CHAPTER IV.

THE MOTH FLIES INTO THE CANDLE.

The invitation which Mr. Bernard Langdon had accepted came from the

Board of Trustees of the "Apollinean Female Institute," a school for the

education of young ladies, situated in the flourishing town of Rockland.

This was an establishment on a considerable scale, in which a hundred

scholars or thereabouts were taught the ordinary English branches,

several of the modern languages, something of Latin, if desired, with a

little natural philosophy, metaphysics, and rhetoric, to finish off with

in the last year, and music at any time when they would pay for it. At

the close of their career in the Institute, they were submitted to a

grand public examination, and received diplomas tied in blue ribbons,

which proclaimed them with a great flourish of capitals to be graduates

of the Apollinean Female Institute.

Rockland was a town of no inconsiderable pretensions. It was ennobled by

lying at the foot of a mountain,--called by the working-folks of the

place "_the_ maounting,"--which sufficiently showed that it was the

principal high land of the district in which it was situated. It lay to

the south of this, and basked in the sunshine as Italy stretches herself

before the Alps. To pass from the town of Tamarack on the north of the

mountain to Rockland on the south was like crossing from Coire to

Chiavenna.

There is nothing gives glory and grandeur and romance and mystery to a

place like the impending presence of a high mountain. Our beautiful

Northampton with its fair meadows and noble stream is lovely enough, but

owes its surpassing attraction to those twin summits which brood over

it like living presences, looking down into its streets as if they were

its tutelary divinities, dressing and undressing their green shrines,

robing themselves in jubilant sunshine or in sorrowing clouds, and doing

penance in the snowy shroud of winter, as if they had living hearts

under their rocky ribs and changed their mood like the children of the

soil at their feet, who grow up under their almost parental smiles and

frowns. Happy is the child whose first dreams of heaven are blended with

the evening glories of Mount Holyoke, when the sun is firing its

treetops, and gilding the white walls that mark its one human dwelling!

If the other and the wilder of the twain has a scowl of terror in its

overhanging brows, yet is it a pleasing fear to look upon its savage

solitudes through the barred nursery-windows in the heart of the sweet,

companionable village.--And how the mountains love their children! The

sea is of a facile virtue, and will run to kiss the first comer in any

port he visits; but the chaste mountains sit apart, and show their faces

only in the midst of their own families.

The Mountain that kept watch to the north of Rockland lay waste and

almost inviolate through much of its domain. The catamount still glared

from the branches of its old hemlocks on the lesser beasts that strayed

beneath him. It was not long since a wolf had wandered down, famished in

the winter's dearth, and left a few bones and some tufts of wool of what

had been a lamb in the morning. Nay, there were broad-footed tracks in

the snow only two years previously, which could not be mistaken;--the

black bear alone could have set that plantigrade seal, and little

children must come home early from school and play, for he is an

indiscriminate feeder when he is hungry, and a little child would not

come amiss when other game was wanting.

But these occasional visitors may have been mere wanderers, which,

straying along in the woods by day, and perhaps stalking through the

streets of still villages by night, had worked their way along down from

the ragged mountain-spurs of higher latitudes. The one feature of The

Mountain that shed the brownest horror on its woods was the existence of

the terrible region known as Rattlesnake Ledge, and still tenanted by

those damnable reptiles, which distil a fiercer venom under our cold

northern sky than the cobra himself in the land of tropical spices and

poisons.

From the earliest settlement of the place, this fact had been, next to

the Indians, the reigning nightmare of the inhabitants. It was easy

enough, after a time, to drive away the savages; for "a screeching

Indian Divell," as our fathers called him, could not crawl into the

crack of a rock to escape from his pursuers. But the venomous population

of Rattlesnake Ledge had a Gibraltar for their fortress that might have

defied the siege-train dragged to the walls of Sebastopol. In its deep

embrasures and its impregnable casemates they reared their families,

they met in love or wrath, they twined together in family knots, they

hissed defiance in hostile clans, they fed, slept, hybernated, and in

due time died in peace. Many a foray had the town's-people made, and

many a stuffed skin was shown as a trophy,--nay, there were families

where the children's first toy was made from the warning appendage that

once vibrated to the wrath of one of these "cruel serpents." Sometimes

one of them, coaxed out by a warm sun, would writhe himself down the

hillside into the roads, up the walks that led to houses,--worse than

this, into the long grass, where the bare-footed mowers would soon pass

with their swinging scythes,--more rarely into houses,--and on one

memorable occasion, early in the last century, into the meeting-house,

where he took a position on the pulpit-stairs,--as is narrated in the

"Account of Some Remarkable Providences," etc., where it is suggested

that a strong tendency of the Rev. Didymus Bean, the Minister at that

time, towards the Arminian Heresy may have had something to do with it,

and that the Serpent supposed to have been killed on the Pulpit-Stairs

was a false show of the Dæmon's Contrivance, he having come in to listen

to a Discourse which was a sweet Savour in his Nostrils, and, of course,

not being capable of being killed Himself. Others said, however, that,

though there was good Reason to think it was a Dæmon, yet he did come

with Intent to bite the Heel of that faithful Servant,--etc.

One Gilson is said to have died of the bite of a rattlesnake in this

town early in the present century. After this there was a great

snake-hunt, in which very many of these venomous beasts were

killed,--one in particular, said to have been as big round as a stout

man's arm, and to have had no less than _forty_ joints to his

rattle,--indicating, according to some, that he had lived forty years,

but, if we might put any faith in the Indian tradition, that he had

killed forty human beings,--an idle fancy, clearly. This hunt, however,

had no permanent effect in keeping down the serpent population.

Viviparous creatures are a kind of specie-paying lot, but oviparous ones

only give their notes, as it were, for a future brood,--an egg being, so

to speak, a promise to pay a young one by-and-by, if nothing happen. Now

the domestic habits of the rattlesnake are not studied very closely, for

obvious reasons; but it is, no doubt, to all intents and purposes

oviparous. Consequently it has large families, and is not easy to kill

out.

In the year 184-, a melancholy proof was afforded to the inhabitants of

Rockland, that the brood which infested The Mountain was not extirpated.

A very interesting young married woman, detained at home at the time by

the state of her health, was bitten in the entry of her own house by a

rattlesnake which had found its way down from The Mountain. Owing to the

almost instant employment of powerful remedies, the bite did not prove

immediately fatal; but she died within a few months of the time when she

was bitten.

All this seemed to throw a lurid kind of shadow over The Mountain. Yet,

as many years passed without any accident, people grew comparatively

careless, and it might rather be said to add a fearful kind of interest

to the romantic hillside, that the banded reptiles, which had been the

terror of the red men for nobody knows how many thousand years, were

there still, with the same poison-bags and spring-teeth at the white

men's service, if they meddled with them.

The other natural features of Rockland were such as many of our pleasant

country-towns can boast of. A brook came tumbling down the mountain-side

and skirted the most thickly settled portion of the village. In the

parts of its course where it ran through the woods, the water looked

almost as brown as coffee flowing from its urn,--to say like _smoky

quartz_ would perhaps give a better idea,--but in the open plain it

sparkled over the pebbles white as a queen's diamonds. There were

huckleberry-pastures on the lower flanks of The Mountain, with plenty of

the sweet-scented bayberry mingled with the other bushes. In other

fields grew great store of high-bush blackberries. Along the road-side

were barberry-bushes, hung all over with bright red coral pendants in

autumn and far into the winter. Then there were swamps set thick with

dingy-leaved alders, where the three-leaved arum and the skunk's-cabbage

grew broad and succulent,--shelving down into black boggy pools here and

there, at the edge of which the green frog, stupidest of his tribe, sat

waiting to be victimized by boy or snapping-turtle long after the shy

and agile leopard-frog had taken the six-foot spring that plumped him

into the middle of the pool. And on the neighboring banks the

maiden-hair spread its flat disk of embroidered fronds on the wire-like

stem that glistened brown and polished as the darkest tortoise-shell,

and pale violets, cheated by the cold skies of their hues and perfume,

sunned themselves like white-cheeked invalids. Over these rose the old

forest-trees,--the maple, scarred with the wounds that had drained away

its sweet life-blood,--the beech, its smooth gray bark mottled so as to

look like the body of one of those great snakes of old that used to

frighten armies,--always the mark of lovers' knives, as in the days of

Musidora and her swain,--the yellow birch, rough as the breast of

Silenus in old marbles,--the wild cherry, its little bitter fruit lying

unheeded at its foot,--and, soaring over all, the huge, coarse-barked,

splintery-limbed, dark-mantled hemlock, in the depths of whose aërial

solitudes the crow brooded on her nest unscared, and the gray squirrel

lived unharmed till his incisors grew to look like ram's-horns.

Rockland would have been but half a town without its pond; Quinnepeg

Pond was the name of it, but the young ladies of the Apollinean

Institute were very anxious that it should be called Crystalline Lake.

It was here that the young folks used to sail in summer and skate in

winter; here, too, those queer, old, rum-scented, good-for-nothing,

lazy, story-telling, half-vagabonds, that sawed a little wood or dug a

few potatoes now and then under the pretence of working for their

living, used to go and fish through the ice for pickerel every winter.

And here those three young people were drowned, a few summers ago, by

the upsetting of a sail-boat in a sudden flaw of wind. There is not one

of these smiling ponds that has not devoured more youths and maidens

than any of those monsters the ancients used to tell such lies about.

But it was a pretty pond, and never looked more innocent--so the native

"bard" of Rockland said in his elegy--than on the morning when they

found Sarah Jane and Ellen Maria floating among the lily-pads.

The Apollinean Institute, or Institoot, as it was more commonly called,

was, in the language of its Prospectus, a "first-class Educational

Establishment." It employed a considerable corps of instructors to rough

out and finish the hundred young lady scholars it sheltered beneath its

roof. First, Mr. and Mrs. Peckham, the Principal and the Matron of the

school. Silas Peckham was a thorough Yankee, born on a windy part of the

coast, and reared chiefly on salt-fish. Everybody knows the type of

Yankee produced by this climate and diet: thin, as if he had been split

and dried; with an ashen kind of complexion, like the tint of the food

he is made of; and about as sharp, tough, juiceless, and biting to deal

with as the other is to the taste. Silas Peckham kept a young ladies'

school exactly as he would have kept a hundred head of cattle,--for the

simple, unadorned purpose of making just as much money in just as few

years as could be safely done. Of course the great problem was, to feed

these hundred hungry misses at the cheapest practicable rate, precisely

as it would be with the cattle. So that Mr. Peckham gave very little

personal attention to the department of instruction, but was always busy

with contracts for flour and potatoes, beef and pork, and other

nutritive staples, the amount of which required for such an

establishment was enough to frighten a quartermaster. Mrs. Peckham was

from the West, raised on Indian corn and pork, which give a fuller

outline and a more humid temperament, but may perhaps be thought to

render people a little coarse-fibred. Her speciality was to look after

the feathering, cackling, roosting, rising, and general behavior of

these hundred chicks. An honest, ignorant woman, she could not have

passed an examination in the youngest class. So this distinguished

institution was under the charge of a commissary and a housekeeper, and

its real business was feeding girls to grain, roots, and meats, under

cover, and making money by it.

Connected with this, however, was the incidental fact, which the public

took for the principal one, namely, the business of instruction. Mr.

Peckham knew well enough that it was just as well to have good

instructors as bad ones, so far as cost was concerned, and a great deal

better for the reputation of his feeding-establishment. So he tried to

get the best he could without paying too much, and, having got them, to

screw all the work out of them that could possibly be extracted.

There was a master for the English branches, with a young lady

assistant. There was another young lady who taught French, of the

_ahvahng_ and _pahndahng_ style, which does not exactly smack of the

_asphalte_ of the Boulevard _trottoirs_. There was also a German teacher

of music, who sometimes helped in French of the _ahfaung_ and

_bauntaung_ style,--so that, between the two, the young ladies could

hardly have been mistaken for Parisians, by a Committee of the French

Academy. The German teacher also taught a Latin class after his

fashion,--_benna_, a ben, _gahboot_, a head, and so forth.

The master for the English branches had lately left the school for

private reasons, which need not be here mentioned,--but he had gone, at

any rate, and it was his place which had been offered to Mr. Bernard

Langdon. The offer came just in season,--as, for various causes, he was

willing to leave the place where he had begun his new experience.

It was on a fine morning, that Mr. Bernard, ushered in by Mr. Peckham,

made his appearance in the great schoolroom of the Apollinean Institute.

A general rustle ran all round the seats when the handsome young man was

introduced. The principal carried him to the desk of the young lady

English assistant, Miss Darley by name, and introduced him to her.

There was not a great deal of study done that day. The young lady

assistant had to point out to the new master the whole routine in which

the classes were engaged when their late teacher left, and which had

gone on as well as it could since. Then Master Langdon had a great many

questions to ask, some relating to his new duties, and some, perhaps,

implying a degree of curiosity not very unnatural under the

circumstances. The truth is, the general effect of the schoolroom, with

its scores of young girls, all their eyes naturally centring on him with

fixed or furtive glances, was enough to bewilder and confuse a young man

like Master Langdon, though he was not destitute of self-possession, as

we have already seen.

You cannot get together a hundred girls, taking them as they come, from

the comfortable and affluent classes, probably anywhere, certainly not

in New England, without seeing a good deal of beauty. In fact, we very

commonly mean by _beauty_ the way young girls look when there is nothing

to hinder their looking as Nature meant them to. And the great

schoolroom of the Apollinean Institute did really make so pretty a show

on the morning when Master Langdon entered it, that he might be pardoned

for asking Miss Darley more questions about his scholars than about

their lessons.

There were girls of all ages: little creatures, some pallid and

delicate-looking, the offspring of invalid parents,--much given to

books, not much to mischief, commonly spoken of as particularly good

children, and contrasted with another sort, girls of more vigorous

organization, who were disposed to laughing and play, and required a

strong hand to manage them;--then young growing misses of every shade of

Saxon complexion, and here and there one of more Southern hue: blondes,

some of them so translucent-looking, that it seemed as if you could see

the souls in their bodies, like bubbles in glass, if souls were objects

of sight; brunettes, some with rose-red colors, and some with that

swarthy hue which often carries with it a heavily-shaded lip, and which

with pure outlines and outspoken reliefs gives us some of our handsomest

women,--the women whom ornaments of pure gold adorn more than any other

_parures_; and again, but only here and there, one with dark hair and

gray or blue eyes, a Celtic type, perhaps, but found in our native stock

occasionally; rarest of all, a light-haired girl with dark eyes, hazel,

brown, or of the color of that mountain-brook spoken of in this chapter,

where it ran through shadowy woodlands. With these were to be seen at

intervals some of maturer years, full-blown flowers among the opening

buds, with that conscious look upon their faces which so many women wear

during the period when they never meet a single man without having his

monosyllable ready for him,--tied as they are, poor things! on the rock

of expectation, each of them an Andromeda waiting for her Perseus.

"Who is that girl in ringlets,--the fourth in the third row on the

right?" said Master Langdon.

"Charlotte Ann Wood," said Miss Darley;--"writes very pretty poems."

"Oh!--And the pink one, three seats from her? Looks bright; anything in

her?"

"Emma Dean,--day-scholar,--Squire Dean's daughter,--nice girl,--second

medal last year."

The master asked these two questions in a careless kind of way, and did

not seem to pay any too much attention to the answers.

"And who and what is that," he said,--"sitting a little apart

there,--that strange, wild-looking girl?"

This time he put the real question he wanted answered;--the other two

were asked at random, as masks for the third.

The lady-teacher's face changed;--one would have said she was frightened

or troubled. She looked at the girl doubtfully, as if she might hear the

master's question and its answer. But the girl did not look up;--she was

winding a gold chain about her wrist, and then uncoiling it, as if in a

kind of reverie.

Miss Darley drew close to the master and placed her hand so as to hide

her lips. "Don't look at her as if we were talking about her," she

whispered softly;--"that is Elsie Venner."

MEXICO.

A certain immortal fool, who had, like most admitted fools, great

wisdom, once said, that the number of truces between the Christians and

Saracens in Palestine made an old man of him; for he had known three of

them, so that he must be at least one hundred and fifty years old. The

saying occurs in a romance, to be sure, but one which is not half so

romantic as the best-accredited decade of Titus Livius, and is quite as

authentic as most of what Sir Archibald Alison says, when he writes on

the United States.

What Palestine and the Crusades were to the witty son of Witless, Mexico

and her politics are to moderns, not even excepting the predestined

devourers of the Aztec land, who ought to know something of the country

they purpose bringing within the full light of civilization through the

aid of slaughter and slavery. There are some myriads of "Americans of

the North" yet living, and who entertain not the remotest idea of dying,

who remember Mexico as a Spanish dependency quite as submissive to

Viceroy Iturrigaray as Cuba is now to Captain-General Serrano; and who

have seen her both an Empire and a Republic, and the theatre of more

revolutions than England has known since the days of the Octarchy. The

mere thought of the changes that have occurred there bewilders the mind;

and the inhabitants of orderly countries, whether that order be the

consequence of despotism or of constitutionalism, wonder that society

should continue to exist in a country where government appears to be

unknown.

Less than fifty years cover the time between the appearance of Hidalgo

and that of Miramon; and between the dates of the leaderships of the two

men, Mexico has had an army of generals, of whom little is now known

beyond their names. Hidalgo, Morelos, Mina, Bravo, Iturbide, Guerrero,

Bustamente, Victoria, Pedraza, Gomez Farias, Paredes, and Herrera,--such

are the names that were once familiar to our countrymen in connection

with Mexican affairs. We have now a new race of Mexican

chiefs,--Alvarez, Comonfort, Zuloaga, Uraga, Juarez, Vidaurri, Haro y

Tamariz, Degollado, and Miramon. Some of these last-named chiefs might,

perhaps, be classed with those first named, from years and services; but

whatever of political importance they have belongs to the present time;

and the most important man of them all, Miramon, is said to be very

young, and was not born until many years after the last vestiges of the

vice-regal rule had been removed. Santa Aña, but for his shifting round

so often,--now an absolute ruler, and then an absolute runaway, yet ever

contriving to get the better of his antagonists, whether they happen to

be clever Mexicans or dull Americans,--might be called the isthmus that

connects the first generation of leaders with that which now misleads

his country. Santa Aña's public life synchronizes with the independence

of Mexico of foreign rule, and his career can hardly be pronounced at an

end. It would be of the nature of a newspaper coincidence, were he to

know his "last of earth" at the very time when, by all indications,

Mexico stands in greater danger of losing her national life than she has

known since the day when Barradas was sent to play the part of Cortés,

but proved himself not quite equal to that of Narvaez. Santa Aña owed

much of his power to his victory over the Spaniards in 1830, though

pestilence did half the work to his hand; and perhaps no better evidence

of the hatred of the Mexicans for Spanish rule can be adduced, than the

hold which he has maintained over their minds, in consequence of the

part he took in overthrowing that rule, and in rendering its return

impossible.

Provoked by the anarchy which has so long existed in Mexico, American

writers, and writers of other countries, have sometimes contrasted the

condition of that nation with the order that prevailed there during the

Spanish ascendency, and it is not uncommon to hear Americans say that

the worst thing that ever happened to the Mexicans was the overthrow of

that ascendency. They forget that the causes of Mexican anarchy were of

Spanish creation, and that it must have exhibited itself, all the same,

if Mexico had not achieved her independence. The shock caused by the

seizure of the Spanish throne by Napoleon I. led to that war against the

Spaniards in Mexico which prematurely broke out in 1810, and which was

of the nature of a _Jacquerie_, but which would have been completely

successful, had Hidalgo been equal to his position. It had been intended

that the blow should be struck against the _Gachupines_,--European

Spaniards, or persons of pure Spanish blood,--who were partisans of

Spain, whether Spain were ruled by Bourbons or Bonapartes; and it was to

have been delivered by the Creoles, who remained faithful to the House

of Bourbon. Circumstances caused the Indian races to commence the war,

and this was fatal to the original project, as it led to the union of

both Spaniards and Creoles against the followers of Hidalgo. The army

with which Calleja overthrew the forces of Hidalgo was an army of

Creoles. It was composed of the very men who would have been foremost in

putting down the Spaniards, if the Indians had remained quiet. From that

time dates the disorder of Mexico, which has ever since continued,

though at intervals the country has known short periods of comparative

repose.

In 1811 Morelos was the most conspicuous of the insurgent chiefs, and

the next year he was successful in several engagements; and it was not

until the end of 1815 that he fell into the hands of his enemies, by

whom he was shot, sharing the fate of Hidalgo. During the four years

that he led the people, efforts were made to settle the controversy on

an equitable basis that would have left the King of Spain master of

Mexico; but the pride of the Spaniards would not allow them to listen to

justice. They acted in Mexico as their ancestors had acted in the

Netherlands. It is the chief characteristic of the Spaniard, that, in

dealing with foreigners, he always assumes a Roman-like superiority,

without possessing the Roman's sense and shrewdness. The treatment of

the Capuans by the Romans, as told by Livy in his narrative of the

Hannibalian War, might be read as a history of the manner in which the

Spaniards ever treat "rebels"; and never did they behave more cruelly

than they behaved toward the Mexicans in the last days of the viceroys.

This fact is to be borne in mind, when we think of the sanguinary

character of Mexican contests; for that character originated in the

action of the Spaniards during their struggles with the Patriots. The

latter were not faultless, but they often exhibited a generosity and a

self-denial that promised much for the future of their country, which

promise would have been realized but for the ferocious tone of the

warfare of the old governing race. The Spaniards were ultimately beaten,

but they left behind them an evil that marred the victory of the

Patriots, and which has done much to prevent it from proving useful to

those who obtained it at great cost to themselves and their country.

The defeat and death of Morelos proved fatal, for the time, to regular

opposition on the part of the Patriots, and it was not until the arrival

of Mina in Mexico that they renewed the war in force. This was in April,

1817; and Mina was defeated and put to death in seven months after he

landed. At the beginning of 1818, the viceroy Apodaca announced to the

home government, "that he would be answerable for the safety of Mexico

without a single additional soldier being sent out to reinforce the

armies that were in the field." Had he been a wise man, the event might

have justified this boast; but as he was neither wise nor honest, and as

he sought to restore the old state of things in all its impurity, his

confidence was fatal to the Spanish cause. The Spanish Constitution of

1812 had been proclaimed in Mexico in the autumn of that year, and its

existence kept the Liberal cause alive. So long as the Patriots had any

power in the field, Apodaca, though an enemy of the Constitution, dared

not seek its destruction; but after the overthrow of Mina, when he

believed the Patriot party was "crushed out," he plotted against the

Constitution, and resolved to restore the system that had existed down

to 1812. Not a vestige of Liberalism was to remain. He selected for his

chief tool the once famous Agustin de Iturbide, who turned out an edged

tool, so sharp, indeed, that he not only cut the viceroy's fingers, but

severed forever the connection between Mexico and Spain. Iturbide had

eminently distinguished himself in the royal army, and to him it was

owing that Morelos had been defeated. He was brave, ambitious, and able,

and he possessed a handsome person and elegant manners. He was appointed

to head an army in Western Mexico, on condition that he should

"pronounce" in favor of the restoration of absolute royal authority. He

accepted the command; but on the 24th of February, 1821, he astonished

his employer by proclaiming, not the plan upon which they had agreed,

but what is known as the _Plan of Iguala_, from the town where the

proclamation was made. This plan provided that Mexico should be

independent of Spain, and for the erection of the country into a

constitutional monarchy, the throne of which should be filled by

Ferdinand VII., or by one of his brothers,--or by some person chosen

from among reigning families, should the Spanish Bourbons decline the

invitation. The monarch was to be called _Emperor_, a title made

fashionable and cheap by Bonaparte's example. Perfect equality was

established, and all distinction of castes was abolished. Saving that

the Catholic religion was declared the national religion, the

twenty-four articles of this Plan were of a liberal character, and leave

an impression on the mind highly favorable to their author. Viewing it

in the light of thirty-nine years, and seeing that republicanism has not

succeeded in Mexico, even a democrat may regret that the Plan of Iguala

did not become the constitution of that country.

The simple abolition of Spanish rule would have satisfied the mass of

the inhabitants, who cared little for political institutions, but who

knew the evils they suffered from the tyranny of a class that did not

number above one-eightieth part of the population. For the time, the

Plan was successful: the clergy, the military, the people, and the old

partisans of independence all supported it; and O'Donoju, who had

arrived as successor to Apodaca, recognized Mexican independence. The

victors entered the capital September 27, 1821, and established a

provisional Junta, which created a regency, with Iturbide for President.

On the 24th of February, 1822, a Congress assembled, which contained

three parties, the representatives of those which existed in the

country:--1. The Bourbonists, who desired that the Plan of Iguala should

be adhered to in all its details; 2. The Iturbideans, who wished for a

monarchy, with their chief as Emperor; and, 3. The Republicans, who were

hostile to monarchical institutions as well as to Spanish rule. It is

possible that the first party might have triumphed, had Spain been under

the dominion of sagacious men; for the clergy must have preferred it,

not only because it was that polity under which they were sure to have

most consideration, but because the whole power of Rome might have been

brought to bear in its behalf, and that the clergy never would have

seriously thought of resisting;--and the influence of the clergy was

great over the mass of the people. But the Spanish government would not

ratify the treaty made by O'Donoju, or abandon its claim on Mexico. This

left but two factions in the Congress, and their quarrel had a sudden

termination, for the moment, in the elevation of Iturbide to the

imperial throne, May 18th, 1822. This was the work of a handful of the

lowest rabble of the capital, the select few of a vagabondage compared

with whom the inhabitants of the Five Points may be counted grave

constitutional politicians. The legislature went through the farce of

approval, and the people acquiesced,--as they would have done, had he

been proclaimed Cham. Had Iturbide understood his trade, he might have

reigned long, perhaps have established a dynasty; but he did what nearly

every Mexican chief since his time has done, and what, to be just,

nearly every revolutionary government has sought to do: he endeavored to

establish a tyranny. He dissolved the Congress, substituting a Junta for

it, composed of his own adherents. The consequence was revolt in various

parts of the empire. Santa Aña, then Governor of Vera Cruz, "pronounced"

against the Emperor; and Echavari, who was sent to punish him, played

the same part toward Iturbide that Iturbide had played toward Apodaca:

he joined the enemies of the imperial government. As Iturbide had

triumphed over the viceroy by the aid of men of all parties but that of

the old Spaniards, so was he overthrown by a coalition of an equally

various character. He gave up the crown, after having worn it not quite

ten months, and was allowed to depart, with the promise of an annual

pension of twenty-five thousand dollars. Seeking to recover the crown in

1824, he was seized and shot,--a fate of which he could not complain, as

he was a man of bloody hand, and, as a royalist leader, had caused

prisoners to be butchered by the hundred.

The Republicans were now triumphant, but their conduct showed that they

were not much better qualified to rule than were the Imperialists. They

made a Federal Constitution,--that which is commonly known as the

Constitution of 1824,--which was principally modelled on that of the

United States. This imitation would have been ridiculous, if it had not

been mischievous. Between the circumstances of America and those of

Mexico there was no resemblance whatever, and hence the polity which is

good for the one could be good for nothing to the other. One fact alone

ought to have convinced the Mexican Constitutionalists of the absurdity

of their doings. Their Constitution recognized the Catholic religion as

the religion of the state, and absolutely forbade the profession of any

other form of faith! In what part of our Constitution they found

authority for such a provision as this, no man can say. It has been

mentioned, reproachfully, that our Constitution does not even recognize

God; yet on a Constitution modelled upon ours Mexican statesmen could

graft an Established Church, with a monopoly of religion! Just where

imitation would have been more creditable to them than originality, they

became original. It has been said, in their defence, that the Church was

so powerful that they could not choose but admit its claim. This would

be a good defence, had they sought to make a Constitution in accordance

with views admitting the validity of an Ecclesiastical Establishment.

The charge against them is not, that they sanctioned an Establishment,

but that they sought to couple with it a liberal republican

Constitution, and thus to reconcile contradictions,--an end not to be

attained anywhere, and least of all in a country like Mexico.

The factions that arose in Mexico after the establishment of the

Republic were the Federalists and the Centralists, being substantially

the same as those which yet exist there. The Federalists have been the

true liberals throughout the disturbances and troubles of a generation,

and, though not faultless, are better entitled to the name of patriots

than are the men by whom they have been opposed. They have been the foes

of the priesthood, and have often sought to lessen its power and destroy

its influence. If they could have had their will any time during the

last thirty-five years, the priests would have been reduced to a

condition of apostolic simplicity, and the Church's vast property been

put to uses such as the Apostles would have approved. Guadalupe Victoria

would probably have been as little averse to the confiscation of

ecclesiastical property as was Thomas Cromwell himself. The fear that a

firm and stable federal government would interfere with the privileges

of the Church, and would not cease such interference until the change

had been made perfect, which implied the Church's political destruction,

is one of the chief reasons why no such government has ever had an

existence in Mexico. The Church has favored every party and faction that

has been opposed to order and liberty. Royalism, centralism, despotism,

and even foreign conquest has it preferred to any state of things in

which there should be found that due union of liberty and law without

which no country can expect to have constitutional freedom. Had it ever

been possible to establish a strong central government in Mexico, it is

very probable the Church would have been one of its firmest pillars. The

character and organization of that institution, its desire to maintain

possession of its property, and its aversion to liberty of every kind,

would all have united to make such a government worthy of the Church's

support, provided it had supported the Church in its turn. The

ecclesiastical influence is everywhere observable in the history of

Mexico, from the beginning of the struggle for independence. The clergy

were supporters of independence, not because they wished for liberty to

the country, but that they might monopolize the vast power of their

order. They hated the Spaniards as bitterly as they were hated by any

other portion of the inhabitants of Mexico. But they never meant that

republicanism should obtain the ascendency in the country. A powerful

monarchy, an empire, was what they aimed at; and the government which

Iturbide established was one that would have received their aid, could

it have brought any power to the political firm the clergy desired to

see in existence. It may be assumed that the clergy would have preferred

a Spanish prince as emperor, for they were too sagacious not to know

that the best part of royalty is that which is under ground. Kings must

be born to their trade to succeed in it; and a brand-new emperor, like

Iturbide, unless highly favored by circumstances, or singularly endowed

with intellectual qualifications, could be of little service to the

clerical party. He fell, as we have seen; but the clerical party

remained, and, having continued to flourish, is at this time, it is

probable, stronger than it was in 1822. It is owing to this party that

the idea has never been altogether abandoned that Mexico should resume

monarchical institutions; and every attempt that has been made to favor

what in this country is known as consolidation has either been initiated

by it or has received its assistance. That we do not misrepresent the

so-called clerical party, in attributing to it a desire to see a king in

Mexico, is clear from the candid admission of one of its members, who

has written at length, and with much ability, in defence of its opinions

and actions. "Had it been given to that party which is taxed with being

absolutist," he says, "to see such a government in Mexico as the

government of Brazil, (not to take examples out of the American

continent,) their earnest desires would have been accomplished. It is

therefore wrongfully that that party is the object of the curses

lavished upon it." This is plain speaking, indeed,--the Brazilian

government being one of the strongest monarchies in the world, and

deriving its strength from the fact that it seeks the good of its

subjects. The blindest republican who ever dreamed it was in the power

of institutions to "cause or cure" the ills of humanity must admit,

that, if Bourbon rule in Mexico could have produced results similar to

those which have proceeded from Braganza rule in Brazil, it would have

been the best fortune that the former country could have known, had Don

Carlos or Don Francisco de Paula been allowed to wear the imperial crown

which was set up in 1822. With less ability than Iturbide, either of

those princes would have made a better monarch than that adventurer. It

is not so much intellect as influence that makes a sovereign useful, the

man being of far less consequence than the institution. Even the case of

Napoleon I. affords no exception to this rule; for his dynasty and his

empire fell with him, because they lacked the stability which comes from

prescription alone. Had Marlborough and Eugene penetrated to Paris, as

did Wellington and Blücher a century later, they never would have

thought of subverting the Bourbon line; but the Bonaparte line was cut

off as of course when its chief was defeated. The first king may have

been a fortunate soldier only, but it requires several generations of

royalty to give power to a reigning house, as in old times it required

several descents to give to a man the flavor of genuine nobility. If it

be objected to this, that it is an admission of the power which is

claimed for flunkeyism, we can only meet the charge by saying that there

is much of the flunkey in man, and that whoso shall endeavor to

construct a government without recognizing a truth which is universal,

though not great, will find that his structure can better be compared to

the Syrian flower than to the Syrian cedar. The age of Model Republics

has passed away even from dreams.

We have called the party in Mexico which represents a certain fixed

principle the clerical party; but we have done so more for the sake of

convenience, and from deference to ordinary usage, than because the

words accurately describe the Mexican reactionists. Conservative party

would, perhaps, be the better name; and the word _conservative_ would

not be any more out of place in such a connection, or more perverted

from its just meaning, than it is in England and the United States. The

clergy form, as it were, the core of this party, and give to it a shape

and consistency it could not have without their alliance. Yet, if we

can believe the Mexican already quoted, and who is apparently well

acquainted with the subject on which he has sought to enlighten the

English mind, the party that is opposed to the Liberals is quite as much

in favor of freedom as are the latter, and is utterly hostile to either

religious or political despotism. After objecting to the course of those

Mexicans who found a political pattern in the United States, and showing

the evils that have followed from their awkward imitation, he says,--"No

wonder, then, that some men, actuated by the love of their country,

convinced of the danger to Mexican nationality from such a state of

things, seeing clearly through all these American intrigues, and

determined to oppose them by all the means in their power, should have

formed long ago, and as soon as the first symptoms of anarchy and the

cause of them became apparent, the centre of a party, which, having

necessarily to combat the so-called 'Liberal party,' or, in other words,

the American army, is accused of being a retrograde, absolutist,

clerical party, bent on nothing but the reëstablishment of the

Inquisition and the 'worst of the worst times.' Nothing, however, is

less true. That party contains in its bosom the most enlightened and the

most respectable part of the community, men who have not as yet to learn

the advantages and benefits of civil and religious liberty, and who

would be happy indeed to see liberty established in their country; but

liberty under the law, rational and wise liberty, liberty compatible

with order and tranquillity, liberty, in a word, for good purposes,--not

that savage, licentious, and tyrannical liberty, the object of which is

anarchy, so well answering the private ends of its partisans, and, above

all, the iniquitous views of an ambitious neighbor.... For the present,

no doubt, their object is limited to obtain the triumph over their

enemies, who are the enemies of Mexico, and to put down anarchy, as the

first and most pressing want of the country, no matter under what form

of government or by what means. In pursuance of such an object, the

clergy naturally side with them; and hence, for those who are ignorant

of the bottom of things in Mexican affairs, the denomination given to

this party of 'Clerical party' supported by military despotism; whereas

the 'Anarchical party' is favored with the name of 'Liberal

Constitutional party.' It is, however, easy to see that those two

parties would be more exactly designated, the one as the _Mexican

Party_, the other as the _American Party_."

If this delineation of the Conservative party be a fair one,--as

probably it is, after making allowance for partisan coloring,--it is

easy to see, that, while the clergy are with it, they are not of it; and

also, that it would be involved in a quarrel with the priesthood in a

week after it should have succeeded in its contest with the Liberals.

Where, then, would be the restoration of order, of which this Mexican

writer has so much to say? The clergy of Mexico are too powerful to

become the tools of any political organization. They use politicians and

parties,--are not used by them. The Conservative party, therefore, is

not the coming party, either for the clergy or for Mexico. It answers

the clergy's purpose of making it a shield against the Liberals, whose

palms itch to be at the property of the Church; but it never could

become their sword; and it is a sword, and a sharp and pointed one,

firmly held, that the clergy desire, and must have, if their end is to

be achieved. The defensive is not and cannot be their policy. They must

rule or perish. Hence the victory of the Conservatives would be the

signal for the opening of a new warfare, and the clergy would seek to

found their power solidly on the bodies of the men whom they had used to

destroy the Liberals. They have pursued one course for thirty-eight

years, and will not be moved from it by any appeals that shall be made

to them in the name of order and of law, appeals to which they have been

utterly insensible when made by Liberals. Indeed, they will not be able

to see any difference between the two parties, but will hate the

Conservatives with most bitterness, because standing more immediately in

their way. A combat would be inevitable, with the chance that the

American Eagle would descend upon the combatants and swoop them away.

If anarchy were a reason for the formation of a league in Mexico,

composed of all the conservative men of the country, it ought to have

been formed long ago. Anarchy was organized there with the Republic, and

was made much more permanent than Carnot made victory. Unequivocal

evidences of its existence became visible before the Constitution was in

a condition to be violated; and when that instrument was accepted, it

appeared to have been set up in order that politicians and parties might

have something definite to disregard. The first President was Guadalupe

Victoria, an honest Republican, whose name has become somewhat dimmed by

time. With him was associated Nicolas Bravo, as Vice-President. It was

while Victoria was President that the masonic parties appeared, known as

the Scotch masons and the York masons, or _Escoceses_ and _Yorkinos_,

which were nothing but clubs of the Centralists and the Federalists. The

President was of the _Yorkinos_ or Federalists, and the Vice-President

was of the other lodge. Bravo and his party were for such changes as

should substitute a constitutional monarchy, with a Spanish prince at

its head, for the Constitution of 1824. Bravo "pronounced" openly

against Victoria,--a proceeding of which the reader can form some idea

by supposing Mr. Breckinridge heading a rabble force to expel Mr.

Buchanan from Washington, for the purpose of calling in some member of

the English royal family to sit on an American throne. Through the aid

of Guerrero, a man of ability and integrity, and very popular, the

Liberals triumphed in the field; but Congress elected his competitor,

Pedraza, President, though the people were mostly for Guerrero. This was

a most unfortunate circumstance, and to its occurrence much of the evil

that Mexico has known for thirty years may be directly traced. Instead

of submitting to the strictly legal choice of President, made by the

members of Congress, the Federalists set the open example of revolting

against the action of men who had performed their duties according to

the requirements of the Constitution. Guerrero was violently made

President. That the other party contemplated the destruction of the

Constitution is very probable; but the worst that they, its enemies,

could have done against it would have been a trifle in comparison with

the demoralizing consequences of the violation of that instrument by its

friends. Yet the Presidency of Guerrero will ever have honorable mention

in history, for one most excellent reason: Slavery was abolished by him

on the anniversary of Mexican independence, 1829, he deeming it proper

to signalize that anniversary "by an act of national justice and

beneficence." Will the time ever come when the Fourth of July shall have

the same double claim to the reverence of mankind?

Guerrero perished by the sword, as he had risen by it. The

Vice-President, Bustamente, revolted, and was aided by Santa Aña. His

popularity was too great to allow him to be spared, and when he was

captured, Guerrero was shot, in 1831. Of the many infamous acts of which

Santa Aña has been guilty, the murder of Guerrero is the worst. Possibly

it would have ruined him, but for his services against the Spaniards, at

about the same time. He was now the chief man in Mexico, and became

President in 1833. The next year he dissolved Congress, and established

a military government. The Constitution of 1824 was formally abolished

in 1835, and a Central Constitution was proclaimed the next year, by

which the States were converted into Departments. Santa Aña kept as much

aloof from these proceedings as he could, and sought to add to his

popularity by attacking Texas, where he reaped a plentiful crop of

cypress.

The triumph of the Centralists was the turning-point in the fortunes of

Mexico, as it furnished a plausible pretext for American interference in

her affairs, the end of which is rapidly approaching. The Texan revolt

had no other justification than that which it derived from the overthrow

of the Federal Constitution; but that was ample, and, had it not been

for the introduction of slavery into Texas, the judgment of the

civilized world would have been entirely in favor of the Texans. In

1844, when our Presidential election was made to turn upon the question

of the annexation of Texas to the United States, the grand argument of

the annexationists was drawn from the circumstance that the Mexicans had

abrogated the Federal Constitution, thereby releasing the Texans from

their obligations to Mexico. This was an argument to which Americans,

and especially democrats, those sworn foes of consolidation, were prone

to lend a favorable ear; and it is certain that it had much weight in

promoting the election of Mr. Polk. Had the Texan revolt been one of

ambition merely, and not justifiable on political grounds apart from the

Slavery question, the decision might have been different, if, indeed,

the question had ever been introduced into the politics of this country.

The sagacious men who managed the affairs of the Democratic party knew

their business too well to attempt the extension of slave-holding

territory in the gross and palpable form that is common in these

shameless days. But Texas, as an injured party that had valiantly

sustained its constitutional rights, was a very different thing from a

province that had revolted against Mexico because forbidden by Mexican

authority to allow the existence of slavery within its borders. There

was much deception in the business, but there was sufficient truth and

justice in the argument used to deceive honest men who do not trouble

themselves to look beyond the surface of things. For more than twenty

years our political controversies have all been colored by the triumph

of the Mexican Centralists in 1835-6; and but for that triumph, it is

altogether likely that our territory would not have been increased, and

that the Slavery question, instead of absorbing the American mind, would

have held but a subordinate place in our party debates. It may, perhaps,

be deemed worthy of especial mention, that the action of the Centralists

of Mexico, destined to affect us so sensibly, was initiated at the same

time that the modern phase of the Slavery question was opened in the

United States. The same year that saw the Federal Constitution of Mexico

abolished saw our government laboring to destroy freedom of the press

and the sanctity of the mails, by throwing its influence in favor of the

bill to prevent the circulation of "incendiary publications," that is,

publications drawn from the writings of Washington and Jefferson; and

the same year that witnessed the final effort of Santa Aña to "subdue"

Texas to Centralization beheld General Cushing declaring that slavery

should not be introduced into the North, thus "agitating" the country,

and winning for himself that Abolition support without which his

political career must have been cut short in the morning of its

existence. Such are the coincidences of history!

From the time of the victory of the Centralists until the commencement

of the war with the United States, Mexico was the scene of perpetual

disturbances. Mexia, a rash, but honest man, made an attempt to free his

country in 1838, but failed, being defeated and executed by Santa Aña,

who came from the retirement to which his Texan failure had consigned

him, as champion of the government. After some years of apparent

anarchy, Santa Aña became Dictator, and in 1843 a new Constitution, more

centralizing in its nature than its immediate predecessor, was framed

under his direction. At the beginning of 1845 he fell, and became an

exile. His successor was General Herrera, who was desirous to avoid war

with the United States, on which account he was violently opposed by

Paredes, with success, the latter usurping the Presidency. Aided by our

government, Santa Aña returned to Mexico, and infused new vigor into his

countrymen. On his return, he avowed himself a Federalist, and

recommended a recurrence to the Constitution of 1824, which was

proclaimed. Paredes had fallen before a "revolution," and was allowed to

proceed to Europe. He was a monarchist, and at that time the friends of

monarchy in Mexico had some hopes of success. It is believed that the

governments of England and France were desirous of establishing a

Mexican monarchy, and their intervention in the affairs of Mexico was

feared by our government. Two things, however, prevented their action,

if ever they seriously contemplated armed intervention. The first was

the rapid success of our armies, coupled as it was with the exhibition

of a military spirit and capacity for which European nations had not

been prepared by anything in our previous history; and the second was

the potato-rot, which brought Great Britain to the verge of famine, and

broke up the Tory party. The ill feeling, too, that was created between

the English and French governments by the Montpensier marriage, and the

discontent of the French people, which led to the Revolution of 1848,

were not without their effect on affairs. Had our government resolved to

seize all Mexico, it could have done so without encountering European

resistance in 1848, when there was not a stable Continental government

of the first class west of the Niemen, and when England was too much

occupied with home matters, and with the revolutions that were happening

all around her, to pay any regard to the course of events in the

Occident. But the Polk administration was not equal to the work that was

before it; and though members of the Democratic party did think of

acting, and men of property in Mexico were anxious for annexation,

nothing was done. The American forces left Mexico, and the old routine

of weakness and disorder was there resumed. Perhaps it would be better

to say it was continued; for the war had witnessed no intermission of

the senseless proceedings of the Mexican politicians. Their contests

were waged as bitterly as they had been while the country enjoyed

external peace.

Several persons held the Presidential chair after the resignation of

Herrera. Organic changes were made. The clergy exhibited the same

selfishness that had characterized their action for five-and-twenty

years. An Extraordinary Constituent Congress confirmed the readoption of

the Constitution of 1824, making such slight changes as were deemed

necessary. Santa Aña again became President. Some of the States formed

associations for defence, acting independently of the general

government. After the loss of the capital, Santa Aña resigned the

Presidency, and Peña y Peña succeeded him, followed by Anaya; but the

first soon returned to office. Peace was made, and Santa Aña again went

into exile. Herrera was chosen President, and for more than two years

devoted himself to the work of reformation, with considerable success,

though outbreaks and rebellions occurred in many quarters. President

Arista also showed himself to be a firm and patriotic chief. But in 1852

a reaction took place, under favor of which Santa Aña returned home and

became President for the fifth time, and Arista was banished. The

government of Santa Aña was absolute in its character, and much

resembled that which Napoleon III. has established in France,--with this

difference, that it wanted that strength which is the chief merit of the

French imperial system. It encountered opposition of the usual form,

from time to time, until it was broken down, in August, 1855, when the

President left both office and the country, and has since resided

abroad. The new revolution favored Federalism. Alvarez was chosen

President, but he was too liberal for the Church party, being so

unreasonable as to require that the property of the Church should be

taxed. Plots and conspiracies were formed against him, and it being

discovered that the climate of the capital did not agree with him, he

resigned, and was succeeded by General Comonfort. Half a dozen leaders

"pronounced" against Comonfort, one of them announcing his purpose to

establish an Empire. Government made head against these attacks, and

seized property belonging to the Church. Some eminent Church officers

were banished, for the part they had taken in exciting insurrections. At

the close of 1857, Comonfort made himself Dictator; but the very men who

urged him to the step became his enemies, and he was deprived of power.

Zuloaga, who was one of his advisers and subsequent enemies, succeeded

him, being chosen President by a Council of Notables. Comonfort's

measures for the confiscation of Church property were repealed. The

Constitution of 1857 placed the Presidential power in the hands of the

Chief Justice, on the resignation of the President, whence the

prominence of Juarez lately, he being Chief Justice when Comonfort

resigned. Assembling troops, he encountered Zuloaga, but was defeated.

The Juarez "government" then left the country, but shortly after

returned. Insurrections broke out in different places, and confusion

reigned on all sides. General Robles deposed Zuloaga, and made an honest

effort to unite the Liberals and Conservatives; but the Junta which he

assembled elected Miramon President, a new man, who had distinguished

himself as a leader of the Conservative forces. Miramon reinstated

Zuloaga, but accepted the Presidency on the latter's abdication, and has

since been the principal personage in Mexico, and, though he has

experienced occasional reverses, has far more power than Juarez. At the

close of the year 1859, the greater part of Mexico was either disposed

to submit to the Miramon government, or cared little for either Miramon

or Juarez.

It is impossible to believe that the Juarez government is possessed of

much strength; and the gentleman who lately represented the United

States in Mexico (Mr. Forsyth) is of opinion that it is powerless.

Nevertheless, our government acknowledges that of Juarez, and has made

itself a party to the contests in Mexico. In his last Annual Message,

President Buchanan devotes much space to Mexican affairs, drawing a

deplorable picture thereof, and recommending armed intervention by the

United States in behalf of the Liberal party. "I recommend to Congress,"

says the President, "to pass a law authorizing the President, under such

conditions as they may deem expedient, to employ a sufficient military

force to enter Mexico for the purpose of obtaining indemnity for the

past and security for the future." This force, should Congress respond

favorably to the Presidential recommendation, is to act in concert with

the Juarez government, and to "restore" it to power. In return for such

aid, that government is to indemnify the Americans, and to provide that

no more Americans shall be wronged by Mexican governments. Does the

President believe this theory of Mexican settlement will be accepted by

the world? If yes, then is he a man of marvellous faith, considering the

uncommonly excellent opportunities he has had to learn what the

political settlements of Mexico really mean. If no, then he has a

meaning beneath his words, and that meaning is the conquest of Mexico.

We do not charge duplicity upon President Buchanan, but it is vexatious

and humiliating to be compelled to choose between such charge and the

belief of a degree of simplicity in him that would be astonishing in a

yearling politician, and which is astounding in a man who has held high

office for well-nigh forty years. Let us suppose that Congress should

kindly listen to President Buchanan's recommendation,--that a strong

fleet and a great army should be sent to the aid of the Juarez

government, and should establish it in the capital of Mexico, and then

leave the country and the coasts of "our sister Republic,"--what would

follow? Why, exactly what we have seen follow the Peace of 1848. The

Juarez government could not be stronger or more honest than was that of

Herrera, or more anxious to effect the rehabilitation of Mexico; yet

Herrera's government had to encounter rebellions, and outrages were

common during its existence, and afterward, when men of similar views

held sway, or what passes for sway in "our sister Republic." So would it

be again, should we effect a "restoration" of the Liberals. In a week

after our last regiment should have returned home, there would be

rebellions for our allies to suppress. If they should succeed in

maintaining their power, it would be as the consequence of a violation

of their agreement with us; and where, then, would be the "indemnity"

for which we are to fight? If they should be overthrown, as probably

would be their fate, where would be the "security" for which we are to

pay so highly in blood and gold? It is useless to quote the treaty which

the Juarez government has just made with our government, as evidence of

its liberality and good faith. That treaty is of no more value than

would be one between the United States and the ex-king of Delhi. Nothing

is more notorious than the liberality of parties that are not in power.

There is no stipulation to which they will not assent, and violate, if

their interest should be supposed to lie in the direction of perjury.

Have we, in the hour of our success, been invariably true to the

promises made in the hour of our necessities? A study of the treaty we

made with France in 1778, by the light of after years, would be useful

to men who think that a treaty made is an accomplished fact. The people

of the United States have to choose between the conquest of Mexico and

non-intervention in Mexican affairs. There may be something to be said

in favor of conquest, though the President's arguments in that

direction--for such they are, disguised though they be--remind us

strongly of those which were put forth in justification of the partition

of Poland; but the policy of intervention does not bear criticism for

one moment. Either it is conquest veiled, or it is a blunder, the chance

to commit which is to be purchased at an enormous price; and blunders

are to be had for nothing, and without the expenditure of life and

money.

We had purposed speaking of the condition of Mexico, the character of

her population, and the probable effect of her absorption by the United

States; but the length to which our article has been drawn in the

statement of preliminary facts--a statement made necessary by the

general disregard of Mexican matters by most Americans--warns us to

forbear. We may return to the subject, should the action of Congress on

the President's recommendation lead to the placing of the Mexican

question on the list of those questions that must be decided by the

event of the national election of the current year.

REVIEWS AND LITERARY NOTICES.

_The Florence Stories._ By JACOB ABBOTT. _Florence and John._ New York:

Sheldon & Co. 16mo. pp. 252.

_Ernest Bracebridge, or Schoolboy Days._ By W. H. G. KINGSTON. Boston:

Ticknor & Fields. 16mo. pp. 344.

How should a book for children be written?

Three rules will suffice. It should be written clearly and simply; for

young minds will spend little time in difficult investigation. It should

have a good moral. It should be interesting; or it will generally be

left unread, and thus any other excellence that it may possess will be

useless. Some writers seem to have a fourth rule,--that it should be

instructive; but, really, it is no great matter, if a child should have

some books without wisdom. Moreover, this maxim is eminently perilous in

its practical application, and, indeed, is seldom followed but at the

expense of the other three.

To these three rules all writers of children's books profess to conform;

yet a good book for children is a rarity; for, simple as the rules are,

they are very little understood. While all admit that the style should

be simple and familiar, some appear to think that anything simple to

them will be equally simple to their child-readers, and write as nearly

as possible in the style of "The Rambler." Such a book is "The Percy

Family," whose author is guilty of an additional impropriety in putting

his ponderous sentences into the mouth of a child not ten years old.

Another and more numerous class, evidently piquing themselves not a

little upon avoiding this error, fall into another by fancying it

necessary to _write down_ to their young readers. They explain

everything with a tiresome minuteness of detail, although any observer

of children ought to know that a child's mind does not want everything

explained. They think that simplicity demands this lengthy discussion of

every trivial matter. There is such a thing as a conceited simplicity,

and there is a technical simplicity, that in its barrenness and

insipidity is worthy only of a simpleton. In Jacob Abbott's "Juveniles"

especially, by means of this minuteness, a very scanty stock of ideas is

made to go a great way. Does simplicity require such trash as this?

"The place was known by the name of the Octagon. The reason why

it was called by this name was, that the principal sitting-room

in the house was built in the form of an octagon, that is,

instead of having four sides, as a room usually has, this room

had eight sides. An octagon is a figure of eight sides.

"A figure of four sides is called a square. A figure of five

sides is called a pentagon, of six sides a hexagon, of eight

sides an octagon. There might be a figure of seven sides, but

it would not be very easily made, and it would not be very

pretty when it was made, and so it is seldom used or spoken of.

But octagons and hexagons are very common, for they are easily

made, and they are very regular and symmetrical in form."

The object of all this is, doubtless, to impart valuable information.

But while such slipshod writing is singularly uninteresting, it may also

be censured as inaccurate. Mr. Abbott seems to think all polygons

necessarily regular. Any child can make a heptagon at once,

notwithstanding Mr. Abbott calls it so difficult. A _regular_ heptagon,

indeed, is another matter. Then what does he mean by saying octagons and

hexagons are very regular? A regular octagon is regular, though an

octagon in general is no more regular than any other figure. But Mr.

Abbott continues:--

"If you wish to see exactly what the form of an octagon is, you

can make one in this way. First cut out a piece of paper in the

form of a square. This square will, of course, have four sides

and four corners. Now, if you cut off the four corners, you

will have four new sides, for at every place where you cut off

a corner you will have a new side. These four new sides,

together with the parts of the old sides that are left, will

make eight sides, and so you will have an octagon.

"If you wish your octagon to be regular, you must be careful

how much you cut off at each corner. If you cut off too little,

the new sides which you make will not be so long as what

remains of the old ones. If you cut off too much, they will be

longer. You had better cut off a little at first from each

corner, all around, and then compare the new sides with what

is left of the old ones. You can then cut off a little more,

and so on, until you make your octagon nearly regular.

"There are other much more exact modes of making octagons than

this, but I cannot stop to describe them here."

Must we have no more pennyworths of sense to such a monstrous quantity

of verbiage than Mr. Abbott gives us here? We would defy any man to

parody that. He could teach the penny-a-liners a trick of the trade

worth knowing. The great Chrononhotonthologos, crying,

"Go call a coach, and let a coach be called,

And let the man that calleth be the caller,

And when he calleth, let him nothing call

But 'Coach! coach! coach! Oh, for a coach, ye gods!'"

is comparatively a very Spartan for brevity. This may be a cheap way of

writing books; but the books are a dear bargain to the buyer.

A book is not necessarily ill adapted to a child because its ideas and

expressions are over his head. Some books, that were not written for

children and would shock all Mr. Abbott's most dearly cherished ideas,

are still excellent reading for them. Walter Scott's poems and novels

will please an intelligent child. Cooper's Leatherstocking tales will

not be read by the lad of fourteen more eagerly than by his little

sister who cannot understand half of them. A child fond of reading can

have no more delightful book than the "Faërie Queene," unless it be the

"Arabian Nights," which was not written as a "juvenile." There are pages

by the score in "Robinson Crusoe" that a child cannot understand,--and

it is all the better reading for him on that account. A child has a

comfort in unintelligible words that few men can understand. Homer's

"Iliad" is good reading, though only a small part may be comprehended.

(We are not, however, so much in favor of mystery as to recommend the

original Greek.) Do our children of the year 1860 ever read a book

called "The Pilgrim's Progress"? Hawthorne's "Wonder-Book" is good for

children, though better for adults.

Then look at our second rule. What, after all, constitutes a "good

moral"? We say that no book has a good moral which teaches a child that

goodness and effeminacy, laziness and virtue, are convertible terms; no

book is good that is "goody," no book is moral that moralizes. The

intention may be good, but the teaching is not. Have as much as you will

of poetical justice, but beware of making your books mere vehicles for

conveying maxims of propriety. You cannot so deceive a child. You may

talk _at_ him, while pretending to tell him a story, but he will soon be

shy of you. He has learned by bitter experience too much of the

falseness of this world, and has been too often beguiled by sugared

pills, to be slow in detecting the sugared pills of your

literature,--especially, O Jacob Abbott! when the pills have so little,

so very little, sugar.

Our notion of a good moral is a strong, breezy, open-air moral, one that

teaches courage, and therefore truth. These are the most important

things for a child to know, and a book which teaches these alone is

moral enough. And these can be taught without offending the mind of the

young reader, however keenly suspicious. But if you wish to teach

gentleness and kindness as well, let them be shown in your story by some

noisy boy who can climb trees, or some active, merry, hoydenish girl who

can run like Atalanta; and don't imply a falsehood by attributing them

always to the quiet children.

Mr. Abbott's books have spoiled our children's books, and have done

their best to spoil our children, too. There is no fresh, manly life in

his stories; anything of the kind is sourly frowned down. Rollo, while

strolling along, picturesquely, perhaps, but stupidly, sees A Noisy Boy,

and is warned by his insufferable father to keep out of that boy's way.

That Noisy Boy infallibly turns out vicious. Is that sound doctrine?

Will that teach a child to admire courage and activity? If he is ever

able to appreciate the swing and vigor of Macaulay's Lays, it will not

be because you trained him on such lyrics as

"In the winter, when 'tis mild,

We may run, but not be wild;

But in summer, we must walk,

And improve our time by talk" (!)

but because that Noisy Boy found him out,--and, quarrelling with him,

(your boy, marvellous to relate! having provoked the quarrel by some

mean trick, in spite of his seraphic training,) gave him a black

eye,--and afterwards, turning out to be the best-hearted Noisy Boy in

the world, taught him to climb trees and hunt for birds' nests,--and

stopped him when he was going to kill the little birds, (for your

pattern boy--poor child! how could he help it?--was as cruel as he was

timid,)--and imparted to him the sublime mysteries of base-ball and tag

and hockey,--and taught him to swim and row, and to fight bigger boys

and leave smaller boys in peace, instructions which he was at first

inclined to reverse,--and put him in the way to be an honest, fearless

man, when he was in danger of becoming a white-faced and white-livered

spooney. And that Noisy Boy himself, perversely declining to verify Mr.

Abbott's decorous prophecies, has not turned out badly, after all, but

has Reverend before his name and reverence in his heart, and has his

theology sound because his lungs are so. No doubt, Tom Jones often turns

out badly, but Master Blifil always does,--a fact which Mr. Abbott would

do well to note and perpend.

What! Because Rollo is virtuous, shall there be no more mud-cakes and

ale? Marry, but there shall! Don't keep a boy out of his share of free

movement and free air, and don't keep a girl out. Poor little child! she

will be dieted soon enough on "stewed prunes." Children need air and

water,--milk and water won't do. They are longing for our common mother

earth, in the dear, familiar form of dirt; and it is no matter how much

dirt they get on them, if they only have water enough to wash it off.

The more they are allowed to eat literal dirt now, the less metaphorical

dirt will they eat a few years hence. The great Free-Soil principle is

good for their hearts, if not for their clothes; and which is it more

important to have clean? Just make up your mind to let the clothes go;

and if you can't afford to have your children soil and tear their laced

pantalets and plumed hats and open-work stockings, why, take off all

those devices of the enemy, and substitute stout cloth and stout boots.

What have they to do with open-work stockings?

"Doff them for shame,

And hang a calf-skin on those recreant limbs."

Believe now, instead of learning by sad experience, that tin trumpets

and torn clothes do not necessarily signify depravity, and that quiet

children are not always free from deceit, cruelty, and meanness. The

quiet, ideal child, of whom Mr. Abbott thinks so highly, generally

proves, in real life, neither more nor less than a prig. He is more

likely to die than live; and if he lives, you may wish he had died.

These models not only check a child's spirit, but tend to make him

dishonest. Ask a child now what he thinks, and, ten to one, he mentally

refers to some eminent exemplar of all the virtues for instructions,

and, instead of telling you what he does think, quotes listlessly what

he ought to think. So that his mincing affectation is not merely

ungraceful, but is a sign of an inward taint, which may prove fatal to

the whole character. It is very easy to make a child disingenuous; if he

be at all timid, the work is already half done to one's hand. Of course,

all children are not bad who are brought up on such books,--one

circumstance or another may counteract their hurtful tendency,--but the

tendency is no less evident, nor is it a vindication of any system to

prove that some are good in its despite.

Again, the popularity of these tame, spiritless books is no conclusive

evidence of their merit. The poor children are given nothing else to

read, and, of course, they take what they can get as better than

nothing. An eager child, fond of reading, will read the shipping

intelligence in a newspaper, if there be nothing else at hand. Does that

show that he is properly supplied with reading matter? They will read

these books; but they would read better books with more pleasure and

more profit.

For our third rule, let our children's stories have no lack of incident

and adventure. That will redeem any number of faults. Thus, Marryatt's

stories, and Mayne Reid's, although in many respects open to censure and

ridicule, are very popular, and deserve to be. The books first put into

a child's hands are right enough, for they are vivid. Whether the letter

A be associated in our infant minds with the impressive moral of "In

Adam's fall We sinned all," or gave us a foretaste of the Apollo in "A

was an Archer, and shot at a Frog,"--in either case, the story is a

plainly told incident, (carefully observing the unities,) which the

child's fancy can embellish for itself, and the whole has an additional

charm from the gorgeous coloring of an accompanying picture. The

vividness is good, and is the only thing that is good. Why, then, should

this one merit be omitted, as our children grow a little older? A

lifeless moral will not school a child into propriety. If a twig be

unreasonably bent, it is very likely to struggle in quite a different

direction, especially if in so doing it struggle towards the light.

There is much truth in a blundering version of the old Scriptural maxim,

"Chain up a child, and away he will go." If you want to do any good by

your books, make them interesting.

And with reference to all three rules, remember that they are to be

interpreted by the light of common sense, and you will hardly need the

following remarks:--

It is alike uncomfortable and useless to a child to be perpetually

waylaid by a moral. A child reading "The Pilgrim's Progress" will omit

the occasional explanations of the allegory or resolutely ignore their

meaning. If you want to keep a poor child on such dry food, don't

mistake your own reason for doing so. It may be eminently proper, but it

is very uncomfortable to him. If you want children to enjoy themselves,

let them run about freely, and don't put them into a ring, in

picturesque attitudes, and then throw bouquets of flowers at them. But,

if you will do so, confess it is not for their gratification, but for

your own.

If you choose to try the dangerous experiment of writing "instructive"

stories, beware of defeating your own object. You write a story rather

than a treatise, because information is often more effective when

indirectly conveyed. Clearly, then, if you convey your information too

directly, you lose all this advantage.

Perfection is as intolerable in these as in any other stories. We all

want, especially children, some amiable weaknesses to sympathize with.

Thus, in "Ernest Bracebridge," an English story of school-life, the hero

is a dreadfully unpleasant boy who is always successful and always

right, and we are soon heartily weary of him. Besides, he is a horrible

boy for mastery of all the arts and sciences, and delivers brief and

epigrammatic discourses, being about twelve years old. However, the book

is full of adventure and out-door games, and so far is good.

After all, a child does not need many books. If, however, we are to have

them, we may as well have good ones. There is no reason why dulness

should be diverted from its legitimate channels into the writing of

children's books. Let us disabuse ourselves of the idea that these are

the easiest books to write. Let us remember that the alphabet is harder

to teach than the Greek Drama, and no longer think that the proper man

to write children's books is the man who is able to write nothing else.

_The Simplicity of Christ's Teachings, set forth in Sermons._ By CHARLES

T. BROOKS, Pastor of the Unitarian Church, Newport, R. I. Boston:

Crosby, Nichols, & Co. 1859. 16mo. pp. 342.

The name of the author of this volume has long been known as that of an

accomplished man of letters. Successive volumes of poetic versions,

chiefly from the German, had, by their various merit, gained for him a

high rank among our translators, when four years ago, in 1856, by a

translation of "Faust," he set himself at the head of living authors in

this department of literature. It is little to say of his work, that it

is the best of the numerous English renderings of Goethe's tragedy. It

is not extravagant to assert that a better translation is scarcely

possible. It is a work which combines extraordinary fidelity to the form

of the original with true appreciation of its spirit. It is at once

literal and free, and displays in its execution the qualities both of

exact scholarship and of poetic feeling and capacity.

This work, and the others of a similar kind which preceded it, were the

result of the intervals of leisure occurring in the course of their

author's professional life as a clergyman. While the wider world has

known him only through these volumes, a smaller circle has long known

and loved him as the faithful and able preacher and pastor,--as one to

whom the most beautiful description ever written of the character of a

good parson might be truly applied; for

"A good man he was of religioun,

That was a poure Persone of a toun:

But riche he was of holy thought and werk;

He was also a lerned man, a clerk,

That Cristes gospel trewely wolde preche,

His parishens devoutly wolde he teche.

* * * * *

And Cristes lore and his apostles' twelve

He taught, but first he folwed it himselve."

And it is in this character that he now comes before us in the volume

which is well entitled "The Simplicity of Christ's Teachings."

It is a misfortune that the qualities which distinguish most published

sermons are not such as to recommend them on the score of literary

merit. The volumes of religious discourses which are worthy to hold a

place in literature, when judged by the usual critical standard, are

very few. A very large proportion of those which are continually

appearing from the press deserve no remembrance, and fortunately have no

permanence. They are addressed to a special class of readers,--a class

generally neither of highly cultivated taste, nor of acute critical

perception. Their writers are rarely men of sufficient talent to win for

themselves recognition out of their own narrow set. What in the slang of

the day are called "sensation" sermons are no exception to the common

rule. Their momentary effect, depending upon exaggeration and

extravagance, is no indication of worth. We should no more think of

criticizing them in a literary journal, than of criticizing the novels

of Mr. Cobb or Mr. Reynolds. Some of the causes of the poverty of

thought and of the negligence of style of average sermons are obvious.

The very interest and importance of the subjects with which the preacher

has to deal oftentimes serve to deaden rather than to excite the mind of

one who takes them up in the formal round of duty. The pretensions of

the clergy of many sects, pretensions as readily acknowledged as made,

save them from the necessity of intellectual exertion. The frequent

recurrence of the necessity of writing, whether they have anything to

say or not, leads them into substituting words for thoughts, platitudes

for truths. The natural weariness of long-continued solitary

professional labor brings mental lassitude and feebleness. The absence

of the fear of close and watchful criticism prevents them from bestowing

suitable pains upon their composition. These and other causes combine to

make the mass of the writing which is delivered from the pulpit poorer

than any other which passes current in the world,--perhaps, indeed, not

poorer in an absolute sense, but poorer when compared with the nature of

the subjects that it treats. It is by no means, however, to be inferred,

that, because a sermon is totally without merit as a work of literature,

it is incapable of producing some good in those who listen to it. On the

contrary, such is the frame of mind of many who regularly attend church,

that they are not unlikely to derive good from a performance which, if

weak, may yet be sincere, and which deals with the highest truths, even

if it deal with them in an imperfect and unsatisfactory manner. And,

indeed, as George Herbert says, good may be got from the worst

preaching; for,

"if all want sense,

God takes the text, and preacheth patience."

Unquestionably, however, there is too much preaching in these days; too

many sermons are written, and the spirit of Christianity is less

effective than if the words concerning it were less numerous.

It is a rare satisfaction, therefore, to find such a volume of sermons

as that of Mr. Brooks, which, though not possessing the highest merit in

point of style, are the discourses of a thoughtful and cultivated man,

with a peculiar spiritual refinement, and with a devout intellect, made

clear by its combination with purity of heart and simplicity of faith.

The religious questions which are chiefly stirring the minds of men are

taken up in them and discussed with what may be called an earnest

moderation, with elevation of feeling and insight of spirit.

_Goethe's Correspondence with a Child._ Boston: Ticknor & Fields. 1859.

The immediate cause of the republication of these letters is the recent

death of Bettina, the child with whom Goethe corresponded. Though this

fact, and the beauty of the volume, may quicken the sale of the work,

and draw out fresh encomiums on its excellence, it has long since passed

the critical crisis and taken its place as one of the most remarkable

series of letters which the public have ever been invited to peruse.

Something of the marvellous vanishes from them, however, when we find

that the title, "Correspondence with a Child," is a misnomer; Bettina

having been, in truth, twenty-two years of age when she first visited

Goethe. Yet while this important circumstance abates much of the wonder

with which we once read her thoughts and confessions, they really become

all the more valuable as studies in human nature when we learn that they

are the exhalations of a heart in full flower, and one upon which the

dews of morning should not linger. The poet had reached the age of sixty

when this tide of tender sentiment, original ideas, and enthusiastic

admiration began to flow in upon him. Their first interview, as Bettina

describes it, with singular freedom, in one of the letters to Goethe's

mother, will be found a useful key, though perhaps not a complete one,

by which to interpret the glowing passion which gushed from her pen.

That the poet was pleased with the homage of this sweet, graceful, and

affectionate girl, and drew her on to the revealing of her whole nature,

is readily perceived. But when we inquire, To what end? we should

remember, that, like Parrhasius, Goethe was before all things an artist;

and furthermore, the correspondence of time will show that from this

crowning knowledge the "Elective Affinities" sprang. It may be that her

admiration was for his genius alone; if so, she chose love's language

for its wealth of expression. Were it so received, it could not but be

regarded as a peerless offering, for she was certainly a kindred spirit.

There are many rare thoughts and profound confessions in these letters,

which would have commanded the praise of Goethe, had they been written

by a rival; and coming, as they did, from a devotee who declared that

she drew her inspiration from him alone, they must have filled his soul

with incense, of which that burned by the priest in the temple of the

gods is only an emblem. To be brief and compendious on this book, it

appears to be a heart unveiled. German critics throw some doubts on the

literal veracity of the book; but it belongs at any rate to the better

class of the _ben trovati_, and among its leaves, the dreamer, the

lover, and the poet will find that ambrosial fruit on which fancy loves

to feed, but whose blossoms are so generally blasted by the common air

that only the few favored ones have had their longings for it appeased.

In imagination, at least, Bettina partook of this banquet, and had the

genius to wreak on words the emotions which swept through her heart.

_Sir Rohan's Ghost._ A Romance. Boston: J. E. Tilton & Company. 1860.

pp. 352.

It is very plain that we have got a new poet,--a tremendous

responsibility both for him who will have to learn how to carry the

brimming vase of Art from the Pierian spring without squandering a drop,

and for us critics who are to reconcile ourselves to what is new in him,

and to hold him strictly to that apprenticeship to the old which is the

condition of mastery at last.

Criticism in America has reached something like the state of the old

Continental currency. There is no honest relation between the promises

we make and the specie basis of meaning they profess to represent. "The

most extraordinary book of the age" is published every week; "genius"

springs up like mullein, wherever the soil is thin enough; the yearly

catch of "weird imagination," "thrilling pathos," "splendid

description," and "sublime imagery" does not fall short of an ordinary

mackerel-crop; and "profound originality" is so plenty that one not in

the secret would be apt to take it for commonplace. Now Tithonus, whom,

as the oldest inhabitant, we have engaged to oversee the criticism of

the "Atlantic," has a prodigiously long memory,--almost as long as one

of Dickens's descriptive passages,--he remembers perfectly well all the

promising young fellows from Orpheus down, and has made a notch on the

stalk of a devil's-apron for every one who ever came to anything that

was of more consequence to the world than to himself. His tally has not

yet mounted to a baker's dozen. Accordingly, when a young enthusiast

rushes to tell Tithonus that a surprising genius has turned up, that

venerable and cautious being either puts his hand behind his ear and

absconds into an extemporary deafness, or says dryly, "American kind, I

suppose?" This coolness of our wary senior is infectious, and we confess

ourselves so far disenchanted by it, that, when we go into a library,

the lettering on the backs of nine-tenths of the volumes contrives to

shape itself into a laconic _Hic jacet_.

It is of prime necessity to bring back the currency of criticism to the

old hard-money basis. We have been gradually losing all sense of the

true relation between words and things,--the surest symptom of

intellectual decline. And this looseness of criticism reacts in the most

damaging way upon literature by continually debasing the standard, and

by confounding all distinction between fame and notoriety. Ought it to

be gratifying to the author of "Popular Sovereignty, a Poem in Twelve

Cantos," to be called the most remarkable man of the age, when he knows

that he shares that preëminence with Mr. Tupper, nay, with half the

names in the Directory? Indiscriminate eulogy is the subtlest form of

depreciation, for it makes all praise suspicious.

We look upon artistic genius as the rarest and most wayward apparition

among mankind. It cannot be predicated upon any of Mr. Buckle's

averages. Given the census, you may, perhaps, say so many murders, so

many suicides, so many misdirected letters (and men of letters), but not

so many geniuses. In this one thing old Mother Nature will be whimsical

and womanish. This is a gift that John Bull, or Johnny Crapaud, or

Brother Jonathan does not find in his stocking every Christmas. Crude

imagination is common enough,--every hypochondriac has a more than

Shakspearian allowance of it; fancy is cheap, or nobody would dream;

eloquence sits ten deep on every platform. But genius in Art is that

supreme organizing and idealizing faculty which, by combining,

arranging, modulating, by suppressing the abnormal and perpetuating the

essential, apes creation,--which from the shapeless terror or tipsy

fancy of the benighted ploughman can conjure the sisters of Fores heath

and the court of Titania,--which can make language thunder or coo at

will,--which, in short, is the ruler of those qualities any one of which

in excess is sure to overmaster the ordinary mind, and which can

crystallize helpless vagary into the clearly outlined and imperishable

forms of Art.

It is not, therefore, from any grudging incapacity to appreciate new

authors, but from a strong feeling that we are to guard the graves of

the dead from encroachment, and their fames from vulgarization, that the

"Atlantic" has been and will be sparing in its use of the word _genius_.

One may safely predicate power, nicety of thought and language, a clear

eye for scenery and character, and grace of poetic conception of a book,

without being willing to say that it gives proof of genius. For genius

is the _shaping_ faculty, the power of using material in the best way,

and may not work itself clear of the besetting temptation of personal

gifts and of circumstances in a first or even second work. It is

something capable of education and accomplishment, and the patience with

which it submits itself to this needful schooling and self-abnegation is

one of the surest tests of its actual possession. Could even

Shakspeare's poems and earlier plays come before us for judgment, we

could only say of them, as of Keats's "Endymion," that they showed

affluence, but made no sure prophecy of that artistic self-possession

without which plenty is but confusion and incumbrance.

So much by way of preface, lest we might seem cold to the very

remarkable merits of "Sir Rohan's Ghost," if we treated it as a book

worth finding fault with, instead of condemning it to the indifferent

limbo of general eulogy. It is our deliberate judgment that no first

volume by any author has ever been published in America showing more

undoubtful symptoms of genuine poetic power than this. There are

passages in it where imagination and language combine in the most

artistic completeness, and the first quatrain of the song which Sir

Rohan fancies he hears,--

----"In a summer twilight,

While yet the dew was hoar,

I went plucking purple pansies

Till my love should come to shore,"--

seems to us absolutely perfect in its simplicity and suggestiveness. It

has that wayward and seemingly accidental just-right-ness that is so

delightful in old ballads. The hesitating cadence of the third line is

impregnated with the very mood of the singer, and lingers like the

action it pictures. All those passages in the book, too, where the

symptoms of Sir Rohan's possession by his diseased memory are handled,

where we see all outward nature but as wax to the plastic will of

imagination, are to the utmost well-conceived and carried out. It was

part of the necessity of the case that the book should be conjectural

and metaphysical, for it is plain that the author is young and has

little experience of the actual. Accordingly, with a true instinct, she

(for the newspapers ascribe the authorship of the book to Miss Prescott)

calls her story a Romance, thus absolving it from any cumbersome

allegiance to fact, and lays the scene of it in England, where she can

have old castles, old traditions, old families, old servants, and all

the other olds so essential to the young writer, ready to her hand.

We like the book better for being in the main _subjective_ (to use the

convenient word Mr. Ruskin is so angry with); for a young writer can

only follow the German plan of conjuring things up "from the depths of

his inward consciousness." The moment our author quits this sure ground,

her touch becomes uncertain and her colors inharmonious.

Character-painting is unessential to a romance, belonging as it does

properly to the novel of actual life, in which the romantic element is

equally out of place. Fielding, accordingly, the greatest artist in

character since Shakspeare, hardly admits sentiment, and never romance,

into his master-pieces. Hawthorne, again, another great master, feeling

instinctively the poverty and want of sharp contrast in the externals of

our New England life, always shades off the edges of the actual, till,

at some indefinable line, they meet and mingle with the supersensual and

imaginative.

The author of "Sir Rohan" attempts character in Redruth the butler, and

in the villain and heroine of her story. We are inclined to think the

villain the best hit of the three, because he is downright scoundrel

without a redeeming point, as the Nemesis of the story required him to

be, and because he is so far a purely ideal character. But there is no

such thing possible as an ideal butler, at least in the sense our author

assumes in the cellar-scene. The better poet, the worse butler; and so

we are made impatient by his more than Redi-isms about wine, full of

fancy as they are in themselves, because they are an impertinence. For

the same reason, we forgive the heroine her rhapsodies about the figures

of the Arthur-romances, but cannot pardon her descents into real life

and her incursions on what should be the sanctuary of the

breakfast-table. The author attributes to her a dash of gypsy blood; and

if her style of humorous conversation be a fair type of that of the race

in general, we no longer wonder that they are homeless exiles from human

society. When will men learn the true nature of a pun,--that it is a

play upon ideas, and not upon sounds,--and that a perfect one is as rare

as a perfect poem?

In the prose "Edda," the dwarfs tell a monstrous fib, when they pretend

that Kvasir, the inventor of poetry, has been suffocated by his own

wisdom. Nevertheless, the little fellows showed thereby that they were

not short of intelligence; for it is almost always in their own overflow

that young poets are drowned. This superabundance seems to us the chief

defect in "Sir Rohan's Ghost." The superabundance is all very fine, of

the costliest kind; but was Clarence any the better for being done to

death in Malmsey instead of water?

This fault we look on as a fault of promise. There is always a chance

that luxuriance may be pruned, but none short of a miracle that a

broomstick may be made to blossom. There is, however, one absolute, and

not relative fault in the book, which we find it harder to forgive,

since it is one of instinct rather than of Art. The author seems to us

prone to confound the _terrible_, (the only true subject of Art) with

the _horrible_. The one rouses moral terror or aversion, the other only

physical disgust. This is one of the worst effects of the modern French

school upon literature, the inevitable result of its degrading the

sensuous into the sensual.

We have found all the fault we could with this volume, because we

sincerely think that the author of it is destined for great things, and

that she owes it to the rare gift she has been endowed with to do

nothing inconsiderately, and by honest self-culture to raise natural

qualities to conscious and beneficent powers.

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