_What I saw on the West Coast of South and North America,
and at the Hawaiian Islands._ By H. WILLIS BAXLEY, M. D. New
York: D. Appleton & Co.
Charles Lamb describes his old friend, George Dyer, as purchasing a
bulky volume of blank verse solely on the ground that there must be some
good things in an epic of six thousand lines. On the same principle,
there may be assumed to be some good sentences in this octavo of six
hundred pages,--although, if so, they must lurk in some paragraph which
we have unluckily missed in the reading. In the spirit of the book,
however, there is a certain frankness which is a frequent merit in that
class of ex-Secessionists to which this Baltimore physician apparently
belongs. And as their graceful little improprieties in Virginia and
elsewhere are daily making new converts to negro suffrage, so this book,
by its guileless exhibition of the whole inner man of one of Mr.
Buchanan's office-holders, may help to avert the resurrection of the
class whom he represents.
Dr. Baxley claims to have been sent in the year 1860 to the west coast
of America, as Special Commissioner of the United States. What he ought
to have done in that capacity is not stated; what he did is plain. He
sailed along the continent upon a bubble of pro-slavery prejudice, and
brought home his aerial ship intact, while all similar bubbles had burst
during his absence. The book, therefore, takes us back to the good old
times. Every allusion to Slavery reminds our Commissioner of joys now
departed. Every glimpse of a black man in the melancholy misery of
freedom recalls to him those happy scientific reveries contributed to
anthropological lore by Messrs. Nott and Gliddon. He admires each dusky
figure in the direct ratio of its nudity, and every added rag of
civilized clothing seems to him so much subtracted from the proprieties
of life. Of course a colored soldier is the climax of aggravation to his
grief; and it does not even relieve his feelings, if the uniform-coat
has no buttons.
The author mentions the war only towards the close of the book, and of
course attributes it solely to Northern fanaticism. This fanaticism he
evidently supposes to have been led on by the fierce, ungovernable Muse
of Professor Longfellow; for, in quoting from the "Arsenal at
Springfield," that poem is described as "sung by one whose harp was then
attuned to melodious measures, but whose now 'discordant noises jarrest
[_sic_] the celestial harmonies' of his younger days." (Page 618.) This
rather bewildering introduction of the second person singular places our
voyager at disadvantage, by irresistibly suggesting that far more
entertaining traveller, Artemas Ward.
The book might at least give some novel facts about the working of the
missionary system in the South Sea Islands,--inasmuch as a wrathful and
foolish observer will often spy out single facts which a more moderate
partisan would omit,--but that he unfortunately takes the whole thing
for granted and observes nothing. It has been more than suspected that
there is a little bigotry mingled with our missionary system; but Dr.
Baxley adds nothing to our knowledge on this point, preferring to rest
his case on the general proposition, that there was also some degree of
bigotry among the Puritan ancestors of these same missionaries two
centuries ago. This fact will hardly be questioned, but it is a poor
substitute for a little information as to contemporary matters.
In favorable moments, the style of this book has the glow, the
affluence, and the fine vein of poetical quotation, that may be found in
our most eloquent real-estate advertisements. At other times there is a
tendency to ponderous and polysyllabic phrases, tempting the unwary
critic to characterize them in words as long. Thus, on the voyage: "The
more pretentious passengers, the upper-ten of the cabin, are wonderfully
characterized by quantitative propensity, while the omnivorous nature of
man is illustrated by them still more strikingly.... The art of
gastronomy is clearly in the ascendant.... Vegetables in season and out
of season, the hebdomadal occupants of the ship's hold, some, doubtless,
the forestallers' residuum, withered, wilted, and decaying;... pickles,
pastry, puddings, and pecan, duly decorated with those dernier resorts
of the dinner-table, almonds, raisins, and filberts, which generally
prove alike first in the order of morbid causation, and first in that of
retroversive result." (p. 20.)
For sea-sickness the author advises "resort to the ship's surgeon,"
which seems a sort of pill at second hand; but he further counsels that
"a person's customary dose of laudanum, morphine, chlorodine, or prussic
acid may be resorted to." This is really unsafe, considering the
suicidal propensities usually found among sea-sick people; and it would
be safer, perhaps, to recommend to those _in extremis_ the perusal of
this book, as a milder narcotic.
_Life and Times of Marcus Tullius Cicero._ By WILLIAM
FORSYTH, M. A., Q. C., Author of "History of Trial by Jury,"
etc. New York: Charles Scribner & Co.
Mr. Forsyth was induced to write this work by the belief that the time
had come when another Life of Cicero than Middleton's famous work might
be acceptable to the public. We are glad that such is his belief; for we
cannot have too many books on the last days of the Roman Republic, if
they are written by competent men,--and there can be no doubt as to Mr.
Forsyth's competency to write on those memorable times. But we do not
think that his work, pleasing and useful as it is, will exclude that of
Middleton from libraries that are collected for use rather than show.
Middleton's book may be, as it has been called, "a lying legend in honor
of St. Tully"; but it is an able work for all that, and does honor to
the eighteenth century. It has many faults, yet it shows an amount of
ability that we do not often find in the historical works of our time.
It was written when Roman history was but little understood, when men
gravely spoke of the Rumelian legend, and ranked it as an historical
fact with the crossing of the Rubicon by Caesar. The dullest graduate of
to-day knows much about Rome that would have astonished Conyers
Middleton, precisely as the dullest of our soldiers knows much about war
that would have astonished Napoleon; but the graduate is as much beneath
Middleton as the soldier is beneath Napoleon. We must test Middleton's
Cicero by the literary standard of Middleton's age; and thus tested, no
one qualified to give an opinion on the subject can hesitate to say that
it is a production of great excellence. Were Middleton now living, he
would have written a far better work on Cicero and his Times than Mr.
Forsyth has written; but we cannot say, much as we admire Mr. Forsyth's
work, that we believe that he, had he lived a hundred and twenty years
ago, would have written a better work than Middleton's. To the man who
can afford time for the reading of but one of those Lives, we should
say, "Read Mr. Forsyth's,"--for it is by far the more accurate, and
therefore the more useful, life of the great Roman orator. But Mr.
Forsyth excels Dr. Middleton in accuracy for pretty much the same reason
that he can make the journey to Rome in less than half the time it
required Middleton to make it. The labors of others have cleared the way
for historians as well as for travellers; and to praise historians for
their superior accuracy would be about as sagacious as it would be to
praise travellers for their superior speed. We feel grateful to the
writers of former times, and we hold it to be the duty of all to do
those writers justice, even if their books should cease to be
authorities. Who would think contemptuously of Newton because he never
saw a steamship?
Mr. Forsyth aims to give his readers some account of Cicero's private
and domestic life, and in this respect his book has a positive
superiority to Middleton's. It is agreeable to read of the _vie privee_
of great men, and it is especially so in the case of such a man as
Cicero, who belonged to a people long since extinct, and who was himself
"the bright, consummate flower" of a civilization which exists only in
books, or in monuments, or in ruins,--a civilization of which it has
wisely been said, that it is the better for the world that it can never
know it again, "for it was rotten at the core, though most glorious in
the complexion." But, when all has been said of Cicero's private life
that can be said of it, we find ourselves going back to Cicero the
statesman, the orator, and the actor in some of the mightiest movements
that ever have shaken the world, and which continue to color our own
private lives at the end of almost two thousand years. If you would
write a book on Roman life and society, as such things were in the last
century of the Republic, Catulus, or any other member of the class of
_optimates_, would serve your purpose as well as Cicero. Men of the same
station live very much alike as to essentials. But no Roman can be named
who matches Cicero in some most important respects as a public man,--as
consul, as proconsul, as orator, as philosopher, as statesman, and as
mere politician. His history, therefore, is the history of Rome through
many eventful years; and when he is murdered, we feel that the curtain
really has dropped because the great Republican drama is at an end. That
sad scene is the last scene of the fifth act of a tragedy that had been
in course of performance through five centuries. We cannot separate such
a man from his times. His private life is as nothing in comparison with
his public life. Private life belongs to comedy, and Cicero's history is
a tragedy, from first to last; and in reading any biography of him that
is prepared, we feel that we are reading Roman history,--and that is
written only in blood.
The part that Cicero had in the Roman Revolution, in that long
procession of events which terminated in the establishment of the
Empire, if not a lofty one, was nevertheless such as to render his
history painfully interesting. We see a man who was far above his his
contemporaries in moral excellence, and who sought to live well, tried
by circumstances beyond human strength. Cicero lived a century too
early, or a century too late. He would have been at his ease as the
contemporary and friend of Paulus AEmilius, but it was not in his nature
to be on fair terms with such men as Caesar and Pompeius, much less with
Antonius. Had he lived a century later, he might have been a calm
philosopher and scholar under the Imperial system. He was, of all men
that ever lived, of equal eminence for ability, the least adapted for a
revolutionary age; and yet it was his fortune to live in the time of the
greatest of all revolutions, and in its very focus, and to be a
prominent actor therein. It was as if Fortune had had a spite against
his house, and had concentrated all her vengeance on his head, by way of
rendering vain the most various and splendid talents that ever were
bestowed upon mortal man. Had Cicero's sense borne any proportion to his
intellectual powers, had he been endowed with a just portion of that
tact which is a more useful thing than genius in a world where they win
sixpences, he would have retired from public life on his return from
exile. But something very like vanity forbade that. He had been too
great to be able to imitate the sensible course of his friend, "the
voluptuous, but august Lucullus." He would keep the field which he had
won, and in which his part had been so brilliant; and the result was,
that he never knew a happy hour. But his miseries made him immortal. Who
would have cared for him, had he passed the last dozen years of his life
at his Formian villa? The remark of Montesquieu, that that people are
happy whose annals are tiresome, is strictly true; but we do not care to
read those annals, while those periods in which men were unhappy
concentrate the attention of both writers and readers. In Rome's
revolutionary age men were as happy as they are in times of pestilence;
and Cicero was the greatest sufferer of them all, because he was
possessed of a sensitiveness that no other Roman ever knew. It is his
history, quite as much as that of either Pompeius or Caesar, that gives a
biographical character to the history of the Republic's closing days,
and renders its study so fascinating, and this without reference to his
private life, some passages of which have a rather ludicrous air,--his
marrying a young wife, for example, after divorcing an old one.
Mr. Forsyth tells Cicero's public life, without neglecting his promise
in other respects. He, like other English writers on Rome, possesses a
great advantage over Germans, his superiors in mere learning, perhaps,
inasmuch as he is familiar with affairs, and English political life is a
constant commentary on Roman political life. Without subscribing to all
his conclusions, we can commend his volumes to those who would be
assisted to an understanding of that splendid struggle in which the
Roman aristocracy went down, but not without inflicting such wounds on
their foes as rendered despotism an absolute necessity.
_Social Statics; or the Conditions Essential to Human
Happiness specified, and the First of them developed._ By
HERBERT SPENCER. With a Notice of the Author, and a Steel
Portrait New York: D. Appleton & Co.
The American publication of the miscellaneous works of Mr. Spencer
terminates with this volume. We learn from the preface that it is not in
all respects a literal expression of the author's present views. While
he adheres to the leading principles set forth fourteen years ago, he is
not prepared to abide by all the detailed applications of them. We are
heartily glad to chronicle this acknowledgment. Full of immediate and
practical value beyond any other work of Mr. Spencer, "Social Statics"
contains passages which seem shot by a mutinous logic-power towards some
dark aphelion, whither the best instruments at our command fail to
follow them. We hazard the conjecture, that the remarks about the
rights of children and the wrong of property in land must receive
essential modification in order to convey to the average reader a
distinct conception of the mature thought of Mr. Spencer upon these
complex themes. But of the general worth of this book, and of its
special application to the needs of great masses of our countrymen, we
emphasize our conviction. The calm deductions of reason are brought to
enforce the distinctive American doctrines in which the loyal citizen
has sentimental belief. Few characters will not feel strengthened by the
study of this very acute investigation of duty in social relations. The
task is not prematurely undertaken. The means of exact observation have
marvellously increased. There is everywhere apparent a demand for the
clear and wealthy mind that shall absorb the seemingly conflicting
phenomena and express the unity of law which connects them. The leading
idea upon which Mr. Spencer's system is based is that of the systematic
character of the Divine rule. He sees throughout the worlds of mind and
matter continual proofs of the progressive development which has lately
come to be expressed by the single word "evolution." Man is not the
degenerate descendant of demigods and heroes, but a promising child
subjected to a system of education of exhaustive excellence. The
circumstances about him are cruel only to be kind. He gradually yields
to their pressure, and is fashioned to higher power and a sweeter life.
More than any other merely philosophical writer, it seems to us that Mr.
Spencer assists the important work of the religionist. He demands
_faith_ sufficient to follow out a principle with unflinching
perseverance. He creates an absorbing interest in human welfare, showing
how all real personal advantage is united with the advantage of all.
There have been various attempts to give Mr. Spencer's writings a
doubtful fame with the American people. Some of these have been very
ingenious; others have had the first merit of sincerity, and nothing
else. No grand doctrine can be so expressed as to render impossible an
_ad captandum_ contradiction from some point or side. A sturdy
catechizing in the interest of some popular dogma will generally give
the casuist an apparent advantage over the seeker of knowledge for
itself alone. It is likewise in the power of a tolerable metaphysician
to set traps and dig pitfalls all over the ultimate grounds of any man's
belief. There are apparently crushing arguments against the assertor of
any conceivable religious creed, as well as against him who would base
his faith where the shifting currents of theological opinion cannot
prevail against it. The being of God Mr. Spencer holds to be a truth
forever vindicated in the consciousness of man: His nature is to finite
beings inscrutable. The latter clause of this statement may be sustained
by a very curious syllogistic scaffolding, and it may be assailed by
reasoning which is to us wholly satisfactory. _Cui bono?_ Let the
philosopher dream out his logical ladder to the Infinite, and never fear
but the heart of humanity will supply the angels ascending and
descending thereupon. We certainly do not accept Mr. Spencer as an
exhaustive expounder of the physics or metaphysics of creation. But the
great body of his doctrines are not affected by our private fancies
about _a priori_ truths or the conditions of thought. He shows the
transcendent reality of the moral claim upon man. He emphasizes the
great truth, not always apparent in the prescriptions of soul-saving
orthodoxy, that disinterestedness is the primary condition of human
virtue. It is not pretended that a fervid religious organization can
find satisfaction in Mr. Spencer. It must work by other methods. It must
conquer problems which science is unable to solve. But, in these
doubting, inquiring days upon which we have fallen, no truly good man
can afford to contemn a scientist who shows how securely the foundations
of religion are laid, and reverently stops at secondary causes without
attempting to deify them. And at this present day such a work is clearly
demanded. It is, indeed, possible that the old Giants Pope and Pagan may
not have rallied since the Bedford tinker bore witness to their
depressed estate. Their successor, Giant Transcendentalist, whom
Hawthorne encountered in his railroad ride to the Celestial City, may
have been delivered over to Mr. Frothingham to be tormented according to
his deserts. But a lusty member of the terrible brotherhood is still at
large. His name is Giant Indifference. Excerpts (perhaps perverted) from
Bentham and Comte, chapters (perchance misinterpreted) from Thackeray's
novels, are his sacred canons. He reports himself to have been created
by subtle questions touching the historical evidence of the Scriptures,
by various intellectual perplexities which the philosophers have brought
to light, and by all the tares and brambles of society upon which the
cynic has directed his microscope. While muttering formularies in which
he has no vital belief, he contrives to make audible a ghastly whisper,
that money, popular reputation, political power, and the sensual
gratifications which these may command, are alone worth getting off the
sofa to realize. Against this monstrous foe to all faithful pilgrimages
Mr. Herbert Spencer is a very able combatant. In "Social Statics,"
especially, he meets the adversary on his own ground. The moral sense is
triumphantly rescued from the assaults of Paley and Bentham, and is
declared capable of generating a fundamental intuition which may be
expanded into a scientific morality. If any are pale at the discovery
that "our little systems have their day and cease to be," let them know
that an honest seeking will ever furnish material for their renewal with
life adapted to man's changing wants. It is not difficult to criticize
various portions of Mr. Spencer's belief, or to offer weighty objections
to certain applications of his principles; but we doubt if any living
man, accepting the limitations of the natural philosopher, has the
balance of mind to write more intelligently upon the highest
subjects,--to furnish more that is true and elevating, and less that is
questionable. We believe that most readers of "Social Statics" will feel
an increased sense of personal responsibility, and a new realization of
what is well enough expressed in ecclesiastical phrase as "the exceeding
sinfulness of sin." And so believing, we do not hesitate to commend it
to the American public.
_Reason in Religion._ By FREDERIC HENRY HEDGE. Boston:
Walker, Fuller, & Co.
The various essays which are brought together under this title discuss
questions of theology, and the opinions which mankind hold upon the most
interesting philosophical and spiritual themes. The author's aim is, to
state as fairly as he can conflicting views, and to propound his own
solution. In this labor Dr. Hedge appears to represent that condition of
Unitarian thinking which prefers a rational to a traditional ground of
authority in matters pertaining to the spiritual life, and strives to
interpret and accommodate the sacred history without forsaking it.
It would not be possible, within the limits of a book notice, to treat
fitly all the questions which are raised by these highly suggestive
essays. Dr. Hedge's clear and chiselled statements cut all the jesses of
our thoughts, and they rise unhooded into his still air. Providence,
Prayer, Free-Will, and Retribution, Evil, Immortality, and Faith,--such
themes stock this volume, and they are all treated in a way to command
the attention of the reader, to bid him ponder, to contribute glad
assent, or to pay the equally flattering tribute of awakened criticism.
The style is simple, and comprehensible at a glance: the pen has
gathered no superfluities upon its journeys into these remote domains,
no scholastic terms cling to it, no ambitious rhetoric. It is never
heated, but it is never dull: the cool and equable flow brings down
thought enough from scholarly and well-spent years to exhilarate and
satisfy. The temper is perfect in which opinions, most discordant to the
writer's fine intelligence are set forth; all his hostility to them
appears in the justness of his comprehension. So that it would be
difficult to find a volume that contains a greater number of impartial
and exhaustive statements of creeds, dogmas, and tendencies of thinking.
And where they cannot win agreement, they extort respect.
The essay upon "The Regent God" is a fine specimen of intellectual
defining the combination with a gentle, tender self-forgetfulness, as if
Dr. Hedge would fain feel all the gifts of the mind and heart absorbed
in the Infinite Presence. Perhaps the essay upon "The Cause of Reason
the Cause of Faith" contains the most vigor; it is a favorite subject,
set forth with great freedom of movement, and with more illustration
than Dr. Hedge usually indulges. How refreshing is the boldness with
which he claims the word Rationalism for the service of Religion!
Elsewhere there are rich sentences in respect of illustration. What a
finished metaphor on page 371! where, in allusion to the belief of the
earliest Christians that some might fall asleep in Christ, but only to
be caught up with him at his coming, he says,--"Their sun of life might
decline, but only as the sun of the Arctic midsummer skirts an horizon
where evening and morning club their splendors to furnish an unbroken
day. In their horizon there was no dissolution of the continuity of
life."
But we have as little space to devote to admiration as to dissent. We
might show cause for our opinion that Religion appears, in this volume,
to be too closely confined to aspiration, to just thinking, and a sense
of human dependence; in vindicating Reason against Tradition, through
all the judicious and thorough discussion of various doctrines, the
author waives, or perhaps only postpones, his opportunity to identify
Religion with the divineness of all knowable and appreciable things. The
most enlightened worship is only one spiritual act or gesture. The
broadest and most limpid thinking is but the morning freshness to a day
full of God's necessities, who works at our morals, our politics, our
society, our science, and our art. Religion is the recognition and
acceptance of all knowable phenomena of human life; in these man finds
his God, God reveals himself to man. We hope to find that the last
essay, upon the "Moral Ideal," is prelusive to another effort in this
direction.