CHAPTER XL.

AN OLD LADY'S APOLOGY.

When Wenna heard that Mr. Roscorla had left England without even

bidding her good-bye by letter, she accepted the rebuke with

submission, and kept her own counsel. She went about her daily duties

with an unceasing industry: Mrs. Trelyon was astonished to see how she

seemed to find time for everything. The winter was coming on, and the

sewing club was in full activity, but even apart from the affairs of

that enterprise, Wenna Rosewarne seemed to be everywhere throughout

the village, to know everything, to be doing everything that prudent

help and friendly counsel could do. Mrs. Trelyon grew to love the girl

in her vague, wondering, simple fashion.

So the days and the weeks and the months went by, and the course of

life ran smoothly and quietly in the remote Cornish village.

Apparently there was nothing to indicate the presence of bitter

regrets, of crushed hopes, of patient despair; only Mabyn used to

watch her sister at times, and she fancied that Wenna's face was

growing thinner.

The Christmas festivities came on, and Mrs. Trelyon was pleased to

lend her protégée a helping hand in decorating the church. One evening

she said, "My dear Miss Wenna, I am going to ask you an impertinent

question. Could your family spare you on Christmas evening? Harry is

coming down from London: I am sure he would be so pleased to see you."

"Oh, thank you, Mrs. Trelyon," Wenna said, with just a little

nervousness. "You are very kind, but indeed I must be at home on

Christmas evening."

"Perhaps some other evening while he is here you will be able to come

up," said Mrs. Trelyon in her gentle way. "You know you ought to come

and see how your pupil is getting on. He writes me such nice letters

now; and I fancy he is working very hard at his studies, though he

says nothing about it."

"I am very glad to hear that," Wenna said in a low voice.

Trelyon did come to the Hall for a few days, but he kept away from the

village, and was seen by no one of the Rosewarnes. But on the

Christmas morning, Mabyn Rosewarne, being early about, was told that

Mrs. Trelyon's groom wished to see her, and, going down, she found the

man, with a basket before him.

"Please, miss, Mr. Trelyon's compliments, and would you take the

flowers out of the cotton-wool and give them to Miss Rosewarne?"

"Oh, won't I?" said Mabyn, opening the basket at once, and carefully

getting out a bouquet of camellias, snowdrops and sweet violets. "Just

you wait a minute, Jakes, for I've got a Christmas-box for you."

Mabyn went up stairs as rapidly as was consistent with the safety of

the flowers, and burst into her sister's room: "Oh, Wenna, look at

this! Do you know who sent them? Did you ever see anything so lovely?"

For a second the girl seemed almost frightened; then her eyes grew

troubled and moist, and she turned her head away. Mabyn put them

gently down and left the room without a word.

The Christmas and the New Year passed without any message from Mr.

Roscorla; and Mabyn, though she rebelled against the bondage in which

her sister was placed, was glad that she was not disturbed by angry

letters. About the middle of January, however, a brief note arrived

from Jamaica.

"I cannot let such a time go by," Mr. Roscorla wrote, "whatever may be

our relations, without sending you a friendly word. I do hope the new

year will bring you health and happiness, and that we shall in time

forget the angry manner in which we parted and all the circumstances

leading to it."

She wrote as brief a note in reply, at the end of which she hoped he

would forgive her for any pain he had suffered through her. Mabyn was

rejoiced to find that the correspondence--whether it was or was not

meant on his part to be an offer of reconciliation--stopped there.

And again the slow days went by until the world began to stir with the

new spring-time--the saddest time of the year to those who live much

in the past. Wenna was out and about a great deal, being continually

busy, but she no longer took those long walks by herself in which she

used to chat to the butterflies and the young lambs and the sea-gulls.

The fresh western breezes no longer caused her spirits to flow over

in careless gayety: she saw the new flowers springing out of the

earth, but it was of another spring-time she was thinking.

One day, later on in the year, Mrs. Trelyon sent down the wagonette

for her, with the request that she would come up to the Hall for a few

minutes. Wenna obeyed the summons, imagining that some business

connected with the sewing club claimed her attention. When she arrived

she found Mrs. Trelyon unable to express the gladness and gratitude

that filled her heart; for before her were certain London newspapers,

and, behold! Harry Trelyon's name was recorded there in certain lists

as having scored a sufficient number of marks in the examination to

entitle him to a first commission. It was no concern of hers that his

name was pretty far down in the list--enough that he had succeeded

somehow. And who was the worker of this miracle?--who but the shy,

sad-eyed girl standing beside her, whose face wore now a happier

expression than it had worn for many a day.

"And this is what he says," the proud mother continued, showing Wenna

a letter: '"It isn't much to boast of, for indeed you'll see by the

numbers that it was rather a narrow squeak: anyhow, I pulled through.

My old tutor is rather a speculative fellow, and he offered to bet me

fifty pounds his coaching would carry me through, which I took; so I

shall have to pay him that besides his fees. I must say he has earned

both: I don't think a more ignorant person than myself ever went to a

man to get crammed. I send you two newspapers: you might drop one at

the inn for Miss Rosewarne any time you are passing, or if you could

see her and tell her, perhaps that would be better.'"

Wenna was about as pleased and proud as Mrs. Trelyon was. "I knew he

could do it if he tried," she said quietly.

"And then," the mother went on to say, "when he has once joined there

will be no money wanting to help him to his promotion; and when he

comes back to settle down here, he will have some recognized rank and

profession, such as a man ought to have. Not that he will remain in

the army, for of course I should not like to part with him, and he

might be sent to Africa or Canada or the West Indies. _You_ know," she

added with a smile, "that it is not pleasant to have any one you care

for in the West Indies."

When Wenna got home again she told Mabyn. Strange to say, Mabyn did

not clap her hands for joy, as might have been expected.

"Wenna," said she, "what made him go into the army? Was it to show you

that he could pass an examination? or was it because he means to leave

England?"

"I do not know," said Wenna, looking down. "I hope he does not mean to

leave England." That was all she said.

Harry Trelyon was, however, about to leave England, though not because

he had been gazetted to a colonial regiment. He came down to inform

his mother that on the fifteenth of the month he would sail for

Jamaica; and then and there, for the first time, he told her the whole

story of his love for Wenna Rosewarne, of his determination to free

her somehow from the bonds that bound her, and, failing that, of the

revenge he meant to take. Mrs. Trelyon was amazed, angry and

beseeching in turns. At one moment she protested that it was madness

of her son to think of marrying Wenna Rosewarne; at another, she would

admit all that he said in praise of her, and would only implore him

not to leave England; or again she would hint that she would almost

herself go down to Wenna and beg her to marry him if only he gave up

this wild intention of his. He had never seen his mother so agitated,

but he reasoned gently with her, and remained firm to his purpose. Was

there half as much danger in taking a fortnight's trip in a

mail-steamer as in going from Southampton to Malta in a yacht, which

he had twice done with her consent?

"Why, if I had been ordered to join a regiment in China, you might

have some reason to complain," he said. "And I shall be as anxious as

you, mother, to get back again, for I mean to get up my drill

thoroughly as soon as I am attached. I have plenty of work before me."

"You're not looking well, Harry," said the mother.

"Of course not," said he cheerfully. "You don't catch one of those

geese at Strasburg looking specially lively when they tie it by the

leg and cram it; and that's what I've been going through of late. But

what better cure can there be than a sea-voyage?"

And so it came about that on a pleasant evening in October Mr.

Roscorla received a visit. He saw the young man come riding up the

acacia path, and he instantaneously guessed his mission. His own

resolve was taken as quickly.

"Bless my soul! is it you, Trelyon?" he cried with apparent delight.

"You mayn't believe it, but I am really glad to see you. I have been

going to write to you for many a day back. I'll send somebody for your

horse: come into the house."

The young man, having fastened up the bridle, followed his host. There

was a calm and business-like rather than a holiday look on his face.

"And what were you going to write to me about?" he asked.

"Oh, you know," said Roscorla good-naturedly. "You see, a man takes

very different views of life when he knocks about a bit. For my part,

I am more interested in my business now than in anything else of a

more tender character; and I may say that I hope to pay you back a

part of the money you lent me as soon as our accounts for this year

are made up. Well, about that other point: I don't see how I could

well return to England, to live permanently there, for a year or two

at the soonest; and--and, in fact, I have often wondered, now, whether

it wouldn't be better if I asked Miss Rosewarne to consider herself

finally free from that--from that engagement."

"Yes, I think it would be a great deal better," said Trelyon coldly.

"And perhaps you would kindly put your resolve into writing. I shall

take it back to Miss Rosewarne. Will you kindly do so now?"

"Why," said Roscorla rather sharply, "you don't take my proposal in a

very friendly way. I imagine I am doing you a good turn too. It is not

every man would do so in my position; for, after all, she treated me

very badly. However, we needn't go into that. I will write her a

letter, if you like--now, indeed, if you like; and won't you stop a

day or two here before going back to Kingston?"

Mr. Trelyon intimated that he would like to have the letter at once,

and that he would consider the invitation afterward. Roscorla, with a

good-humored shrug, sat down and wrote it, and then handed it to

Trelyon, open. As he did so he noticed that the young man was coolly

abstracting the cartridge from a small breech-loading pistol he held

in his hand. He put the cartridge in his waistcoat pocket and the

pistol in his coat pocket.

"Did you think we were savages out here, that you came armed?" said

Roscorla, rather pale, but smiling.

"I didn't know," said Trelyon.

* * * * *

One morning there was a marriage in Eglosilyan, up there at the small

church on the bleak downs overlooking the wide sea. The spring-time

had come round again; there was a May-like mildness in the air; the

skies overhead were as blue as the great plain of the sea; and all the

beautiful green world was throbbing with the upspringing life of the

flowers. It was just like any other wedding, but for one little

incident. When the bride came out into the bewildering glare of the

sun, she vaguely knew that the path through the churchyard was lined

on both sides with children. Now, she was rather well known to the

children about, and they had come in a great number; and when she

passed down between them it appeared that the little folks had brought

vast heaps of primroses and violets in their aprons and in tiny

baskets, and they strewed her path with these flowers of the new

spring. Well, she burst into tears at this, and hastily leaving her

husband's arm for a moment, she caught up one of the least of the

children--a small, golden-haired girl of four--and kissed her. Then

she turned to her husband again, and was glad that he led her down to

the gale, for her eyes were so blinded with tears that she could not

see her way.

Nor did anything very remarkable occur at the wedding-breakfast. But

there was a garrulous old lady there with bright pink cheeks and

silvery hair; and she did not cease to prattle to the clergyman who

had officiated in the church, and who was seated next her. "Indeed,

Mr. Trewhella," she said confidentially, "I always said this is what

would come of it. Never any one of those Trelyons set his heart on a

girl but he got her; and what was the use of friends or relatives

fighting against it? Nay, I don't think there's any cause of

complaint--not I! She's a modest, nice, ladylike girl: she is indeed,

although she isn't so handsome as her sister. Dear, dear me! look at

that girl now! Won't she be a prize for some man? I declare I haven't

seen so handsome a girl for many a day. And, as I tell you, Mr.

Trewhella, it's no use trying to prevent it: if one of the Trelyons

falls in love with a girl, the girl's done for: she may as well give

in."

"If I may say so," observed the old clergyman, with a sly gallantry,

"you do not give the gentlemen of your family credit for the most

remarkable feature of their marriage connections. They seem to have

had always a very good idea of making an excellent choice."

The old lady was vastly pleased. "Ah, well," she said, with a shrewd

smile, "there were two or three who thought George Trelyon--that was

this young man's grandfather, you know--lucky enough, if one might

judge by the noise they made. Dear, dear! what a to-do there was when

we ran away! Why, don't you know, Mr. Trewhella, that I ran away from

a ball with him, and drove to Gretna Green with my ball-dress on, as

I'm a living woman? Such a ride it was!--why, when we got up to

Carlisle--"

But that story has been told before.

CAMP-FIRE LYRICS.

II.--NIGHT--LAKE HELEN.

I lie in my red canoe

On the water still and deep,

And o'er me darkens the blue,

And beneath the billows sleep,

Till, between the stars o'erhead

And those in the lake's embrace,

I seem to float like the dead

In the noiselessness of space.

Betwixt two worlds I drift,

A bodiless soul again--

Between the still thoughts of God

And those which belong to men;

And out of the height above,

And out of the deep below,

A thought that is like a ghost

Seems to gather and gain and grow,

That now and for evermore

This silence of death shall hold,

While the nations fade and die

And the countless years are rolled.

But I turn the light canoe,

And, darting across the night,

Am glad of the paddles' noise

And the camp-fire's honest light.

EDWARD KEARSLEY.

* * * * *

MILL'S ESSAYS ON RELIGION.

An interest attaches to Mr. Mill's posthumous _Essays on Religion_

which is quite independent of their intrinsic value or importance. The

position of their author at the head of an active school of thinkers

gives them to a certain extent a representative character, while, in

connection with the curious account of his mental training presented

in his autobiography, they merit perhaps still closer attention as a

subject of psychological study. It is not, however, in this latter

light that we can undertake to examine them here. Our object is merely

to point out some of the fallacies and contradictions which might

escape the notice of a cursory reader, and which show with how

uncertain a step a philosopher who piqued himself on the clearness and

severity of his logic moves on ground where a stronger light than that

of reason was needed to irradiate his path.

The first essay is devoted to an examination of the ways of Nature as

unmodified by the voluntary agency of man. These the author finds

worthy of all abhorrence; and Nature in its purely physical aspect he

considers to be full of blemishes, which are patent to the eye of

modern science, and which "all but monkish quietists think it a

religious duty to amend." A competent master-workman with good

materials would not have turned out a world so "bunglingly" made, with

great patches of poisonous morass and arid desert unfit for human

habitation, with coal and other requisites for man's comfort stored

away out of sight, with the rivers all unbridged, and mountains and

other impediments thrown in the way of free locomotion. So far, then,

from its being man's duty to imitate Nature, as some have thought it

was, it is incumbent upon him to oppose her with all his powers,

because of her gross injustice in the realm of morals, and to remedy

her physical defects as far as lies in his power. On this view of

Nature our fathers were wiser in their generation than we when they

trimmed their trees into grotesque shapes and laid out their

landscapes in geometric lines; when in medicine they substituted the

lancet and unlimited mercury for the _vis medicatrix naturae_; when in

philosophy they dictated to Nature from their internal consciousness,

before Bacon introduced the heresy of induction; when in politics they

had a profound faith in statutes and none at all in statistics; when

in education they conscientiously rammed down the ologies at the point

of the ferule, in blissful ignorance of psychology. If Mr. Mill finds

it necessary to rail at Nature because she did not put coal on the top

of the ground and build bridges and dig wells for man's convenience,

why not call her a jade at once because she does not grow ready-made

clothing of the latest mode in sizes to suit, because the trees do not

bear hot rolls and coffee, and because Mr. Mill's philosophy is not an

intuition of the mind? He is less restrained in speaking of the moral

enormities of Nature. Altogether the most striking passage in the

book is his indictment of the Author of Nature, which is truly Satanic

in its audacity and hardly to be paralleled in literature for its

impiety; for it is impious even from Mr. Mill's standpoint, since he

admits that the weight of evidence tends to prove that Nature's Author

is both wise and good. We transcribe only some of his expressions:

"Nearly all things which men are hanged or imprisoned for doing to one

another are Nature's _every-day performances_;" she "has a hundred

hideous deaths" reserved for her victims, "such as the ingenious

cruelty of a Nabis or a Domitian never surpassed," which "she uses

with _the most supercilious disregard both of mercy and justice_;"

"she inflicts torture in _apparent wantonness_;" "everything which

_the worst men_ commit against life and property is perpetrated on a

larger scale by natural agents;" "Nature has noyades more fatal than

those of Carrier: her plague and cholera far surpass the poison-cups

of the Borgias." Such are a few of the impassioned and presumptuous

expressions which Mr. Mill allows himself to use in speaking of the

great mystery of human suffering, which others touch with reverence,

and do not dare to reprobate, since they cannot understand. His words

are as false as they are bold. Fierce and terrible as Nature is in

some of her aspects, it is not true that her _prevailing_ attitude is,

as here indicated, one of bitter hostility to the race she nourishes

on her bosom. If she were the monster here described, mankind would

long ago have perished under her persistent cruelties, and Mr. Mill's

profane cry would never have gone up to Heaven. Men will always regard

the world subjectively, and adjudge it happy or the reverse according

to their temperament or passing humor; but, if it be conceded--as it

is by Mr. Mill through his whole argument--that man is a moral

creature, with a true power of self-determination within certain

limits, and with sufficient intelligence to discern the laws of

Nature, and that therefore all the pain that man brings upon himself

by voluntary violation of discovered law is to be deducted from the

sum-total of human suffering to arrive at the amount that is

attributable to Nature, most men, if they are honest, will on

reflection admit that Nature brings to the great body of the human

family immeasurably more comfort, if not pleasure, than she does pain.

Take the senses, which are the sources of physical pleasure. How

seldom, comparatively, the eye is pained, while it rests with habitual

gratification upon the sky and landscape, and on the human form divine

when unmarred by vice! How rarely the taste is offended or the

appetite starved, while every meal, be it ever so simple, yields

enjoyment to the palate! The ear is regaled with the perpetual music

of wind and ocean and feathered minstrelsy, of childhood's voice and

the sweet converse of friends. So, too, Nature is a great laboratory

of delicate odors: the salt breath of the sea is like wine to the

sense; the summer air is freighted with delights, and every tree and

flower exhales fragrance: only where danger lurks does Nature assault

the nostrils with kindly warning. If it be objected that vast numbers

of the race live in cities where every sense is continually offended,

it is to be remembered that "man made the town," and is to be held

responsible for the unhappiness there resulting from his violations of

natural law. But even in cities Nature is more kind to man than he is

to himself, and dulls his faculties against the deformities and

discords of his own creating. From the sense of feeling it is probable

we receive more pain than pleasure, but by no means so much more as to

overbalance the great preponderance of delights coming through the

other avenues: a great part of such pain is cautionary, and much can

be avoided by voluntary action; and the stimulus thus given by the

wise severity of Nature begets that activity of the moral life from

which results the highest form of happiness. When we attempt to

estimate our mental and moral sufferings, it is impossible even to

approximate the proportion of them that are due to our voluntary

infringement of law; but, adding together all that spring from natural

sources and all that men bring upon themselves, the suffering is

still outweighed by the pleasure among the great mass of men.

But, however unfavorable a view we take of the condition of humanity,

it is gross exaggeration to say, "_There is no evidence whatever_ in

Nature for Divine justice, whatever standard of justice our ethical

opinions may lead us to recognize: ... there is _no shadow of justice_

in the general arrangements of Nature." Though many of Nature's

dealings with man appear to be unjust, by far the larger proportion of

them are graduated according to what seems, even to us, a standard of

strict equity. As Matthew Arnold puts it, there is a power in Nature

"which makes for righteousness." And every generation verifies the

words of the Preacher: "The righteous shall be recompensed _in the

earth_--much more the wicked and the sinner;" "as righteousness

_tendeth to life_, so he that pursueth evil _pursueth it to his own

death_." It was the reverent saying of that noblest of pagans, Marcus

Aurelius, that "if a man should have a feeling and a deeper insight

with respect to the things which are produced in the universe, there

is hardly anything that comes in the course of Nature which will not

seem to him to be in a manner disposed _so as to give pleasure_." When

that "deeper insight" comes, and the eyes of man's spiritual

understanding are opened, all appearance of injustice in Nature will

probably vanish.

If men were indeed as wretched as Mr. Mill describes them to be, and

had no fear of judgment and immortality--which Mr. Mill informs us are

probably but figments of the brain--why should they continue to endure

"the calamity of so long life"?

'Twere best at once to sink to peace,

Like birds the charming serpent draws--

To drop head-foremost in the jaws

Of vacant darkness, and to cease.

So men would begin to reason if this dark gospel of despair were ever

to gain currency; but, fortunately, it is only the morbid dream of a

closet philosopher, who fancied the world was upside down because he

could not unriddle it with his logical Rule of Three.

This representation of Nature is not only at variance with facts, but

inconsistent with Mr. Mill's own conclusions, as he reasons from

natural phenomena that the Creator is both wise and beneficent, but

that He is in some way hindered from fully accomplishing His kind

purposes. But if "_there is no evidence whatever for Divine justice_,

and _no shadow of justice_ in the general arrangements of Nature," the

reasonable inference is that its author is a being of infinite

malignity who is in some mysterious manner, for the present, prevented

from wreaking the full measure of his wrath upon mankind. From this

horrible thought Mr. Mill recoils, and, giving logic to the winds, he

trusts that

God is love indeed,

And love Creation's final law,

Though Nature, red in tooth and claw

With ravin, shrieks against his creed.

In the second essay Mr. Mill undertakes to prove the uselessness and

harmfulness of supernatural religion both to society and individuals,

and the sufficiency of human authority, of education and public

opinion to accomplish all the beneficial results usually accredited to

faith in a Divine Being. "Religion," he says, "by its intrinsic force,

... without the sanction superadded by public opinion, ... has never,

save in exceptional characters or in peculiar moods of mind, exercised

a very potent influence after the time had gone by in which Divine

agency was supposed habitually to employ temporal rewards and

punishments." Whatever application this statement may have to other

religions claiming a divine origin, it is entirely false of

Christianity. In its origin, _it_ certainly held out no temporal

bribes of any character. Its Founder expressly said to His disciples,

"In this world ye shall have tribulation." "Behold," He says, "I send

you forth as sheep in the midst of wolves"; "ye shall be hated of all

men for My sake"; "if any man will come after Me, let him deny

himself, and take up his cross and follow Me." His own life was one of

unparalleled contumely, and He told them they must not expect to fare

better than their Master. Nor did they. The majority of the apostles

met cruel deaths after lives of suffering. Paul, describing his

experience, speaks of his beatings and his perils among his countrymen

and the heathen, of his hunger and thirst and his cold and nakedness.

And his was only an extreme example of the common lot of the early

generations of Christians. Yet in the face of the hostility of the

whole Roman and Jewish world, manifested in the most cruel

persecutions, Christianity rapidly grew, gaining its most signal

triumphs, laying hold of the consciences and transforming the lives of

men. It was only when it came under the patronage of the civil

government, and the public opinion of the world was thrown in its

favor, and its peculiar doctrines became diluted with worldly policy,

that it began to lose its reforming influence--a fact which Mr. Mill

himself alludes to in his essay _On Liberty_. This experience has been

frequently repeated since the days of Constantine; so that history

fairly proves that Christianity does its peculiar work more

effectually _when it is dissociated from all human sanctions_, and

left to act solely by its intrinsic force. This is true not only of

the Church at large, but of individuals. Paul, Luther, à Kempis drew

their inspiration from the simple words of Christ, and owed next to

nothing to the opinions of the world about them. It has always been

direct contact with the life and precepts of the Founder of

Christianity that has fired the hearts and braced the spiritual

energies of the noblest Christians, who have been the reformers of

their times, braving the enmity of the world to instill a purer and a

loftier morality.

The illustrations, suggested first by Bentham, which Mr. Mill cites to

prove the worthlessness of the religious sanction--viz., the almost

universal breach of oaths where not enforced by law, and the

prevalence of male unchastity and the practice of dueling among

Christian communities--have no pertinency whatever to his argument,

since they only prove the predominance of religious infidelity and

indifference in countries nominally Christian, which no one denies;

while the exceptions to this rule, which occur almost wholly among

Christians, prove the very view he controverts. It is Christian

opinion making itself felt through legislation that is gradually

circumscribing the area of these vices.

Again, says Mr. Mill. "Because when men were still savage they would

not have received either moral or scientific truths unless they had

supposed them supernaturally imparted, does it follow they would now

give up moral truths any more than scientific because they believed

them to have no other origin than wise and noble human hearts?"

Overlooking the adroit introduction here of scientific truths as

having originally been on the same footing with moral truths--for

which we do not think there is any sufficient historic evidence--it is

competent to reply that the great mass of mankind are still in the

earlier stages of intellectual and moral development, even in the most

advanced countries; so that on grounds of utility it is important to

prolong, if possible, the supernatural sanctions of religion.

Although, as Mr. Mill believes, a moral truth once in the possession

of humanity may never be lost, it may yet have its influence suspended

through many generations, as in the Dark Ages, and thus the advance of

civilization be indefinitely retarded; and therefore the office of

religion in keeping morality operative among men is not to be

discarded. It is doubtless impossible to estimate with entire

correctness the relative value of the different forces that advance or

retard civilization, but we believe the weight of historic evidence

goes to prove that religious skepticism was the actual cause, as it

has always been the inevitable precursor, of national decay. Coleridge

in _The Friend_ quotes the historian Polybius as attributing the

strength of the Roman republic to the general reverence of the

invisible powers, _and the consequent horror in which the breaking of

an oath was held._ This he thought the _causa causarum_ of Roman

grandeur; and he attributed the ruin of the Greek states to the

frequency of perjury resulting from the atheism taught by the

Sophists. Goethe says somewhere that "all epochs in which faith has

prevailed have been the most heart-stirring and fruitful both as

regard contemporaries and posterity; whereas all epochs in which

unbelief obtains its miserable triumphs, even when they boast of some

apparent brilliancy, are not less surely doomed to speedy oblivion."

This assertion is notably true of the histories of Judea, Greece,

Rome, and Spain. And, _a priori_, it might be argued that the only

possible ground for that cordial unanimity of society upon fundamental

questions which is essential to a stable and highly developed

civilization is a common faith in some central rightful authority

competent to demand and enforce equal obedience from all classes; in

other words, faith in God. A band of savages might be held in a lax

social union by the common fear of some brawny chief, but in civilized

communities it is the real _divinity_ that doth hedge about the king

or other civil head that gives cohesion to the social mass. As a

political force, therefore, religion cannot be dispensed with.

Religion is not only useless, Mr. Mill proceeds, but "there is a very

real evil consequent on ascribing a supernatural origin to the

received maxims of morality. That origin consecrates the whole of

them, and protects them from being discussed and criticised." Such an

objection hardly comes with good grace from Mr. Mill, who spends his

strength to prove that a divine sanction has no efficacy when not

backed by human authority. Nor has such an objection, if it were true,

any application to the case till it is absolutely proved that _all_

religions are of human origin, or else that more harm results from

believing human systems divine than from believing one divine system

to be of human growth. Neither of these alternatives does he attempt

to establish, and he explicitly admits it is impossible to prove the

former. But the objection is not true. Human criticism has never been

backward to attack all systems of morality, despite the popular faith

in their divine origin. Christianity especially has had its historic

and intellectual and moral foundations attacked by able critics in

every century since its introduction on earth. But in the face of

every form of opposition it has made a steady progress, and

strengthened its hold upon the human heart and conscience as the world

has advanced in culture. It is to-day professed by a larger number of

disciples and with a more intelligent faith than at any other period

of its history. It is the dominant religion in those countries which

are in the van of human progress, whose political institutions are the

freest in the world, and whose inhabitants are the happiest and most

virtuous. And despite its insoluble mysteries it has always received

the assent of the highest intelligence to its divine origin. "My

faith," said De Quincey, "is that though a great man may, by a rare

possibility, be an infidel, an intellect of the highest order must

build on Christianity." And Bacon's testimony is to the same effect.

"It is only," he says, "when superficially tested that philosophy

leads away from God: deeper draughts of a thorough and real philosophy

bring us back to Him." And poor Tyndall, standing afar off in the

outer regions of pure intellect, hard by the

ever-breaking shore

That tumbles in the godless deep,

has recently been heard to murmur that in his loftiest moments the

promise and potency of matter give no response to the deepest cry of

the soul. And along the centuries stand the princes of thought, Paul,

Augustine, Bacon, Luther, Milton, Pascal, Kepler, Newton, Coleridge,

Faraday, Herschel, testifying to the impregnability of the

intellectual foundation of the Christian faith.

If Mr. Mill's arguments to prove the worthlessness of Christianity are

open to many objections, the reasons he offers for accepting his

substitute, the Religion of Humanity, are utterly baseless and

delusive. For faith in God he would have us adopt an ideal conception

of what human life can be made in the future, and sacrifice all our

present enjoyment to secure a realization of that conception ages

hence. This, says he, is a better religion than any belief respecting

the unseen powers. "If individual life is short, the life of the human

species is not." How does he know this? The dark demon of Nature he

has so vividly described may sweep away the puny race to-morrow by

some fell cataclysm; and it would be a blessing if she did in his

view. "If such an object," he continues, "appears small to a mind

accustomed to dream of infinite and eternal beatitudes, it will expand

into far other dimensions when these _baseless fancies_ shall have

receded into the past." But if we must feed our moral natures on

"baseless fancies," most men will prefer the Christian dogmas of

immortality, the infinite capacity of development of the human soul,

the brotherhood of the race and its vital union with its Creator, and

its perfectibility of human institutions and social conditions in this

life under the leavening influence of Christian principle, although

Mr. Mill may stigmatize them as grandiose and enervating dreams, to

his beggarly improved substitute, which appeals neither to our common

sense nor to our moral intuitions. Taking his own criterion, utility,

as the test of truth, his religion of humanity fails to establish

itself, for it postpones the happiness of each existing generation to

the fancied good of future generations which may never be born, and

this _ad infinitum_. On this part of his subject Mr. Mill is simply

fatuous, as when he speaks of our being sustained in this faith by the

approbation of the dead whom we venerate. But if Socrates and Howard

and Washington and Christ and Antoninus and Mrs. Mill are turned to

clay, as he says they probably are, it is nonsense to assert that he

is strengthened in the path of duty by a feeling that they would

sympathize with him if alive. It is the unconfessed hope of their

immortality that quickens him, if he is affected at all. Mr. Mill's

idolatry of his wife, like Buckle's love for his mother, was an

argument for the immortality of the soul which he does not seem to

have been able entirely to reject.

Mr. Mill never tires of calling Christianity a selfish religion, and

glorifies his substitute as free from this defect. But Mr. Fitzjames

Stephen, in his work entitled _Liberty, Equality, Fraternity_, has

clearly pointed out that Mr. Mill has only succeeded in duping himself

on this point. A man _cannot_ free himself from self-consideration.

Christianity indeed appeals to the innate desire of happiness, but

condemns the overweening and blind self-regard which cannot see that

the highest happiness of self flows from a just respect to the

selfhood of others and from the cultivation of the spiritual nature.

Love your neighbor _as_ yourself is the Christian precept; and it has

the advantage of being practicable, which Mr. Mill's has not.

Mr. Mill considerately says he will forbear to urge the moral

difficulties and perversions of the Christian revelation, "the

recognition, for example, of the object of highest worship in a being

who could make a hell." "Is it possible," he asks, "to adore such a

one without a frightful distortion of the standard of right and

wrong?" "Any other of the outrages to the most ordinary justice and

humanity involved in the common Christian conception of the moral

character of God sinks into insignificance beside this dreadful

idealization of wickedness. Most of them, too, are happily not so

unequivocally deducible from the very words of Christ." Yet this very

Personage, who, Mr. Mill says, implicitly believed and taught this

awful doctrine, presents, he confesses, the highest type of pure

morality the world has ever seen. Arguing from this phenomenon, the

more hideous the creed and the more torpid or sophisticated the

intellect, the higher the morality is likely to be.

In the last essay, _On Theism_, Mr. Mill examines the evidences in

Nature for the existence of God and for the immortality of the soul.

The argument from design he thinks establishes the probability of the

existence of an intelligent Creator of _limited power_; for "who," he

asks, "would have recourse to means if to attain his end his mere word

were sufficient?" It may be replied to this that it is as open to an

omnipotent being to accomplish his will through a long chain of

causes as by a fiat acting immediately. The recourse to intermediate

means does not of necessity prove a limitation of power. If the means

actually chosen are defective or bad, it may imply limitation of

wisdom or moral obliquity just as much as defect of power, and any

choice between these alternatives is entirely arbitrary from a logical

standpoint.

Monotheism, Mr. Mill asserts, is a natural product, requiring a

considerable amount of intellectual culture, but always appearing at a

certain stage of natural development. How, then, did it originate

among the Hebrews before they had emerged from barbarism, and fail to

appear among their highly civilized contemporaries, the Egyptians and

Assyrians? Christlieb is more correct than Mr. Mill, we think, when he

says that neither in ancient nor in modern times has it been possible

to find a nation which by its own unaided powers of thought has

arrived at a definite belief in one personal living God. And the

latest researches of ethnologists, as they may be found admirably

compiled by Mr. Tyler (himself an advocate of the development

hypothesis) in his _Primitive Culture_, substantiate this assertion.

Mr. Mill, in dealing with Kant's dictum, that the intuition of duty

implies a God of necessity, is foolish enough to say "that this

feeling of obligation rather _excludes_ than compels the belief in a

divine legislator;" which is a very discreditable piece of sophistry.

In closing this short review of these interesting essays we may be

permitted to quote a few of Mr. Mill's admissions, which, taken

together, almost amount to a confession of faith in the Christian

system, and which leave upon the mind the impression that this painful

groping of an earnest inquirer after the truth, and the closer

approximation he continually made to Christian dogma, would have

resulted, had he lived longer, in his adoption of that faith as

offering the hypothesis that best explains the perplexing phenomena of

the moral world.

"Experience," he says, "has abated the ardent hopes once entertained

of the regeneration of the human race by merely negative doctrine, by

the destruction of superstition." Here is a declaration of the need of

a system of positive truth.

Again, of the Christian revelation he says: "The sender of the alleged

message is not a sheer invention: there are grounds independent of the

message itself for belief in His reality.... It is moreover much to

the purpose to take notice that the very imperfection of the evidences

which natural theology can produce of the divine attributes removes

some of the chief stumbling-blocks to the belief of revelation." Here

is the _raison d'être_ of revelation.

This revelation, it should be borne in mind, in its method and

character bears a striking similarity to the natural world, from whose

Author it professes to come, as was long ago pointed out by Bishop

Butler, and recently with great cogency by Mr. Henry Rogers in his

most forcible work on the _Superhuman Origin of the Bible_.

Again: "A revelation cannot be proved unless by external

evidence--that is, by the evidence of supernatural facts." Here is an

assertion of the necessity of miracles.

Again: "Science contains nothing repugnant to the supposition that

every event which takes place results from a specific volition of the

presiding Power, provided this Power adheres in its particular

volitions to general laws laid down by itself;" which is the biblical

representation of the divine mode of action.

Again: "All the probabilities in case of a future life are that such

as we have been made, or have made ourselves before the change, such

we shall enter into the life hereafter;" which is the exact

declaration of Scripture.

Mr. Mill further helps the Christian cause by pointing out two flaws

in Hume's argument against miracles--viz., that the evidence of

experience to which its appeal is made is only negative evidence;

which is not conclusive, since facts of which there had been no

previous experience are often discovered and proved by positive

experience to be true; and secondly, the argument assumes that the

testimony of experience against miracles is undeviating and

indubitable, whereas the very thing asserted on the other side is that

there have been miracles, and that the testimony is not wholly on the

negative side.

No Christian can read the following tribute to the character of Christ

without sadness that the joy of a larger faith was rejected by its

author: "Whatever else may be taken away from us by rational

criticism, Christ is still left--a unique figure, not more unlike all

his precursors than all his followers, even those who had the direct

benefit of his teaching. About the life and sayings of Jesus there is

a stamp of personal originality, combined with profundity of insight,

... which must place the Prophet of Nazareth, even in the estimation

of those who have no belief in his inspiration, in the very first rank

of the men of sublime genius of whom our species can boast. When this

pre-eminent genius is combined with the qualities of probably the

greatest moral reformer and martyr to that mission who ever existed

upon earth, religion cannot be said to have made a bad choice in

pitching upon this man as the ideal representative and guide of

humanity; nor even now would it be easy even for an unbeliever to find

a better translation of the rule of virtue from the abstract into the

concrete than to endeavor so to live that Christ would approve our

life.... When to this we add that to the conception of the rational

critic it remains a possibility that Christ actually was what he

supposed himself to be, ... we may well conclude that the influences

of religion on the character which will remain after rational

criticism has done its utmost against the evidences of religion are

well worth preserving, and what they lack in direct strength as

compared with those of a firmer belief is more than compensated by the

greater truth and rectitude of the morality they sanction." The

confession of these last few lines refutes the whole of Mr. Mill's

elaborate argument on the worthlessness and immorality of that

religion which from his grave he lifts his sad and hollow voice to

overthrow.

LAWRENCE TURNBULL.

OUR MONTHLY GOSSIP.

WOMAN'S RIGHTS IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY.

Not only we, the latest seed of Time--

... not only we that prate

Of rights and wrongs, have loved the _women_ well.

Nearly a century and a half ago an English lady, out of patience with

the intolerable assumptions of the other sex, raised her voice in

behalf of her own. In 1793 there was published in London a pamphlet

entitled "_Woman not Inferior to Man, or a Short and Modest

Vindication of the Natural Right of the Fair Sex to a Perfect Equality

of Power, Dignity and Esteem with the Men_. By Sophia, a Person of

Quality." The title-page has a quotation from Rowe's _Fair Penitent_:

How hard is the condition of our sex!

--Through every state of life the slave of man!

* * * * *

Wherefore are we

Born with souls, but to assert ourselves,

Shake off this wild obedience they exact,

And claim an equal empire o'er the world?

From such a title and such an epigraph one might expect the most

incendiary sentiments in the pages which follow, and that Sophia had

nothing less in view than to overthrow the usurper; but this she

disclaims: she has no intention, she avers, "to stir up any of my own

sex to revolt against the _men_, or to invert the present order of

things with regard to _government_ and _authority_" Her sole object

appears to be to bring men to a proper sense of their deficiencies and

the emptiness of their pretensions. But she is a person of admirable

dignity and discretion: it is not until the conclusion, when she has

not left them a leg to stand upon, that she magnanimously waives all

the advantages to accrue from their humiliation, and merely bids them

in future to know their true place. The composition is in every way

worthy of these elevated sentiments. Sophia need not have announced

herself a person of quality: there is evidence of it on every leaf of

her book. One recognizes the accomplished gentlewoman of a hundred

years ago, with her solid reading, her strong common sense, her sober

religious convictions, her household science. No doubt she loved fine

lace and old china; there are recondite internal proofs that she was

pretty; and on closing the book a far-off rustle of her brocade

reaches us as she makes her spreading curtsey. But we will let her

speak for herself a little. Her first position is certainly a strong

one: "If this haughty sex would have us believe they have a natural

right of superiority over us, why don't they prove their charter from

Nature by making use of reason to subdue themselves?... Were we to see

_men_ everywhere and at all times masters of themselves, and their

animal appetites in perfect subordination to their rational faculties,

we should have some color to think that Nature designed them as

masters to us." The doctrine of female inferiority she considers "a

vulgar though ancient error," observing that until very recent ages

the sun was believed to revolve round the earth, and the notion of the

antipodes was "a heresy in philosophy"--that to assert the equality of

the sexes now was no greater paradox than to advocate either of those

theories but a short time ago. "But," she continues, "who shall the

matter be tried by?" and here we suspect she has reached the root of

the difficulty. Both men and women, she admits, are too much

interested to be impartial judges; therefore she appeals to "rectified

reason" as umpire. She considers in order the various claims to

predominance which men have put forward, and confutes them one by one.

"Man concludes that all other creatures were made for him because he

was not created until all were in readiness for him:" even granting

that to be unanswerable, she says it only proves that men were made

for women, and not _vice versâ_: "they are our natural drudges.... Men

are magnified because they succeed in taming a tiger, an elephant or

such like animals;" therefore what rank must belong to woman, "who

spends years in training that _fiercer animal_, MAN?" She instances a

journeyman tailor she once saw belabor his wife with a neck of mutton,

"to make her know, as he said, her _sovereign lord and master_. And

this is perhaps as strong an argument as their sex is able to produce,

though conveyed, in a greasy light.... To stoop to regard for the

strutting things is not enough; to humor them more than we could

children with any tolerable decency is too little; they must be

served, forsooth!" It is grievous injustice to Sophia, but one almost

fancies one hears Madame George Sand. She allows that to please man

ought to be part of the sex's business if it were likely to succeed;

"but such is the fanatical composition of their natures that the more

pains is taken in endeavoring to please them, the less generally is

the labor successful; ... and surely _women_ were created by Heaven

for some better end than to labor in vain their whole life long." The

supercilious commendations of men are gall and wormwood to her: "Some,

more condescending, are gracious enough to confess that many _women_

have wit and conduct; but yet they are of opinion that even such of us

as are the most remarkable for either or both still betray something

which speaks the imbecility of our sex." She makes an excellent plea

forgiving women a thorough education, complaining that it is denied

them, and then they are charged with being superficial: "True

knowledge and solid learning cannot but make woman as well as man more

humble; ... and it must be owned that if a little superficial

knowledge has rendered some of our sex vain, it equally renders some

of theirs insupportable." With all the sex's frivolity, she adds,

women have not been found to spend their lives on mere _entia

rationis_ splitting hairs and weighing motes like the Schoolmen. She

concludes that men deprive women of education lest they should oust

them "from those public offices which they fill so miserably." She

handles her logic admirably, and exposes her adversaries for begging

the question and reasoning in a circle. Of course she enforces her

assertions by citing the women who have distinguished themselves in

every position of responsibility, military, political and

intellectual, and only refrains from multiplying instances because of

their number. Not to quote those alone who have filled chairs of

medicine with honor, she ingeniously remarks that the remedies classed

as "an old woman's recipe" are those oftenest prescribed, to the glory

of her sex, who by patience, humanity and observation have invented

without the help of Galen and Hippocrates an infinity of reliefs for

the sick which their adherents can neither improve nor disapprove. She

makes her final point on the question of moral superiority. It is

sometimes stated "that some _women_ have been more flagitious than any

_men_, but that in nowise redounds to the dishonor of our sex in

general. _The corruption of the best is ever the worst_: should we

grant this, ... it must be owned their number would at least balance

the account. I believe no one will deny but that at least upon the

most moderate computation there are a thousand _bad men_ to one _bad

woman_." She winds up by an appeal to her own sex in the very spirit

of Miss F.P. Cobbe, the sum of which is to adjure women, for their own

sakes, not to be silly.

How many contemporaries of George Selwyn had their eyes opened by this

clear statement of their demerits there are no means of ascertaining.

But Sophia raised up at least one furious antagonist, who replied by a

pamphlet called "MAN _Superior to_ WOMAN, _or a Vindication of Man's

Natural Right of Sovereign Authority over the Woman, containing a

Plain Confutation of the Fallacious Arguments of_ SOPHIA. By a

GENTLEMAN." The first thing to be noted is, that whereas Sophia said

her say in about fifty pages, the masculine reply covers seventy-eight

in smaller print. He opens by a "Dedication to the Ladies," beginning,

"Lovely creatures"--an exordium which any woman of spirit would

resent, the perfidy and disrepect of his intentions being obvious in

those words alone; and he continues in the tone of flippancy which was

to be expected. His arguments are weak in the extreme, and his satire

is pointless. The only hit is his scheme for a female university, with

Mrs. Manly and Mrs. Afra Behn in the chair of literature. His summary

of woman's character and occupations was given earlier, with more

brevity and wit, and no less truth, by Pope. To Sophia's historical

illustrations he opposes female types named Tremula, Bellnina,

Novilia, etc. But in truth the production is so excessively scurrilous

that one needs to remember that those were the times of Congreve and

Fielding to believe that the author could have the right to style

himself "A GENTLEMAN." We shudder with pity for poor Sophia, who had

such a mass of filth flung at her. But that decorous personage is not

disconcerted: she does not lose her head or her temper, but opens her

mouth with a freedom of speech which was the prerogative of an honest

woman in those days, and rejoins with a second pamphlet: "_Woman's

Superior Excellence over Man_" Her first thrust is to regret, in

behalf of the other sex, that neither Achilles nor Hector appears as

their champion, but Thersites. Either her adversary was silenced, or

the publishers considered that what he said was not worthy of

preservation, for no further words of his appear, so that in any case

she had the best of it. Her first pamphlet had a second edition in the

following year. Its memory was still alive in this century, for it was

quoted with respect by the _Retrospective Review_ for 1824 in a

learned article on the "Privileges of Woman," which deserves the

attention of those interested in the subject.

S.B.W.

THE TOMB OF LORENZO DE' MEDICI.

I wish to chronicle in the pages of _Lippincott's Magazine_ the record

of a scene that took place this spring in the Medicean chapel attached

to the church of San Lorenzo in Florence. It was in itself a

remarkable and memorable scene enough, but it was yet more important

as regards certain interesting points of history on which it throws a

very curious light, if it does not, as many persons will be inclined

to think, settle them definitively.

The little square marble chapel itself, which no visitor to Florence

will have forgotten, is admired as an architectural gem of Michael

Angelo, and is yet more celebrated as the shrine of some of his finest

works, especially the sitting statue of Lorenzo and the recumbent

statues of _Twilight_ and _Dawn_ on the tomb of Lorenzo. These two

grand figures, it will be remembered, repose on the arched canopy over

the tomb in such a position that, if not retained in their places by

some means adapted for that purpose, they would slide off the rounded

arch by their own weight. Now, it had been lately observed that the

statue of _Twilight_ was moving, and it was very reasonably judged to

be necessary that this should be looked to. The statue was therefore

carefully raised, and it was discovered that when the tomb of Lorenzo

had been opened to place in it the body of the murdered Alexander, his

(putative) son, the metal stanchion or peg by means of which Michael

Angelo had secured his statue in its place had been replaced by a

wooden one. This, in the course of the centuries which have since

elapsed had become decayed, and the statue might have fallen any day.

This being the case, it was thought well to raise the other statue,

that of the _Dawn_ also. But that was found to be as secure in its

place as the great artist had left it. But these superincumbent

statues having been thus lifted from off the sepulchre, it was

suggested that the opportunity should be taken to examine the contents

of the tomb.

There were several reasons which rendered such an examination

historically interesting and curious. A certain degree of doubt has

been cast--mainly by Grimm--on the question whether the tomb be in

fact that of Lorenzo, the father of Catherine de' Medici, the

celebrated queen of France--whether it be not rather that of Giuliano,

his uncle. For my part, I had always thought that there was little or

no foundation for the doubt. The main features of the story of

Alexander will probably be in the memory of the reader. The Florentine

republic and liberty were destroyed in 1527 by the united forces of

the traitor pope, the Medicean Clement VII., and Charles V., with the

understanding that this Alexander should marry Margaret, the emperor's

illegitimate daughter, and that Florence should become a dukedom to

dower the young couple withal. Who and what this Alexander was has

always been one of the puzzles of history. He was, tradition says,

very swarthy, and was generally believed to be the son of a Moorish

slave-mother. He was certainly illegitimate; and the question, Who was

his father? was always a doubtful one, though he has generally been

called the son of Lorenzo. I have elsewhere given at length reasons

for believing rather that whispered bit of scandal of the time which

declared the pope, Clement VII., to be his father. When Florence fell

he became duke, and reigned over the unhappy city for seven years, in

such sort that the murder of him in 1537 by his kinsman Lorenzino,

traitorously and cowardly done as the deed was, was deemed the act of

a patriot. The story of such a deed, done at midnight in a private

chamber, and never made the subject of legal investigation, of course

reaches subsequent generations enveloped in more or less of

uncertainty. Now, it was likely enough that the careful examination of

the remains in the tomb in question might throw light on sundry points

of Alexander's story.

In the first place, the identity of the tomb is now fixed beyond the

possibility of a doubt. It was known that the body of the murdered

Alexander was placed in the tomb of his putative father, Lorenzo. If,

therefore, the body of Alexander should be found in this sepulchre,

the tomb is proved to have been that of Lorenzo. When the lid of the

sarcophagus was raised, there accordingly were the two bodies

visible--one dressed in white, the other in black. It has been

assumed--and I think the assumption is abundantly justified, as will

presently be seen--that the skeleton in black is that of Lorenzo, and

the skeleton in white that of Alexander. The relative position of the

bodies was very singular. The heads were at opposite ends of the

sarcophagus, and the bodies were placed, not side by side, but each

between the legs of the other. One of the bodies, that of Lorenzo,

seemed when the lid of the sarcophagus was raised to be headless, but

on examination the skull was found under the breast of the black tunic

that covered the body. There can be little doubt that it became

detached when the body was moved for the purpose of placing that of

Alexander in the tomb. The white garment that clad the skeleton of

Alexander was an embroidered shirt ornamented with lace: the legs were

covered with white leggings. The skull of this skeleton had all the

teeth perfect when the sarcophagus was opened; but should the

curiosity of any future generation tempt the men of that day to peer

into this receptacle of the dust of tyrants, the skull of the murdered

Alexander will be found to be toothless. And all sorts of suppositions

and theories may be based on this singular fact, and credited, until

some antiquary of the period discovers in an ancient magazine

published at the period of a former examination of the sepulchre this

record, in which I am obliged to declare--with a blush for the decency

of the Florentines--that the teeth were all stolen by persons who were

permitted to be present at the opening of the tomb. A certain special

historical interest is attached to those teeth of the murdered man.

The story goes that when Lorenzino stabbed him as he slept on a bed in

Lorenzino's own house, to which he had been inveigled in the hope of

meeting there a certain lady, the wife of a Ginori of the time,

Alexander started up, and, seizing the thumb of the murderer between

his teeth, held him so firmly that he could not have escaped had not a

bravo whom he had hired to aid him come to his assistance. These,

then, were the teeth that held so well in the death-grip of their

owner! Some Florentine historically-minded virtuoso (!) appreciated

the significance of the fact, and stole them from the head some three

centuries and a half after that last bite of theirs. There were

several gaps in the range of teeth still remaining in the skull of

Alexander, which has appeared strange to some who remember that he

was only twenty-seven when he died. But I think that any medical man,

taking into consideration; the manner of his death, would find nothing

strange in the circumstance, but on the contrary a confirmation of the

truth of the facts which the chroniclers of the time have preserved

for us.

Perhaps, however, the most curious and interesting fact which the

opening of this tomb has ascertained is that testified to by the hair

still remaining on the skull which was that of Alexander. It is a

black curly hair of a coarse quality, such as a man of mixed black

blood may be supposed to have had. It is recorded that one of the

wounds given by the bravo Scoronconcolo, whom Lorenzino had hired to

assist him in the murder, and who ran up to complete the job when his

master was disabled by being fast held by the teeth of Alexander, was

a stab in the face. And of the truth of this tradition also the skull

of the murdered man still affords evidence; for on the left-hand side

of the face, a little below the socket of the eye, there is a mark in

the bone beneath the cheek which must have been made by the point of

the sword or dagger that inflicted the wound, and which shows that the

bravo Scoronconcolo's thrust must have been a shrewd one.

It will readily be supposed that the scene at the opening of the

sepulchre must have been a very impressive one. There, in that solemn

chapel of white and black marble which the genius of Michael Angelo

prepared for the repose of his sovereigns and patrons, with his

lifelike and immortal presentations of the forms of the dead who have

filled all story with their names, looking down on the deed with sad

and solemn faces, who would not, while thus forcing the prison-house

of the tomb to render up its terrible and long-concealed secrets, have

been deeply sensible of a feeling of awe and reverence? Even putting

aside all such sentiments as the contemplation of such a _memento

mori_ is usually found to inspire in most men, the purely scientific

historical inquirer must have felt the importance of the occasion, and

the great desirability of making the most in an historical point of

view of so rare an opportunity. I am sorry to be obliged to record

that the Florentines, so far as could be judged from their conduct and

bearing, felt nothing of all this. No one who knows them as well as I

do would have expected reverence from them under any possible or

imaginable circumstances; but one might have expected such due care

and decency of proceeding as would have sufficed to render the

examination of the remains as historically instructive as possible,

and to preserve the record for a future generation. But this was very

far from being the case. A learned professor of anatomy indeed

attended at the opening of the tomb, but instead of touching the

remains himself, or utilizing his science by handling them as they

ought to have been handled, he called a workman, and by him the bodies

were torn out from their resting-place in fragments. The clothes were

of course torn to pieces in the operation; the lace from the shirt of

Alexander was permitted to be stolen; and the same fate, as has been

stated, overtook his teeth. No sort of preparation had been made for

any possible examination of the remains to any good purpose. They were

laid out anyhow, as the phrase is, on a little marble bench in the

chapel. Those who remember the place will not need to be told how

perfect a sham any pretence of examination must have been under such

circumstances. When this pretence had been gone through, the bones

were cast back again into the marble sarcophagus by the workman,

"like"--as one eye-witness of the scene describes it--"the bones of

dogs." And when the same person looked into the sarcophagus after this

tossing back had been effected, he saw a mere confused heap of the

scattered bones of two skeletons undistinguishably mixed together. "I

cannot help," writes the same eye-witness, "expressing my sense of the

barbaric acts which I witnessed. Historic skeletons--the father of

Catherine de' Medici, the son-in-law of Charles V.; Florentine

nobles--one a duke of Florence, the other of Urbino--both bad enough

fellows, no doubt, but could any Communists have acted worse? Besides,

Communist mobs assert principles, and do these things in hot blood.

But this most monstrous outrage was committed coolly by pure stupidity

and the carelessness which cannot be moved by any consideration to

take any trouble that can by any possibility be avoided. Had they

turned up a quantity of the bones of animals to examine them, they

could not have done worse." It is fair to add that _some_ of the

organs of the Florentine press stigmatized the proceedings upon this

occasion as they deserved to be stigmatized.

T.A.T.

T.W. ROBERTSON.

The qualifications needed by the novelist and by the dramatist are at

once alike and unlike. Differing in manner rather than in matter, they

are rarely found united in one man. Scott, from whose novels many

stirring plays have been taken, was incapable of writing one himself;

Thackeray, even after he was the well-known author of _Vanity Fair_,

could not find a manager willing to produce his comedy; and

Thackeray's great master, Fielding, comparatively failed as a

dramatist, though Joseph Surface is Blifil and Charles Surface is Tom

Jones, and from the same work Colman derived his comedy of the

_Jealous Wife_, which holds the stage to this day. By dint of hard

work a man might make himself a novelist, but the dramatist, like the

poet, must be born. He who possesses the power of writing successfully

for the stage will surely show it in his first work. This theory

accounts for the signal success of the _Cantab_, a slight farce played

in 1861 at the London Strand Theatre. The material was weak and

worn-out, but the fun was not forced: it flowed naturally from the

situations. There was a freshness and a firmness about the little

piece which showed the hand of a young author capable of better

things. Three years later, Mr. Sothern, desiring a part diametrically

the opposite of Lord Dundreary, produced _David Garrick_, and in 1865

_Society_ made its first appearance on the stage of the Prince of

Wales's Theatre. Then T. W. Robertson stepped to the front rank of

living English dramatists.

The author had found his audience and his actors. The Prince of

Wales's Theatre was directed by a burlesque actress, and devoted to

light comedy and extravaganza: after that it gave up burlesque, merely

heightening the effect of the comedy and prolonging the programme by a

quiet farce. The company was small and strong, the theatre was well

managed, and plays were handsomely mounted. After the success of

_Society_ until Robertson's death its main reliance was upon his pen.

In 1866 _Ours_ was first produced, followed in 1867 by _Caste_. The

pieces of other authors, although carefully played and well mounted,

were uniform failures. Mr. Edmund Yates's _Tame Cats_, and Mr. Dion

Boucicault's _How She Loves Him!_ were each withdrawn after a run of a

very few nights, whereas _School Play_, an _M.P._ succeeded each other

with undisputed success. At the Haymarket Theatre _David Garrick_ was

followed by _Home_ and _Birth_.

The day was won, and the successful author could afford to rest on his

laurels. But he was ambitious and a hard worker; so he continued to

write and adapt. To counterbalance the good-fortune of _David Garrick_

and _Home_ at the Haymarket, and the series of six at the Prince of

Wales's Theatre, there was a list of failures--_Birth, Progress,

Dreams_ and _War_. But his comedies were far more successful than his

heavier plays: his belief in his power to construct good acting dramas

must have been sadly shaken by the total failure of _For Love_, the

_Shadow-Tree Shaft_ and the _Nightingale_. There can be no better

proof of their want of success than the fact that at a time when

American managers were eager for his comedies, not one of his dramas

was ever produced in the United States. But in spite of the

comparative failure of his later works, his death was felt to be the

loss of a dramatic author of some performance and of greater promise,

We have a way of nicknaming a new writer after one of his most

celebrated predecessors whom we imagine him to resemble, and then we

find fault with him for not having all the qualities of an author whom

he probably has no desire to imitate. False friends of T.W. Robertson

called him the "modern Sheridan." Few writers are more dissimilar.

Robertson in his dialogue and construction imitated the modern French

dramatists; Sheridan, the old English, Congreve, Farquhar and

Wycherley. Robertson especially delighted in love-scenes--there are

generally two at least in each of his comedies: I cannot remember one

in any of Sheridan's. The dialogue of the author of the _School for

Scandal_ is artificial and glittering--that of the author of _School_

is generally more natural, and always less brilliant. They have,

however, one point in common: they both practiced Molière's maxim, _Je

prends mon bien où je le trouve_. They both unhesitatingly

plagiarized. Robertson in particular easily assimilated foreign

matter. He turned _Le Dégel_ and _Les Ganaches_ of M. Sardou into _A

Rapid Thaw_ and _Progress_. _David Garrick_ was taken from _Dr.

Robin_, a French play, itself imitated from the German. _Home_ closely

follows _L'Aventurière_ of M. Émile Augier. Madame de Girardin's _La

Joie fait peur_, previously translated by Mr. G.H. Lewes as _Sunshine

through the Clouds_, gave Robertson the situation of the last act of

_War_: Mr. Dion Boucicault has since deftly adapted the same

delightful little piece under the name of _Kerry, or Night and

Morning_. The Cinderella-like plot of _School_ is taken from the

_Aschenbrödel_ of Roderick Benedix: the school examination was

suggested by a French vaudeville, _En classe, mesdemoiselles!_ The

part of Beau Farintosh is a weak revival of Garrick's Lord Chalkstone

and Colman and Garrick's Lord Ogleby; and the strong situation in the

fourth act is imitated from _Les Beaux Messieurs de Bois-Doré_ of

George Sand.

But Robertson is decidedly strongest when he walks without crutches.

His own original plays, _Society, Caste, Ours_, are by far his best. A

foreign support made him limp. Of all his adaptations, _home_ alone

is really good: most of the others failed. Although that cosmopolitan

mosaic _School_ has been the most successful of his pieces in

London--it has passed its five hundredth night--it is by no means the

best. Success is not necessarily a test of real merit. Evidently,

_School_ has the elements of popularity, although it is a very weak

piece, although it is full of foreign matter, and although it violates

that most necessary rule of dramatic art, declaring no play should

contain an effect, a line, a scene or an act which does not bear on

the end in view by developing either the characters or the action. The

entire second act, containing the farcical examination-scene, is

useless. Robertson again sinned in this way in the _Nightingale_:

although it had no effect on the plot, although it was entirely

unnecessary, he introduced a pretty tableau representing the heroine,

a lovely prima-donna, singing under the silver moonbeams in a boat

rocked to and fro by the waves.

I have before spoken of Robertson's fondness for love-scenes. There

are almost as many of them in one of his comedies as in one of Mr.

Anthony Trollope's novels. And they are generally very good. What can

be more delicious than the "spooning" in _Home_, if it is not the

billing and cooing in _Ours_? But what can be more commonplace or more

objectionable than the frequent remarks about love and Cupid scattered

through his plays? Tom Stylus says in _Society_, "Love is an awful

swindler--always drawing upon Hope, who never honors his drafts--a

sort of whining beggar, continually moved on by the maternal police.

But 'tis a weakness to which the wisest of us are subject--a kind of

manly measles which this flesh is heir to, particularly when the flesh

is heir to nothing else. Even I have felt the divine damnation--I mean

emanation. But the lady united herself to another, which was a very

good thing for me, and anything but a misfortune for her." This is

altogether false: no man could ever say such things seriously--at

least no man of sense would, and Tom Stylus is a man of sense. See,

too, this bit of dialogue in _Play_:

"AMANDA. You are a good girl, and will be rewarded some day with a

good man's love for this.

"ROSIE. I don't want it. I don't want anything to do with love. Love's

a nasty, naughty, wicked boy, and the sooner he's put in

convict-clothes and refused a ticket-of-leave, the better."

That is false too: the affected smartness of the wit does not suit the

situation; or, rather, as a writer in the _Athenaeum_ has said of a

similar speech, "it suits any occasion."

In this same _Play_, Mrs. Kin peck soliloquizes thus: "I fell into a

most unquiet sleep. I thought I saw Cliqueteaux, the old croupier, who

died of love for me--of that and a complication of other disorders. A

man that was a genius, with a wart on his nose. It was hereditary--the

genius, not the wart," etc. Now this may be "funny," but it is not

dramatic. It reminds one of the most forced passages of Artemas Ward's

generally fresh and unforced humor. But perhaps the worst instance in

all Robertson's play of this pitiful sacrifice of situation and

character to a petty "joke" is found in _Caste_. Sam Gerridge, a

gas-fitter and plumber, desiring to marry Polly, the daughter of

Eccles, a drunken old brute, tells him so, casually mentioning that to

prove his affection he will do anything he can in "the way of

spirituous liquor or tobacco." This captivates the heart of old

Eccles, who joins the hands of the young couple, saying with a drunken

leer, "Samuel Gerridge, she is thine. Samuel Gerridge, you shall be

'er 'usband! I don't know a gas_fitter_ man!" (The italics are in the

original).

These are but minor errors, however. The great fault in Robertson's

comedies is the lack of strong dramatic interest. There is no human

passion. There is no exhibition of human strength and human weakness.

There is little of that clash of character against character from

which results true comedy. But even if his characters are mere

empty-headed automata, even if his plays have not the literary value

of Mr. W.S. Gilbert's, even if his pieces have not the situations of

Sardou or the wit of Sheridan, he has a simple sweetness all his own.

And perhaps, after all, the greatest objection to him is the weakness

of his imitators. Success is always a schoolmaster. But it is not just

to hold Robertson responsible for the faults of Alberry or the

failings of the tea-cup-and-saucer school of comedy-writers.

J.B.M.

THE LETTERS OF A PRINCESS.

It is the fashion to decry French memoirs of court-life, and,

considering the quaint freedom of style which characterizes much of

this voluminous literature, it is not strange. Many of these memoirs,

original letters, etc. are exceedingly interesting, because of their

merciless unmasking of some of the sublime figure-heads of history;

notably the letters of Madame Charlotte Elizabeth of Bavaria, widow of

Monsieur, the only brother of Louis XIV. She always hated the French

manners, and longed for her native _sauer-kraut_ and sausages, which

to her taste were finer than all the luxuries and dainties of the

French cuisine. She was counted a severe moralist, and her tongue was

more dreaded than a bayonet-charge. To be sure, her enemies more than

hinted that her extraordinary virtue was trebly guarded by her

ugliness. On the latter subject she says herself, "I must be cruelly

ugly: I never had a passable feature. My eyes are little, my nose

short and big, my lips long and flat, my cheeks hanging, my face long,

my waist and my legs large, my stature short: sum-total, a little old

fright." But she was intelligent and witty, and that, in France at

least, goes a long way with a woman. She was also loyal and truthful.

No one doubted her word when once she had spoken. This makes her

testimony valuable, though many incidents circumspectly narrated by

her seem incredible. Of the young duchesse de Bourgogne, second

daughter of Louis XIV., she says: One of her amusements was to make

her lackeys drag her over the floor by her feet. It is to be presumed

that the duchess was a _very_ young person at this time.

Madame Charlotte's portrait of Marie Thérèse, queen of _Le Grand

Monarque_, is not very flattering: "Her teeth were black and broken,

and she ate immoderately of garlic and chocolate. She was very fond of

basset, but she never won, for she could never learn to play any game.

She ate long and very slowly, taking mouthfuls for a canary." The

diagnosis of the disease of which the queen died displays the popular

pathological lore of those times. Madame says: "She died of an abscess

on the arm, for which Fagon bled her. The humor entered and fell on

the heart: he then gave her an emetic to remove the humor, and this

suffocated her." La Valière, according to Madame Charlotte, was the

only woman who ever really loved the king. She limped a little, had

lovely eyes, irregular teeth, and was very neat in her person, while

Madame de Montespan was just the reverse.

Of Cardinal Richelieu we have a glimpse in madame's letters which his

biographers, generally at least, omit. She tells us that he used to

have violent fits of insanity, during which he would imagine that he

was a horse, jump over a billiard-table, kick his servants, neigh, and

make a fearful noise for an hour. His domestics would then get him

into bed, and after much sweating he would wake without the least

memory of what had passed. As "jumping over a billiard-table" might

appear an incredible feat, at least for an aged cardinal, it is proper

to remark that the billiard-tables of those times bore about the same

relation in size to our modern billiard-tables that the ancient

spinnet did to a grand pianoforte.

JAPANESE ART.

Some of our young ladies have a pretty art of constructing miniature

landscapes out of pebbles and mosses, strips of glistening paper for

brooks, little fuzzy pine sticks painted green for trees, and animals

and Swiss cottages from the toy-shop. Could these amateur artists once

see how the Japanese do this thing, they would abandon their mosses

and pebbles in despair. A late traveler in Japan says of one of these:

"It was a fairy-like landscape seen through a spy-glass reversed."

Some of the details were real trees dwarfed to pigmies by the art of

the Oriental florist. There were limpid lakes peopled with gold-fish;

grottos and summer-houses of exquisite finish draped with growing

verdure and large enough to shelter a small company of rabbits: lovely

walks winding through groves, lawns and by miniature parterres of

flowers, and finally, liliputian canals, spanned by elegant bridges

wide enough for the passage of a large rat.

* * * * *

Among the "Notes" in the New York _Nation_ of May 6th is the

following:

"In the new edition of Prescott's complete works (Lippincott) we have

remarked that the introduction to _Charles V._, so admirable for the

time when it was written, is left untouched by the editor, not even

the notes giving any intimation of the great progress made in the

knowledge of the Middle Ages within the last hundred years. The editor

may have chosen to regard the work as a literary monument to be

preserved as it stands, and certainly it would require very extensive

if not entire recasting."

There would seem to be some misapprehension at the bottom of these

statements. No one, we believe, has ever undertaken to edit

Robertson's _History of Charles the Fifth_. Prescott appended to it a

long "Account of the Emperor's Life after his Abdication," and for

that reason it has been included in all subsequent editions of his

works. But no intimation has ever been given that the editor of

Prescott's histories had assumed the same office for Robertson. If any

one be engaged in editing _Charles the Fifth_, we can only wish him

joy of the task. We trust, however, he will not proceed on the plan

suggested by the _Nation_, of "recasting" the work in whole or in

part. Such a process could hardly be considered as proper treatment of

any literary production, which, whatever its demerits, should at least

be subjected to no worse perversions than those of dishonest or

incompetent criticism.

LITERATURE OF THE DAY.

Macready's Reminiscences, and Selections from his Diaries and Letters.

Edited by Sir Frederick Pollock, Bart., one of his Executors. New

York: Macmillan & Co.

It is probable that this book will excite a degree of disappointment

in many readers, who, knowing Macready's position outside his

profession, may naturally have expected to find in the record of his

life ample and interesting details of his intercourse, often amounting

to intimacy, with a great number of notable persons. This expectation

would without doubt have been gratified had the autobiography, which

occupies a third of the volume and covers about the same proportion of

the writer's theatrical career, been carried to its close. Macready

was not one of those men who spring to eminence at a bound: his powers

were gradually and slowly developed, and owing partly to this fact,

but partly also to unfavorable circumstances, the recognition of them

was tardy and grudging. For many years after his _début_ on the London

boards he, who at a later period was almost disparaged as a

pre-eminently intellectual actor, owed his chief successes to his

performance of melodramatic parts like Rob Roy and William Tell, for

which his mental as well as physical endowments were considered

especially to qualify him. When at length he had reached his full

maturity, he stood without a living rival as the representative of

leading Shakespearian characters; and maintaining this supremacy down

to his retirement from the stage, closed the line of great tragedians

and left a place which after the lapse of a quarter of a century still

remains unfilled. His high personal worth and his efforts to exalt and

purify the drama won him golden opinions from all sorts of men; and,

with the exception of Garrick, no actor probably ever mingled as

largely or came into as close relations with persons distinguished in

other and alien walks of life. Mere fashionable society he seems never

to have frequented, and his labors were too pressing and onerous to

allow of that continuous companionship with a chosen circle in which

men of letters or of science, however industrious, are generally able

to find relaxation. But he came in contact, at one time or another,

with most of the celebrated people of his day on both sides of the

Atlantic, his friendship was sought and prized by many of them, and

the occasional glimpses we get of them in his _Diaries_ are of a kind

to deepen our regret that the _Reminiscences_, in which the power of

skillfully elaborating his material is sufficiently evidenced, should

close abruptly just when the sources of its interest were becoming

wider and fuller.

But any loss from this cause of amusing anecdotes or graphic

descriptions of persons or scenes is more than made good by the far

higher value and stronger attraction of the book as the portraiture of

a striking character and a remarkable career. In this view the

_Diaries_ are not inferior in interest to the expanded narrative that

precedes them. Indeed, terse and concise as they generally are, they

have the advantage of presenting freshly and vividly the impressions

and reflections of the moment, and thus exhibiting the writer's mind

both in its habitual and exceptional states without reservation or

deliberate purpose. They do not, however, reveal any different image

from that which is presented in the autobiography: on the contrary,

they confirm the truthfulness and frank fidelity of the more conscious

self-delineation which is there attempted. There breathes, indeed,

through the whole book a tone of unaffected sincerity, the charm of

which cannot be overrated. Not only does every statement bear the

stamp of veracity, but there is an utter absence of artifice, of any

design, so to speak, upon the reader, which is as rare as it is

beautiful. Admiration and sympathy were needs of Macready's nature,

but he will have no jot of them beyond what he can fairly and

honorably claim. Least of all, will he exalt himself at the expense of

others. He pays no idle compliments, pours out no fulsome or insidious

eulogies, but he speaks of his rivals and his predecessors with the

warm appreciation of one who had felt the full influence of their

power, and who could never look on merit with an oblique eye. His

worship of Mrs. Siddons, as unparalleled in her genius, was life-long,

and his descriptions of her acting convey a more vivid idea of its

peculiar qualities and matchless effect than any others we can

remember to have read. Talma comes next in his regard as "the most

finished artist of his time, not below Kean in his most energetic

displays, and far above him in the refinement of his taste and the

extent of his research--equaling Kemble in dignity, unfettered by his

stiffness and formality." He says acutely of Kean that "when under the

impulse of his genius he seemed to _clutch_ the whole idea of the man,

... but if he missed the character in his first attempt at conception

he never could recover it by study." Of Kean, if of any actor, we

might have feared that his notices would be tinged with jealousy; but

not only does he render justice to his originality and "burning

energy," but his account of the only evening he ever spent in private

with "this extraordinary man" brings into full relief the charm of his

manners and personal qualities at a time when he was still unspoilt by

flattery and unenfeebled by dissipation. Sketches and criticisms more

or less complete are given of many other great performers, whom, it is

to be remembered, Macready had less opportunity of seeing in a variety

of parts than if he had not himself been a busy member of the

profession. He can censure as well as praise--less warmly, but not

less candidly. His verdict on Ristori, whom he saw after his

retirement, may not improbably appear harsh to her admirers, but we

should recommend them to ponder well before endeavoring to controvert

it.

It would, however, be difficult if not impossible to name a volume of

memoirs in which there is so little dispraise of individuals, such an

absence of what can be characterized as depreciation either in the way

of direct remark or of insinuation. There will be no call for

contradiction of any slurs upon character through perversion of facts

or the repetition of hearsay calumny in its pages. Nor does this seem

to proceed from either a mere distaste for the chatter of gossips or an

unwillingness to wound the feelings of survivors, though both these

traits are discernible enough. The strong and more pervading cause lay

in an instinctive nobility of nature which sought only what was

excellent and had no keen scent for blemishes or meannesses. There are

in his _Diaries_ many bitter reproaches and vehement denunciations, but

they are all directed against his own conduct. Like Orlando, he will

chide no breather in the world but himself, against whom he knows most

faults. He had the defects incidental to a sensitive organization, an

irritable temperament and an aspiring mind. He was apt to suspect

hostility where none existed, and to resent indignities that were never

intended. He confesses on one occasion at least to an unworthy elation

at the inferiority of a rival. Above all, he was unable to curb the

outbreaks of impatience and anger excited by negligence or

stupidity--outbreaks which were often sufficiently amusing to the

bystanders from the contrast between the old-fashioned violence of the

language and the refined tones and lofty bearing of the speaker. In

fact, so foreign were such displays to the dominant qualities of his

character, while yet so closely connected with the fine sense and

exacting spirit of the artist, that one is tempted to wish that he

could himself have viewed them with more indifference, accepting this

thorn in the flesh as a slight but irremediable misfortune, instead of

making it the constant subject of penitence and self-abasement. But

such a course would have been still more foreign to his nature, ever

aiming at perfection, moral and artistic, ever summoning his faculties

and actions to the stern inquest of conscience, and refusing to accept

the verdict of any lower tribunal. And the struggle had its reward in a

real if not complete victory. The weeds, if never wholly eradicated,

could not choke the nobler growth; the stream, if it retained its

turbid coloring, increased always in volume and majesty. The fine

qualities which might so easily have deteriorated remained unscathed.

His keen sense of justice and honor, his inborn candor and generosity,

his fervent love of virtue and goodness in their simplest and least

obtrusive exhibitions, his cordial admiration of true greatness,--these

and kindred traits never lost their freshness or force. Above all, he

retained throughout life that deep and exquisite tenderness of feeling

which formed the supreme charm of his character, as it did of his

acting, and to which it would not, we think, be easy to find a parallel

in a person of his own sex. It was not alone in his ardent family

affections--his fond recollections of the mother he lost in boyhood,

his devotion to his sister, wife and brother, his passionate love of

his children, or his anguish and abiding sorrow at every severance of

such ties--that this quality displayed itself. His sympathy with all

suffering, especially if conjoined with innocence and patient

endurance, was not only quick but strong. His eyes fill with tears at

the sight of a fellow-passenger in a mail-coach, a poor deformed boy,

who is carrying a basket of toys from one town to another, and he

shakes his hand at parting with a "God bless thee!" that comes direct

from the heart. It was strikingly characteristic of him that, with all

his intense ambition, his resolute desire--to use a phrase which we

have heard him apply to himself--"to rise above the crowd, and stand

when others fall," he chose for his wife a young provincial actress,

whom he had once chided for her inattention or inability, but whose

artlessness of manner, purity and sweetness of nature and aptness for

improvement so enlisted his sympathies that he constituted himself her

friend and guide until the death of her father and brother awakened a

still warmer solicitude, bringing with it the discovery that "love had

been the inspiration of all the counsel and assistance he had rendered

her." Nor is the noble frankness less noticeable with which he tells

of his sister's unconcealed disappointment on her first introduction to

the _fiancée_, whose person as well as mind he had so extolled in his

descriptions and whom happily she learned ere long to look at with his

eyes, so that the happiness and serenity of his home were destined to

be pure and undisturbed.

Within a few years after his marriage he fixed his abode at a short

distance from London, where the sight of open fields, of trees and

flowers, never failed to exercise its soothing and restorative

influence upon him. The love of Nature was a passion with him, and in

the record of his journeys--whether the few which he was able to make

for the sole purpose of pleasure or his many professional tours--his

notices of the scenery show how large was the enjoyment he derived

from this healthful source. When, too, he withdrew from public life,

it was to the neighborhood of a small town, remote from the former

scenes of his struggles and triumphs, but commanding a wide view over

a pleasing landscape. Here, as the friend who has edited this volume

tells us, "he devoted himself almost exclusively to labors of kindness

and usefulness; his charity was so extensive that, although his left

hand knew not what his right hand did, it was impossible that it

should escape observation even beyond the sphere of the recipients of

his bounty; and while thus engaged in relieving distress in the

neighborhood of his new home, he continued to remit money to old

pensioners elsewhere up to the day of his death.... But his great

interest was in the cause of education, especially among the poorer

classes, which he developed at the cost of incessant personal

exertion, and mainly at his own expense. He established a

night-school, which he conducted himself, and in which he was assisted

by voluntary teachers from among the gentlemen and tradesmen of the

town, who attended in turns, but he was himself never absent from his

post, except under very urgent necessity. After a time some of his

friends raised a subscription in order to relieve Macready of a part

of the burden which his own zeal in the cause had brought upon

himself. Yet, although his own contribution to it had not been ever

less than one hundred pounds a year [about a twelfth of his whole

income], he was so fond of the night-school that he accepted this aid

as a proof of the estimation in which his work was held, and as an

additional fund, but not in ease of his own payments." Such a close to

such a life will seem either a lame and impotent conclusion or a most

fitting and harmonious cadence, according to the point of view.

We have spoken chiefly of Macready's character as a man, which was so

attractive in itself, and is so faithfully and lucidly mirrored in

this record of his life, that the work may be commended to readers of

every class and ranked with the choicest specimens of biography. As

the record of an artistic career its interest is of course more

limited. Yet in this respect also its excellence is very great, and if

the art which Macready practiced with such assiduity and devotion,

though with no undue estimate of its value or importance, held a

higher place in the world's regard, the light which is here thrown on

its processes and requirements would be received as an inestimable

boon. But at least his example, the spirit in which he worked, is

worthy of the study and emulation of those who cultivate any art. In

none has excellence ever been achieved by deeper thought or more

unremitting labor. It would be absurd to question Macready's real

eminence, based on the judgment of critical audiences with whom great

acting was not a mere matter of tradition. But we may readily concede

that in natural endowments he fell short of the most illustrious of

his predecessors, that he lacked the intuitive grasp which he ascribes

to Mrs. Siddons and to Kean, and that he never reached the intensity

and complete _abandon_ which gave an overwhelming effect to their

highest performances. We may apply to his acting what Carlyle has so

justly said of the poetry of Schiller, that it "shows rather like a

partial than a universal gift--the labored product of certain

faculties rather than the spontaneous product of his whole nature."

There was always the perception of the natural limit of his

qualifications, instead of any suggestiveness of a boundless capacity.

His voice, though rich and musical and of extraordinary compass, had

not the sonorous roundness and the penetrating sweetness of the rarest

organs, and was subject to a tremulousness which, though often

pleasing, could not but be considered as a defect. His features,

though capable of great expression, had neither the beauty nor the

extraordinary mobility so desirable in an actor. His attitudes and

walk were graceful, picturesque, often superb, but not absolutely free

from conventionalism. Instead of bursting away, as Kean had done, from

the meshes of tradition, he had only expanded and attenuated them to

the utmost, and if they did not really cramp, they still appeared to

circumscribe Nature and truth. It is evident that without the most

persistent efforts he could never have triumphed over obstacles and

gained the highest rank in his profession. How ardent and

conscientious was the struggle a thousand details in this volume bear

testimony. Perhaps the most curious is the description given in a

letter written after his retirement of the methods he had practiced

for repressing exaggeration in gesture, utterance or facial

expression. "I would lie down on the floor, or stand straight against

a wall, or get my arms within a bandage, and, so pinned or confined,

repeat the most violent passages of _Othello, Lear, Hamlet, Macbeth_,

or whatever would require most energy and emotion; I would speak the

most passionate bursts of rage under the supposed constraint of

_whispering them_ in the ear of him of her to whom they were

addressed, thus keeping both voice and gesture in subjection to the

real impulse of the feeling.... I was obliged also to have frequent

recourse to the looking-glass, and had two or three large ones in my

room to reflect each view of the posture I might have fallen into,

besides being under the necessity of acting the passion close to a

glass to restrain the tendency to exaggerate its expression--which was

the most difficult of all--to repress the ready frown, and keep the

features, perhaps I should say the muscles, of the face undisturbed,

whilst intense passion would speak from the eye alone." If the

propriety of some of these exercises be questionable, there can be no

doubt that the general effect of such discipline was to correct the

acquired tendencies of his youth and to chasten his style until it

lacked nothing less than refinement.

All this concerned the _technique_ of his art. Its soul--the thoughts,

the feelings, the characters to be embodied by it--formed the subject

of deeper, more constant and more delightful meditation. Here at least

Macready was at no disadvantage in a comparison with the most

illustrious of his predecessors. Some there may have been who gave

more vividly the salient points of a character, or who, as in the case

of Kean's Othello, infused into their personations of some of the

grandest but least complex of Shakespeare's creations an intensity of

passion that defied all rivalry. But none ever brought to the study of

the poet the intellectual discernment, the sympathetic spirit, the

true and heartfelt devotion with which Macready ministered at his

shrine. Not his own part alone, but the whole play, including the

words and scenes omitted in representation, were imprinted in his

memory and continually revolved. The groundwork was thus laid in a

thorough knowledge of the _medium_, to use the expression of Taine,

applying it, however, not to mere external facts and circumstances,

but to that individuality of form, ideas and style which the great

dramatist has given to each of his works. Then the meaning and bearing

of every phrase received their share of light from the same general

source, and the performance was pervaded throughout by a consistency

and a subtle discrimination which rendered it a living commentary,

acting on the intellect through the emotions.

It is easy to understand why, in the great variety of Macready's

impersonations, none stood out by universal consent as indubitably the

greatest. To all he gave his unstinted devotion and the full measure

of his powers, and the choice was left to be determined mainly by the

peculiar taste of the spectator. Yet there were some which must be

recalled with especial vividness as best exemplifying the scope of his

genius and his general characteristics. Two of these parts, Werner and

Melantius, were not Shakespearian creations, but they were at least

devices of the poetical imagination, not of the mere playwright's

handiwork. In both we have the spectacle of a proud and sensitive but

open and loving nature blighted with dishonor and misery through the

crimes of one near in blood and cherished with an unsuspecting

affection. Here were conceptions that made no demands on his

imaginative power. He had not to transform himself into the

characters, but only to give free play to the springs of his own

nature. The grief, the passion, the sudden revulsions of feeling were

not mimetic displays: one could imagine no different expression of

them. He was Werner and Melantius because Werner and Melantius were

Macready.

Shakespeare's characters do not so adapt themselves to individual

idiosyncrasies. No man can hope to identify himself with them unless

he can give wings to his faculties and soar above the plane of his

actual emotions. Often, no doubt, apparent triumphs have been gained

by displays of histrionic power that owed little to the informing

spirit of the poet. But Macready has never been accused of seeking

such results: whatever his performances may have lacked, they were

always imbued with a fine intelligence which brought all the details

into harmony and kept the attention fixed on the conception of the

character. Thus in Macbeth, which was perhaps, on the whole, his most

perfect impersonation, every look and gesture, every intonation,

conveyed the idea of one who lived on the border-line of an invisible

world, to whom all shapes and actions were half phantasmal, for whom

clear vision and sober contemplation were impossible. All his

utterances were abrupt, all his movements hurried; a certain wildness,

not of mere mental agitation, but of a spirit nurtured on unrealities,

marked his manner and countenance throughout. In Hamlet there was the

drawback of a physical appearance unsuited to the part. Yet it was the

character which he had studied most profoundly, and in which, as we

remember him in it, he held the most complete sway over the minds and

feelings of his audiences. None of his performances, as may be

imagined, was so distinguished by its intellectuality, yet none was so

simply and irresistibly pathetic. The abstraction and self-communing

in the delivery of the famous soliloquy can never have been surpassed,

and were probably never equaled; and throughout the closet scene there

was a reality in the tenderness, the vehemence, and the awe which

held the spectators breathless and spellbound. "Beautiful Hamlet,

farewell, farewell!" are his closing words in recording his last

performance of the part. But this was no final parting: while memory

retained her seat in the mind of this great artist, this true and

loving servant of Shakespeare's genius, the matchless creations with

which he had so identified himself could never cease to be the

subjects of daily meditation. "On one occasion," we are told, "after

his powers had so much failed that it was long since he had been

capable of holding or reading a book to himself, he said he had been

reading _Hamlet_. On some surprise being expressed, he touched his

forehead, and said 'Here;' and when asked if he could recollect the

whole play, he replied, 'Yes, every word, every pause; and the very

pauses have eloquence.'"

Books Received

The Internal Mission of the Holy Ghost. By Henry Edward, Archbishop of

Westminster New York: D. & J. Sadlier.

Man and Beast Here and Hereafter. By Rev. J.G. Wood, M.A., F.L.S. New

York: George Routledge & Son.

Lakey's Village and Country Houses, comprising eighty-four pages of

Designs. New York: The Orange Judd Co.

Social Science and National Economy. By R.E. Thompson, M.A.

Philadelphia: Porter & Coates.

A Defence of the United States Patent System. By J.S. Perry. Boston:

James R. Osgood & Co.

Brief Biographies: English Statesmen. By T.W. Higginson. New York:

G.P. Putnam's Sons.

The Best Reading: Hints on the Selection of Books. New York: G.P.

Putnam's Sons.

How to Make a Living. By George C. Eggleston. New York: G.P. Putnam's

Sons.

Ralph Wilton's Weird: A Novel. By Mrs. Alexander. New York: Henry Holt

& Co.

Warrington's Manual. By William S. Robinson. Boston: Lee & Shepard.

Home Talks. By John H. Noyes. Published by the Oneida Community.

Spain and the Spaniards. By N.L. Thieblin. Boston: Lee & Shepard.

Social Pressure. By Sir Arthur Helps. Boston: Roberts Brothers.

In the Camargue. By Emily Bowles. Boston: Loring.