[Illustration: DECEMBER.
VOL. IV. No. 5
THE INTERNATIONAL MAGAZINE.
New-York: STRINGER & TOWNSEND. 1851.
J.W. ORR, N.Y.]
Contents for December.
NAUVOO AND DESERET: THE MORMONS. _Six Engravings_, 577
WINDSOR CASTLE AND ITS ASSOCIATIONS. _Two Engravings_, 585
M. JULES GERARD AND THE BARON MUNCHAUSEN, IN AFRICA, 587
WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT, AND HIS WORKS: _Portrait_, 588
SLIDING SCALES OF DESPAIR, 592
DEATH IN YOUTH: BY H. W. PARKER, 593
A GERMAN HAND-BOOK OF AMERICA, 593
GONDOLETTAS: TWO SONGS: BY ALICE B. NEAL, 597
THE DUTCH GOVERNORS OF NEW AMSTERDAM: BY J. R. BRODHEAD, 597
AN AUTUMN BALLAD: BY W. A. SUTLIFFE, 598
CARLYLE'S LIFE OF JOHN STERLING, 599
SONGS OF THE CASCADE: BY A. OAKEY HALL, 602
HERMAN MELVILLE'S NEW NOVEL OF "THE WHALE," 602
A STORY WITHOUT A NAME: BY G. P. R. JAMES. _Concluded_, 604
CALCUTTA: SOCIAL, INDUSTRIAL, POLITICAL.--_Bentley's Miscellany_, 611
REVOLUTIONS IN RUSSIA. BY ALEXANDER DUMAS.--_Sharpe's Magazine_, 616
DRINKING EXPERIENCES: A TEMPERANCE LECTURE BY "NIMROD," 621
AMERICAN AND EUROPEAN SCENERY COMPARED: BY THE LATE J. F. COOPER, 625
A BULL FIGHT AT RONDA.--_United Service Magazine_, 631
VAGARIES OF THE IMAGINATION.--_Chambers's Edinburgh Journal_, 638
THE FRENCH FLOWER GIRL.--_Dickens's Household Words_, 641
THE THREE ERAS OF OTTOMAN HISTORY.--_The Antheneum_, 643
THE CAPTAIN AND THE NEGRO.--_United Service Magazine_, 646
THE VEILED PICTURE: A TRAVELLER'S STORY.--_New Monthly Magazine_, 648
THE SPENDTHRIFT'S DAUGHTER: IN SIX CHAPTERS.--_Household Words_, 664
MY NOVEL: BY SIR EDWARD BULWER LYTTON. _Continued_, 683
AUTHORS AND BOOKS:
Pendant to Professor Creasy's _Decisive Battles of the
World_, 693.--Correspondence respecting the Thirty Years'
War, 693.--German collection of English Songs, 693.--German
Philologists, 693.--Weil's History of the Califs, 693.--The
Germans in Bohemia, 693.--Andree's Work on America, 694.--Works
on Spinoza, 694.--New Goethean Literature, 694.--The British
Empire in Europe, by Meidinger, 694.--The Play of the
Resurrection, 694.--German History of French Literature,
694.--New work on German Knighthood, &c., 694.--German Romance
in the 18th Century, 695.--Madame Blaze de Bury's New Novel,
695.--Richter's History of the Evangelical German Churches,
695.--German Life of Sir Robert Peel, 695.--Zimmermann on the
English Revolution, 695.--History of Norway, 695.--Reguly,
the Hungarian Traveller, 695.--Political Notabilities of
Hungary, 695.--Speeches, &c., by King William of Prussia,
695.--Pictures from the North, 695.--History of the Swiss
Confederation, 695.--Bern's System of Chronology, by Miss
Peabody, 695.--French Almanacs, 695.--M. Croce-Spinelli's
Work on Popular Government, 696.--Works by the Paris
Asiatic Society, 696.--Cæsar Daly on Parisian Architecture,
696.--Figuier's Modern Discoveries, 696.--The _Annuaire
des Deux Mondes_, 696.--Calvin's Inedited Letters,
697.--Lacretelle, 697.--Critical Studies of Socialism,
697.--Memoirs of Mademoiselle Mars, 697.--The Institute of
France, 697.--Grille, on the War in La Vendée, 697.--History
of the Bourgeoisie of Paris, 697.--_Archives des Missions
Scientifiques_, &c., 697.--Travels in Africa, 698.--Spirit of
New Roman Catholic Literature, 698.--Gardin de Tassy on Mr.
Salisbury's Unpublished Arabic Documents, 699.--New Travels in
Palestine, 698.--The Abbadie Travellers, 699.--French, English,
and American Missionaries, as Scholars, 699.--The Westminster
Review, 690.--A Grandson of Robert Burns, 699.--Friends in
Council, &c., by Mr. Helps, 699.--New English Announcements,
700.--New Dissenters' College, 700.--Sir Charles Lyell, and the
"Free Thinkers," 700.--Professor Wilson, 700.--Miss Kirkland's
Evening Book, 700.--Works by Mrs. Lee, 701.--Mr. Boyd's edition
of Young's Night Thoughts, 702.--"Injustice to the South,"
702.--Splendid American Gift Books for 1852, 703.--New American
Works in Press, 703, &c.
THE FINE ARTS:
Leutze's Washington, 703.--Colossal Statue of Washington at
Munich, 703.--Kaulbach's Frescoes, 703.--Cadame's Compositions
of the Seasons, 703.--Portraits of Bishop White and Daniel
Webster, 703.
HISTORICAL REVIEW OF THE MONTH:
The American Elections, 704.--Kossuth In England, 704.--Europe,
and the East, 704.
RECENT DEATHS:
Archibald Alexander. D. D., 705.--J. Kearney Rogers, M. D.,
705.--Rev. William Croswell, D. D., 706.--Granville Sharpe
Pattison, M. D., 706.--Mr. Stephens, author of _The Manuscripts
of Erdely_, 706.--Mr. Gutzlaff, the Missionary, 707.--Don
Manuel Godoy, the Prince of the Peace, 708.--George Baker,
708.--M. De Savigny, 708.--Archbishop Wingard, 708.--Samuel
Beaseley, author of _The Roué_, 708.--H. P. Borrell,
708.--James Tyler. R. D., 708.--Emma Martin, 709.--Yar
Mohammed, 709.--Alexander Lee, 710.--Prince Frederick of
Prussia, 710.
GENTLEMEN'S AND LADIES FASHIONS FOR DECEMBER. _Seven Engravings_, 718
THE INTERNATIONAL MAGAZINE
Of Literature, Art, and Science.
* * * * *
Vol. IV. NEW-YORK, DECEMBER 1, 1851. No. V.
NAUVOO AND DESERET.
IMPOSTURE AND HISTORY OF THE MORMONS.
Among the many extraordinary chapters in the history of the Nineteenth
Century none will seem in the next age more incredible and curious than
that in which is related the Rise and Progress of Mormonism. The creed
of the Latter Day Saints, as they style themselves, is not, indeed,
more absurd and ridiculous than that of the Millerites, but this last
sect had but a very brief existence, and is now almost forgotten;
while the imposture of Smith and his associates, commencing before
Miller began his prophecies, is still successful, and represented by
missionaries in almost every state throughout the world.
[Illustration: THE MORMON EXODUS: PASSING THE ROCKY MOUNTAINS.]
It has been observed with some reason, that had a Rabelais or a Swift
told the story of the Mormons under the veil of allegory, the sane
portion of mankind would probably have entered a protest against the
extravagance of the satirist. The name of the mock hero, his own and
his family's ignorance and want of character, the low cunning of his
accomplices, the open and shameless vices in which they indulged, and
the extraordinary success of the sect they founded, would all have been
thought too obviously conceived with a view to ludicrous effects. Yet
the Mormon movement has assumed the condition of an important popular
feature, and after much suffering and many reverses, its authors have
achieved a condition of eminent industrial prosperity. In twenty years
the company, consisting of the impostor and his father and brother,
has increased to nearly half a million; they occupy one of the richest
portions of this continent, have a regularly organized government, and
are represented in the Congress of the United States by a delegate
having all the powers usually conferred on the members for territories.
With missions in every part of the country, in every capital of Europe,
in Mecca, in Jerusalem, and among the islands of the Pacific and the
Indian Oceans, all of whom are charged with the duty of making converts
and gathering them to the Promised Land of Deseret, they must very soon
have a population sufficiently large to claim admission as an equal
member to the Union, and perhaps to hold the balance of power in its
affairs.
To illustrate the energy and success with which their missions are
prosecuted, we may cite the statement contained in a work just
published in London, _The Mormons, or Latter Day Saints, a Contemporary
History_, that more than fourteen thousand persons have left Great
Britain since 1840 for the "Holy City." The emigrants passing through
Liverpool in 1849, amounted to 2,500, generally of the better class
of mechanics and farmers, and it was estimated that at least 30,000
converts remained behind. In June, 1850, there were in England and
Scotland, 27,863, of whom London contributed 2,529; Liverpool, 1,018;
Manchester, 2,787; Glasgow, 1,846; Sheffield, 1,920; Edinburgh, 1,331;
Birmingham, 1,909; and Wales, 4,342. And the Mormon census was again
taken last January, giving the entire number in the British Isles
at 30,747. In fourteen years, more than 50,000 had been baptized in
England, of whom nearly 17,000 had "emigrated to Zion." Although the
Mormon emigration is commonly of the better class, there are also poor
Mormons; and that these as well as their more prosperous brethren may
be "gathered to the holy city," there is now amassed in Liverpool
a very large fund, under the control of officers appointed by the
"Apostles," destined exclusively for the equipment and transportation
of converts to their place of Refuge.
The interest which recent events have attracted to the community in
Deseret or Utah, will render interesting a more particular survey of
its origin, progress, and condition.
In 1825 there lived near the village of Palmyra, in New-York, a family
of small farmers of the name of Smith. They were of bad repute in the
neighborhood, notorious for being continually in debt, and heedless of
their business engagements. The eldest son, Joseph, says one of his
friends, "could read without much difficulty, wrote a very imperfect
hand, and had a very limited understanding of the elementary rules of
arithmetic." Associated in some degree with Sidney Rigdon, who comes
before us in the first place as a journeyman printer, he was the
founder of the new faith. The early history of the conspiracy of these
worthies is imperfectly known; but it is evident that Rigdon must have
been in Smith's confidence from the first. Rigdon, indeed, probably
had more to do with the matter than even Smith; but it was the latter
who was first put conspicuously forward, and who managed to retain
the pre-eminence. The account of the pretended revelation, as given
by Smith, is as follows: He all at once found himself laboring in a
state of great darkness and wretchedness of mind--was bewildered among
the conflicting doctrines of the Christians, and could find no comfort
or rest for his soul. In this state, he resorted to earnest prayer,
kneeling in the woods and fields, and after long perseverance was
answered by the appearance of a bright light in heaven, which gradually
descended until it enveloped the worshipper, who found himself standing
face to face with two supernatural beings. Of these he inquired which
was the true religion? The reply was, that all existing religions
were erroneous, but that the pure doctrine and crowning dispensation
of Christianity should at a future period be miraculously revealed
to himself. Several similar visitations ensued, and at length he was
informed that the North American Indians were a remnant of Israel; that
when they first entered America they were a powerful and enlightened
people; that their priests and rulers kept the records of their history
and doctrines, but that, having fallen off from the true worship, the
great body of the nation were supernaturally destroyed--not, however,
until a priest and prophet named Mormon, had, by heavenly direction,
drawn up an abstract of their records and religious opinions. He was
told that this still existed, buried in the earth, and that he was
selected as the instrument for its recovery and manifestation to all
nations. The record, it was said, contained many prophecies as to these
latter days, and instructions for the gathering of the saints into a
temporal and spiritual kingdom, preparatory to the second coming of
the Messiah, which was at hand. After several very similar visions,
the spot in which the book lay buried was disclosed. Smith went to
it, and after digging, discovered a sort of box, formed of upright and
horizontal flags, within which lay a number of plates resembling gold,
and of the thickness of common tin. These were bound together by a
wire, and were engraved with Egyptian characters. By the side of them
lay two transparent stones, called by the ancients, "Urim and Thummim,"
set in "the two rims of a bow." These stones were divining crystals,
and the angels informed Smith, that by using them he would be enabled
to decipher the characters on the plates. What ultimately became of the
plates--if such things existed at all--does not appear. They were said
to have been seen and handled by eleven witnesses. With the exception
of three persons, these witnesses were either members of Smith's
family, or of a neighboring family of the name of Whitmer. The Smiths,
of course, give suspicious testimony. The Whitmers have disappeared,
and no one knows any thing about them. Another witness, Oliver Cowdrey,
was afterwards an amanuensis to Joseph; and another, Martin Harris, was
long a conspicuous disciple. There is some confusion, however, about
this person. Although he signs his name, as a witness who has seen and
handled the plates, he assured Professor Anthon that he never had seen
them, that "he was not sufficiently pure of heart," and that Joseph
refused to show him the plates, but gave him instead a transcript on
paper of the characters engraved on them. It is difficult to trace the
early advances of the imposture. Every thing is vague and uncertain. We
have no dates, and only the statements of the prophet and his friends.
Meantime, Smith must have worked successfully on the feeble and
superstitious mind of Martin Harris. This man, as we have just said,
received from him a written transcript of the mysterious characters,
and conveyed it to Professor Anthon, a competent philological
authority. Dr. Anthon's account of the interview is one of the most
important parts of the entire history. Harris told him he had not seen
the plates, but that he intended to sell his farm and give the proceeds
to enable Smith to publish a translation of them. This statement,
with what follows, shows that Smith's original intention, _quoad_ the
alleged plates, was to use them as a means for swindling Harris. The
Mormons have published accounts of Professor Anthon's judgment on
the paper submitted to him, which he himself states to be "perfectly
false." The Mormon version of the interview represents Dr. Anthon
"as having been unable to decipher the characters correctly, but as
having presumed that, if the original records could be brought, he
could assist in translating them." On this statement being made, Dr.
Anthon described the document submitted to him as having been a sort
of _pot-pourri_ of ancient marks and alphabets. "It had evidently been
prepared by some person who had before him a book containing various
alphabets; Greek and Hebrew letters, crosses and flourishes, Roman
letters, inverted or placed sideways, were arranged in perpendicular
columns, and the whole ended in a rude delineation of a circle,
divided into various compartments, decked with numerous strange marks,
and evidently copied after the Mexican Calendar given by Humboldt,
but copied in such a way as not to betray the source whence it was
derived." This account disposes of the statement that the characters
were Egyptian, while the very jumble of the signs of different nations,
languages, and ages, proves that the impostor was deficient both in
tact and knowledge. The scheme seems to have been, at all events, _in
petto_ when Smith communicated with Harris; but a satisfactory clue to
the fabrication is lost in our ignorance of the time and circumstances
under which Smith and Rigdon came together. It must have been
subsequent to that event that the "translation," by means of the magic
Urim and Thummim, was begun. This work Smith is represented as having
labored at steadily, assisted by Oliver Cowdrey, until a volume was
produced containing as much matter as the Old Testament, written in the
Biblical style, and containing, as Smith said the Angel had informed
him, a history of the lost tribes in their pilgrimage to and settlement
in America, with copious doctrinal and prophetic commentaries and
revelations.
The devotion of Harris to the impostor secured a fund sufficient for
defraying the cost of printing the pretended revelation, and the sect
began slowly to increase. The doctrines of Smith were not at first
very clearly defined; it is probable that neither he nor Rigdon had
determined what should be their precise character; but like their early
contemporary the prophet Matthias (the interesting history of whose
career was published in New-York several years ago by the late Colonel
Stone), they had no hesitation in deciding on one cardinal point,
that the revelations made to Smith at any time should be received
with unquestioning and implicit faith, and the earliest of these
revelations contemplated a liberal provision for all the prophet's
personal necessities. Thus, in February, 1831, it was revealed to the
disciples that they should immediately build the prophet a house; on
another occasion it was enjoined that, if they had any regard for
their own souls, the sooner they provided him with food and raiment,
and every thing he needed, the better it would be for them; and in a
third revelation, Joseph was informed that "he was not to labor for his
living." All these "revelations" were received, and though the impostor
seemed to intelligent men little better than a buffoon, his followers
soon learned to regard him as almost deserving of adoration, and he
began to revel in whatever luxury and profligacy was most agreeable
to his vulgar taste and ambition. As in the case of the scarcely more
respectable pretender, Andrew Jackson Davis, it was asserted that
his original want of cultivation precluded the notion of his having
by the exercise of any natural or acquired faculties produced his
"revelations." Everywhere his followers said, "The prophet is not
learned in a human sense: how could he have become acquainted with all
the antiquarian learning here displayed, if it were not supernaturally
communicated to him?" But to this question there was soon an answer
equally explicit and satisfactory. The real author of the Book of
Mormon was a Rev. Solomon Spaulding, who wrote it as a romance. Its
entire history and the means by which it came into the possession of
Smith are described, in the following statement, by Mr. Spaulding's
widow:--
[Illustration: CROSSING THE MISSOURI.]
"Since the _Book of Mormon_, or _Golden Bible_ (as it was
originally called), has excited much attention, and is deemed
by a certain new sect of equal authority with the sacred
Scriptures, I think it a duty to the public to state what I
know of its origin.... Solomon Spaulding, to whom I was married
in early life, was a graduate of Dartmouth college, and was
distinguished for a lively imagination, and great fondness for
history. At the time of our marriage, he resided in Cherry
Valley, New York. From this place, we removed to New Salem,
Ashtabula County, Ohio, sometimes called Conneaut, as it is
situated on Conneaut Creek. Shortly after our removal to this
place, his health failed, and he was laid aside from active
labors. In the town of New Salem there are numerous mounds and
forts, supposed by many to be the dilapidated dwellings and
fortifications of a race now extinct. These relics arrest the
attention of new settlers, and become objects of research for
the curious. Numerous implements were found, and other articles
evincing skill in the arts. Mr. Spaulding being an educated
man, took a lively interest in these developments of antiquity;
and in order to beguile the hours of retirement, and furnish
employment for his mind, he conceived the idea of giving an
historical sketch of the long-lost race. Their antiquity led
him to adopt the most ancient style, and he imitated the Old
Testament as nearly as possible. His sole object in writing
this imaginary history was to amuse himself and his neighbors.
This was about the year 1812. Hull's surrender at Detroit
occurred near the same time, and I recollect the date well
from that circumstance. As he progressed in his narrative, the
neighbors would come in from time to time to hear portions
read, and a great interest in the work was excited among them.
It claimed to have been written by one of the lost nation, and
to have been recovered from the earth; and he gave it the title
of 'The Manuscript Found.' The neighbors would often inquire
how Mr. Spaulding advanced in deciphering the manuscript; and
when he had a sufficient portion prepared, he would inform
them, and they would assemble to hear it read. He was enabled,
from his acquaintance with the classics and ancient history,
to introduce many singular names, which were particularly
noticed by the people, and could be easily recognized by them.
Mr. Solomon Spaulding had a brother, Mr. John Spaulding,
residing in the place at the time, who was perfectly familiar
with the work, and repeatedly heard the whole of it. From
New Salem we removed to Pittsburgh, in Pennsylvania. Here
Mr. Spaulding found a friend and acquaintance, in the person
of Mr. Patterson, an editor of a newspaper. He exhibited his
manuscript to Mr. Patterson, who was much pleased with it,
and borrowed it for perusal. He retained it a long time, and
informed Mr. Spaulding that if he would make out a title-page
and preface, he would publish it, and it might be a source
of profit. This Mr. Spaulding refused to do. Sidney Rigdon,
who has figured so largely in the history of the Mormons,
was at that time connected with the printing office of Mr.
Patterson, as is well known in that region, and, as Rigdon
himself has frequently stated, became acquainted with Mr.
Spaulding's manuscript, and copied it. It was a matter of
notoriety and interest to all connected with the printing
establishment. At length the manuscript was returned to its
author, and soon after we removed to Amity, Washington county,
where Mr. Spaulding died, in 1816. The manuscript then fell
into my hands, and was carefully preserved. It has frequently
been examined by my daughter, Mrs. M'Kenstry, of Monson,
Massachusetts, with whom I now reside, and by other friends.
After the Book of Mormon came out, a copy of it was taken to
New Salem, the place of Mr. Spaulding's former residence,
and the very place where the 'Manuscript Found' was written.
A woman appointed a meeting there; and in the meeting read
copious extracts from the Book of Mormon. The historical part
was known by all the older inhabitants, as the identical
work of Mr. Spaulding, in which they had all been so deeply
interested years before. Mr. John Spaulding was present, and
recognized perfectly the production of his brother. He was
amazed and afflicted that it should have been perverted to so
wicked a purpose. His grief found vent in tears, and he arose
on the spot, and expressed to the meeting his sorrow that the
writings of his deceased brother should be used for a purpose
so vile and shocking. The excitement in New Salem became so
great, that the inhabitants had a meeting, and deputed Dr.
Philastus Hurlbut, one of their number, to repair to this
place, and to obtain from me the original manuscript of Mr.
Spaulding, for the purpose of comparing it with the Mormon
Bible--to satisfy their own minds and to prevent their friends
from embracing an error so delusive. This was in the year 1834.
Dr. Hurlbut brought with him an introduction and request for
the manuscript, which was signed by Messrs. Henry, Lake, Aaron
Wright, and others, with all of whom I was acquainted, as they
were my neighbors when I resided at New Salem. I am sure that
nothing would grieve my husband more, were he living, than
the use which has been made of his work. The air of antiquity
which was thrown about the composition doubtless suggested
the idea of converting it to the purposes of delusion. Thus,
an historical romance, with the addition of a few pious
expressions, and extracts from the sacred Scriptures, has been
construed into a new Bible, and palmed off upon a company of
poor deluded fanatics as Divine."
Similar evidence as to the Spaulding MS. was given by several private
friends, and by the writer's brother, all of whom were familiar with
its contents. The facts thus graphically detailed have of course been
denied, but have never been disproved. Indeed, without them it is
impossible to explain the hold which Rigdon always possessed on the
Prophet; for he was a poor creature, without education and without
talents. At one time--a critical moment in the history of the new
church--a quarrel arose between the accomplices; but it ended in
Smith's receiving a "revelation," in which Rigdon was raised by divine
command to be equal with himself, having plenary power given to him to
bind and loose both on earth and in heaven.
[Illustration: A MORMON CARAVAN ON THE PRAIRIES.]
The remaining history of the Mormons is eminently interesting. Ignorant
and superstitious as have been the chief part of the disciples, and
atrocious as have been the tricks of the knaves who have led them on
amid all the varieties of their good and evil fortune, there have
occasionally been displayed among them an enthusiasm and bravery of
endurance that demand admiration. Nearly from the beginning the leaders
of the sect seem to have contemplated settling in the thinly populated
regions of the western states, where lands were to be purchased for
low prices, and after a short residence at Kirkland, in Ohio, they
determined to found a New Jerusalem in Missouri. The interests of the
town were confided to suitable officers, and Smith spent his time
in travelling through the country and preaching, until the real or
pretended immoralities of the sect led to such discontents that in
1839 they were forcibly and lawlessly expelled from the state. We are
inclined to believe that they were not only treated with remarkable
severity, but that there was not any reason whatever to justify an
interference in their affairs.
[Illustration: THE MORMON TEMPLE AT NAUVOO.]
From Missouri the saints proceeded to Illinois, and on the sixth of
April, 1841, with imposing ceremonies, laid at their new city of Nauvoo
the corner-stone of the Temple,[1] an immense edifice, without any
architectural order or attraction, which in a few months was celebrated
every where as not inferior in size and magnificence to that built by
Solomon in Jerusalem. Nauvoo is delightfully situated in the midst of
a fertile district, and a careful inquirer will not be apt to deny
that it became the home of a more industrious, frugal, and generally
moral society, than occupied any other town in the state. Whatever
charges were preferred against Smith and his disciples, to justify the
outrages to which they were subjected, the history of their expulsion
from Nauvoo is simply a series of illustrations of the fact that the
ruffian population of the neighboring country set on foot a vast scheme
of robbery in order to obtain the lands and improvements of the Mormons
without paying for them. We have not room for a particular statement
of the discontents and conspiracies which grew up in the city, nor
for any detail of the aggressions from without. On the 27th of June,
1844, Joseph and Hyrum Smith were murdered, while under the especial
protection of the authorities of the state. A writer in the _Christian
Reflector_ newspaper, soon after, observed of Joseph Smith:
"Various are the opinions concerning this singular personage;
but whatever may be thought in reference to his principles,
objects, or moral character, all agree that he was a most
remarkable man.... Notwithstanding the low origin, poverty,
and profligacy of these mountebanks, they have augmented
their numbers till more than 100,000 persons are now numbered
among the followers of the Mormon Prophet, and they never
were increasing so rapidly as at the time of his death. Born
in the very lowest walks of life, reared in poverty, educated
in vice, having no claims to even common intelligence, coarse
and vulgar in deportment, the Prophet Smith succeeded in
establishing a religious creed, the tenets of which have been
taught throughout America; the Prophet's virtues have been
rehearsed in Europe; the ministers of Nauvoo have found a
welcome in Asia; Africa has listened to the grave sayings of
the seer of Palmyra; the standard of the Latter-Day Saints
has been reared on the banks of the Nile; and even the Holy
Land has been entered by the emissaries of this impostor. He
founded a city in one of the most beautiful situations in the
world, in a beautiful curve of the 'Father of Waters,' of no
mean pretensions, and in it he had collected a population
of twenty-five thousand, from every part of the world. The
acts of his life exhibit a character as incongruous as it is
remarkable. If we can credit his own words and the testimony
of eye-witnesses, he was at the same time the vicegerent of
God and a tavern-keeper--a prophet and a base libertine--a
minister of peace, and a lieutenant-general--a ruler of tens of
thousands, and a slave to all his own base passions--a preacher
of righteousness, and a profane swearer--a worshipper of
Bacchus, mayor of a city, and a miserable bar-room fiddler--a
judge on the judicial bench, and an invader of the civil,
social, and moral relations of men; and, notwithstanding
these inconsistencies of character, there are not wanting
thousands willing to stake their souls' eternal salvation
on his veracity. For aught we know, time and distance will
embellish his life with some new and rare virtues, which his
most intimate friends failed to discover while living with
him. Reasoning from effect to cause, we must conclude that
the Mormon Prophet was of no common genius: few are able to
commence and carry out an imposition like his, so long, and so
extensively. And we see, in the history of his success, most
striking proofs of the credulity of a large portion of the
human family."
[1] The temple was of white limestone, 128 feet long, 83 feet wide, and
60 feet high. Its style will be seen in the above engraving. It was
destroyed by fire, on the 19th of November, 1848. The town of Nauvoo
is now occupied by another class of socialists, the Icarians, under M.
Cabet, of Paris.
[Illustration: THE EXPULSION FROM NAUVOO.]
After some dissensions, in which the party of Brigham Young triumphed
over that of Sidney Rigdon, the sect were reorganized and for some time
were permitted quietly to prosecute their plans at Nauvoo. But early in
1846 they were driven out of their city and compelled in mid winter to
seek a new home beyond the farthest borders of civilization. The first
companies, embracing sixteen hundred persons, crossed the Mississippi
on the 3d February, 1846, and similar detachments continued to leave
until July and August, travelling by ox-teams towards California,
then almost unknown, and quite unpeopled by the Anglo-Saxon race.
Their enemies asserted that the intention of the Saints was to excite
the Indians against the government, and that they would return to
take vengeance on the whites for the indignities they had suffered.
Nothing appears to have been further from their intentions. Their
sole object was to plant their Church in some fertile and hitherto
undiscovered spot, where they might be unmolested by any opposing sect.
The war against Mexico was then raging, and, to test the loyalty of
the Mormons, it was suggested that a demand should be made on them to
raise five hundred men for the service of the country. They consented,
and that number of their best men enrolled themselves under General
Kearney, and marched 2,400 miles with the armies of the United States.
At the conclusion of the war they were disbanded in Upper California.
They allege that it was one of this band who, in working at a mill,
first discovered the golden treasures of California; and they are said
to have amassed large quantities of gold before the secret was made
generally known to the "Gentiles." But faith was not kept with the
Mormons who remained in Nauvoo. Although they had agreed to leave in
detachments, as rapidly as practicable, they were not allowed necessary
time to dispose of their property; and in September, 1846, the city
was besieged by their enemies upon the pretence that they did not
intend to fulfil the stipulations made with the people and authorities
of Illinois. After a three days' bombardment, the last remnant was
finally driven out.
The terrible hejira of the Mormon emigrants over the Rocky Mountains
has been described by Mr. Kane of Philadelphia, in an interesting
pamphlet, which is honorable to his own character for good sense and
for benevolent feeling. No religious emigration was ever attended
by more suffering, no emigration of any kind was ever prosecuted
with more bravery. It resulted in the permanent establishment of the
"Commonwealth of the New Covenant," in Utah, or Deseret, one of the
most attractive portions of the interior of this Continent, near its
western border. Of this territory Mr. Kane says:
Deseret is emphatically a new country; new in its own
characteristic features, newer still in its bringing together
within its limits the most inconsistent peculiarities of
other countries. I cannot aptly compare it to any. Descend
from the mountains, where you have the scenery and climate of
Switzerland, to seek the sky of your choice among the many
climates of Italy, and you may find welling out of the same
hills the freezing springs of Mexico and the hot springs of
Iceland, both together coursing their way to the Salt Sea
of Palestine, in the plain below. The pages of Malte Brun
provide me with a less truthful parallel to it than those which
describe the Happy Valley of Rasselas, or the Continent of
Ballibarbi.
[Illustration: GREAT SALT LAKE CITY OR NEW JERUSAL'M.]
The history of the Mormons has ever since been an unbroken record
of prosperity. It has looked as though the elements of fortune,
obedient to a law of natural re-action, were struggling to compensate
their undue share of suffering. They may be pardoned for deeming it
miraculous. But, in truth, the economist accounts for it all, who
explains to us the speedy recuperation of cities, laid in ruin by
flood, fire, and earthquake. During its years of trial, Mormon labor
had subsisted on insufficient capital, and under many difficulties,
but it _has_ subsisted, and survives them now, as intelligent and
powerful as ever it was at Nauvoo; with this difference, that it has
in the mean time been educated to habits of unmatched thrift, energy,
and endurance, and has been transplanted to a situation where it is
in every respect more productive. Moreover, during all the period of
their journey, while some have gained by practice in handicraft, and
the experience of repeated essays at their various halting-places,
the minds of all have been busy framing designs and planning the
improvements they have since found opportunity to execute. Their
territory is unequalled as a stock-raising country; the finest pastures
of Lombardy are not more estimable than those on the east side of the
Utah Lake and its tributary rivers, and it is scarcely less rich in
timber and minerals than the most fortunate portions of the continent.
From the first the Mormons have had little to do in Deseret, but attend
to mechanical and strictly agricultural pursuits. They have made
several successful settlements; the farthest north is distant more than
forty miles, and the farthest south, in a valley called the Sanpeech,
two hundred, from that first formed. A duplicate of the Lake Tiberias
empties its waters into the innocent Dead Sea of Deseret, by a fine
river, which they have named the Western Jordan. It was on the right
bank of this stream, on a rich table land, traversed by exhaustless
waters falling from the highlands, that the pioneers, coming out of the
mountains in the night of the 24th of July, 1847, pitched their first
camp in the Valley, and consecrated the ground. This spot proved the
most favorable site for their chief settlement, and after exploring
the whole country, they founded on it their city of the New Jerusalem.
Its houses are diffused, to command as much as possible the farms,
which are laid out in wards or cantons, with a common fence to each.
The farms in wheat already cover a space nearly as large as Rhode
Island. The houses of New Jerusalem, or Great Salt Lake City, as it is
commonly called, are distributed over an area nearly as great as that
of New York. The foundations have been laid for a temple more vast
and magnificent than that which was erected at Nauvoo. The Deseret
News, a paper established under the direction of the ecclesiastical
authority came to us lately with several columns descriptive of the
fourth anniversary celebration of the arrival of the disciples in their
Promised Land.
Since the preceding paragraphs were written some important information
has been received from Utah, justifying apprehensions that the ambition
of the chief of the sect, and territorial governor, Brigham Young,
will be continually productive of difficulties. It appears that in
consequence of his unwarrantable assumptions of authority, the larger
and most respectable portion of the territorial officers, including
B. O. Harris, Secretary of the Territory, G. K. Brandenburg, Chief
Justice, E. P. Bracchas, Associate Justice, H. R. Day, Indian Agent,
and Messrs. Gillette and Young, were preparing to leave for the
Atlantic States.
The particulars of the difficulty are not stated, but it is said that
$20,000 appropriated by Congress for territorial purposes had been
squandered by Young, and an attempt made by him to take $24,000 from
the Treasurer, who refused, and applied to the Court to support him.
This was done, and an injunction granted restraining the proceedings of
the Governor.
[Illustration: WINDSOR CASTLE.]
Of the numerous objects of interest with which the banks of the Thames
are so thickly studded, none are of such surpassing grandeur and regal
magnificence as Windsor Castle, with its adjacent chapel of St. George,
and Eton College. This massive and stately pile is richly storied
with poetic associations, and venerable for its antiquity, in having
proudly defied the ravages of Time for some eight centuries. Here
kings were born; here they kept royal state amid the blaze of fashion
and luxurious indulgence; and here in the adjoining mausoleum, they
were buried. Here deeds of chivalry and high renown that shine on
us from ancient days were enacted; and it is here the most exemplary
of England's monarchy still prefers to hold her suburban residence.
This brave old fortress, unlike the Tower of London, with its dark
records of crime, is rife with pleasant memories. Not only is the
edifice itself, with its gigantic towers, its broad bastions, and its
kingly halls, sacred with incident and story, but Shakespeare has also
rendered classical the very ground on which it stands.
[Illustration: DISTANT VIEW OF WINDSOR CASTLE.]
Windsor Forest, with its magnificent old oaks and its richly variegated
scenery, of "upland, lawn and stream," has afforded a fruitful theme
for the pens of Gray and the poet of "The Seasons;" and Pope, it will
be remembered, has felicitously pictured forth its changeful beauties.
As far back as the days of the Saxons we have records of palatial
residence at Old Windsor, or as its name then was, _Windleshora_, so
called from the windings of the Thames in its vicinity. William the
Norman built some portions of the Castle, which, until the time of
Richard I., seems ever to have been the peaceful abode of royalty.
During the civil wars, of which Windsor was a principal scene, the
Castle became the most important military establishment in the kingdom.
The sanguinary struggles connected with the signing of _Magna Charta_,
are familiar to the reader. The birth of Edward III., which took place
at Windsor, forms another epoch in its history--that prince having
reconstructed the greater part of the Castle, and very largely extended
it. William of Wykeham was the architect, with the liberal salary of a
shilling a day. It is said he and six hundred workmen employed on the
building, at the rate of one penny a day. It was here Richard II. heard
the appeal of high treason, brought by the Duke of Lancaster against
Mowbray, Duke of Norfolk, which resulted in the former becoming Henry
IV. It was here the Earl of Surrey, imprisoned for the high crime of
eating flesh in Lent, beguiled his solitude, with his muse; and here
was the last prison of that unfortunate monarch, Charles I. In Windsor
Castle also resided the haughty Elizabeth; and along its terrace might
have been seen in the days of the Commonwealth the stern figure of the
lion-hearted Cromwell. It was the residence of Henry VIII., and the
prison of James I. of Scotland. It is indebted for most of its modern
splendor, to the luxurious taste and prodigal expenditure of George
IV., who obtained from the House of Commons the sum of £300,000 for
the purpose. The suites of royal apartments at present in use by the
Queen are superb in the extreme, especially the state drawing rooms, in
which are nine pictures by Zuccarelli; and St. George's Hall--a vast
apartment in which the state banquets are given.
The long walk, extending about three miles in a direct line to the
Palace, presents the finest vista of its kind in the world. It extends
from the grand entrance of the Castle, to the top of a commanding
hill in the Great Park, which affords a panoramic view of enchanting
beauty, including many places memorable in history. On the right is
the Thames, seen beyond Charter Island, and the plain of Runnymede,
where the Barons extorted _Magna Charta_, whilst in the hazy distance
are the rising eminences of Harrow and Hampstead. On the summit of this
hill stands the equestrian statue of George III. Near the avenue called
Queen Elizabeth's Walk, tradition still points out a withered tree as
the identical oak of "Herne the Hunter," who, as the tale goes,
"Sometimes a keeper here in Windsor Forest,
Doth all the winter time, at still midnight,
Walk round the oak, with great ragged horns."
[We derive this article from an interesting and beautifully
illustrated volume of "Memories of the Great Metropolis," by
FREDERIC SAUNDERS, to be issued in a few days by one of our
leading publishers. We shall notice it again.]
MR. GERARD, THE LION KILLER, AND M. LE BARON MUNCHAUSEN, WHO BEAT HIM.
Jules Gerard is an officer in the famous army of Africa, who has a
passion for lion killing. He is the Gordon Cumming of France. He
follows lions alone; hunts them like sheep, for miles; sleeps near
them; and patiently awaits their coming. Last year we published
(article "Wild Sports in Algeria," _International_, vol. ii. p. 121,)
an account of one of his exploits, to which he now refers us. His last
adventure is sufficiently exciting, and incredibly daring. It is told
in a letter to a friend, and published in the _Journal des Chasseurs_:--
"My dear Léon,--In my narrative of the month of August, 1850,
I spoke of a large old lion which I had not been able to fall
in with, and of whose sex and age I had formed a notion from
his roarings. On the return of the expeditionary column from
Kabylia, I asked permission from General St. Armand to go and
explore the fine lairs situated on the northern declivity of
Mount Aures, in the environs of Klenchela, where I had left
my animal. Instead of a furlough, I received a mission for
that country, and accordingly had during two months to shut
my ears against the daily reports that were brought to me by
the Arabs of the misdeeds of the solitary. In the beginning of
September, when my mission was terminated, I proceeded to pitch
my tent in the midst of the district haunted by the lion, and
set about my investigations round about the _douars_ to which
he paid the most frequent visits. In this manner I spent many
a night beneath the open sky, without any satisfactory result,
when, on the 15th, in the morning, after a heavy rain which
had lasted till midnight, some natives, who had explored the
cover, came and informed me that the lion was ensconced within
half a league of my tent. I set out at three o'clock, taking
with me an Arab to hold my horse, another carrying my arms,
and a third in charge of a goat most decidedly unconscious of
the important part it was about to perform. Having alighted
at the skirt of the wood, I directed myself towards a glade
situated in the midst of the haunt, where I found a shrub to
which I could tie the goat, and a tuft or two to sit upon. The
Arabs went and crouched down beneath the cover, at a distance
of about 100 paces. I had been there about a quarter of an
hour, the goat meanwhile bleating with all its might, when a
covey of partridges got up behind me, uttering their usual
cry when surprised. I looked about me in every direction,
but could see nothing. Meanwhile the goat had ceased crying,
and its eyes were intently fixed at me. She made an attempt
to break away from the fastening, and then began trembling
in all her limbs. At these symptoms of fright I again turned
round, and perceived behind me, about fifteen paces off, the
lion stretched out at the foot of a juniper-tree, through the
branches of which he was surveying us and making wry faces. In
the position I was in, it was impossible for me to fire without
facing about. I tried to fire from the left shoulder but felt
awkward. In turning gently round without rising, I was in a
favorable position, and just as I was levelling my piece the
lion stood up and began to show me all his teeth, at the same
time shaking his head, as much as to say, 'What the devil are
you doing there?' I did not hesitate a moment, and fired at his
mouth. The animal fell on the spot as if struck by lightning.
My men ran up at the shot; and as they were eager to lay hands
on the lion, I fired a second time between the eyes, in order
to secure his lying perfectly still. The first bullet had taken
the course of the spine throughout its entire length, passing
through the marrow, and had come out at the tail. I had never
before fired a shot that penetrated so deeply, and yet I had
only loaded with sixty grains. It is true the rifle was one of
Devisme's and the bullets steel-pointed. The lion, a black one
and among the oldest I have ever shot, supplied the kettles of
four companies of infantry who were stationed at Klenchela.
Receive, my dear Léon, the assurance of my devoted affection.
JULES GERARD."
The exploit of 1850 was the chasing of two lions, one of which he
killed; the other, supposed to be the one now shot, running away from
him and escaping, after a vigorous chase of many miles. Some one--a
celebrated author, indeed, with whose astonishing adventures we have
been familiar from boyhood--envious of the recent fame of Mr. Arthur
Gordon Cumming and M. Jules Gerard, has sent the following letter to
the editor of the London _Times_:
Sir,--The exploit of M. Jules Gerard, recorded in _The Times_
of the 14th inst., is certainly very wonderful, but by no means
equals one performed by myself in South Africa. Observing on
one occasion a large black lion, about 18 feet in length,
reposing under a caoutchouc tree, I fired, and the bullet, like
that of M. Gerard, went right through the backbone and came
out at the tail; but, wonderful to relate, it hit against the
tree, and rebounding, came back the same way and went straight
into the barrel of my rifle, just after I had reloaded with
powder. I instantly presented my piece at the lioness, which
was reposing by the side of her lord, and fired; and thus I
killed two animals (so large that they supplied three regiments
of the line and 200 irregular cavalry with food for nearly a
week) with one and the same bullet. In case any of your readers
should doubt the truth of this statement, I eschew the usual
fashion of writing under a false name, and subscribe myself,
your very obedient servant,
BARON MUNCHAUSEN.
_London_, Oct. 15.
[Illustration: WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT.]
We present to the readers of the _International Magazine_, this month,
from a recent Daguerrotype by Brady, the best portrait ever published
of the greatest living poet who writes the English language.
WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT was born on the third of November, 1794, in
the village of Cummington, Massachusetts. His father, Dr. Peter
Bryant of that place, one of the most eminent physicians of the day,
was possessed of extensive literary and scientific acquirements, an
unusually vigorous and well-disciplined mind, and an elegant and
refined taste. He was fond of study, and sought to infuse into the
minds of his young and growing family, those habits of intellectual
exertion which had been to himself a source of so much exalted
pleasure. It was fortunate for the subject of this notice, that such
was his character; for when his own genius began to discover signs
of its power, he found in his father an able and skilful instructor,
who chastened, improved, and encouraged the first rude efforts of
his boyhood. That parent did not, like the father of Petrarch, burn
the poetic library of his son, amid the tears and groans of the boy;
nor, like the relatives of Alfieri, suppress, for nearly one-third
of his existence, the poetic fervor which consumed his heart; but,
looking upon poetry as a high, perhaps the highest of arts, and poetic
eminence as the noblest fame, he nourished with cheerful care the least
indications of its presence, and supplied the youth with the means of
its culture and growth. Nor were his services unrewarded, as it appears
from Mr. Bryant's solemn Hymn to Death, by the subsequent gratitude and
success of his pupil.
When only ten years of age, Mr. Bryant produced several small poems,
which, though of course marked by the defects and puerilities of so
immature an age, were yet thought to possess sufficient merit to be
published in the newspaper of a neighboring village--the Hampshire
Gazette. His friends, though pleased with these early evidences of
talent, did not injure him with injudicious flattery, but, in the
spirit of Dryden's simile, treated them
"As those who unripe veins in mines explore,
On the rich bed again the warm turf lay,
Till time digests the yet imperfect ore,
Knowing it would be gold another day."
Mr. Bryant acquired the rudiments of his school education under the
care, first of the Rev. Mr. Snell of Brookfield, and then under
that of the Rev. Mr. Hallock of Plainfield, Massachusetts. They
found in him a sprightly and intelligent pupil, better pleased to
lay up knowledge from books, and the silent meditation of nature,
than to join in the ordinary pastimes of children. He was quick of
apprehension, and diligent in pursuit. He rapidly ran through the
usual preliminary studies; and in 1810, then in the sixteenth year
of his age, was entered a member of the sophomore class of Williams'
College. In that institution, he continued his studies with the same
ardor and enthusiasm. He was particularly noted for his fondness for
the classics, and in a little while made himself master of the more
interesting portions of the literature of Greece and Rome. But he
had not been in college more than a year or two, when he asked and
procured an honorable dismission, for the purpose of devoting himself
to the study of the law. This he did in the office of Judge Howe of
Worthington, and afterwards in that of the Hon. William Baylies of
Bridgewater, and, in 1815, was admitted to practice at the bar of
Plymouth.
But, during the period of his studies, Mr. Bryant had not neglected
the cultivation of his poetic abilities. In 1808, before he went to
college, he had published, in Boston, a satirical poem, which attracted
so much attention, that a second edition was demanded in the course of
the next year. "When it is remembered," observes Mr. Leggett, "that
this work was given to the public by an author who had not completed
his fourteenth year, it cannot but be considered a remarkable instance
of early maturity of mind. Pope's Ode to Solitude was written at twelve
years of age; but it possesses neither fancy nor feeling, and except
for the harmony of its versification, is entitled to no particular
praise. His Translation of Sappho to Phaon is indeed an extraordinary
production, and has uniformly received the warmest commendation from
the critics. Yet, it is but a translation, while the poem of our
author, written still earlier in life, is an original effort, and as
such cannot but be received with greater surprise, on account of the
wonderful precocity of judgment, wit, and fancy it exhibits. Like
Cowley's Poetical Blossoms, it must have been composed when the writer
was little more than thirteen; but in point of merit, it is decidedly
superior to these effusions of unripened genius." Certain political
strictures on Mr. Jefferson and his party, which this poem contained,
have given rise, since Mr. Bryant has become conspicuous as an ardent
friend of democracy, to charges of political inconsistency and
faithlessness. They are charges, however, that require no refutation;
and we refer to them now only to remark, that it is a singular evidence
of Mr. Bryant's integrity and discernment, that the only point of
attack which embittered enemies have found in his whole life, are his
unconsidered mutterings when a stripling of only thirteen, living in
times of high political excitement, and among a people who were all of
one way of thinking. How few pass through life with characters so pure
and unassailable!
But what chiefly contributed to give Mr. Bryant rank as a poet, was
the publication, in the North American Review of 1816, of the poem of
Thanatopsis, written four years before, in 1812. That a young man, not
yet nineteen, should have produced a poem so lofty in conception, and
so beautiful in execution, so full of chaste language, and delicate and
striking imagery--and above all, so pervaded by a noble and cheerful
religious philosophy--may well be regarded as one of the most wonderful
events of literary history. And the wonder is increased when we learn,
that this sublime lyric was followed, in the course of the few next
years, by the "Inscription for an Entrance into a Wood," written in
1813, and published in the North American in 1817; by the "Waterfowl,"
written in in 1816, and published in 1818; and by the "Fragment of
Simonides," written in 1811, and published in 1818. In 1821, he wrote
his largest poem, "The Ages," which was delivered before the Phi Beta
Kappa Society of Harvard College, and soon after published at Boston,
in a small volume, in connection with the poems we have already
mentioned, and some others. The appearance of this volume at once
established the fame of Mr. Bryant as a poet.
In the same year Mr. Bryant married a young and amiable lady, Miss
Fairchild, of Great Barrington, Mass., whither he had removed to
prosecute his profession. He was both skilful and successful as a
lawyer, but the labor of the vocation clashing with his poetic and
moral sensibilities, induced him, after a ten years' practice, to
remove, in 1825, to the city of New-York, to commence a career of
literary effort. His fame, which had preceded him, soon procured
him the editorship of the New-York Review, which he managed, in
connection with other gentlemen, with great industry and talent. About
the same time he joined Mr. Gulian C. Verplanck, Mr. Robert Sands,
and Fitz-Greene Halleck, and several young artists of the city, in
the production of an Annual called "The Talisman," which for beauty
and variety of contents, has not been surpassed, even in these more
prolific days of Annuals. Some of Mr. Bryant's contributions to
it place him as a prose writer beside the best of any nation. The
narrative of the "Whirlwind," for accurate description, condensed
energy and eloquence of expression, and touching incident, has always
struck us as one of the master-pieces of writing.
In 1827, Mr. Bryant became an editor of the New-York Evening Post,
and since then, with the exception of the years 1834 and '49, when
he travelled with his family in Europe, has had the almost exclusive
control of that journal. It is by his conduct in this capacity, that he
has acquired his standing as a politician.
We have cause, then, to speak of Mr. Bryant's political character.
When he first undertook the management of the Evening Post, that paper
had taken no decided stand in the politics of the day. Its leanings,
however, were towards the aristocratic party. Mr. Bryant soon infused
into its columns some portion of his native originality and spirit. Its
politics assumed a higher tone, its disquisitions on public measures
became daily more pointed and stirring, and, finally, it declared with
great boldness on what was considered the more liberal side. From that
day to this, it has taken a leading part in political controversies,
and exerted a controlling influence over public opinion. In the fierce
excitement kindled by General Jackson's attack upon the United States
Bank, in the hot debates of the tariff and internal improvement
questions, and in the deeply-agitating, almost convulsive contest
which prostrated the banking system, the Evening Post maintained the
strongest ground, was generally in advance of its day, and never
faltered or flinched in the assertion of the severest tenets of the
democratic creed. Unlike most journals, it did not satisfy itself with
an undiscriminating defence of the temporary doctrines of party, but,
regardless alike of friend and foe, yet cautiously and calmly, it
expressed the whole truth in its length and breadth.
The manner in which Mr. Bryant has conducted these controversies is in
the highest degree honorable to him. He has disdained the miserable
arts by which small minds achieve the triumphs of their party or their
own profit. Drawing his principles from the independent conclusions
of his own mind, he has not shifted with every wind of doctrine. He
has regarded politics, not as the strife of opposing interests, nor
as a factious struggle for party supremacy, nor yet as a predatory
warfare for the spoils of success, but as the solemn conflict of great
principles. He has studied it as a comprehensive science, in which
the rights and happiness of millions of men are interested, and which
has issues and dependencies spreading over the events of many years.
In this light, he has sought to teach its truths, with conscientious
fidelity.
His intellectual adaptation to his calling is in many respects a
striking one. With a mind of quick sagacity, strong reasoning powers,
ready wit, and an inexhaustible fertility, he has been able to perform
its incessant and laborious duties with signal success. Disciplined,
as well as enriched by severe study, he has added to the learning of
books the attainments of extensive observation and travel. His style is
remarkable for its purity and elegance, no less than for the felicity
of its illustrations. In controversy, he most frequently resorts to a
caustic but graceful irony. He is playful without being vulgar, pointed
without grossness, sharp as a Damascus blade, and just as polished.
Nor are the compactness and strength of his expression less to be
admired, than his uniform perspicuity and ease. That he is sometimes
unnecessarily cutting, as some complain, is a fault, if it exist, that
springs from the native integrity of his mind, and the secluded and
refined nature of his pursuits. It has seemed to us, however, that this
alleged severity is no more than the spirit of justice as it manifests
itself in a pure and honest mind. For we doubt if a man more perfectly
just, and less liable to be warped by the questionable compliances of
society, ever lived.
We shall not enter into any criticism of Mr. Bryant's poetry here,
because it has been so fully estimated before, that there is no need of
doing so again; but there is one view which has been taken of it, on
which we shall offer a few remarks. That view occurs in the following
passage of Mr. J. R. Lowell's Fable for Critics:
"There is Bryant, as quiet, as cool, and as dignified,
As a smooth, silent iceberg that never is ignified,
Save when by reflection 'tis kindled o' nights
With a semblance of flame by the chill Northern Lights.
He may rank (Griswold says so) first bard of your nation,
(There's no doubt that he stands in supreme ice-olation,)
Your topmost Parnassus he may set his heel on,
But no warm applauses come, peal following peal on,--
He's too smooth and too polished to hang any zeal on:
Unqualified merits, I'll grant, if you choose, he has 'em,
But he lacks the one merit of kindling enthusiasm;
If he stir you at all, it is just, on my soul,
Like being stirred up with the very North Pole,
"He is very nice reading in summer, but _inter_
_Nos_, we don't want _extra_ freezing in winter;
Take him up in the depth of July, my advice is,
When you feel an Egyptian devotion to ices.
But, deduct all you can, there's enough that's right good in him,
He has a true soul for field, river, and wood in him;
And his heart in the midst of brick walls, or where'er it is,
Glows, softens, and thrills with the tenderest charities--
To you mortals that delve in this trade-ridden planet?
No, to old Berkshire's hills, with their limestone and granite.
If you're one who _in loco_ (add _foco_ here) _desipis_,
You will get out of his outermost heart (as I guess) a piece;
But you'd get deeper down if you came as a precipice,
And would break the last seal of its inwardest fountain,
If you could only palm yourself off for a mountain.
Mr. Quivis, or somebody quite as discerning,
Some scholar who's hourly expecting his learning,
Calls B. the American Wordsworth; but Wordsworth
Is worth near as much as your whole tuneful herd's worth.
No, don't be absurd, he's an excellent Bryant;
But, my friends, you'll endanger the life of your client,
By attempting to stretch him up into a giant:
If you choose to compare him, I think there are two persons
fit for a parallel--Thomson and Cowper;
I don't mean exactly,--there's something of each,
There's T.'s love of nature, C.'s penchant to preach;
Just mix up their minds so that C.'s spice of craziness
Shall balance and neutralize T.'s turn for laziness,
And it gives you a brain cool, quite frictionless, quiet,
Whose internal police nips the buds of all riot,--
A brain like a permanent strait-jacket put on
The heart which strives vainly to burst off a button,--
A brain which, without being slow or mechanic,
Does more than a larger less drilled, more volcanic;
He's a Cowper condensed, with no craziness bitten,
And the advantage that Wordsworth before him has written.
Now, what is the main charge here: that Mr. Bryant, while he has great
sympathy with external nature, with mountains and precipices, has no
sympathy with his fellow-man. 'Tis a weighty charge--the weightiest
that can be made against a man or a poet. It says virtually that he
has no soul, no heart, no impulse, no feeling, except for brutes and
vegetables; in short, that he is no better than a heathen savage, a
regular worshipper of stocks and stones, without natural affection, or
without God in the world. "For," as the apostle queries very wisely,
"if he love not man, whom he hath seen, how can he love God, whom he
hath not seen?" Your lines, then, Mr. Quiz, imply nothing less than
black, bleak, barren, unredeemed practical Atheism!
But can there be the remotest semblance of truth in them? Is our Bryant
such a heathen or atheist as not to know his fellow-men except they
present themselves in the disguise of mountains, or he see them, like
the prophet, as trees walking? We appeal to you, young ladies, who have
been melted into tears by his pathos. We appeal to you, young men,
whose every purpose of good has been quickened into livelier action by
his words; and to you, old heads, whose experience has learned a riper
and mellower wisdom from his fine meditative views of the ends and aims
of life.
Yet, before you render your concurrent answers, with somewhat of
indignation that anybody could put you upon the task, let us, in good
American sort, begin with a few statistics. This is a question of fact,
and since it has been raised, we will determine it by facts.
There are, in Carey & Hart's splendid edition of Bryant--we mean
splendid as to the typography and paper, and not inclusive of those
ill-drawn sketches of Leutze, who has made the women all German and
given Mr. William Tell of Switzerland a straddle as wide as the
Dardanelles, to say nothing of the hideous face of Rizpah and that
Monk so excessively huge as to stand some forty feet from the pillar
against which he leans--this splendid edition, we say, contains just
one hundred and thirty-two poems, all told, to which,--stand up and
listen, to the sentence, Mr. Lowell!--more than seventy refer wholly to
subjects of an exclusively human interest--man in his being and doing,
while nine out of ten of the rest, though occupied primarily with
some phase of external nature, are yet so managed as to weave a deep
and beautiful human philosophy,--with the dull and dead proceedings
of the mechanical world. Yes, Mr. Critic, we say that there is a
very fine, a very rich, a very noble and very touching vein of human
sentiment, which runs through all of Bryant's writings, whereby, even
as much as Wordsworth, he makes these mountains and precipices a part
of our human life, and whereby, too, he makes the whole of us, who
read him lovingly, that is, who read him at all, much better men and
women, in our several spheres. No human sympathies forsooth! Why there
are hundreds, nay, thousands, of us, who have derived many of their
tenderest and noblest humanities from this very cold-blooded He-Daphne;
this fleshless marble Apollo,--this Ice-Palace and Alpine glacier,--far
shining brilliant, but oh how frigid!
By poems of an exclusive human interest, we mean, such as bear directly
on man's experience and duties and relations in this life: such as
the Ages, for instance, which commemorates the progress of humanity,
through all its trials and triumphs: such as Thanatopsis, which makes
the grave glorious, and pours the light of a lofty and serene religion
around our darkest hour: such as the Old Man's Funeral, more divine in
its descriptive beauty than the best sermon we ever heard: such as the
Battle Field, which animates us with the voice of trumpet to meet the
stern struggles of daily warfare: and such as many others in the same
vein, to say nothing of the Murdered Traveller, the Massacre at Scio,
the Hunter of the Prairies, the Living Lost, the Crowded Street, the
Greek Boy, the Arctic Lover, the African Chief, the Child's Funeral,
&c., &c. These could only have been prompted by a strong feeling of
sympathy with man, and though executed with the nicest finish of art,
are yet full of touching pathos and sentiment. The best proof of this
is, that they invariably excite the emotions they were intended to
excite--and that, too, in no milk and waterish way. They sink straight
into the heart; they open the fountains of the feelings; they send the
salt water to the eyes (if that be needed); they make the blood tingle;
in short, they produce that all-overishness which comes upon one when
he sees a fine action on the stage, or reads a noble passage in an
oration, or looks at Lentze's Washington. Try it on yourself, if you
don't believe it, or, what is better, try it on your little girl and
boy, whose feelings are not yet case-hardened or frozen over! It will
be a queer kind of frigidity that they will be witness to. Why, bless
your soul, Mr. Lowell, we are free to confess that we have ourselves
long, long ago, cried over the Indian Girl's Lament, and the Death of
the Flowers,--yes, cried, and we say it without shame,--indeed, with
a strange sense of regret that we cannot cry now over things of that
sort. _Eheu, eheu fugaces_, &c.
More than that, we have asseverated that even in poems which are
not immediately emotional, which are directed to some phase of mere
external nature, the humanitary tendencies of Bryant break out, or
shine through as veins of silver from the rocks. It is, in fact,
one of his most charming peculiarities, that he habitually connects
great moral and social truths with the various aspects of nature. His
muse is never satisfied with celebrating the pomp and glory of the
external world; she must find a deeper meaning in all than what the
eye sees or the ear hears; she must trace some beautiful analogy,
some spiritual significance on which both mind and heart can repose.
Bryant's descriptions of nature, it is granted, are accurate to a line;
what he speaks he knows; he finds no nightingales nor cowslips just
three thousand miles away from where it is possible for them to live;
and he never writes from his memory of books; yet his descriptions
are more than mere descriptions,--dull scientific catalogues of
quantities,--herbariums of dried plants,--museums of withered lifeless
twigs, and of stuffed animals standing thereupon! They have all a
meaning under them--a hidden wisdom--a genial yet profound human soul.
It is thus that he has wound our affections around the North Star, the
Winds, Monument Mountain, and even the Ruffled Grouse. How often, too,
in the midst of his general meditations and philosophizings, does some
touching individual allusion creep in, to show that the poet's heart is
all alive with sensibility: as in the Hymn to Death, which closes with
that solemn monody on the Departure of his Father:
"Alas! I little thought that the stern Power,
Whose fearful praise I sung, would try me thus,
Before the strain was ended. It must cease.--
For he is in his grave, who taught my youth
The art of verse, and in the bud of life
Offered me to the Muses. Oh, cut off
Untimely! when the reason in its strength
Ripened by years of toil and studious search,
And watch of Nature's silent lessons, taught
The hand to practice best the lenient art,
To which thou gavest thy laborious days,
And last, thy life. And, therefore, when the earth
Received thee, tears were in unyielding eyes,
And on hard cheeks, and they who deemed thy skill
Delayed their death hour, shuddered and turned pale
When thou wert gone. This faltering verse which thou
Shalt not, as wont, o'erlook, is all I have
To offer at thy grave,--this--and the hope
To copy thy example, and to leave
A name of which the wretched shall not think
As of an enemy's, whom they forgive
As all forgive the dead. Rest, therefore, thou
Whose early guidance trained my infant steps--
Rest, on the bosom of God, till the brief sleep
Of Death is over--and a happier life
Shall dawn to waken thine insensible dust!"
Does an iceberg write in that strain, we should like to know? Or does
it mourn the death of the flowers, in this wise:
"And then I think of one, who in her youthful beauty died,
The fair meek blossom that grew up and faded by my side,
In the cold moist earth we laid her, when the forest cast the leaf,
And we wept that one so lovely should have a life so brief.
Yet not unmeet it was that one like that young friend of ours,
So gentle and so beautiful, should perish with the flowers."
Or do icebergs yearn thus for communion in the after world with the
beloved spirits of this:
"In meadows fanned by Heaven's life-breathing wind
In the resplendence of that glorious sphere,
And larger movements of the unfettered mind
Wilt thou forget the love that joined us here?
The love that lived through all the stormy past,
And meekly with my harsher nature bore,
And deeper grew and tenderer to the last,
Shall it expire with life and be no more?"
Truly, that iceberg theory must be surrendered, it must melt and give
way before the gentle warmth of these words, and the thousand other
such words which any reader of Bryant will instantly recall.
But, having convinced and confuted Mr. Critic, we will proceed to
observe that there is after all a foundation of truth--a slender
one--for his towering superstructure of ridicule. It is this: that in
the outset of his career, Mr. Bryant's sympathies were, not too much
with external Nature, but too little with Man. At the same time, we
maintain that he has been constantly correcting this fault, and has
written more and more, the older he has grown, to the human heart. He
is not, and we hope never will be, a passionate writer, like Byron:
he is not one who deals, like Burns, with the warm, gushing, homely
affections of the poor every where: he has none of Schiller's energy of
conviction: none of the naive, playful garrulous bonhomie of Beranger;
simply, because he is of another order of man from all these. He is
quiet, gentle, contemplative, modest,--wise. Yet if no lava-tides
of passion burn through his veins, as were said to run through the
veins of Alfieri; if he is not, as Carlyle said of Dante, "a red-hot
cone of fire" shooting steadily up into the sky; if he cannot, with
Shakespeare, or Goethe, make the blood quiver and thrill for weeks by a
single word; he is still not a frigid, heartless writer, not altogether
an ice mountain, which dazzles always but never warms. He is too
earnest, too truthful, too good for that; too deeply penetrated by the
spiritual realities of life, too democratic in his aspirations for our
race, too hopeful of the future developments of society, in short, too
finely touched with that feminine element which is the characteristic
of genius. Besides, the great internal fires of the Earth, which shoot
up in terrific and explosive violence, stupendous as they are, do not
nurse the tender bud into life, nor cover the earth with verdure and
fruit. This is left to the genial sunshine and the warm summer rains.
In private intercourse, Mr. Bryant is what all his writings, poetical
as well as prose, indicate. His life is that of a student of
elegant and lofty literature. He is reserved in his manner, almost
to repulsiveness, yet in the social circle is witty, amiable, and
affectionate. When his sympathies are interested, the spirit of
tenderness and benevolence gleams like a flame from his eyes, and plays
around his features in a beautiful radiance. In his opinions of men, he
endeavors to be just; but when he is not just, the leaning is towards
the side of mercy. A strong natural irritability has been disciplined
by stern effort into the subjection of reason; and his tastes and
habits, though refined by careful culture, are as simple as those of a
child. Those who know him best are at a loss which most to admire, the
superiority of his faculties, or the modesty of his deportment.
SLIDING SCALES OF DESPAIR.
The London _Morning Chronicle_, after an observation that a hurriedly
written epitaph always appears, in the course of time, to require
revisal, expresses its admiration for the good sense of a Parisian
sculptor, who, when he took his instructions for a monument, insisted
upon the _veuve inconsolable_ or the heartstricken husband penning the
intended inscription, and even signing the holograph, as a further
authority to him for immortalizing so much utter despair. "The day
before the record was actually to be cut for eternity, his habit was to
send the inscription book to the mourner's house, lest any correction
should be desired. The havoc which, upon receiving back the volume, he
usually found made among laudatory adjectives and adverbs of infinity,
was, to a good man, a delightful evidence of the cooling and healing
powers of time."
DEATH IN YOUTH.
WRITTEN FOR THE INTERNATIONAL MONTHLY MAGAZINE.
BY H. W. PARKER.
'Tis sad to leave the lovely world,
The blazoned banner of the sky,
And all the Earth's sublimity,
Are, day by day, in light unfurled,
In glory float before the eye.
The practised ear and eye are clearer,
The heart is deeper, Nature dearer,
From year to year: 'tis sad to die.
'Tis hard to leave the busy world--
To feel our courage mounting high
On thoughts that just begin to fly,
Then arrow-struck and swiftly hurled
Downward to dim obscurity.
Our life is always a beginning,
A hope of honor worth the winning;
We hope to do, and hoping, die.
'Tis hard to leave a stormy world,
When every watcher may descry
A happy Future drawing nigh,
And all the nations, onward whirled,
Behold the sunny shores that lie
Beyond that ever-heaving ocean--
The Present, with its wild commotion;
Alas, to see, to sink, to die.
And yet to leave a weary earth
For higher life, is well, we know,
Our being is a constant flow,
And death itself is newer birth;
The seed decays that it may grow;
A world sublime awaits the dying
Who purely lived. Away with sighing;
The Past is passed; 'tis well to go.
A GERMAN HAND-BOOK OF AMERICA.
We have at present in our hands several recently published European
works relative to America, all of which possess more than ordinary
claims to attention. We have, however, chosen the most unpretending as
the subject of our present remarks, since, for the thinking majority of
our readers, it will undoubtedly prove the most interesting. The volume
to which we allude is entitled, _Des Auswanderers' Handbuch_, or, _The
Emigrants' Hand-book: a True Sketch of the United States of North
America, and Reliable Counsellor for Men of every Rank and Condition
who propose Emigrating Thither: by_ GEORGE M. VON ROSS, of North
America, Editor of the "_Allgemeinen Auswanderungs-Zeitung_" (Universal
Emigration Journal). Published at Elberfeld and Iserlohn, by Julius
Baedeker.
The author, according to his preface, is an American by birth, and
was for many years a farmer in the eastern, western, and southwestern
sections of the United States. That he is not without learning
and ability is evinced by his remarkably excellent work entitled
_Taschen-Fremdwörterbuch, oder Verdeutschung von mehr als 16,000
Fremdwörter_--(_i. e._ a Pocket Dictionary of Foreign Words, or the
adoption into German of more than Sixteen Thousand Foreign Words).
This book is familiar in Germany, and exhibits great philological
acumen, as well as a thorough knowledge of German in its minutest
difficulties. At one time Mr. Ross distinguished himself by attacking
Schröter's well-known pamphlet relative to the Catholic emigration to
St. Mary's, in Pennsylvania, and he has since published a smaller work
for emigrants, entitled _Rathschlage und Warnungen_, or, Counsels and
Warning.
The performance now before us is written in that straightforward
practical style which may be best characterized by the statement that
"He had something to say, _and he said it_." That it is impartial is
not its least merit. A foreigner, it is true, may occasionally be found
who passes unprejudiced judgments on another country, but that any one
still retaining home-born sympathies and feelings with his native land
should do so is a wonder. And we deem it a creditable thing in this
work, that where he is called upon to describe any calling, trade,
or profession, he is not afraid to say boldly--In this calling the
German cannot succeed--in that, he is unapt--in a third, the American
surpasses him; while, on the other hand, he amply encourages the
emigrant as regards occupations for which he is qualified. Many writers
of such books have cast a _couleur de rose_ light over every thing
(well knowing that by such means their books would be more saleable),
and induced industrious men, following callings unheard of in this
country, to emigrate, in the absurd hope of finding more constant and
better paid employment here than at home. An intelligent American, who
would not cross the Atlantic, or hardly ascend in a balloon, without
previously _calculating_ the time and chances of arrival or descent,
and who certainly would do neither without first informing himself as
to every imaginable particular of his ultimate destination, can hardly
conceive the vast necessity of such books. He would, by every means,
gather information from those who had visited in person the destined
land. Not so the common German emigrant. Thousands embark in the belief
that New-York is some mysterious golden-glowing Indian city, surrounded
by orange groves and palm-trees. In the village of Weinsberg, in
Suabia, several years since, a well-educated student was overheard to
remark of some peasants, "Tell them that in your country the people
have two heads, and they'll believe you."
Let us now, by extracts, give our readers an idea of the manner in
which Mr. Von Ross describes the land of his birth to the land of his
adoption. The first item of interest is his sketches of the respective
characteristics of the Yankee and Southerner.
"Superficial observers have spoken of the inhabitant of the Northern
States as if money were his only aim--as if he were inspired only by
selfishness and avarice--and as if he estimated men by the weight of
their purses. But those who regard him closely, and judge otherwise
than by first appearances, will discover in him a calculating
(_berechnenden_), enterprising, thoroughly practical man, caring
little for pleasure, and seeking his recreation (_erholung_) in the
domestic circle. They will find in him a man who, with iron industry,
fights his way through life, esteeming wealth, it is true--not the
inherited, however, but _the earned_, which testifies to the ability
of its possessor. A man, in fine, who with unbending courage bears
the blow of destiny, and is thereby only stimulated to new exertions.
The Southerner, on the contrary, is more _chivalresque_--he lives to
live. The climate in which he is born has also a material influence
upon his manners, customs, and character: effecting, in reality, the
same difference which we observe between the cool, reflective, tough
North German, and the jovial, genial, easily excited South German,
or Frenchman. We would hardly have deemed it necessary to inform the
reader that in _thus_ sketching the inhabitants of the United States in
light outlines, we do not include the mixed and Europeanized population
of the Atlantic cities, had we not learned by experience that many
travellers slightly acquainted only with the Atlantic States and their
vicinity, have from these sketched all North America and its people. He
who would know the American, must also know the cities of the interior.
"If, in addition to these characteristics, we should describe the
personal and distinctive appearance of the Northerner and Southerner,
we would say that the first are, generally speaking, large, tall,
and spare--their ladies beautiful and of delicate complexion; while
the Southerners are broad-shouldered and powerful--the female sex
being voluptuously formed and beautiful, but when not subject to the
influence of exercise and fresh air of a sallow complexion.
"Every North American is--and who has a better right so to _be_--an
enthusiastic _honorer (vereher) of his fatherland_, but he does not
measure out by inches the limits of his native land, or bound his
patriotism by the clod on which his cradle rested--for to him the
roar of the Rio del Norte, the thunder-peal of Niagara, and the
murmur of the Pacific or Atlantic oceans have equally a familiar,
home-like sound. Nor less than the land of his birth does he esteem
its laws, constitution, and institutions, and regards them in nowise
as oppressive, but as protective. Those laws he made for himself, and
chose himself as their executor. RESPECT FOR THE LAW is to the American
self-respect.
"The so often blamed _national pride_ of the American, if not really
praiseworthy, is at least pardonable; for a nation which could rise
like a single man, and, at every sacrifice, throw off the yoke
of England--a nation which has given birth to such men as GEORGE
WASHINGTON, THOMAS JEFFERSON, BENJAMIN FRANKLIN, and many others whose
names are mentioned with wonder all over this world--a nation which
occupies the first rank in trade, commerce, and industry, _may_ be
proud, and _must_ be proud, as long as its power is free from sloth and
lethargy."
And here we may be permitted to interrupt for an instant our noble
Man of Ross (the reader will observe that he wears the aristocratic
_von_), for the sake of saying a good word over this honest,
hard-fisted go-ahead eulogium of our country. There be those
ultra-Europeanized, or _soi-disant_ refinedly educated Americans,
who will complacently smile at this recapitulation of United States
excellencies, and if slangily inclined, brand it as "pea-nut," "stump
eloquence," and "Fourth-of-Julyism." The sum-total being, that it
is vulgar rhodomontade. With all due respect, we think differently.
Let the reader remember that this is addressed to a German--a
_foreign_--audience, who are greatly in need just at present of a
few scraps of such oratory as this, were it only to counteract the
malignant influences of the English tourists, whose works are far more
extensively read in Germany than we imagine. Mrs. Trollope's work on
America, which, at the present day, is regarded only with contempt or
laughter by the educated in England, has been, and is even yet, read
with a feeling akin to wonder by the honest simple-hearted Germans. A
wonder indeed so intense, at the marvellous marvels therein narrated,
that it generally results in inspiring in the mind of the reader
credulous enough to believe, an intense desire to visit the land of
liberty.
"In no part of the world are ladies treated with so much respect as in
North America. They can make, by land or water, the longest journeys
without the apprehension of having their sense of delicacy offended
by hearing an improper expression, and, as far as _public_ opinion is
concerned, the law allows them privileges greater than they obtain in
any other country. By marriage, the wife enters at once into equal
possession of her husband's property; the simple testimony of a woman
is of the same force as the oath of a man, and the testimony of a woman
when confirmed by oath, can only be neutralized by the oaths of three
men. The ill-treatment of a wife by her husband is severely punished;
but such cases are as unusual of occurrence as that a woman takes undue
advantage of her rights. It may moreover be confidently asserted, that
America is the true home of connubial love. The consciousness of her
rights gives the American lady a dignity of manner which admirably
blends with the amiable attractions of her sex. Not a little of the
fascination so peculiar to the ladies of North America is, however,
due to the circumstance that no woman--not even the poorest--is ever
obliged to perform any task based upon merely physical strength. She
rules at _home_ undisputed; and this is the reason why the poorest
house in America is a model of neatness and order."
"'_Help yourself_' (aid yourself), is a favorite phrase of the
American, and which has given him the character of wanting in charity,
while in fact it is nothing but a simple indication of the means
by which every man in sound health can in that country relieve his
poverty. _Work_ in America is neither difficult to obtain, nor is
it hemmed in and oppressed by the regulations and requirements of
_guilds_, unions, and peculiar laws. _Beggars_ and _vagabonds_ find
indeed no favor in his eyes; but unfortunate guiltless poverty
invariably meets with his warmest aid, as is evidenced by the numerous
hospitals, institutions, &c., which would astonish any one reflecting
on the youth of the country. Kindness and hospitality may also be
included among his virtues.
"From which the reader may justly infer, that beggary and theft are
rare in the United States; and though it may be alleged that such
occurrences are frequent in the large cities, it may be at the same
time remembered that these are the _rendezvous_ of the scum of all
nations, while on the other hand the fact, that in the country, and
even in the villages, locks are rare on house and stable doors, affords
the strongest confirmation that America presents by far fewer instances
of robbery than the greater part of Europe."
After which, Herr Von Ross indulges in a few attractive remarks on the
facility of marriage in America, which would, however, prove far less
astonishing to our American, than to his German readers: concluding
with the following paragraph, which is not devoid of a certain degree
of observation:
"Young married couples whose means will not permit them to keep house,
pass their first year of wedded life in boarding-houses, by which means
the facilities to marriage are greatly extended."
The following passages on our alleged want of sociability identify
us to a certain degree, and to our minds not unpleasantly, with our
English cousins. Of all persons, those to be most pitied or despised
are "the weak brethren," who, devoid of internal or intellectual
resources, or manly self-reliance, declaim against a nation or a
society at large because its members, forsooth, do not receive them
with open arms. The true _citoyen du monde_--the genuine cosmopolite,
never has occasion to make this complaint against any country. For the
more a man depends on himself and the less on others for happiness,
just in that proportion will it be his luck to attract sympathy and
sociability when among strangers. Narrow-minded Spaniards, and those
of other nations, _who travel for the express purpose of getting into
fashionable society_, are peculiarly liable to this reproach. Such a
foreigner have we heard, minutely and boringly detailing to a stern
circle of impregnable natives, the noble and munificent style of
hospitality with which _they_ would be treated, were they visitors
in _his_ fatherland: "In my contree 'spose you come strangére in one
cittee, a gentleman take you in hees house. In ze morning come one
buttiful gairl wiz coffees. Zen dey send you one horse carriage for
make de promenàde. Aftair dinner come buttiful gairls again wiz ticket
on silvare waiter for whole opera box! Wat you sink of dat, hey?"
"_Think!_" replied a native, "why I think that you take great pains to
make a strange gentleman feel _very uncomfortable_." But to return to
our writer.
"Strangers who have hastily travelled and superficially examined
America, and those who have judged by the statements of others rather
than by their own experience, have ascribed to the American a want of
sociability and a stiff and repulsive manner towards strangers. True
it is that in America it is no very easy matter to become intimate
with a man or establish one's self in his family circle--but he who
has once attained this point, becomes a home friend in the fullest
sense of the word, and will find hidden beneath the stern, earnest
exterior of the American, a warm heart, and in his conversation a
remarkable degree of familiar confidence. Those who have detected in
the confident manner and sense of independence which the American
manifests, any thing approaching to presumption, must assuredly have
been the newly arrived, who could not accustom themselves to the idea
that even laborers should consider that they had with others equal
right to express their opinions. The man, however, who is free from
prejudice will not fail to admire a nation, wherein the poorest is on
an equality with the richest, and where the rich, at least, do not
take it on themselves to assert their superiority. Seldom, indeed, do
we find a native American, conscious of his right to equality, giving
a stranger (his possible superior in intelligence or education) to
understand that he considers himself quite as good as any one--the
right is to him a thing so natural, that it never even occurs to
him to boast of it. This is, unfortunately, far from being the case
with the majority of the more ignorant German emigrants, accustomed
in their own country to oppressive laws, and not unfrequently hard
treatment, yet without learning the orderly conduct which these should
have taught, and who think that in America they have a right to do as
they please. The American Germans seem to entertain the opinion that
it is their republican duty, at all times, with or without occasion
or provocation, to give to every man belonging in Europe to the
higher classes, to understand and feel that the difference of rank
is not recognized--as if indeed, in America far more than in Europe,
education and culture did not of themselves indicate the rank which
a man occupies. These American Germans all nourish the jealousy of
trade (_Brodneid_) the miserable little hatreds, and the whole range
of German disunity or local enmities, which they brought over with
them, with a care and zeal worthy of a better cause. Seldom indeed do
we hear a German there call himself German, he remains as of old a
Prussian, a Bavarian, a Hanoverian, a Hessian, or an Altenburger. Even
the irritation between North and South Germans still continues, but let
one of them only get together so many scraps of English as will barely
render him intelligible, _then_ he denies his fatherland--Americanizes
both Christian and surnames--adopts tobacco chewing, and other evil
customs of the New World, and draws on himself with full justice the
contempt of his more sensible fellow-countrymen and the ridicule of the
Americans. Let no one misunderstand us, we pronounce this hard judgment
not against the entire German population of North America, but still
a great--a very great portion thereof are with the fullest justice
obnoxious to these charges, and he who has lived any time in the German
districts of North America, and more particularly among the German, or
German descended population of Pennsylvania, will agree with us with
all his heart."
These are not amiable words, even if merited, but we must still admire
the energy with which the blow is given. Often have we despised the
contemptible and weak spirit which could induce so many almost newly
arrived Germans to change fine sounding and easily enunciable names,
into vulgar, snobbish appellatives for which no child would thank
them. Often have we wondered at the pitiable impertinence with which
ignorant Deutschers have taken it upon themselves, in the second
rate American-German journals to abuse our national observance of
the Sabbath, or our respect for women, and despised the small-minded
eagerness with which they caught up any petty disrespect toward
females, and cited it complacently as a proof that this noble attribute
was on the wane in _the land of their adoption_. Often have we been
amazed at the readiness with which illiterate rascals, whose ideas of
government or political liberty, were at home bounded by the word:
"_Polizei_," "_Strafe_," "_Wanderbuch_," "_Zuchthaus_," and "_Fechten_"
take it upon themselves to curse, ban and vilify the only land in the
world where they could find bread or protection. But again, with Mr.
Ross, we earnestly protest that we do _not_ believe that such conduct
or such foolish ingratitude can ever with justice be attributed to any
respectable or well educated Germans. Some few there have been, indeed,
who, urged by the selfish stimulant of a desire for popularity, have
thus flattered the prejudices of their more ignorant fellow-countrymen,
but none who have thus spoken from the heart.
In conclusion, we may remark that if, as has generally been said, we
are a sensitive race, attaching undue importance to the good opinion of
our neighbors, and striving infinitely more than we need to keep up a
good national reputation, we ought to be much obliged to all who, like
Mr. Ross, preach to other countries in their own tongue and with such a
peculiarly distinct enunciation, their candid and unbiased opinion of
their native land. What must strike the reader is indeed the remarkably
unembarrassed and independent air with which he addresses his audience,
and the coolness with which, on their own ground, he points out their
own defects, and their general inferiority to the freemen of "this
great and glorious country." He tells them that America is a land of
hard work--a church-going, Sabbath-keeping, God-fearing, moral land,
for which they must prepare themselves; and no Methodist ever assured
his flock of his solemn conviction that they were all irreclaimable
sinners, with greater earnestness than Mr. Ross announces to his
public, in the plainest terms, that the great majority of the German
emigrants to America are a pack of graceless, narrow-minded, ignorant,
fatherland-denying knaves; ending with an earnest appeal to all whom
it may concern, or are therein informed, to know if they do not with
heart and soul (_aus vollum Flerzen_) coincide with him in these
views. But the American reader who for an instant imagines that Mr.
Ross will lose either popularity or reputation among his auditors,
is decidedly mistaken. Accustomed as we are to regard with nervous
anxiety the slightest opinion of the most insignificant foreigner
regarding our country, and to raise high very tornadoes of indignation
against such writers as have abused our own manners and customs, we
can hardly conceive that an author after "_giving it_" to his readers
in such a remarkably hot-and-heavy style, and, to make all perfectly
intelligible, concluding with the assurance that it is from his very
heart, can still proceed quietly, editing a paper, keeping up his list,
and remaining unmobbed.
But we trust that the day is not distant when foreigners will no
longer be able to taunt us with undue sensitiveness. So rapidly have
we of late years increased in power, in wealth, in influence, that
our conviction of our own might has not kept pace with its growth.
Like the young giant in Rabelais, we have lain in our cradle without
an attempt to break the chain. But with the consciousness of our vast
and immovable moral and political superiority (a consciousness which
despite the good self-opinion so generally attributed to Americans,
has hitherto scarce dawned on us), will come a quiet disregard of the
united abuse and laughter of all Europe. A Dickens may _then_ issue
his "Notes"--a Marryatt, publish his "Diary"--without attracting the
attention or anger of the American press from Maine to Mexico.
And why need such works irritate our entire public _now_? Nay, we
believe the period of our extravagant sensibility to foreign opinions
must at length be considered as past, and that hereafter we shall be
more in peril of excess of recklessness and bravado. The effect of this
loss of a national characteristic we shall not here speculate upon. But
a brief period will be necessary for its illustration.
GONDOLETTAS.
A RECOLLECTION OF MENDELSSHON'S "SONGS WITHOUT
WORDS."
WRITTEN FOR THE INTERNATIONAL MONTHLY MAGAZINE.
BY ALICE B. NEAL.
THE PARTING.
Far out in the moonlight how softly we glide!
Scarce knowing, scarce heeding the lapse of the tide.
I watch the light shadows steal over thy face,
And pillow thy head in a last, long embrace.
Thy heart keeps low music still beating to mine,
Thy white arms around me I slowly entwine--
I part the wild tresses that shroud thy pale cheek,
I kiss thee--I clasp thee--no word dare I speak.
Alas! that star-light should fade from the sky!
Alas for the parting that draweth so nigh!
Glide slowly--ye ripples--flow softly, oh tide!
For the silence of _death_, must the living divide.
MEMORIES.
Again, but alone, I am out on the sea--
I come, where so often I floated with thee;
I list for the tones of thy low evening hymn--
But the breeze hath a moan--and the starlight is dim.
I think of thee here, of thy deep mournful eyes,
That spoke to my own in mute, thrilling replies;
Of thy gentle caress, and thy cold brow, so pale,
When I pressed that last kiss--but I utter no wail!
I garner in silence the memories of years,
With yearnings too tender, too hopeless for tears;
For down 'neath the stillness and hush of its waves,
_The tide of my life, like the sea, hath its graves_!
THE DUTCH GOVERNORS OF NEW AMSTERDAM.
COMMUNICATED TO THE INTERNATIONAL MAGAZINE
BY JOHN ROMEYN BRODHEAD.[2]
In the year 1649, there appeared in Holland a small anonymous pamphlet
of forty-two pages, bearing the imprint of Antwerp, and entitled
_Breeden Raedt, aen de Vereenighde Nederlandeche Provintien_, or Plain
Counsels to the United Netherlands' Provinces. It is very rare; the
only copy I know of, in this country, is the one with which I have been
kindly furnished by my friend Mr. Campbell, the Deputy Librarian at the
Hague.
[2] The substance of this interesting article was read by Mr. Brodhead
at the last meeting of the Historical Society.--_Ed. International._
It purports to be a conversation between ten Dutch interlocutors,
respecting the trade of the Netherlands West India Company. The chief
speaker, is a Dutch "schipper," who had been in New Netherland. In
the course of his remarks, he gives many very interesting and novel
details, concerning the two directors, Kieft and Stuyvesant, and their
respective administrations. As some of these particulars have never
before been known to our historians, I propose to translate a few of
the most interesting. It is very evident, however, that the narrator
was not a mere schipper of a merchant vessel. He was intimately
acquainted with the details of the local politics of New Netherland;
and evidently was personally unfriendly both to Kieft and Stuyvesant.
From internal evidence, and for various other reasons, I have been
led to believe that this little work was prepared by or under the
superintendence of Cornelius Melyn, who had been one of the foremost
and most consistent advocates of the popular cause under Kieft, and who
suffered gross injustice from the tyrannical and oppressive conduct of
Stuyvesant. The title-page of the tract states that it was "prepared
and compiled from divers true and veritable memorials, by 'I. A.,'" who
is described as G.W.O., perhaps Gezaghebber, or Director of the West
India Company. Whoever these initials, I. A., are meant to represent,
the author seems to have fully adopted the views and expressed the
feelings of Melyn. While, therefore, some allowance should be made
for occasional exhibitions of personal bitterness, the statements in
the Breeden Raedt appear to be entitled to full credit, respecting
the facts which they relate. Some of these are entirely novel; others
are confirmatory of what we have before known; all of them seem to be
entirely harmonious with the story of New Netherland.
The antecedents of director Kieft, (of whom we have heretofore known
little or nothing previously to his arrival at Manhattan in 1638), are
thus related: "William Kieft was born at Amsterdam. From youth he was
educated as a merchant; and, after having taken charge of, or rather
neglected, his own and his master's business, for a certain time, at
Rochelle, he happened to fail there. Upon which, according to custom,
his portrait was stuck upon the gallows there, as several living
witnesses, who have seen it with their own eyes, can yet testify. This
man, having been for some time out of business, was employed to ransom
several Christian prisoners out of Turkey. To such a bankrupt the
money was intrusted. He went and freed some, for whom there was the
least to pay; but the others, whose friends had contributed the most
money, he left in bondage. For these, their parents and friends were
once more obliged to raise funds. This fine brother was appointed by
the directors, to be Director over the inhabitants and trade of New
Netherland in the year 1637."
The events of the Indian war in 1643, are referred to with a
distinctness which leaves little doubt that the narrator was himself,
one of the witnesses of them. In these respects, the Breeden Raedt
confirms the statements of De Vries and other authorities in the
Holland documents at Albany. With respect to the transactions on Long
Island in 1644, and the civil and religious difficulties which divided
the people against director Kieft until his successor arrived in 1647,
the pamphlet exhibits several interesting and novel details.
Stuyvesant is described as "the son of a clergyman in Friesland, and
who formerly, at Franiker (the seat of a famous high school, now
extinct), had robbed the daughter of his own landlady. Being caught
in the fact, he had been let off for his father's sake; otherwise it
would perhaps have been there, that he must have paid the penalty of
his first offence." On his arrival in New Netherland, Stuyvesant is
described as conducting himself as arrogantly as the "Grand Duke of
Moscovy," and as promptly taking the side of his predecessor Keift,
against Melyn and Kuyter, the leaders of the popular party. In this,
the Breeden Raedt confirms our official accounts. The two patriots
were tried, convicted, and sentenced to be fined, and transported to
Holland. They were sent as prisoners on board the ship Princess, in
which the late director Kieft, and Dominie Everardus Bogardus, the
first clergyman in New Netherland also embarked. The ship struck on
the English coast, "where this ungodly Kieft seeing death before his
eyes, sighing very deeply, dubiously addressed both these (Kuyter and
Melyn): 'Friends, I have done you wrong, can you forgive me?' The ship
being broken into eight fragments, drove the whole night in the water.
By daybreak, the greater part (of passengers) were drowned. Cornelius
Melyn lost his son. Dominie Bogardus, Kieft, Captain John De Vries,
and a great number of people were drowned. There was swallowed up a
great treasure with Kieft, for the ship was returning with more than
four hundred thousand guilders. Joachim Petersen Kuyter remained alone
on one of the fragments of the ship, upon which there was a piece of
cannon sticking out of a port, with which he was saved at daylight. He
had taken it for a man and had spoken to it, but receiving no answer
thought he was dead. In the end, he was thrown on shore with it, to
the great astonishment of the English, who came down to the strand by
thousands, and who set up the piece of cannon as a lasting memorial.
Melyn floating on his back in the sea, fell in with others who were
clinging to a part of the wreck, and was driven on a sand bank, which
became dry with the ebb tide." From this place they made their escape
to the shore. Kuyter and Melyn, after saving their lives, became most
solicitous to secure their papers, which were to serve for their
defence in Holland against the sentences which had been pronounced on
them in New Netherland. After three days' labor, they fished up a box
containing these valued papers. With these they proceeded to Amsterdam,
and laid their case before the States General, which granted them an
appeal, and meanwhile suspended Stuyvesant's sentence.
After describing the escape of the "patriots," Kuyter and Melyn, and
their safe arrival in Holland with their papers, the Breeden Raedt
continues its review of the Provincial administration, and gives some
particulars respecting the chief officers and public affairs in New
Netherland, to be found no where else. The narrative is brought down to
August, 1649, at which time Melyn, who had returned to New Netherland,
seems to have embarked a second time for Holland, to bring his case
again before the States General. He appears to have sailed in the
same vessel which conveyed Van der Donck, Couwenhoven, and Bont, the
delegates who had been commissioned to carry over the "Vertoogh," or
remonstrance of the commonalty of New Netherland, against Stuyvesant's
arbitrary government. The Breeden Raedt appears to have been printed
soon after Melyn's return to the Fatherland. As it contains very severe
reflections upon official persons in the Province, and as it was an
anonymous tract, it was perhaps judged prudent to publish it with the
imprint of Antwerp. I think, however, that it was actually printed in
Holland. The Breeden Raedt was one of the earliest, if not the very
earliest separate pamphlet respecting New Netherland. It was followed
in 1650, by the Vertoogh; in 1651, by Hartger's description; and in
1655, by Van der Donck's larger work, and by De Vries's Journal printed
at Alckmaer.
AN AUTUMN BALLAD.
WRITTEN FOR THE INTERNATIONAL MONTHLY MAGAZINE.
BY W. A. SUTLIFFE.
Come, say the Ave-Mary prayer.
And chant the Miserere!
The autumn frosts have chilled the air,
The winter groweth dreary!
The willow, bending o'er the tomb,
Moans dolefully for ever,--
The north-wind bloweth in the gloom,
The morning cometh never!
Avaunt, thou memory, springing up
Like demon bold uprising!
Full cold and bitter is our cup,
Nor needeth thine apprising!
The Future glimmereth in the dark,
We hear the billows roaring,
The wind beleaguereth our barque,
The storm will soon be pouring.
Of all the visions of our youth,
The mind is disenchanted;
When manhood sternly paints the truth,
The soul is sadly haunted.
The sun is sepulchred of night,
The flower in autumn bendeth;
Fair fruitfulness has soonest blight--
All beauty graveward tendeth.
The world is petrified at heart,
No sympathy is welling;
Each plays in mine his soulless part,
Too woful 'tis for telling.
Then say the Ave-Mary prayer,
And chant the Miserere!
The autumn frosts have chilled the air--
The winter groweth dreary!
Bethink ye that He made ye all!
The same God bends above ye!
The same God spreads the light or pall,
The same God deigns to love ye!
The wind that blows the cultured lea.
And through the rich man's hedges,
Sighs round the poor man pleasantly,
And o'er the barren ledges.
The rich go up on Fortune's wheel.
The poor are crushed beneath it;
Oppression draws the bloody steal,
Alas, when will she sheathe it!
Then say the Ave-Mary prayer,
And chant the Miserere!
The autumn frosts have chilled the air,
The winter groweth dreary!
The beldame sitteth at her loom,
She weepeth 'mid the weaving;
The orphan lingers at the tomb,
He's mickle cause for grieving.
The dust is laid with dropping tears;
The slave cowers 'neath the scourging;
Each day is filled with busy fears,
Like restless spirits urging.
O, God! within the Heaven unseen!
When will the sun be shining;
Until the spring-time cometh green,
Forgive us for our pining!
Then say the Ave-Mary prayer,
And chant the Miserere!
The autumn frosts have chilled the air,
The winter groweth dreary!
CARLYLE'S LIFE OF STERLING[3]
No work has yet appeared this season in which the better portion of
the reading public have felt so deep an interest as in the Life of
John Sterling, by THOMAS CARLYLE. But this is less a consequence of
the subject than of the authorship. Any thing from the hand of Carlyle
is sure of a large audience, but he has hitherto done nothing in which
his personality was likely to be so much involved as in this life of
his friend "ARCHÆUS." We copy from the London _Spectator_ the following
reviewal of it:
"The domain of political economy is not unlimited; the laws of
supply and demand are not the only or the strongest forces at
work in nature. Here is a man whom the world would have been
well content to leave quiet in his early grave by the sea-shore
in the sweetest of English islands; to leave him there to the
soft melodies of the warm wind and the gentle rain, and the
pious visits now and then of those who knew and loved him
when his eye was bright and his voice eloquent with sparkling
thoughts and warm affections. He had done nothing that the
public cared for; had left no traces on the sands of Time that
the next tide would not have effaced. But he lived amongst men
who write books, amongst some of the very best of such; and two
of the foremost of them loved him so well, that they could not
let his memory die,--thought that the positive actual results
of his life made known to the public were but faint indications
of the power that lay in him though sorely foiled and baffled,
and that he in his individual spiritual progress typified
better than most the struggle that the age is passing through,
its processes, and its results. But the two men, though united
in affection for Sterling, were so different in other respects,
that the memorial raised by the one could scarcely fail to be
unsatisfactory to the other. Archdeacon Hare, the author of
the earlier biography, is a man of encyclopoedic knowledge,--a
profound classical scholar, the most learned and philosophical
of modern English theologians, at once accurate and wide in his
acquaintance with European history and literature. And this
large survey of the forms under which the men of the past have
thought and acted, has not led in him to an indifference to all
forms, but rather to a keener sense of the organic vitality
of forms, especially of national institutions, whether civil
or ecclesiastical polities, states or churches. Moreover,
apart from this general characteristic, which would lead to an
intellectual and practical reverence for the institutions of
his own land, and a hesitating caution in the introduction of
constitutional changes, Mr. Hare is an English churchman of no
ordinary cast. He has passed from the region of traditional
belief, has skirted the bogs and quicksands of doubt and
disbelief, and has found firm footing where alone it seems
possible, in a revelation whose letter is colored by the
human media through which it has passed, and in a faith whose
highest mysteries are not only harmonious with but necessary
complements to the truths of reason. The English Church is to
him the purest embodiment of his religious idea, as the English
constitution was to him, in common with Niebuhr, Coleridge,
and other great thinkers, of the idea of a state. Such a man
could not write a life like Sterling's without feeling that his
relation to Christianity and the Church was the great fact for
him as for all of us; and that the change in him, from hearty
acceptance of Christian doctrine and church organization to
a rejection of the former and something very like contempt
for the latter, needed explanation. That explanation he has
sought in the overthrow of the balance of Sterling's life
through repeated attacks of illness, which shut him out from
practical duties, and threw him entirely upon speculation,
thereby disproportionately developing the negative side of
him, already too strong from early defects of education: and
few persons will, we should think, be found to deny Mr. Hare's
general position, that the pursuit of speculative philosophy
as the business of life has this tendency; Mr. Carlyle, we
should have supposed least of all men. But a special cause
interferes with Mr. Carlyle's recognition of the principle as
applicable to Sterling. Christianity, as understood commonly
perhaps everywhere, except, it may be, at Weimar and Chelsea,
and church formulas certainly as understood everywhere, he
is in the habit of classing under a category which in his
hands has become an extensive one--that of _shams_. He calls
them by various forcible but ugly names,--as "old clothes,"
"spectral inanities," "gibbering phantoms," or, with plainer
meaning, "huge unveracities and unrealities." That Sterling at
any time of his life accepted these for "eternal verities" he
cannot consider a step from the "no" to the "yes," nor their
repudiation as a step backwards from the "yes" to the "no." Let
him speak for himself. He is commenting on Sterling's entry
into orders as Mr. Hare's curate at Hurstmonceaux:
"Concerning this attempt of Sterling's to find sanctuary in
the old Church, and desperately grasp the hem of her garment
in such manner, there will at present be many opinions; and
mine must be recorded here in flat reproval of it, in mere
pitying condemnation of it, as a rash, false, unwise and
unpermitted step. Nay, among the evil lessons of his time to
poor Sterling, I cannot but account this the worst; properly
indeed, as we may say, the apotheosis, the solemn apology and
consecration, of all the evil lessons that were in it to him.
Alas! if we did remember the divine and awful nature of God's
Truth, and had not so forgotten it as poor doomed creatures
never did before,--should we, durst we in our most audacious
moments, think of wedding it to the world's untruth, which is
also, like all untruths, the devil's? Only in the world's last
lethargy can such things be done, and accounted safe and pious!
Fools! 'Do you think the living God is a buzzard idol,' sternly
asks Milton, 'that you dare address Him in this manner?' Such
darkness, thick sluggish clouds of cowardice and oblivious
baseness, have accumulated on us; thickening as if towards the
eternal sleep! It is not now known, what never needed proof
or statement before, that Religion is not a doubt; that it is
a certainty,--or else a mockery and horror. That none or all
of the many things we are in doubt about, and need to have
demonstrated and rendered probable, can by any alchemy be made
a 'Religion' for us; but are and must continue a baleful, quiet
or unquiet, Hypocrisy for us; and bring--_salvation_, do we
fancy? I think it is another thing they will bring; and are, on
all hands, visibly bringing, this good while!----"
Herein consists the whole difference between Hare and Carlyle in their
views of Sterling's career. They looked at it from such opposite points
that what is the zenith to one is the nadir to the other. What Sterling
himself thought of it, was strikingly expressed to his brother, Captain
Anthony Sterling, by a comparison, of his case "to that of a young lady
who has tragically lost her lover, and is willing to be half-hoodwinked
into a convent, or in any noble or quasi-noble way to escape from
a world which has become intolerable." The truth seems to be, that
Sterling went into orders under the combined influence of remorse for
the share he had inadvertently had in causing the disastrous fate of a
near relative (Mr. Boyd, who was shot with Torrijos in Spain), and of
a gradual disenchantment from trust in mere political schemes for the
regeneration of mankind,--a disease more common to the genial young
men of his time than of ours. That while in the exercise of his duties
as a parish-priest he was energetic, useful, and happy, the evidence
in Mr. Hare's book is fully sufficient to show. It is impossible to
say whether his scepticism would have come upon him had he continued
in that active career; but it is certainly a gratuitous supposition of
Mr. Carlyle that the ill-health which put an end to it was only the
outward and ostensible cause of its termination, and does not appear
to be borne out by a single letter or expression of Sterling's own.
Indeed, for years after he left Hurstmonceaux, he seemed to continue as
firm in his attachment to Christianity as when he was there; though,
on the other hand, it may well be doubted whether a man of Sterling's
intellect, who would surrender his beliefs to Strauss's _Leben Jesu_,
is likely in the present day to keep them under any conceivable
circumstances. We think that Mr. Hare on the one hand has attributed
too exclusive an influence to Sterling's forced inactivity, and Mr.
Carlyle has certainly not taken it sufficiently into account as a
determining cause of his skepticism.
[3] The Life of John Sterling. By Thomas Carlyle. Published by Chapman
& Hall. [Boston, republished by Ticknor, Reed & Fields, 1851.]
But whatever subject Mr. Carlyle takes up, and whether he be right or
wrong in his opinions, he is sure to write an interesting book. He is
never wearisome, and whether his tale have been twice told or not, he
clothes it by his original treatment with an attractive charm that few
writers can lend even to an entirely new subject. The maxim of the
author of _Modern Antiquity_, that
"True genius is the ray that flings
A novel light o'er common things,"
has seldom been better illustrated than by this life of Sterling. The
facts are most of them neither new nor of a nature in themselves to
excite any very strong interest, but the details of the life are told
with such simplicity, and yet with such constant reference to the grand
educational process which they collectively make up, that one seems
listening to a narrative by Sterling's guardian angel, loving enough to
sympathize in the smallest minutiæ, and wise enough to see in each of
them the greatness of the crowning result. Nor is this impression in
the least impaired by the insignificance of the sum total of Sterling's
actual achievements. For had they been tenfold greater than they were,
they would have been as nothing in the presence of that which Mr.
Carlyle looks to as the soul's great achievement--heroic nobleness of
struggle and a calm abiding of the issue. After noticing the purity of
Sterling's character, and his conformity to "the so-called moralities,"
his biographer goes on to say:
"In clear and perfect fidelity to Truth wherever found, in
childlike and soldierlike, pious and valiant loyalty to the
Highest, and what of good and evil that might send him,--he
excelled among good men. The joys and the sorrows of his lot he
took with true simplicity and acquiescence. Like a true son,
not like a miserable mutinous rebel, he comported himself in
this Universe. Extremity of distress--and surely his fervid
temper had enough of contradiction in this world,--could not
tempt him into impatience at any time. By no chance did you
ever hear from him a whisper of those mean repinings, miserable
arraignings and questionings of the Eternal Power, such as
weak souls even well disposed will sometimes give way to in
the pressure of their despair; to the like of this he never
yielded, or showed the least tendency to yield;--which surely
was well on his part. For the Eternal Power, I still remark,
will not answer the like of this, but silently and terribly
accounts it impious, blasphemous, and damnable, and now as
heretofore will visit it as such. Not a rebel but a son, I
said; willing to suffer when Heaven said, Thou shalt;--and
withal, what is perhaps rarer in such a combination, willing to
rejoice also, and right cheerily taking the good that was sent,
whensoever or in whatever form it came.
"A pious soul we may justly call him; devoutly submissive to
the will of the Supreme in all things: the highest and sole
essential form which Religion can assume in man, and without
which all forms of religion are a mockery and a delusion in
man."
Every one not personally acquainted with Sterling will feel that
the great interest of the book is in the light thrown by it on Mr.
Carlyle's own belief. For good or evil, Mr. Carlyle is a power in the
country; and those who watch eagerly the signs of the times have their
eyes fixed upon him. What he would have us leave is plain enough,
and that too with all haste, as a sinking ship that will else carry
us--state, church, and sacred property--down along with it. But whither
would he have us fly? Is there firm land, be it ever so distant? or is
the wild waste of waters, seething, warring round as far as eye can
reach, our only hope? the pilot-stars, shining fitfully through the
parting of the storm-clouds, our only guidance? There are hearts on
this land almost broken, whose old traditional beliefs, serving them
at least as moral supports, Mr. Carlyle and teachers like him have
undermined. Some betake themselves to literature, as Sterling did; some
fill up the void with the excitement of politics; others feebly bemoan
their irreparable loss, and wear an outward seeming of universal irony
and sarcasm. Mr. Carlyle has no right, no man has any right, to weaken
or destroy a faith which he cannot or will not replace with a loftier.
We have no hesitation in saying, that the language which Mr. Carlyle
is in the habit of employing towards the religion of England and of
Europe is unjustifiable. He ought to have said nothing, or he ought to
have said more. Scraps of verse from Goethe, and declamations, however
brilliantly they may be phrased, are but a poor compensation for the
slightest obscuring of "the hope of immortality brought to light by
the gospel," and by it conveyed to the hut of the poorest man, to
awaken, his crushed intelligence and lighten the load of his misery.
Mr. Carlyle slights, after his contemptuous fashion, the poetry of his
contemporaries: one of them has uttered in song some practical wisdom
which he would do well to heed:
"O thou that after toil and storm
May'st seem to have reached a purer air,
Whose faith has centre everywhere,
Nor cares to fix itself to form,
"Leave thou thy sister, when she prays,
Her early heaven, her happy views;
Nor thou with shadowed hint confuse
A life that leads melodious days.
"Her faith through form is pure as thine,
Her hands are quicker unto good.
Oh, sacred be the flesh and blood
To which she links a truth divine!
"See thou, that countest reason ripe
In holding by the law within,
Thou fail not in a world of sin,
And even for want of such a type."
This life of Sterling will be useful to the class whose beliefs
have given way before Mr. Carlyle's destroying energies; because it
furnishes hints, not to be mistaken though not obtrusive, as to the
extent to which they must be prepared to go if they would really be
his disciples. If the path has in its very dangers an attraction for
some, while others are shudderingly repelled, in either case the result
is desirable, as it is the absence of certainty which causes the pain
and paralyzes the power of action. At any rate, the doctrines of this
teacher must be so much more intelligible to the mass when applied,
as they are here, in commentary upon a life all whose details are
familiar, because it is the life of a contemporary and a countryman,
that all who read must inevitably be impressed with that great lesson
of the philosophic poet--
"The intellectual power through words and things
Goes sounding on, _a dim and perilous way_."
Though John Sterling is of course the principal figure in the
composition, and Mr. Carlyle's treatment the great attraction of the
book, yet the figures in the background will be those to make most
impression on the general reader. Coleridge stands there in striking
but caricatured likeness; and even his most devoted admirers will not
be sorry to see a portrait of their master by such a hand: and all
will curiously observe the contrast between the sarcastic bitterness
which colors the drawing of the philosophic Christian, and the kindly
allowance through which the character of John Sterling's father, the
famous "Thunderer" of the _Times_, is delineated. We half suspect that
Coleridge would have appeared to Mr. Carlyle a much greater man, if he
had allowed him to declaim--"Harpocrates-Stentor," as Sterling calls
him--with trumpet voice and for time unlimited on the divine virtues of
Silence. There are besides, as in all Mr. Carlyle's works, passages of
wise thought expressed in most felicitous language: of which not the
least important is this advice given to Sterling in reference to his
poetic aspirations:
"You can speak with supreme excellence; sing with considerable
excellence you never can. And the Age itself, does it not,
beyond most ages, demand and require clear speech; an Age
incapable of being sung to, in any but a trivial manner, till
these convulsive agonies and wild revolutionary overturnings
readjust themselves? Intelligible word of command, not musical
psalmody and fiddling, is possible in this fell storm of
battle. Beyond all ages, our Age admonishes whatsoever thinking
or writing man it has: Oh speak to me, some wise intelligible
speech; your wise meaning, in the shortest and clearest way;
behold, I am dying for want of wise meaning, and insight into
the devouring fact: speak, if you have any wisdom! As to song
so-called, and your fiddling talent,--even if you have one,
much more if you have none,--we will talk of that a couple of
centuries hence, when things are calmer again. Homer shall be
thrice welcome; but only when Troy is _taken_: alas, while the
siege lasts, and battle's fury rages every where, what can I do
with the Homer? I want Achilleus and Odysseus, and am enraged
to see them trying to be Homers!--"
These bricks from Babylon convey but scanty intimation of the varied
interest of the book. However the readers of it may differ from its
opinions, they cannot but find, even in Mr. Carlyle's misjudgments and
prejudices, ample matter for serious reflection: for if he misjudges,
it is generally because he is looking too intently at a single truth,
or a single side of a truth; and such misjudgments are more suggestive
than the completest propositions of a less earnest, keen-sighted, and
impassioned thinker. He is indeed more a prophet than a logician or
a man of science. And one lesson we may all learn from this, as from
everything he writes,--and it is a lesson that interferes with no
creed,--that honesty of purpose, and resoluteness to do and to say the
thing we believe to be the true thing, will give heart to a man's life,
when all ordinary motives to action and all ordinary supports of energy
have failed like a rotten reed.
SONGS OF THE CASCADE.
WRITTEN FOR THE INTERNATIONAL MONTHLY MAGAZINE.
BY A. OAKEY HALL.
I.
THE CASCADE VAUNTETH ITSELF.
Over my pebbly bed I flow:
Till foaming--now splashing,
Soon leaping--then dashing
Into the chasm's bowl below,
Where my pearl drops glittering,
Rival the driven snow.
The chains of Winter I spurn!
All Summer and Spring
Through the grove I sing,
Gladdening lily and fern,
And the tired bird who kisses my cheek
With a dainty touch of his thirsty beak.
And when from the mountain side
The sunshines of May
Charm the snows away--
The torrent's impulsive tide
Mingles its turbid strength with mine,
Marking the thicket with surging line.
Then as the grove I enter,
The tree-tops shake,
The granite beds quake,
Into their very centre;
Whilst the birds around on the soaking ground
Hush their song at my thunder sound!
Man never with puny arm
_My_ power shall curb,
_My_ flow disturb!
Ha! ha! for nature's charm:
Powerful in the rock
That human strength doth mock!
Long as stern Father Time
Shall harvest future years--
Garnering joys and tears--
In every land and clime:
So long shall I from the moss-clad steep,
Bubble or vaunt in the foaming leap!
II.
THE CASCADE HUMBLETH ITSELF.
Under the dams I go,
With sullen plash,
And humbled dash,
On giant wheels below,
That proudly turn where huge fires burn,
Mocking the sunset glow!
As the "feeders" I enter,
High windows shake,
And brick walls quake,
Deep to their very centre,
While _I_ painfully sob to the taunting throb
In the heart of my mill tormentor.
Afar up the arid hill,
Huger wheels are turning--
Fiercer fires are burning--
The mountain torrent is still!
And I mourn me now for the thicket's green
In the grove where our surging line was see.
Man with his stalwart arms,
Plying the axe and spade--
Reft the grove of its shade,
Dissolving nature's charms;
With genius to plan it blasted the granite,
As involving the earthquake's aid.
Nothing of freedom now I know!
For the glare of the brick,
The machinery click,
And the mist from the wheels below,
Blindeth and stunneth--I faint--I reel.
I yield my charm to the spell of steel!
HERMAN MELVILLE'S WHALE.[4]
The new nautical story by the always successful author of _Typee_, has
for its name-giving subject a monster first introduced to the world
of print by Mr. J. N. Reynolds, ten or fifteen years ago, in a paper
for the _Knickerbocker_, entitled _Mocha Dick_. We received a copy
when it was too late to review it ourselves for this number of the
_International_, and therefore make use of a notice of it which we find
in the London _Spectator_:
"This sea novel is a singular medley of naval observation, magazine
article writing, satiric reflection upon the conventionalisms of
civilized life, and rhapsody run mad. So far as the nautical parts are
appropriate and unmixed, the portraiture is truthful and interesting.
Some of the satire, especially in the early parts, is biting and
reckless. The chapter-spinning is various in character; now powerful
from the vigorous and fertile fancy of the author, now little more than
empty though sounding phrases. The rhapsody belongs to wordmongering
where ideas are the staple; where it takes the shape of narrative or
dramatic fiction, it is phantasmal--an attempted description of what
is impossible in nature and without probability in art; it repels the
reader instead of attracting him.
[4] The Whale. By Herman Melville, Author of "Typee," "Omoo,"
"Redburn," "Mardi," "White Jacket." In three volumes. Published by
Bentley.
[Moby Dick, or the Whale: By Herman Melville: 1 vol. 12mo. New-York,
Harper & Brothers.]
"The elements of the story are a South Sea whaling voyage, narrated
by Ishmael, one of the crew of the ship Pequod, from Nantucket. Its
'probable' portions consist of the usual sea matter in that branch of
the industrial marine; embracing the preparations for departure, the
voyage, the chase and capture of whale, with the economy of cutting
up, &c., and the peculiar discipline of the service. This matter is
expanded by a variety of digressions on the nature and characteristics
of the sperm whale, the history of the fishery, and similar things,
in which a little knowledge is made the excuse for a vast many words.
The voyage is introduced by several chapters in which life in American
seaports is rather broadly depicted.
"The 'marvellous' injures the book by disjointing the narrative, as
well as by its inherent want of interest, at least as managed by Mr.
Melville. In the superstition of some whalers, (grounded upon the
malicious foresight which occasionally characterizes the attacks of
the sperm fish upon the boats sent to capture it,) there is a _white_
whale which possesses supernatural power. To capture or even to hurt
it is beyond the art of man; the skill of the whaler is useless; the
harpoon does not wound it; it exhibits a contemptuous strategy in its
attacks upon the boats of its pursuers; and happy is the vessel were
only loss of limb, or of a single life, attends its chase. Ahab, the
master of the Pequod--a mariner of long experience, stern resolve, and
indomitable courage, the high hero of romance, in short, transferred
to a whale-ship--has lost his leg in a contest with the white whale.
Instead of daunting Ahab, the loss exasperates him; and by long
brooding over it his reason becomes shaken. In this condition, he
undertakes the voyage; making the chase of his fishy antagonist the
sole abject of his thoughts, and, so far as he can without exciting
overt insubordination among his officers, the object of his proceedings.
"Such a groundwork is hardly natural enough for a regular-built novel,
though it might form a tale, if properly managed. But Mr. Melville's
mysteries provoke wonder at the author rather than terror at the
creation; the soliloquies and dialogues of Ahab, in which the author
attempts delineating the wild imaginings of monomania, and exhibiting
some profoundly speculative views of things in general, induce
weariness or skipping; while the whole scheme mars, as we have said,
the nautical continuity of story--greatly assisted by various chapters
of a bookmaking kind.
"Perhaps the earliest chapters are the best although they contain
little adventure. Their topics are fresher to English readers than
the whale-chase, and they have more direct satire. One of the leading
personages in the voyage is Queequeg, a South Sea Islander, that
Ishmael falls in with at New-Bedford, and with whom he forms a bosom
friendship.
"Queequeg was a native of Kokovoko, an island far away to the West and
South. It is not down in any map; true places never are.
"While yet a new-hatched savage, running wild about his native
woodlands in a grass clout, followed by the nibbling goats, as if he
were a green sapling,--even then, in Queequeg's ambitious soul lurked
a strong desire to see something more of Christendom than a specimen
whaler or two. His father was a high chief, a king; his uncle a high
priest; and on the maternal side he boasted aunts who were the wives of
unconquerable warriors. There was excellent blood in his veins--royal
stuff; though sadly vitiated, I fear, by the cannibal propensity he
nourished in his untutored youth.
"A Sag Harbour ship visited his father's bay; and Queequeg sought a
passage to Christian lands. But the ship having her full complement of
seamen, spurned his suit; and not all the King his father's influence
could prevail. But Queequeg vowed a vow. Alone in his canoe, he paddled
off to a distant strait, which he knew the ship must pass through when
she quitted the island. On one side was a coral reef; on the other
a low tongue of land, covered with mangrove thickets, that grew out
into the water. Hiding his canoe, still afloat, among these thickets,
with its prow seaward, he sat down in the stern, paddle low in hand;
and when the ship was gliding by, like a flash he darted out--gained
her side--with one backward dash of his foot capsized and sank his
canoe--climbed up the chains--and throwing himself at full length upon
the deck, grappled a ring-bolt there, and swore not to let it go though
hacked in pieces.
"In vain the captain threatened to throw him overboard--suspended
a cutlass over his naked wrists: Queequeg was the son of a king,
and Queequeg budged not. Struck by his desperate dauntlessness, and
his wild desire to visit Christendom, the captain at last relented,
and told him he might make himself at home. But this fine young
savage--this sea Prince of Whales--never saw the captain's cabin. They
put him down among the sailors, and made a whaleman of him. But, like
the Czar Peter content to toil in the ship-yards of foreign cities,
Queequeg disdained no seeming ignominy, if thereby he might haply gain
the power of enlightening his untutored countrymen. For at bottom--so
he told me--he was actuated by a profound desire to learn among the
Christians the arts whereby to make his people still happier than they
were, and more than that, still better than they were. But, alas! the
practices of whalemen soon convinced him that even Christians could be
both miserable and wicked, infinitely more so than all his father's
heathens. Arrived at last in old Sag Harbour, and seeing what the
sailors did there, and then going on to Nantucket, and seeing how they
spent their wages in that place also, poor Queequeg gave it up for
lost. Thought he, it's a wicked world in all meridians: I'll die a
Pagan.
"The strongest point of the book is its 'characters.' Ahab, indeed,
is a melodramatic exaggeration, and Ishmael is little more than a
mouthpiece; but the harpooners, the mates, and several of the seamen,
are truthful portraitures of the sailor as modified by the whaling
service. The persons ashore are equally good, though they are soon lost
sight of. The two Quaker owners are the author's means for a hit at the
religious hypocrisies. Captain Bildad, an old sea-dog, has got rid of
every thing pertaining to the meeting-house save an occasional 'thou'
and 'thee.' Captain Peleg, in American phrase, 'professes religion.'
The following extract exhibits the two men when Ishmael is shipped:
"I began to think that it was high time to settle with myself
at what terms I would be willing to engage for the voyage. I
was already aware that in the whaling business they paid no
wages, but all hands, including the captain, received certain
shares of the profits, called _lays_; and that these lays
were proportioned to the degree of importance pertaining to
the respective duties of the ship's company. I was also aware
that, being a green hand at whaling, my own lay would not be
very large: but, considering that I was used to the sea, could
steer a ship, splice a rope, and all that, I made no doubt
that, from all I had heard, I should be offered at least the
two hundred and seventy-fifth lay--that is, the two hundred and
seventy-fifth part of the clear net proceeds of the voyage,
whatever that might eventually amount to. And though the two
hundred and seventy-fifth lay was what they called a rather
_long lay_, yet it was better than nothing; and if we had a
lucky voyage, might pretty nearly pay for the clothing I would
wear out on it, not to speak of my three years' beef and
board, for which I would not have to pay one stiver.
"It might be thought that this was a poor way to accumulate
a princely fortune: and so it was, a very poor way indeed.
But I am one of those that never take on about princely
fortunes, and am quite content if the world is ready to board
and lodge me while I am putting up at this grim sign of the
Thunder-cloud. Upon the whole, I thought that the two hundred
and seventy-fifth lay would be about the fair thing, but would
not have been surprised had I been offered the two hundredth,
considering I was of a broad-shouldered make.
"But one thing, nevertheless, that made me a little distrustful
about receiving a generous share of the profits, was this:
ashore, I had heard something of both Captain Peleg and his
unaccountable old crony Bildad; how that they, being the
principal proprietors of the Pequod, therefore the other and
more in considerable and scattered owners left nearly the whole
management of the ship's affairs to these two. And I did not
know but that the stingy old Bildad might have a deal to say
about shipping hands, especially as I now found him on board
the Pequod, quite at home there in the cabin, and reading his
Bible, as if at his own fireside. Now, while Peleg was vainly
trying to mend a pen with his jack-knife, old Bildad, to my
no small surprise, considering that he was such an interested
party in these proceedings--Bildad never heeded us, but went
on mumbling to himself out of his book, '_Lay_ not up for
yourselves treasures upon earth, where moth--'
"'Well, Captain Bildad,' interrupted Peleg, 'what d'ye
say--what lay shall we give this young man?'
"'Thou knowest best,' was the sepulchral reply; 'the seven
hundred and seventy-seventh wouldn't be too much--would
it--'where moth and rust do corrupt, but _lay_--'
"Lay indeed, thought I, and such a lay!--the seven hundred and
seventy-seventh! Well, old Bildad, you are determined that I,
for one, shall not _lay_ up many _lays_ here below, where moth
and rust do corrupt. It was an exceedingly _long lay_ that,
indeed; and though from the magnitude of the figure it might
at first deceive a landsman, yet the slightest consideration
will show that, though seven hundred and seventy-seven is a
pretty large number, yet when you come to make a _teenth_
of it, you will then see, I say, that the seven hundred and
seventy-seventh part of a farthing is a good deal less than
seven hundred and seventy-seven gold doubloons. And so I
thought at the time.
"'Why, b---- t your eyes, Bildad!' cried Peleg, 'thou dost not
want to swindle this young man! he must have more than that?'
"'Seven hundred and seventy-seventh,' again said Bildad,
without lifting his eyes; and then went on mumbling--'for where
your treasure is, there will your heart be also.'
"'I am going to put him down for the three hundredth,' said
Peleg; 'do ye hear that, Bildad? The three hundredth lay, I
say.'
"Bildad laid down his book, and, turning solemnly towards
him, said, 'Captain Peleg, thou hast a generous heart; but
thou must consider the duty thou owest to the other owners of
this ship--widows and orphans, many of them; and that, if we
too abundantly reward the labors of this young man, we may be
taking the bread from those widows and those orphans. The seven
hundred and seventy-seventh lay, Captain Peleg.'
"'Thou Bildad!' roared Peleg, starting up, and clattering about
the cabin, 'B---- t ye, Captain Bildad; if I had followed thy
advice in these matters, I would afore now had a conscience to
lug about that would be heavy enough to founder the largest
ship that ever sailed round Cape Horn.'
"'Captain Peleg,' said Bildad steadily, 'thy conscience may be
drawing ten inches of water or ten fathoms--I can't tell; but
as thou art still an impenitent man, Captain Peleg, I greatly
fear lest thy conscience be but a leaky one, and will in the
end sink thee foundering down to the fiery pit, Captain Peleg,'"
"It is a canon with some critics that nothing should be introduced into
a novel which it is physically impossible for the writer to have known:
thus, he must not describe the conversation of miners in a pit if they
_all_ perish. Mr. Melville hardly steers clear of this rule, and he
continually violates another, by beginning in the autobiographical form
and changing _ad libitum_ into the narrative. His catastrophe overrides
all rule: not only is Ahab, with his boat's-crew, destroyed in his last
desperate attack upon the white whale, but the Pequod herself sinks
with all on board into the depths of the illimitable ocean. Such is the
go-ahead method."
A STORY WITHOUT A NAME[5]
WRITTEN FOR THE INTERNATIONAL MONTHLY MAGAZINE
BY G. P. R. JAMES, ESQ.
CHAPTER L.
Sir Philip Hastings, I have said, was reading a Greek book when Mr.
Short entered the library. His face was grave, and very stern; but all
traces of the terrible agitation with which he had quited the side of
his wife's death-bed, were now gone from his face. He hardly looked
up when the surgeon entered. He seemed not only reading, but absorbed
by what he read. Mr. Short thought the paroxysm of grief was passed,
and that the mind of Sir Philip Hastings, settling down into a calm
melancholy, was seeking its habitual relief in books. He knew, as every
medical man must know, the various whimsical resources to which the
heart of man flies, as if for refuge, in moments of great affliction.
The trifles with which some will occupy themselves--the intense
abstraction for which others will labor--the imaginations, the visions,
the fancies to which others again will apply, not for consolation, not
for comfort; but for escape from the one dark predominant idea. He said
a few words to Sir Philip then, of a kindly but somewhat commonplace
character, and the baronet looked up, gazing at him across the
candles which stood upon the library table. Had Mr. Short's attention
been particularly called to Sir Philip's countenance, he would have
perceived at once, that the pupils of the eyes were strangely and
unnaturally contracted, and that from time to time a certain nervous
twitching of the muscles curled the lip, and indented the cheek. But he
did not remark these facts: he merely saw that Sir Philip was reading:
that he had recovered his calmness; and he judged that that which might
be strange in other men, might not be strange in him. In regard to what
he believed the great cause of Sir Philip's grief, his wife's death,
he thought it better to say nothing; but he naturally concluded that
a father would be anxious to hear of a daughter's health under such
circumstances, and therefore he told him that Emily was better and more
composed.
[5] Concluded from page 499.
Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1850, by G. P. R.
James, in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States
for the Southern District of New-York.
Sir Philip made a slight, but impatient motion of the hand, but Mr.
Short went on to say, "As she was so severely and terribly affected,
Sir Philip, I have given Mistress Emily a composing draught, which has
already had the intended effect of throwing her into profound slumber.
It will insure her, I think, at least six, if not seven hours of calm
repose, and I trust she will rise better able to bear her grief than
she would be now, were she conscious of it."
Sir Philip muttered something between his teeth which the surgeon
did not hear, and Mr. Short proceeded, saying, "Will you permit me
to suggest, Sir Philip, that it would be better for you too, my dear
sir, to take something which would counteract the depressing effect of
sorrow."
"I thank you, sir, I thank you," replied Sir Philip, laying his
hand upon the book; "I have no need. The mind under suffering seeks
medicines for the mind. The body is not affected. It is well--too well.
Here is my doctor;" and he raised his hand and let it fall upon the
book again.
"Well then, I will leave you for to-night, Sir Philip," said the
surgeon; "to-morrow I must intrude upon you on business of great
importance. I will now take my leave."
Sir Philip rose ceremoniously from his chair and bowed his head; gazing
upon the surgeon as he left the room and shut the door, with a keen,
cunning, watchful look from under his overhanging eyebrows.
"Ha!" he said, when the surgeon had left the room, "he thought to
catch me--to find out what I intended to do--slumber!--calm, tranquil
repose--so near a murdered mother! God of heaven!" and he bent down his
head till his forehead touched the pages of the book, and remained with
his face thus concealed for several minutes.
It is to be remarked that not one person, with a single exception, to
whom the circumstances of Lady Hastings' death were known, even dreamed
of suspecting Emily. They all knew her, comprehended her character,
loved her, had faith in her, except her own unhappy father. But with
him, if the death of his unhappy wife were terrible, his suspicions
of his daughter were a thousand fold more so. To his distorted vision
a multitude of circumstances brought proof all powerful. "She has
tried to destroy her father," he thought, "and she has not scrupled
to destroy her mother. In the one case there seemed no object. In the
other there was the great object of revenge, with others perhaps more
mean, but not less potent. Try her cause what way I will, the same
result appears. The mother opposes the daughter's marriage to the man
she loves--threatens to frustrate the dearest wish of her heart--and
nothing but death will satisfy her. This is the end then of all these
reveries--these alternate fits of gloom and levity. The ill balanced
mind has lost its equipoise, and all has given way to passion. But what
must I do--oh God! what must I do?"
His thoughts are here given, not exactly as they presented themselves;
for they were more vague, confused, and disjointed; but such was
the sum and substance of them. He raised his head from the book and
looked up, and after thinking for a moment or two he said, "This
Josephus--this Jew--gives numerous instances, if I remember right, of
justice done by fathers upon their children--ay, and by the express
command of God. The priest of the Most High was punished for yielding
to human weakness in the case of his sons. The warrior Jephtha spared
not his best beloved. What does the Roman teach? Not to show pity to
those the nearest to us by blood, the closest in affection, where
justice demands unwavering execution. It must be so. There is but the
choice left, to give her over to hands of strangers, to add public
shame, and public punishment to that which justice demands, or to do
that myself which they must inevitably do. She must die--such a monster
must not remain upon the earth. She has plotted against her father's
life--she has colleagued with his fraudulent enemies--she has betrayed
the heart that fondly trusted her--she has visited secretly the haunts
of a low, vulgar ruffian--she has aided and abetted those who have
plundered her own parents--she has ended by the murder of the mother
who so fondly loved her. I--I am bound, by every duty to society, to
deliver it from one, who for my curse, and its bane, I brought into the
world. She must be put to death; and no hand but mine must do it."
He gazed gloomily down upon the table for several minutes, and then
paced the room rapidly with agony in every line of his face. He wrung
his hands hard together. He lifted up his eyes towards heaven, and
often, often, he cried out, "Oh God! Oh God! Is there no hope?--no
doubt?--no opening for pause or hesitation?"
"None, none, none," he said at length, and sank down into his chair
again.
His eye wandered round the room, as if seeking some object he could not
see, and then he murmured, "So beautiful--so young--so engaging--just
eighteen summers; and yet such a load of crime!"
He bent his head again, and a few drops of agony fell from his eyes
upon the table. Then clasping his forehead tight with his hand, he
remained for several minutes thoughtful and silent. He seemed to grow
calmer; but it was a deceitful seeming; and there was a wild, unnatural
light in his eyes which, notwithstanding all the apparent shrewdness of
his reasoning--the seeming connection and clearness of his argument,
would have shown to those expert in such matters, that there was
something not right within the brain.
At length he said to himself in a whisper, as if he was afraid that
some one should hear him, "She sleeps--the man said she sleeps--now is
the time--I must not hesitate--I must not falter--now is the time!" and
he rose and approached the door.
Once, he stopped for a moment--once, doubt and irresolution took
possession of him. But then he cast them off, and moved on again.
With a slow step, but firm and noiseless tread, he crossed the hall and
mounted the stairs. No one saw him: the servants were scattered: there
was no one to oppose his progress, or to say, "Forbear!"
He reached his daughter's room, opened the door quietly, went in, and
closed it. Then he gazed eagerly around. The curtains were withdrawn:
his fair, sweet child lay sleeping calmly as an infant. He could see
all around. Father and child were there. There was no one else.
Still he gazed around, seeking perhaps for something with which to do
the fatal deed! His eye rested on a packet of papers upon the table. It
contained those which Marlow had left with poor gentle Emily to justify
her to her father in case of need.
Oh, would he but take them up! Would he but read the words within!
He turns away--he steals toward the bed!
Drop the curtain! I can write no more.
Emily is gone!