of the Capital and sent in manuscript to
provincial officers. At Canton it is printed for the public at large and
sold. It appears every other day in the form of a pamphlet of ten or
twelve pages. It consists of three parts; the first is devoted to Court
news, such as the health and other doings of the Imperial family; the
second gives the decrees of the Sovereign; the third contains the
reports and memorials of public functionaries made to the imperial
government on all subjects concerning the interests of the country. The
decrees are concise in style; the reports and memorials are the
perfection of verbiage. The former have the force of laws, the Emperor
being both legislative and executive. As a record of materials for
history the _Gazette_ is of little value, for a little study shows that
lies are abundant in it, and that its statements are designed as much to
conceal as to make known the facts. Since the English war the number of
documents published relating to affairs with foreign nations is very
small. Something is given respecting the finances, but that too, is of
very little value.
* * * * *
Mr. Williams, who wrote "Shakspeare and his Friends," &c., has just
published a novel entitled "The Luttrells." It was very high praise of
his earlier works that they were by many sagacious critics attributed to
Savage Landor. His novels on the literature of the Elizabethan age
evince taste and feeling, and his sketches of the Chesterfield and
Walpole period in "Maids of Honor," are happily and gracefully done.
"The Luttrells" has passages occasionally more powerful but hardly so
pleasing as some in the books we have named. In mere style it is an
improvement on his former efforts. In the early passages of the story
there is nice handling of character, and frequent touches of genuine
feeling.
* * * * *
The fifth volume of Vaulabelle's _Histoire de la Restauration_, a
conscientious and carefully written history of France and the Bourbon
family, from the restoration in 1815 down to the overthrow of Charles
X., has just been published at Paris. It receives the same praise as the
preceding volumes. M. Vaulabelle it may be remembered was for a brief
period, in 1848, General Cavaignac's Minister of Education and Public
Worship.
* * * * *
Captain Sir Edward Belcher, C.B., R.N., &c., whose presence in New York
we noted recently, is now in Texas, superintending the settlement of a
large party of first class English emigrants. A volume supplemental to
his "Voyage of H.M.S. Samarang," illustrative of the zoology of the
expedition, has been published in London by Arthur Adams, F.L.S.
* * * * *
M. Guizot, it is said, is going back to his old profession of editor. He
is to participate in the conduct of the _Journal des Debats_, in which,
of course, he will sign his articles. We do not always agree with M.
Guizot, but we cannot help thinking him, upon the whole, the most
respectable man who for a long time has been conspicuous in affairs in
France.
* * * * *
The sixth and concluding volume of the life and correspondence of Robert
Southey, edited by C.C. Southey--illustrated with a view of Southey's
Monument in Crosthwaite Church, and a view of Crosthwaite, from Greta
Hill--was published in London, early in November, and will soon be
reissued by Harpers.
* * * * *
Somebody having said that Bulwer had lost his hearing, and was in a very
desponding way in consequence, he has written to the _Morning Post_ to
say he is by no means deaf, but that if he were he should not much
despond on that account, "for the quality and material of the talk
that's going is not calculated to cause any great regret for the
deprivation of one's ears."
* * * * *
The second volume of the Count de Castelnau's Expedition into the
Central Regions of South America, under the auspices of the French
government, has just been published in Paris.
* * * * *
An eminent diplomatist of France has just published two volumes of most
interesting revelations drawn from his own note-books and personal
knowledge. We allude to the _Etudes Diplomatiques et Litteraires_ of
Count Alexis de Saint Priest. On the partition of Poland especially, it
casts an entirely new and conclusive light. M. Saint Priest shows that
apart from the internal anarchy and weakness of Poland, the catastrophe
was the work not of Russia as has been commonly supposed, but of
Frederic the Great of Prussia. Russia had no interest in dividing
Poland; in fact she was already supreme in that country; and besides,
her policy has never been that of an active initiative,--she waits for
the fruit to fall, and does not take the trouble of shaking the tree
herself. The great criminal then in this Polish affair was Prussia, and
the cause was the historic antagonism between Germany and Poland. M.
Saint Priest sketches the character of Frederic with the hand of a
master. "We shall see him," he says in approaching that part of his
subject, "we shall see him as he was, both adventurous and patient,
ardent and calm, full of passion yet perfectly self-possessed, capable
of embracing the vastest horizon and of shutting himself up for the
moment in the most limited detail, his eyes reaching to the farthest
distance, his hand active in the nearest vicinity, approaching his aim
step by step through by-paths, but always gaining it at last by a single
bound. We shall see him employing the most indefatigable, the most
tenacious, the most persevering will in the service of his idea,
preparing it, maturing it by long and skillful reparation, and imposing
it on Europe not by sudden violence, but by the successive and cunning
employment of flattery and intimidation. And finally, when all is
consummated, we shall see him succeed in avoiding the responsibility and
throwing it altogether upon his coadjutors, with an art all the more
profound for the simplicity under which its hardihood was concealed, and
the indifference which masked its avidity. To crown so audacious a
maneuver, he will not hesitate to declare, that "since he has never
deceived any one, he will still less deceive posterity! And in fact he
has treated them with a perfect equality: he made a mock of posterity as
well as of his contemporaries." With regard to the part of France in the
division of Poland, M. Saint Priest attempts to prove that the French
monarchy could not prevent the catastrophe; but that it was in the
revolutionary elements then fermenting in France and opposed to the
monarchy, that Frederic found his most powerful allies. Of course he
defends the monarchy from blame in the matter, and we shall not
undertake to say that he is wrong in so doing. Certainly the downfall of
Poland cannot be regarded as an isolated event, but as a part of the
great series of movements belonging to the age, in which causes the most
antagonistic in their nature often cooperated in producing the same
effect. M. Saint Priest further reasons that the providential mission of
Poland was to oppose Turkey and Islamism, and when the latter ceased to
rise the former necessarily declined. But our space will not permit us
to follow this interesting work any farther. The careful students of
history will not fail to consult it for themselves.
* * * * *
Mary Lowell Putnam, a daughter of the Rev. Dr. Lowell of Boston, and
sister of James Russell Lowell, the poet, is the author of an
annihilating reviewal, in the last _Christian Examiner_, of Mr. Bowen on
the Hungarian Struggle for Independence. The _Tribune_ contains a
_resume_ of the controversy, in which it had itself been honorably
distinguished, and furnishes the following sketch of Professor Bowen's
antagonist:
"Without any ambition for literary distinction, leading a life of
domestic duties and retirement, and pursuing the most profound and
various studies from an insatiate thirst for knowledge, this
admirable person has shown herself qualified to cope with the
difficulties of a complicated historical question, and to vanquish
a notorious Professor on his own ground. The manner in which she
has executed her task (and her victim) is as remarkable for its
unpretending modesty as for its singular acuteness and logical
ability. She writes with the graceful facility of one who is
entirely at home on the subject, conversant from long familiarity
with its leading points, and possessing a large surplus of
information in regard to it for which she has no present use. If
she exhibits a generous sympathy with the cause of the oppressed,
she does not permit the warmth of her feelings to cloud the
serenity of her judgment. She conducts the argument with an almost
legal precision, and compels her opponent to submit to the force of
her intellect."
Harvard would certainly be a large gainer if Mrs. Putnam could succeed
Mr. Bowen as professor of _History_, or,--as the libeller of Kossuth
_fills_ so small a portion of the chair,--if she could be made associate
professor; but to this she would have objections.
* * * * *
In Leipsic a monument has been erected by the German agriculturists to
Herr Thaer, who has done so much amongst them for agricultural science.
It consists of a marble column nine feet high, on which stands the
statue of Thaer, life size. It is surrounded by granite steps and an
iron balustrade. The column bears the inscription, "To their respected
teacher, Albert Thaer, the German Agriculturists--1850."
* * * * *
A New Novel by Bulwer Lytton is announced by Bentley, to appear in three
volumes. Dickens, having completed his "David Copperfield," will
immediately commence a new serial story. Thackeray, it is rumored, has a
new work in preparation altogether different from anything he has yet
published. The Lives of Shakspeare's Heroines are announced to appear in
a series of volumes.
* * * * *
"Sir Roger de Coverly: By the Spectator," is one of the newest and most
beautiful books from the English press. It is illustrated by Thompson,
from designs by Frederick Tayler, and edited with much judgment by Mr.
Henry Wills. The idea of the book is an extremely happy one. It is not
always easy to pick out of the eight volumes of the _Spectator_ the
papers which relate to _Sir Roger de Coverley_, when we happen to want
them. Here we have them all, following close upon each other, forming so
many chapters of the Coverley Chronicle, telling a succinct and charming
story, with just so much pleasing extract from other papers as to throw
light upon the doings of Sir Roger, and enough graceful talk about the
London of Queen Anne's time (by way of annotation) to adapt one's mind
completely to the de Coverley tone of sentiment. The _Spectator_--we
mean the modern gazette of that name--says of it:--
"The character of Sir Roger de Coverley is a creation which, in its
way, has never been surpassed; never perhaps equaled except by the
_Vicar of Wakefield_. The de Coverley establishment and the Vicar's
family have a strong general likeness. They are the same
simple-minded, kind-hearted English souls, in different spheres of
society. The thirty papers of the _Spectator_ devoted to Sir Roger
and his associates, now that we have them together, form a perfect
little novel in themselves, from the reading of which we rise as we
rise from that of Goldsmith, healthier and happier. There never was
so beautiful an illustration of how far mere genuine heartiness of
disposition and rectitude of purpose can impart true dignity to a
character, as Sir Roger de Coverley. He is rather beloved than
esteemed. He talks all the way up stairs on a visit. He is a
walking epitome of as many vulgar errors as Sir Thomas Browne
collected in his book. He has grave doubts as to the propriety of
not having an old woman indicted for a witch. He is brimful of the
prejudices of his caste. He has grown old with the simplicity of a
child. Captain Sentry must keep him in talk lest he expose himself
at the play. And yet about all he does there is an unassuming
dignity that commands respect; and for strength and consistency in
the tender passion Petrarch himself does not excel him. Sir Roger's
unvarying devotion to his widow, his incessant recurrence to the
memory of his affection to her, the remarks relating to her which
the character of Andromache elicits from him at the play, and the
little incident of her message to him on his death-bed, form as
choice a record of passionate fidelity as the sonnets of the
Italian. How beautiful, too, is that death-scene--how quietly
sublime! Let us add that the good Sir Roger is surrounded by people
worthy of him. Will. Wimble, with his good-natured, useless
services; Captain Sentry, brave and stainless as his own sword, and
nearly as taciturn; the servant who saved him from drowning; the
good clergyman who is contented to read the sermons of others; the
innkeeper who must needs have his landlord's head for a sign; the
_Spectator_ and his cronies: and then, and still, the Widow!"
* * * * *
Mr. William W. Story, to whose sculptures we have referred elsewhere, is
engaged in the preparation of a memoir of his father, the great jurist.
* * * * *
The Life of John Randolph, by Hugh A. Garland, has been published by the
Appletons in two octavos. It is interesting--as much so perhaps as any
political biography ever written in this country--but the subject was so
remarkable, and the materiel so rich and various, that it might have
been made very much more attractive than it is. Mr. Garland's style is
decidedly bad--ambitious, meretricious and vulgar--but it was impossible
to make a dull work upon John Randolph's history and character.
* * * * *
The Best Edition of Milton's Poems ever published in America--a reprint
of the best ever published in England--that of Sir Edgerton Brydges, has
just been printed by George S. Appleton of Philadelphia, and the
Appletons of New York. It is everything that can be desired in an
edition of the great poet, and must take the place, we think, of all
others that have been in the market. We are also indebted to the same
publishers for an admirable edition of Burns, which if not as
judiciously edited as the Milton of Sir Edgerton Brydges, is certainly
very much better than any we have hitherto possessed.
* * * * *
The Keepsake: a Gift for the Holidays, is one of the most
splendid--indeed is the _most_ richly executed annual of the season. We
have not had leisure to examine its literary contents, but they are for
the most part by eminent writers. In unique and variously beautiful
bindings, "The Keepsake" is desirable to all the lovers of fine art.
* * * * *
Gray's Poems, with a Life of the author by Professor Henry Reed, has
been published by Mr. Henry C. Baird, of Philadelphia, in a volume the
most elegant that has been issued this year from the press of that city.
The engravings are specimens of genuine art, and the typography is as
perfect as we have ever seen from the printers of Paris or London.
* * * * *
The Rev. Duncan Harkness Weir, a distinguished _alumnus_ of the
university and author of an essay "On the tenses of the Hebrew verb,"
which appeared in "Kitto's Journal of Sacred Literature" for October
last, has been elected Professor of Oriental Languages, in the College
and University of Glasgow, in room of the late Dr. Gray.
* * * * *
Douglass Jerrold announces a republication of all his writings for the
last fifteen years, in weekly numbers, commencing on the first of
January next--"a most becoming contribution to the Industry of Nations
Congress of 1851."
* * * * *
The Rev. Christopher Wordsworth, a nephew of William Wordsworth, has
nearly completed the memoirs of the poet, which will be reprinted, with
a preface by Professor Henry Reed, by Ticknor, Reed and Fields, of
Boston.
The Fine Arts.
Schwanthaler's Bavaria, and the Theresienwiese at Munich.--On the
western side of Munich several streets converge in a plain which is the
arena of the great popular festival that takes place every October.
Around this plain, which is called the Theresienwiese, as well as around
the whole district in which the city is placed, the land rises some
thirty or forty feet. Near the spot where the green waters of the Iser
break through this ridge, King Louis founded the Hall of Fame, which is
to transmit to posterity the busts of renowned natives of the country.
This edifice is in Doric style, and with its two wings forms a
court-yard, opening toward the city. In the center of this court is
placed upon a granite pedestal, thirty feet high, a colossal statue of
bronze, fifty-four feet high, representing Bavaria, to which we have
several times referred in _The International_--our European
correspondence enabling us to anticipate in regard to subjects of
literature and art generally even the best-informed foreign journals.
The Hall of Fame will not be completed for some years, but the statue is
finished, and was first exposed to view on the 9th of October. The
execution of this statue was committed by King Louis to Schwanthaler,
who began by making a model of thirteen feet in height. In order to
carry out the work a wooden house was erected at the royal foundry, and
a skeleton was built by masons, carpenters, and smiths, to sustain the
earth used in the mould for the full-sized model. This was begun in
1838, and ere long the figure stood erect. The subsequent work on the
model occupied two years. The result was greatly praised by the critics,
who wondered at the skill which had been able to give beauty as well as
dignity to a statue of so large dimensions. It holds up a crown of
oak-leaves in the left hand, while the right, resting upon the hip,
grasps an unsheathed sword twined with laurel, beneath which rests a
lion. The breast is covered with a lion's skin which falls as low as the
hips; under it is a simple but admirably managed robe extending to the
feet. The hair is wreathed with oak-leaves, and is disposed in rich
masses about the forehead and temples, giving spirit to the face and
dignity to the form. Such was the model, and such is the now finished
statue. But the subsequent steps in its completion are worthy of a
particular description.
The model was in gypsum, and the first thing done was to take a mould
from it in earth peculiarly prepared for the reception of the melted
metal. The first piece, the head, was cast September 11th, 1844. It
weighs one hundred and twenty hundred-weight, and is five or six feet in
diameter: the remainder was cast at five separate times. When the head
was brought successful out of the mould, King Louis and many of the
magnates of Germany were present. The occasion was in fact a festival,
which Mueller, the inspector of the royal bronze foundry and probably the
first living master of the art of casting in bronze, rendered still more
brilliant by illuminations and garlands of flowers. Vocal music also was
not wanting, as the artists of Munich were present in force, and their
singing is noted throughout Germany. Since last July workmen have been
constantly engaged in transporting the pieces of bronze weighing from
200 to 300 cwt. to the place where the statue was to be erected. For
this purpose a wagon of peculiar construction was used, with from
sixteen to twenty horses to draw it. On the 7th of August the last
piece, the head, was conveyed; it was attended by a festal procession.
The space within the head is so great that some twenty-eight men can
stand together in it. The body, the main portions of which were made in
five castings, weighs from 1300 to 1500 cwt., and has a diameter of
twelve feet; the left arm, which is extended to hold the wreaths, from
125 to 130 cwt.; its diameter is five feet, and the diameter of its
index finger six inches. The nail of the great toe can hardly be covered
with both a man's hands. A door in the pedestal leads to a cast-iron
winding stairway which ascends to the head, within which benches have
been arranged for the comfort of visitors, several of whom can sit there
together with ease. The light enters through openings arranged in the
hair, whence also the eye can enjoy the view of the city and the
surrounding country with the magical Alps in the background. The entire
mass of bronze, weighing about 2600 cwt., was obtained from Turkish
cannon lost in the sea at Navarino and recovered by Greek divers. The
value of the bronze is about sixty thousand dollars. The sitting lion
has a height of near thirty feet. It was cast in three pieces, and
completes the composition in the most felicitous manner.
The statue having been completed, the final removing of the scaffolding
around it and its full exposure to the public took place on the 9th of
October. This was a day of great festivity at Munich and its vicinity. A
platform had been erected directly in front of the statue for the
accommodation of King Maximilian and his suite. The festivities began
with an enormous procession of carriages, led by bands of music and
bearing the representatives of the different industrial and agricultural
trades, with symbols of their respective occupations. As they passed
before the King's platform each carriage stopped, saluted his majesty,
and received a few kindly words in reply. The procession was closed by
the artists of Munich. The carriages took their station in a half circle
around the platform. Soon after, accompanied by the thunder of cannon,
the board walls surrounding the scaffold were gradually lowered to the
ground. The admiration of the statue (which by the way is exactly
fifty-four feet high), was universal and enthusiastic. All beholders
were delighted with the harmony of its parts and the loveliness of its
expression notwithstanding its colossal size. The ceremonies of the day
were closed with speeches and music; the painter Tischlein made a speech
lauding King Louis as the creator of a new era for German art. A very
numerous chorus sung several festive hymns composed for the occasion,
after which the multitude dispersed.
* * * * *
The Dominican Monastery of San Marco at Florence has for centuries been
regarded with special interest by the lovers of art for the share it has
had in the history of their favorite pursuit. Nor has its part been of
less importance in the sphere of politics. The wanderer through its
halls is reminded not only of Fra Angelico da Fiesole and Fra
Bartolommeo, to whose artistic genius the monastery is indebted for the
treasures which adorn its halls, refectory, corridors, and cells, but of
Cosimo de Medici, Lorenzo his great descendant, of Savonarola, and the
long series of contests here waged against temporal and spiritual
tyranny. The works of Giotto and Domenico Ghirlandajo are likewise to be
found in the monastery, and there also miniature pictures of the most
flourishing period of art may be seen ornamenting the books of the
choir. Every historian who has written upon Florence has taken care not
to omit San Marco and its inhabitants.
We are glad to announce that a society of artists at Florence has
undertaken to give as wide a publicity as possible to the noblest
productions of art in this monastery. A former work by the same men is a
good indication of what may now be expected from them. Some years since
they published copies of the most important pictures from the collection
of the Florentine Academy of Art. They gave sixty prints with
explanations. Among engravings from galleries this was one of the best,
containing in moderate compass a history of Tuscan art from Cimabue to
Andrea del Sarto. The new work, which has long been in preparation but
has been delayed by unfavorable circumstances, will now be carried
through the press without delay. Its title is, _San Marco Convento dei
Padri Predicatori in Firenze illustrato e inciso principalmente nei
dipinti del B. Giovanni Angelico_. Antonio Parfetti, the successor of
Morghen and Garavaglia as professor of the art of engraving on copper at
the Florentine Academy, has the artistic supervision of the enterprise.
Father Vincenzo Marchese, to whom the public are indebted for the work
well known to all students, on the artists of the Dominican order, is to
furnish a history of the monastery, a biography of Fra Angelico,
together with explanations of the engravings. Everything is thus in the
most capable hands. The execution of the copperplates leaves nothing to
be desired. The draughtsmen and engravers having had the best
preparatory practice in the above-mentioned series from the Academy,
have fully entered into the spirit of the originals; both outlines and
shading are said by the best critics to combine the greatest delicacy
with exactness, and to reproduce the expression of feeling which is the
difficulty in these Florentine works, with tact and truth. As yet they
have finished only the smaller frescoes which adorn almost every cell;
but they will soon have ready the larger ones, which will show how this
painter, whose sphere was mainly the pious emotions of the soul, was
also master of the most thrilling effects. The same is proved by the
powerful picture of the Crucifixion in the chapter hall, with its heads
so full of expression, a selection from which has just been published by
G.B. Nocchi, who some years since issued the well-known collection of
drawings from the Life of Jesus in the Academy. The impression of the
frescoes on Chinese paper has been done with the greatest care. Forty
plates and forty printed folio sheets will complete the work, which is
to be put at a moderate price. These illustrations of San Marco will be
universally welcomed with delight by the admirers of the beautiful, for
there the painter who most purely represented Christian art passed the
greater part of his life, leaving behind him an incomparable mass of the
most characteristic and charming creations.
* * * * *
Mr. William W. Story, who some time since abandoned a lucrative
profession to devote himself to art, has recently returned from Rome,
where he had been practicing sculpture during the past three years. Mr.
Story, we understand, has brought home with him to Boston several models
of classical subjects, the fruits of his labors abroad, which are spoken
of in the highest terms by those who have had the privilege of
inspecting them. Mr. Story is the only son of the late Justice Story of
Massachusetts. Before going abroad he had distinguished himself by some
of his attempts at sculpture, one of which was a bust of his father,
which he executed in marble. A copy of this work has been purchased or
ordered by some of his father's admirers in London, to be placed in one
of the Inns of Court. Mr. Story also made himself known by a volume of
miscellaneous poems, published in 1845. It is his intention, we learn,
to return to Italy in the spring.
* * * * *
Les Beautes de la France is the title of a splendid new work now
publishing at Paris. It consists of a collection of engravings on steel,
representing the principal cities, cathedrals, public monuments,
chateaux, and picturesque landscapes of France. Each engraving is
accompanied by four pages of text, giving the complete history of the
edifice or locality represented. What is curious about it is that the
engravings are made in London, for what reason we are not informed.
* * * * *
The first exhibition of paintings, such as is now given annually by our
academies, was at Paris in the year 1699. In September of that year, at
the suggestion of Mansart, the first was held in the Louvre. It
consisted of two hundred and fifty-three paintings, twenty-four pieces
of sculpture, and twenty-nine engravings. The second and last during the
reign of Louis XIV. was opened in 1704. That was composed of five
hundred and twenty specimens. During the reign of Louis XV., from 1737,
there were held twenty-four expositions. That of 1767 was remarkable for
the presence of several of the marine pieces of Claude Joseph Vernet.
During the reign of Louis XVI., from 1775 to 1791 there were nine
expositions. The _Horatii_, one of the master pieces of David, figured
in that of 1785. His first pieces had appeared in that of 1782. The
former Republic, too, upon stated occasions "exposed the works of the
artists forming the general commune of the arts." It was in these that
David acquired his celebrity as a painter which alone saved his head
from the revolutionary axe. The Paris exhibition will this year commence
on the fifteenth of December.
* * * * *
The largest specimen of Enamel Painting probably in the world, has
recently been completed by Kloeber and Martens at Berlin. It is four and
a half feet high, and eight feet broad, and it is intended for the
castle church at Wittenberg. The subject is Christ on the Cross, and at
his feet, on the right, stands Luther holding an open bible and looking
up to the Savior; and, on the left, Melancthon, the faithful cooperator
of the great reformer. The tombs of both are in this church, and it is
known that to those who, after the capture of the town, desired to
destroy these tombs, the emperor, Charles V., answered, "I war against
the living, not against the dead!" It was to the portal of this church
that Luther affixed the famous protest against indulgences which
occasioned the first movement of the Reformation. The king has caused
two doors to be cast in bronze, with this protest inscribed on them, so
that it will now be seen there in imperishable characters.
* * * * *
The original portrait of Sir Francis Drake wearing the jewel around his
neck which Queen Elizabeth gave him, is now in London for the purpose of
being copied for the United Service Club. Sir T.T.F.E. Drake, to whom it
belongs, carried to London at the same time, for the inspection of the
curious in such matters, the original jewel, which, beyond the interest
of its associations with Elizabeth and Drake, is valuable as a work of
art. On the outer case is a carving by Valerio Belli, called Valerio
Vincentino, of a black man kneeling to a white. This is not mentioned by
Walpole in his account of Vincentino. Within is a capital and
well-preserved miniature of Queen Elizabeth, by Isaac Oliver, set round
with diamonds and pearls.
* * * * *
The Family of Vernet--the "astonishing family of Vernet"--is thus
referred to by a Paris correspondent of the _Courier and Enquirer_:
"History, probably, does not show another instance of so remarkable
a descent from father to son, through four generations, of the
possession, in an eminent degree, of a special and rare talent.
Claude Joseph was born in 1714, and was the son of a distinguished
painter of his day, Antoine Vernet. He excelled all his
contemporaries in sea pieces. His son, Antoine Charles Horace
Vernet, was, after David, one of the first painters of the empire,
excelling especially in battle scenes. His Rivoli, Marengo,
Austerlitz, Wagram, and his twenty-eight plates illustrative of the
campaign of Bonaparte in Italy, have secured a very high reputation
for A.C.H. Vernet. The greatest living French painter--perhaps it
may be truly said, the greatest painter of the day--is Horace
Vernet, son of the last named. He was born in 1789 _in the Louvre_.
He, like his father, excels in battle scenes and is remarkable for
the vivacity and boldness of his conceptions. He is now covering
the walls of the historic gallery at Versailles with canvas, which
will cause him to descend to posterity as the greatest of his
family. None of your readers who have visited Versailles, but have
stood before and admired till the picture seemed almost reality,
his living representations of recent military events in Africa. His
last admirable picture of Louis Napoleon on _horseback_ will, it is
stated, be one of the greatest attractions of the approaching
exposition."
* * * * *
M. Leutze is expected home from Germany in the spring. He left
Philadelphia, the last time, nearly ten years ago. He will accompany his
great picture of "Washington crossing the Delaware." Powers's statue of
Calhoun, with the left arm broken off by the incompetent persons who at
various times were engaged in attempting to recover it, upon being
removed from the sea under which it had lain nearly three months was
found as fresh in tone as when it came from the chisel of the sculptor.
It has been placed in the temple prepared for it in Charleston. Mr.
Ranney has completed a large picture representing Marion and his Men
crossing the Pedee.
* * * * *
Kaulbach, according to a letter from Berlin in the November _Art
Journal_, was to leave that city about the middle of October, in order
to resume for the winter his duties as Director of the Academy of
Munich. The sum which he will receive for his six great frescoes and the
ornamental frieze, will be 80,000 thalers (12,000_l._ sterling) and this
is secured to him, as the contract was made before the existence of a
constitutional budget.
* * * * *
Homer's Odyssey furnishes the subjects for a series of frescoes now
being executed in one of the royal palaces at Munich. Six halls are
devoted to the work; four of them are already finished, sixteen cantos
of the poem being illustrated on their walls. The designs are by
Schwanthaler, and executed by Hiltensperger. Between the different
frescoes are small landscapes representing natural scenes from the same
poem.
* * * * *
If we credit all the accounts of pictures by the old masters, we must
believe that they produced as many works as with ordinary energy they
could have printed had they lived till 1850. The _Journal de Lot et
Garonne_ states that in the church of the Mas-d'Agenais, Count Eugene de
Lonley has discovered, in the sacristy, concealed beneath dust and
spiders' webs, the 'Dying Christ,' painted by Rubens in 1631. The head
of Christ is said to be remarkable for the large style in which it is
painted, for drawing, color, and vigorous expression.
* * * * *
A picture painted on wood, and purchased in 1848 at a public sale in
London, where it was sold as the portrait of an Abbess by Le Brozino,
has been examined by the Academy of St. Luke at Rome, to whose judgment
it was submitted by the purchaser, and unanimously recognized as the
work of Michael Angelo, and as representing the illustrious Marchesa de
Pescara, Victoria Colonna.
* * * * *
The National Academy of Design has resolved, that the entire body of
artists in this city should be invited to assemble for social
intercourse, in the saloons of the Academy, on the first Wednesday
evening of every month, commencing in December, and continuing until the
season of the annual exhibition.
* * * * *
The French President has presented to the Museum of the Louvre David's
celebrated painting of Napoleon Bonaparte crossing the Alps. This work
was for many years at Bordentown, New Jersey, in possession of Joseph
Bonaparte.
* * * * *
The _Art Journal_ for November contains an engraving on steel of the
marble bust by Mr. Dunham of Jenny Lind. This bust, we believe, was
recently sold in New York, by Mr. Putnam, for four hundred dollars.
* * * * *
Herman's series of pictures called Illustrations of German History,
which gained great praise in Southern Germany some two years since, are
now being engraved on steel at Munich, and will soon be published.
Music and the Drama.
THE ASTOR PLACE OPERA
We have watched with interest the attempts which have been made for
several years to establish permanently the Italian opera in New York.
Although we disapprove of some of the means which have been used to
accomplish this object, yet, upon the whole, those who have been
efficient in the matter, both amateurs and artists, are entitled to the
hearty commendation of our musical world. To the enterprising Maretzek
belongs the palm, for his energy, liberality, and discrimination, in
bringing forward, in succession, so many great works, and so many
artists of superior excellence. No man could have accomplished what has
been accomplished by Maretzek, without a combination of very rare
endowments. Let the public then see to it that one who has done so much
for the cultivation and gratification of a taste for the most refining
and delightful of the arts, does not remain unappreciated and
unrewarded. Of the last star which has been brought forward by M.
Maretzek, the musical critic of _The International_ (who has been many
years familiar with the performances of the most celebrated artists in
London, Paris, St. Petersburgh and Vienna, and who, it is pertinent to
mention, never saw M. Maretzek or Mlle. Parodi except in the orchestra
or upon the stage) gives these opinions.
As an artist, Parodi ranks among the very best of Europe.
Notwithstanding so few years have elapsed since her first appearance
upon the stage, she has attained a reputation second only to that of
Grisi and Persiani. We have often had the pleasure of listening to both
of these last-named celebrities, in their principal roles, and have
dwelt with rapture upon their soul-stirring representations. We have
also listened to the Norma and the Lucrezia Borgia of Parodi, and have
been equally delighted and astonished. Her excellences may be briefly
summed up as follows: With an organ of very great compass and of perfect
register, she combines immense power and endurance, and a variety and
perfection of intonation unsurpassed by any living artist. When she
portrays the softer emotions--affection, love, or benevolence--nothing
can be more sweet, pure, and melodious, than her tones; when rage,
despair, hate, or jealousy, seize upon her, still is she true to nature,
and her notes thrill us to the very soul, by their perfect truthfulness,
power, and intensity of expression. If gayety is the theme, no bird
carols more blithely than the Italian warbler. What singer can sustain a
high or a low tone, or execute a prolonged and varied shake, with more
power and accuracy than Parodi? What prima donna can run through the
chromatic scale, or dally with difficult cadenzas, full of unique
intervals, with more ease and precision than our charming Italian? Who
can execute a musical tour de force with more effect than she has so
recently done in Norma and Lucrezia?
Persiani has acquired her great reputation by husbanding her powers for
the purpose of making frequent points, and on this account she is not
uniform, but by turn electrifies and tires her audience. She passes
through the minor passages, undistinguished from those around her, but
in the concerted pieces, and wherever she can introduce a cadenza or a
_tour de force_, she carries all before her. Parodi is good
_everywhere_--in the dull recitative, and in the secondary and
unimportant passages. Her magnificent acting, combined with her superb
vocalization, enchain through the entire opera.
Grisi, like Parodi, is always uniform and accurate in her
representations, and upon the whole should be regarded as the queen of
song; but with these exceptions we know of no person who deserves a
higher rank as a true artist than Parodi. As yet she is not sufficiently
understood. She electrifies her hearers, and secures their entire
sympathies, but they have still to learn that silvery and melodious
tones, and cool mechanical execution, do not alone constitute a genuine
artist or a faultless prima donna. When the public understand how
perfectly Parodi identifies herself with the emotions and passions she
has to portray,--when they appreciate the immense variety of intonations
with which she illustrates her characters, and the earnestness and
intensity with which she throws her whole nature into all she does--then
she will be hailed as the greatest artist ever on this continent, and
one of the greatest in the world.
* * * * *
Mrs. E. Oakes Smith's new tragedy called "The Roman Tribute," has been
produced in Philadelphia for several nights in succession, with very
decided success. The leading character in this play, a noble old Roman,
is quite an original creation. He is represented as a mixture of antique
patriotism, heroic valor, sublime fidelity, and stern resolution, tinged
with a beautiful coloring of romance which softens and relieves his more
commanding virtues. Several feminine characters of singular loveliness
are introduced. The play abounds in scenes of deep passion and thrilling
pathos, while its chaste elegance of language equally adapts it for the
closet or the stage. It was brought out with great splendor of costume,
scenery, proscenium, and the other usual accessories of stage effect,
and presented one of the most gorgeous spectacles of the season. We are
gratified to learn that the dramatic talent of this richly-gifted lady,
concerning which we have before expressed ourselves in terms of high
encomium, has received such a brilliant illustration from the test of
stage experiment. Mrs. Oakes Smith's admirable play of "Jacob Leisler"
will probably be acted in New York during the season.
* * * * *
LEIGH HUNT UPON G.P.R. JAMES.
I hail every fresh publication of James, though I half know what he is
going to do with his lady, and his gentleman, and his landscape, and his
mystery, and his orthodoxy, and his criminal trial. But I am charmed
with the new amusement which he brings out of old materials. I look on
him as I look on a musician famous for "variations." I am grateful for
his vein of cheerfulness, for his singularly varied and vivid
landscapes, for his power of painting women at once lady-like and loving
(a rare talent,) for making lovers to match, at once beautiful and
well-bred, and for the solace which all this has afforded me, sometimes
over and over again, in illness and in convalescence, when I required
interest without violence, and entertainment at once animated and mild.
* * * * *
HERR HECKER DESCRIBED BY MADAME BLAZE DE BURY.
We have heretofore given in the _International_ some account of Madame
Blaze de Bury, and have made some extracts from her piquant and
otherwise remarkable book, "Germania."[2] Looking it over we find
considerable information respecting Herr Hecker, who, since his
unfortunate attempt to revolutionize Germany, has lived in the United
States, being now, we believe, a farmer somewhere in the West. According
to the adventurous Baroness, Hecker was the first man in Germany to
declare for revolution. He was born, near Mannheim, in 1811; he took a
doctor's degree in the University of Heidelberg, followed the profession
of the law, and was elected a member of the Lower House in his 31st
year. Thenceforth he was active in opposition. He possessed all the
chief attributes of a popular leader, and his person was graceful and
commanding, his temperament ardent, his eloquence impassioned. Although
the Grand Duke Leopold was the "gentlest and most paternal of
sovereigns," according to Madame de Bury, still there were many radical
defects in the constitution of Baden. Against these defects Hecker waged
war, and with some success, which instigated him to further efforts
against the government. At length he was beaten on a motion to stop the
supplies, and he retired into France disgusted with his countrymen.
After some time he returned impregnated with the reddest republicanism.
He found sympathy in Baden, and when the revolution broke out in Paris,
he resolved to raise the standard of Republicism in Germany. In April,
1848, he set out for Constance, with four drummers and eight hundred
Badeners. He and they, extravagantly dressed and armed, proceeded
unopposed, singing "Hecker-songs," and comparing their progress to the
march of the French over the Simplon! They arrived at Constance, and
called the people to arms, but the people would not come. The slouched
hats and huge sabers of the patriots did not produce the desired
impression, and then _it rained_. In short, the movement failed.
Finally, having beaten up all the most disaffected parts of the country
for recruits, Hecker arrived at Kandern with twelve hundred men. Here
Gagern met him with a few hundred regular troops. Hecker attempted to
gain them over with the cry of "German brotherhood," but Gagern kept
them steady until he fell, mortally wounded, on the bridge. Then there
was a slight skirmish; both parties retreated, and act the first of the
drama closed. Meanwhile the _Vor Parlament_ had been summoned, and the
National Assembly of Frankfort had met in the Paulskircke, to the number
of four hundred deputies; their self-constituted task was simply to
reform all Germany. Frankfort was stirring and joyous upon this
occasion, as it had used to be in former days, when within its walls
was elected the Head of the Holy Roman Empire. Bells were rung, cannon
fired, triumphal arches raised, green boughs and rainbow-colored banners
waved, flowers strewn in the streets, tapestries hung from windows and
balconies, hands stretched forth in greeting, voices strained to call
down blessings; all that popular enthusiasm could invent was there, and
one immense cry of rejoicing saluted what was fondly termed the
"Regeneration of Germany." The tumults, the misery, the bloodshed, and
the disappointment that followed, until the Rump of this "magniloquent
Parliament" sought shelter at Stuttgardt, are fresh in our memory.
[2: Germania: its Courts, Camps, and People. By the Baroness Blaze
de Bury. London: Colburn.]
Hecker, having done his utmost to "agitate" his country, and having
failed "to inspire a dastard populace with the spirit of the ancient
Roman people," as Madame expresses it, he fled to America. But his name
was still a tower of strength to his Red brethren and the _Freicorps_ of
the Schwartzwald and the Rhine. In Western Germany a year ago last
summer his return was enthusiastically expected by the revolutionary
army. "When Hecker comes," said they, "we shall be invincible." He came:
his followers crowded round him and implored him at once to lead them on
to victory! "Victory be d--d," was the reply of the returned exile; "go
home to your plows and your vines and your wives and children, and leave
me to attend to mine." Hecker had only come to Europe for his family,
and he returned almost immediately to America. Meanwhile the war blazed
up for a little while and then expired, leaving behind it the _Deutsche
Verwirrung_[3] as it now presents itself in Germania.[4]
[3: Literally, the _German entanglement_.]
[4: Hecker seems to have been a sincere enthusiast; and it is
always observed by his friends that he renounced ease and comfort
for the cause that he espoused. We append a single verse from one
of the "Hecker songs" that were in 1849 in the mouth of every
Badish republican:--
"Look at Hecker wealth-renouncing,
O'er his head the red plume waves,
Th' awakening people's will announcing,
For the tyrant's blood he craves!
Mud boots thick and solid wears he,
All round Hecker's banner come,
And march at sound of Hecker's drum."]
Original Poetry.
THE GRIEF OF THE WEEPING WILLOW.
Round my cottage porch are wreathing
Creeping vines, their perfume breathing
To the balmy breeze of Spring.
Near it is a streamlet flowing,
Where old shady trees are growing;
But of _one alone_ I sing.
O'er the water sadly bending,
With the wave its leaflets blending,
Stands a lonely willow tree.
And the shadow seems e'erlasting,
That its boughs are always casting
O'er the tiny wavelets' glee.
Oft I've wondered what the sorrow,
That ne'er know a gladsome morrow,
In the mourner's heart was sealed;
But no bitter wail of sadness,
Nor low tone of chastened gladness,
Had the willow tree revealed.
When the breeze its leaves was lifting;
When the snows were round it drifting,
Seemed it still to grieve the same.
Round its trunk a vine is twining,
But its tendrils too seem pining
For a hand to tend and claim.
Type of love that bears life's testing,
They earth's rudest storms are breasting;
Harmed not--so together borne;
And like girl to lover clinging,
Passing time is only bringing
Strength for every coming morn.
Of one summer eve I ponder,
When I musing chanced to wander
By the streamlet's margin bright.
Moonbeams thro' the leaves were streaming,
And each leaping wave was gleaming
With a paly, astral light.
O'er me hung the weeping willow;
Mossy bank was balmy pillow,
And in slumber sweet I dreamed:
Dreamed of music round me gushing,
That as winds o'er harp-strings rushing,
E'er like angel's whisper seemed.
Oh, those low-breathed tones of sorrow;
Would that mortal tongue could borrow
Power to sing their sweetness o'er;
Here and there a sentence gleaming,
Soon my spirit caught the meaning
That the mournful numbers bore.
Sleeper, who beneath my shade,
Hath thy couch of dreaming made;
Listen as I breathe to thee
All my mournful history.
Childhood, youth, and womanhood,
Have beneath my branches stood;
And of each as pass thy slumbers,
Speak my melancholy numbers.
Of a fair-haired child I tell,
Who, one evening shadows fell,
Many a bright and gladsome hour
Passed mid haunt of bird and flower;
O'er the grassy meadow straying,
By the streamlet's margin playing,
Free from thoughts of care and sadness,
Full of life, and joy, and gladness.
Where my branches lowly hung
Oft her fairy form hath swung,
And methinks her laugh I hear,
Gaily ringing sweet and clear,
As with fading light of day,
Tripped her dancing feet away,
With many smiles and fewer tears,
Thus flew childhood's sunny years.
Soon she in my shadow stood,
On the verge of womanhood:
O'er her pale and thoughtful brow
Sunny tress was braided now;
Softer tones her lips were breathing,
Calmer smiles around them wreathing,
Than in childhood's gayer day,
Sported from those lips away.
Often with her came another;
But more tender than a brother
Seemed he in the care of her
Who was his perfect worshiper.
His the hand that trained the vine
Round my mossy trunk to twine;
'Twas the parting gift of one,
Whom no more I looked upon.
Memories of bygone hours
Seemed to her its fragile flowers.
And each bursting, fragrant blossom
Wore she on her gentle bosom,
'Till like them in sad decay,
Passed her maiden life away.
Once, and only once again,
To the trysting place she came:
Sad and tearful was her eye,
And I heard a mournful sigh,
Breathed from out the parted lips,
Whose smile seemed quenched by grief's eclipse.
Leaf and flower were fading fast,
'Neath the autumn's chilling blast.
And all nature seemed to be
Kindred with her misery.
Winter passed--but spring's warm sun
Brought not back the long-missed one.
And though vainly, still I yearn
For that stricken one's return.
HERMANN
_Riverside, Nov. 10, 1850._
A STORY WITHOUT A NAME.[5]
WRITTEN FOR THE INTERNATIONAL MONTHLY MAGAZINE BY
G.P.R. JAMES, ESQ.
[5: Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1850, by
G.P.R. James, in the Clerk's office of the District Court of the
United States, for the Southern District of New York.]
CHAPTER I.
Let me take you into an old-fashioned country house, built by architects
of the early reign of James the First. It had all the peculiarities--I
might almost say the oddities--of that particular epoch in the building
art. Chimneys innumerable had it. Heaven only knows what rooms they
ventilated; but their name must have been legion. The windows were not
fewer in number, and much more irregular: for the chimneys were gathered
together in some sort of symmetrical arrangement, while the windows were
scattered all over the various faces of the building, with no apparent
arrangement at all. Heaven knows, also, what rooms they lighted, or were
intended to light, for they very little served the purpose, being
narrow, and obstructed by the stone mullions of the Elizabethan age.
Each too had its label of stone superincumbent, and projecting from the
brick-work, which might leave the period of construction somewhat
doubtful--but the gables decided the fact.
They, too, were manifold; for although the house had been built all at
once, it seemed, nevertheless, to have been erected in detached masses,
and joined together as best the builder could; so that there were no
less than six gables, turning north, south, east, and west, with four
right angles, and flat walls between them. These gables were
surmounted--topped, as it were, by a triangular wall, somewhat higher
than the acute roof, and this wall was constructed with a row of steps,
coped with freestone, on either side of the ascent, as if the architect
had fancied that some man or statue would, one day or another, have to
climb up to the top of the pyramid, and take his place upon the crowning
stone.
It was a gloomy old edifice: the bricks had become discolored; the
livery of age, yellow and gray lichen, was upon it; daws hovered round
the chimney tops; rooks passed cawing over it, on the way to their
conventicle hard by; no swallow built under the eaves; and the trees, as
if repelled by its stern, cold aspect, retreated from it on three sides,
leaving it alone on its own flat ground, like a moody man amidst a gay
society.
On the fourth side, indeed, an avenue--that is to say, two rows of old
elms--crept cautiously up to it in a winding and sinuous course, as if
afraid of approaching too rapidly; and at the distance of some five or
six hundred yards, clumps of old trees, beeches and evergreen oaks, and
things of somber foliage, dotted the park, only enlivened by here and
there a herd of deer.
Now and then, a milk-maid, a country woman going to church or market, a
peasant, or a game-keeper, might be seen traversing the dry brown
expanse of grass, and but rarely deviating from a beaten path, which led
from one stile over the path wall to another. It was all somber and
monotonous: the very spirit of dullness seemed to hang over it; and the
clouds themselves--the rapid sportive clouds, free denizens of the sky,
and playmates of the wind and sunbeam--appeared to grow dull and tardy,
as they passed across the wide space open to the view, and to proceed
with awe and gravity, like timid youth in the presence of stern old age.
Enough of the outside of the house. Let me take you into the interior,
reader, and into one particular room--not the largest and the finest;
but one of the highest. It was a little oblong chamber, with one window,
which was ornamented--the only ornament the chamber had--with a decent
curtain of red and white checked linen. On the side next the door, and
between it and the western wall, was a small bed. A walnut-tree table
and two or three chairs were near the window. In one corner stood a
washing-stand, not very tidily arranged, in another a chest of drawers;
and opposite the fire-place, hung from nails driven into the wall, two
or three shelves of the same material as the table, each supporting a
row of books, which by the dark black covers, brown edges, and thumbed
corners, seemed to have a right to boast of some antiquity and much use.
At the table, as you perceive, there is seated a boy of some fifteen
years of age, with pen and ink and paper, and an open book. If you look
over his shoulder, you will perceive that the words are Latin. Yet he
reads it with ease and facility, and seeks no aid from the dictionary.
It is the "Cato Major" of Cicero. Heaven! what a book for a child like
that to read! Boyhood studying old age!
But let us turn from the book, and examine the lad himself more closely.
See that pale face, with a manlike unnatural gravity upon it. Look at
that high broad brow, towering as a monument above the eyes. Remark
those eyes themselves, with their deep eager thought; and then the gleam
in them--something more than earnestness, and less than wildness--a
thirsty sort of expression, as if they drank in that they rested on, and
yet were unsated.
The brow rests upon the pale fair hand, as if requiring something to
support the heavy weight of thought with which the brain is burdened. He
marks nothing but the lines of that old book. His whole soul is in the
eloquent words. He hears not the door open; he sees not that tall,
venerable, but somewhat stiff and gaunt figure, enter and approach him.
He reads on, till the old man's Geneva cloak brushes his arm, and his
hand is upon his shoulder. Then he starts up--looks around--but says
nothing. A faint smile, pleasant yet grave, crosses his finely cut lip;
but that is the only welcome, as he raises his eyes to the face that
bends over him. Can that boy in years be already aged in heart?
It is clear that the old man--the old clergyman, for so he evidently
is--has no very tender nature. Every line of his face forbids the
supposition. The expression itself is grave, not to say stern. There is
powerful thought about it, but small gentleness. He seems one of those
who have been tried and hardened in some one of the many fiery furnaces
which the world provides for the test of men of strong minds and strong
hearts. There has been much persecution in the land; there have been
changes, from the rigid and severe to the light and frivolous--from the
light and frivolous to the bitter and cruel. There have been tyrants of
all shapes and all characters within the last forty years, and fools,
and knaves, and madmen, to cry them on in every course of evil. In all
these chances and changes, what fixed and rigid mind could escape the
fangs of persecution and wrong? He had known both; but they had changed
him little. His was originally an unbending spirit: it grew more tough
and stubborn by the habit of resistance; but its original bent was still
the same.
Fortune--heaven's will--or his own inclination, had denied him wife or
child; and near relation he had none. A friend he had: that boy's
father, who had sheltered him in evil times, protected him as far as
possible against the rage of enemies, and bestowed upon him the small
living which afforded him support. He did his duty therein
conscientiously, but with a firm unyielding spirit, adhering to the
Calvinistic tenets which he had early received, in spite of the
universal falling off of companions and neighbors. He would not have
yielded an iota to have saved his head.
With all his hardness, he had one object of affection, to which all that
was gentle in his nature was bent. That object was the boy by whom he
now stood, and for whom he had a great--an almost parental regard.
Perhaps it was that he thought the lad not very well treated; and, as
such had been his own case, there was sympathy in the matter. But
besides, he had been intrusted with his education from a very early
period, had taken a pleasure in the task, had found his scholar apt,
willing, and affectionate, with a sufficient touch of his own character
in the boy to make the sympathy strong, and yet sufficient diversity to
interest and to excite.
The old man was tenderer toward him than toward any other being upon
earth; and he sometimes feared that his early injunctions to study and
perseverance were somewhat too strictly followed--even to the detriment
of health. He often looked with some anxiety at the increasing paleness
of the cheek, at the too vivid gleam of the eye, at the eager nervous
quivering of the lip, and said within himself, "This is overdone."
He did not like to check, after he had encouraged--to draw the rein
where he had been using the spur. There is something of vanity in us
all, and the sternest is not without that share which makes man shrink
from the imputation of error, even when made by his own heart. He did
not choose to think that the lad had needed no urging forward; and yet
he would fain have had him relax a little more, and strove at times to
make him do so. But the impulse had been given: it had carried the youth
over the difficulties and obstacles in the way to knowledge, and now he
went on to acquire it, with an eagerness, a thirst, that had something
fearful in it. A bent, too, had been given to his mind--nay, to his
character, partly by the stern uncompromising character of him to whom
his education had been solely intrusted, partly by his own peculiar
situation, and partly by the subjects on which his reading had chiefly
turned.
The stern old Roman of the early republic; the deeds of heroic
virtue--as virtue was understood by the Romans; the sacrifice of all
tender affections, all the sensibilities of our nature to the rigid
thought of what is right; the remorseless disregard of feelings
implanted by God, when opposed to the notion of duties of man's
creation, excited his wonder and his admiration, and would have hardened
and perverted his heart, had not that heart been naturally full of
kindlier affections. As it was, there often existed a struggle--a sort
of hypothetical struggle--in his bosom, between the mind and the heart.
He asked himself sometimes, if he could sacrifice any of those he knew
and loved--his father, his mother, his brother, to the good of his
country, to some grave duty; and he felt pained and roused to resistance
of his own affections when he perceived what a pang it would cost him.
Yet his home was not a very happy one; the kindlier things of domestic
life had not gathered green around him. His father was varying and
uneven in temper, especially toward his second son; sometimes stern and
gloomy, sometimes irascible almost to a degree of insanity. Generous,
brave, and upright, he was; but every one said, that a wound he had
received on the head in the wars, had marvelously increased the
infirmities of his temper.
The mother, indeed, was full of tenderness and gentleness; and doubtless
it was through her veins that the milk of human kindness had found its
way into that strange boy's heart. But yet she loved her eldest son
best, and unfortunately showed it.
The brother was a wild, rash, reckless young man, some three years
older; fond of the other, yet often pleased to irritate--or at least to
try, for he seldom succeeded. He was the favorite, however, somewhat
spoiled, much indulged; and whatever was done, was done for him. He was
the person most considered in the house; his were the parties of
pleasure; his the advantages. Even now the family was absent, in order
to let him see the capital of his native land, to open his mind to the
general world, to show him life on a more extended scale than could be
done in the country; and his younger brother was left at home, to pursue
his studies in dull solitude.
Yet he did not complain; there was not even a murmur at his heart. He
thought it all quite right. His destiny was before him. He was to form
his fortune for himself, by his own abilities, his own learning, his own
exertions. It was needful he should study, and his greatest ambition for
the time was to enter with distinction at the University; his brightest
thoughts of pleasure, the comparative freedom and independence of a
collegiate life.
Not that he did not find it dull; that gloomy old house, inhabited by
none but himself and a few servants. Sometimes it seemed to oppress him
with a sense of terrible loneliness; sometimes it drove him to think of
the strange difference of human destinies, and why it should be
that--because it had pleased Heaven one man should be born a little
sooner or a little later than another, or in some other place--such a
wide interval should be placed between the different degrees of
happiness and fortune.
He felt, however, that such speculations were not good; they led him
beyond his depth; he involved himself in subtilties more common in those
days than in ours; he lost his way; and with passionate eagerness flew
to his books, to drive the mists and shadows from his mind. Such had
been the case even now; and there he sat, unconscious that a complete
and total change was coming over his destiny.
Oh, the dark workshop of Fate! what strange things go on therein,
affecting human misery and joy, repairing or breaking shackles for the
mind, the means of carrying us forward in a glorious cause, the
relentless weights which hurry us down to destruction! While you sit
there and read--while I sit here and write, who can say what strange
alterations, what combinations in the most discrepant things may be
going on around--without our will, without our knowledge--to alter the
whole course of our future existence? Doubtless, could man make his own
fate, he would mar it; and the impossibility of doing so is good. The
freedom of his own actions is sufficient, nay, somewhat too much; and it
is well for the world, aye, and for himself--that there is an overruling
Providence which so shapes circumstances around him, that he cannot go
beyond his limit, flutter as he will.
There is something in that old man's face more than is common with
him--a deeper gravity even than ordinary, yet mingled with a tenderness
that is rare. There is something like hesitation, too--ay, hesitation
even in him who during a stormy life has seldom known what it is to
doubt or to deliberate: a man of strict and ready preparation, whose
fixed, clear, definite mind was always prompt and competent to act.
"Come, Philip, my son," he said, laying his hand, as I have stated, on
the lad's shoulder, "enough of study for to-day. You read too hard. You
run before my precepts. The body must have thought as well as the mind;
and if you let the whole summer day pass without exercise, you will soon
find that under the weight of corporeal sickness the intellect will flag
and the spirit droop. I am going for a walk. Come with me; and we will
converse of high things by the way."
"Study is my task and my duty, sir," replied the boy; "my father tells
me so, you have told me so often, and as for health I fear not. I seem
refreshed when I get up from reading, especially such books as this. It
is only when I have been out long, riding or walking, that I feel
tired."
"A proof that you should ride and walk the more," replied the old man.
"Come, put on your hat and cloak. You shall read no more to-day. There
are other thoughts before you; you know, Philip," he continued, "that by
reading we get but materials, which we must use to build up an edifice
in our own minds. If all our thoughts are derived from others gone
before us, we are but robbers of the dead, and live upon labors not our
own."
"Elder sons," replied the boy, with a laugh, "who take an inheritance
for which they toiled not."
"Something worse than that," replied the clergyman, "for we gather what
we do not employ rightly--what we have every right to possess, but upon
the sole condition of using well. Each man possessed of intellect is
bound to make his own mind, not to have it made for him; to adapt it to
the times and circumstances in which he lives, squaring it by just
rules, and employing the best materials he can find."
"Well, sir, I am ready," replied the youth, after a moment of deep
thought; and he and his old preceptor issued forth together down the
long staircase, with the slant sunshine pouring through the windows upon
the unequal steps, and illuminating the motes in the thick atmosphere we
breathe, like fancy brightening the idle floating things which surround
us in this world of vanity.
They walked across the park toward the stile. The youth was silent, for
the old man's last words seemed to have awakened a train of thought
altogether new.
His companion was silent also; for there was something working within
him which embarrassed and distressed him. He had something to tell that
young man, and he knew not how to tell it. For the first time in his
life he perceived, from the difficulty he experienced in deciding upon
his course, how little he really knew of his pupil's character. He had
dealt much with his mind, and that he comprehended well--its depth, its
clearness, its powers; but his heart and disposition he had not scanned
so accurately. He had a surmise, indeed, that there were feelings strong
and intense within; but he thought that the mind ruled them with
habitual sway that nothing could shake. Yet he paused and pondered; and
once he stopped, as if about to speak, but went on again and said
nothing.
At length, as they approached the park wall, he laid his finger on his
temple, muttering to himself, "Yes, the quicker the better. 'Tis well to
mingle two passions. Surprise will share with grief--if much grief there
be." Then turning to the young man, he said, "Philip, I think you loved
your brother Arthur?"
He spoke loudly, and in plain distinct tones; but the lad did not seem
to remark the past tense he used. "Certainly, sir," he said, "I love him
dearly. What of that?"
"Then you will be very happy to hear," replied the old man, "that he has
been singularly fortunate--I mean that he has been removed from earth
and all its allurements--the vanities, the sins, the follies of the
world in which he seemed destined to move, before he could be corrupted
by its evils, or his spirit receive a taint from its vices."
The young man turned and gazed on him with inquiring eyes, as if still
he did not comprehend what he meant.
"He was drowned," said the clergyman, "on Saturday last, while sailing
with a party of pleasure on the Thames;" and Philip fell at his feet as
senseless as if he had shot him.