_Études sur Pascal_. Par M. VICTOR COUSIN. Cinqième Edition, revue et
augmentée. Paris: 1857. pp. 566. 8vo.
We render hearty thanks to M. Cousin for this new edition of a favorite
work. No library which contains Pascal's "Provinciales" and "Pensées"
should be without it.
"Of all the monuments of the French language," says M. Cousin, in the
_Avant-propos_ to this new edition, "none is more celebrated than the
work 'Les Pensées,' and French literature possesses no artist more
consummate than Pascal. Do not expect to find in this young
geometrician, so soon consumed by disease and passion, the breadth,
surface, and infinite variety of Bossuet, who, supported by vast and
uninterrupted study, rose and rose until he gained the loftiest reaches
of intellect and art, and commanded at pleasure every tone and every
style. Pascal did not fulfil all his destiny. Besides the mathematics
and natural philosophy he knew scarcely more than a little theology,
and he barely passed through good society. It is true, Pascal passed
away from earth quickly; but during his short life he discerned
glimpses of the _beau ideal_, he attached himself to it with all his
heart and soul and strength, and he never allowed anything to leave his
hands unless it bore its lively impress. So great was his passion for
perfection, that unchallenged tradition tells us he wrote the
seventeenth 'Provinciale' thirteen times over. 'Les Pensées' are merely
fragments of the great work on which he consumed the last years of his
life; but these fragments sometimes present so finished a beauty, that
we do not know which most to admire, the grandeur and vigor of the
sentiments and ideas, or the delicacy and depth of the art."
This praise is unexaggerated. What a career was run by this genius!
Discovering the science of geometry at twelve years of age,--next
inventing the arithmetical machine,--discovering atmospheric pressure,
while every philosopher was prating about "Nature's horror of a
vacuum,"--inventing the wheelbarrow, to divert his mind from the pains
of the toothache, and succeeding,--inventing the theory of
probabilities,--establishing the first omnibuses that ever relieved the
public,--then writing the "Provinciales,"--dying at thirty-three,
leaving behind him two small volumes (you may carry them in your
pocket) which are the unchallengeable title-deeds of his immortal fame,
the favorite works of Gibbon, Voltaire, Macaulay, and Cousin! Where
else can so crowded and so short a career be found?
It is scarcely possible to repress a smile in reading this work and
discovering the patient care with which M. Cousin avoids speaking of
the "Provinciales." And it is strange to say (no contemptible proof of
the influence exercised by the Church of Rome, even when checked as it
is in France) that no decent edition of the "Provinciales" can be found
in the French language. While we possess M. Cousin's "Études sur
Pascal," and M. Havet's edition of "Les Pensées," the only editions of
"Les Provinciales" of recent date are the miserable publications of
Charpentier and the Didots. Editions of Voltaire and Rousseau are
numerous, elaborate, and elegant; for atheism is pardoned much more
easily than abhorrence of the Jesuits.
The volume named at the head of this article contains a great many
valuable documents relating to Pascal and his family: all of Pascal's
correspondence known to exist, including his celebrated letter on the
death of Étienne Pascal, his father, which is usually printed in "Les
Pensées," being cut up into short sentences to fit it for that work, a
large part of it being omitted; his singular essay on Love; curious
details concerning the De Roanner family; an essay on the true text of
the "Pensées"; a curious fac-simile of a page of that work; and a
discussion (perhaps M. Cousin would say a refutation) of Pascal's
philosophy. But we must protest against the easy manner in which M.
Cousin wears his honors. When a book has reached its fifth edition and
is evidently destined to a good many more during the author's lifetime,
he lies under an obligation to place the new information he may have
collected, and the additional thoughts which may have occurred to him,
during the intervals between the different editions, in a form more
convenient to the render than new prefaces and new notes. To master the
information contained in this work is no recreation, but a severe task,
and one not to be accomplished except upon repeated perusals of the
book. This is the more inexcusable because M. Cousin is now free from
all official and professional cares; and it would involve the less
labor to him, as he never writes, but dictates all his compositions.
* * * * *
_Belle Brittan on a Tour; at Newport, and Here and There._ New York:
Derby & Jackson. 1858.
The compulsion of hunger, or the request of friends, was the excuse for
the printing of sorry books in Pope's time; and it has not become
obsolete yet. The writer of the book, the title of which we have given
above, pleads the latter alternative as the occasion of this
publication. He says it was "a few friends" that preferred this
request. It is unfortunate for him that he had any so void of judgment
and empty of taste. He thinks his Letters will "receive unjust
censure," as well as "undue praise." We think that he may relieve his
mind of any such apprehension. We cannot think his book at all likely
to receive more dispraise than it richly merits. A more discreditable
one, not absolutely indictable, we hope, has seldom issued from the
American press.
What motive the author had in assuming a female character, we know not.
He certainly has been very unfortunate in his female acquaintance, if
he accurately imitates their tone of thought and style of talk, in his
letters. Should they happen to fall in the way of any foreigners, we
beg them to believe that this is not the way in which American women
converse. But we think that there can scarcely be a cockney so spoony
as not to "spy a great peard under her muffler," and know that it is a
man awkwardly masquerading in women's clothes. It is a libel on the
women of the country, to put such balderdash into the mouth of one who
may be supposed to have been finished at a fifth-rate boarding-school.
The letters are in the worst style of the "Own Correspondents" of
third-rate papers. The "_deadhead_" perks itself in your face at every
turn, in flunkeyish gratitude for invitations, drinks, dinners, and
free passes,--from "the gentlemanly Lord Napier," down to "intelligent
and gentlemanly" railway-conductors, "gentlemanly and attentive"
hotel-clerks, "gracious, gentlemanly, and gallant" tavern-keepers, and
their "lovely and accomplished brides." The soul of a footman is
expressed by the pen of an abigail,--and the one not a Humphrey
Clinker, nor the other a Winifred Jenkins,--and we are expected to
admire the result as a good imitation of a lively, intelligent,
well-bred American young lady! We protest against the profanation.
The letters take a wide range of subject, and treat of "Shakspeare,
taste, and the musical glasses," in a vein that would have done no
discredit to Lady Blarney and Miss Arabella Wilhelmina Amelia Skeggs
themselves. We might divert our readers with some specimens of
criticism, or opinion, did our limits admit of such entertainment. We
can only inform them, on Belle Brittan's authority, that worthy Dr.
Charles Mackay, who suffers throughout the book from intermittent--nay,
chronic--attacks of puffery, is "one of the best living poets of
England"; Mademoiselle Lamoureux, the _danseuse_, is "better than
Ellsler"; and pretty Mrs. John Wood, the lively _soubrette_ of the
Boston Theatre, "possesses many of the rarest requisites of a great
actress"! But these are inanities which an inexperienced and
half-taught girl might possibly utter in a familiar letter. Not so, we
trust, as to the belief expressed by Belle Brittan, in puffing "Jim
Parton's, Fanny Fern's Jim's," Life of Burr,--"more charming than a
novel," because, as she implies, of the successful libertinism of its
hero,--when she says, speaking in the name of the maidens of America,
"We all, I suppose, must fall, like our first parents, when the hour of
_our_ temptation comes"!
We should not have given the space we have bestowed on this worthless
book, had it not been made the occasion of newspaper puffs innumerable,
recommending it to the public as something worthy of their time and
money. It is one of the worst signs of our time that a false
good-nature or imperfect taste should lead respectable papers to give
currency to books destitute of all merit, by the application to them of
stereotyped phrases of commendation. These letters, without a grace of
style, without a flash of wit, without a genial ray of humor, deformed
by coarse breeding, vulgar self-conceit, and ignorant assumption, are
bepraised as if they were fresh from the mint of genius, and bore the
image and superscription of Madame de Sévigné or Lady Mary Wortley!
This evil must be cured, or the daily press may find that it will cure
itself.
We know nothing of the author of this book, excepting what he has here
shown us of himself. He may be capable of better things, and when they
come before us, we shall rejoice to do them justice. But we advise him,
first of all, to discard his disguise, which becomes him as ill as the
gown of Mrs. Ford's "maid's aunt, the fat woman of Brentford," did Sir
John Falstaff. Or, if he will persist in playing the part of a woman,
let him bear in mind that to be unmanly is not necessarily to be
womanly, and that it does not follow that one writes like a lady
because he does _not_ write like a gentleman.
_Appleton's Cyclopaedia of Drawing_. Designed as a Text-book for the
Mechanic, Architect, Engineer, and Surveyor. Comprising Geometrical
Projection, Mechanical, Architectural, and Topographical Drawing,
Perspective, and Isometry. Edited by W.E. WORTHEN. New York: D.
Appleton & Co. 1857.
Mr. Worthen has given us in this book a most judicious and complete
compilation of the best works on the various branches of "practical"
drawing,--having, with real thoughtfulness and knowledge of what was
needed in a handbook, condensed all the most important rules and
directions to be found in the works of MM. Le Brun and Armengaud on
geometrical and mechanical drawing, Ferguson and Garbett on
architectural, and Williams, Gillespie, Smith, and Frome, on
topographical drawing.
It includes a very full chapter of geometrical definitions, a complete
and minute description of all the implements of mechanical drawing, and
solutions of all the useful problems of geometrical drawing,--a part of
the work especially needed by practical mechanics, and hitherto to be
found, so far as we know, only in the form of results in the
pocket-books of tables, or in the lengthy and elaborate treatises of
the heavy cyclopaedias, or works specially devoted to the topic.
There is an admirably condensed treatise on the mechanical powers,
containing all the problems of use in construction, with tables of the
mechanical properties of materials. In mechanical drawing there are
directions for the most complicated drawings, going up to the last
improvements in the steam-engine. The same completeness of elementary
instruction marks the section on architectural drawing, though in this
department we should have liked a fuller and better-chosen series of
examples, especially of domestic architecture,--an Italian villa
planned by Mr. Upjohn being the only really tasteful and appropriate
dwelling-house given. The designs by Downing, rarely much more than
commodious residences with great neatness rather than artistic beauty,
stand very well for that style of building which consults comfort and
attains it, but it is a misuse of words to call them artistic.
Picturesque they may be at times, but often the affectation of external
style puts Downing's designs into the category of Gothic follies and
Grecian villanies, in which the outside gives the lie to the
inside,--emulating in wood the forms of stone, giving to cottages on
whose roof snow will never lie three inches deep all the pitch a Swiss
_châlet_ would need. We are especially sorry to see a plate of Thomas's
house in Fifth Avenue, New York,--the most absurd and ludicrous pile of
building material which can be found on the avenue,--and to find such
evidence of taste as is shown by the editor's commendation of it as
"uniting richness and grandeur of effect," "admirably suited," etc. Mr.
Worthen, however, generally abstains from much expression of opinion as
to styles or the respective merits of works.
His examples of the steam-engine are nearly all from American models,
and include the oscillating engines of the "Golden Gate," the last
important advance in the construction of the marine engine; for,
although the form of the oscillator has been known for years, it had
never been applied to marine uses until the success of the "Golden
Gate" proved its applicability to the heaviest engines. The examples of
architectural details and ornaments are copious, and represent all
styles with great fairness; but there is much confusion in the
numbering of the plates, so that it is a problem at times to find the
illustration desired.
The tinted illustrations, though answering their proposed purpose, are
a disgrace to the art of lithotinting,--coarse, ineffective, and cheap.
The publishers, we think, would have profited by a little more
liberality in this respect.