Chapter II

HOUNDS AND HORSES AT ROME

English Kennel

The Steeple-chase

Roman Dogs

SONG

MY FRIEND THE DUTCHMAN

WORKS OF HANS CHRISTIAN ANDERSEN.[1]

If our readers have perchance stumbled upon a novel called "The

Improvisatore" by one HANS CHRISTIAN ANDERSEN, a Dane by birth, they

have probably regarded it in the light merely of a foreign importation

to assist in supplying the enormous annual consumption of our

circulating libraries, which devour books as fast as our mills do raw

cotton;--with some difference, perhaps, in the result, for the material

can rarely be said to be worked up into any thing like substantial

raiment for body or mind, but seems to disappear altogether in the

process. As the demand, here, exceeds all ordinary means of supply, they

may have been glad to see that our trade with the North is likely to be

beneficial to us, in this our intellectual need. Its books may not be so

durable as its timber, nor so substantial as its oxen, but then they are

articles of faster growth, and of easier transportation. To free-trade

in these productions of the literary soil, not the most jealous

protectionist will object; and they have, perhaps, been amused to

observe how the mere circumstance of a foreign origin has given a cheap

repute, and the essential charm of novelty, to materials which in

themselves were neither good nor rare. The popular prejudice deals very

differently with foreign oxen and foreign books; for, whereas an

Englishman has great difficulty in believing that good beef can possibly

be produced from any pastures but his own, and the outlandish beast is

always looked upon with more or less suspicion, he has, on the contrary,

a highly liberal prejudice in favour of the book from foreign parts; and

nonsense of many kinds, and the most tasteless extravagancies, are

allowed to pass unchallenged and unreproved, by the aid of a German, or

French, or Danish title-page.

Nay, the eye is sometimes tasked to discover extraordinary beauty, where

there is nothing but extraordinary blemish. Where the shrewd translator

had veiled some absurdity or rashness of his author, the more profound

reader has been known to detect a meaning and a charm, which "the

English language had failed adequately to convey;" and he has, perhaps,

shown a sovereign contempt for "the bungling translator," at the very

time when that discreet workman had most displayed his skill and

judgment. The idea has sometimes occurred to us--Suppose one of these

foreign books were suddenly proved to be of genuine home

production--suppose the German, or the Dane, or the Frenchman, were

discovered to be a fictitious personage, and all the genius, or all the

rant, to have really emanated from the English gentleman, or lady, who

had merely professed to translate--presto! how the book would instantly

change colours! What a reverse of judgment would there be! What secret

_misgivings_ would now be detected and proclaimed! What sudden

outpourings of epithets by no means complimentary! How the boldness of

many a metaphor would be transformed into sheer impudence! How the

profundities would clear up, leaving only darkness behind! They were so

mysterious--and now, throw all the light of heaven upon them, and there

is nothing there but a blunder or a blot.

If our readers, we say, have fallen upon this, and other novels of

Andersen, they have probably passed them by as things belonging to the

literary _season_: they have been struck with some passages of vivid

description, with touches of genuine feeling, with traits of character

which, though imperfectly delineated, bore the impress of truth; but

they have pronounced them, on the whole, to be unfashioned things, but

half made up, constructed with no skill, informed by no clear spirit of

thought, and betraying a most undisciplined taste. Such, at least, was

the impression their first perusal left upon our mind. Notwithstanding

the glimpses of natural feeling and of truthful portraiture which caught

our eye, they were so evidently deficient in some of the higher

qualities which ought to distinguish a writer, and so defaced by

abortive attempts at fine writing, that they hardly appeared deserving

of a very critical examination, or a very careful study. But now there

has lately come into our hands the autobiography of Hans Christian

Andersen, "The True Story of my Life," and this has revealed to us so

curious an instance of intellectual cultivation, or rather of genius

exerting itself without any cultivation at all, and has reflected back

so strong a light, so vivid and so explanatory, on all his works, that

what we formerly read with a very mitigated admiration, with more of

censure than of praise, has been invested with quite a novel and

peculiar interest. Moreover, certain tales for children have also fallen

into our hands, some of which are admirable. We prophesy them an

immortality in the nursery--which is not the worst immortality a man can

Win--and doubt not but that they have already been read by children, or

told to children, in every language of Europe. Altogether Andersen, his

character and his works, have thus appeared to us a subject worthy of

some attention.

We insist upon coupling them together. We must be allowed to abate

somewhat of the austerity of criticism by a reference to the life of the

author. We cannot implicitly follow the unconditioned admiration of Mrs

Howitt for "the beautiful thoughts of Andersen," which she tells us in

her preface to the Autobiography, "it is the most delightful of her

literary labours to translate." We must be excused if we think that the

mixture of praise and of puff, which the lady lavishes so

indiscriminately upon the author whose works she translates, is more

likely to display her own skill and dexterity in author-craft, than

permanently to enhance the fame of Andersen. In the works which Mrs

Howitt has translated, (with the exception of the Autobiography,) there

is a great proportion of most unquestionable trash, which, we should

imagine, it must be a great affliction to render into English.

It is curious, and perhaps necessary, to watch this new relationship

which has sprung up in the world of letters, between the original author

and his translator. A reciprocity of services is always amiable, and one

is glad to see society enriched by another bond of mutual amity. The

translator finds a profitable commodity in the genius of his author; the

author, a stanch champion in his foreign ally, who, notwithstanding his

community of interest, can still praise without blushing. Many good

results doubtless arise from this alliance, but an increased chance of

impartial criticism is not likely to be one of them.

When Andersen writes _for_ childhood or _of_ childhood, he is singularly

felicitous--fanciful, tender, and true to nature. This alone were

sufficient to separate him from the crowd of common writers. For the

rest of his works, if you will look at them kindly, and with a friendly

scrutiny, you will find many a natural sentiment vividly reflected. But

traces of the higher operations of the intellect, of deep or subtle

thought, of analytic power, of ratiocination of any kind, there is

absolutely none. If, therefore, his injudicious admirers should insist,

without any reference to his origin or culture, on extolling his

writings as works submitted, without apology or excuse, to the mature

judgment and formed taste--they can only peril the reputation they seek

to magnify. They will expose to ridicule and contempt one who, if you

allow him a place apart by himself, becomes a subject of kindly and

curious regard. If they insist upon his introduction, unprotected by the

peculiar circumstances which environ him--we do not say amongst the

literary magnates of his time, but even in the broad host of highly

cultivated minds, we lose sight of him, or we follow him with something

very much like a smile of derision.

We remember being told of a dexterous stratagem, by which a lady cured

her son of what she deemed an unworthy passion for a rustic beauty. We

tell the story--for it may not only afford us an illustration, but a

hint also to other perplexed mammas, who may find themselves in the like

predicament. She had argued, and of course in vain, against his

high-flown admiration of the village belle. She was a goddess! She would

become a throne! Apparently acquiescing in his matrimonial project, she

now professed her willingness to receive his bride-elect. Accordingly,

she sent her own milliner--mantua-maker--what you will,--to array her in

the complete toilette of a lady of fashion. The blushing damsel appeared

in the most elegant attire, and took her place in the maternal

drawing-room, amongst the sisters of the enraptured lover. Alas!

enraptured no more! The rustic beauty, where could it have flown? The

belle of the village was transformed into a very awkward young lady.

Goddess!--She was a simpleton. Become a throne!--She could not sit upon

a chair. The charm was broken. The application we need hardly make.

There may be certain uncultivated men of genius on whom it is possible

to practise a like malicious kindness.

We would rather preface our notice of the life and works of Andersen, by

a motto taken from our own countryman Blake, artist and poet, and a man

of somewhat kindred nature:--[2]

"Piping down the valleys wild,

Piping songs of pleasant glee,

On a cloud I saw a child,

And he laughing said to me--

'Pipe a song about a lamb;'

So I piped with merry cheer.

'Piper, pipe that song again!--'

So I piped--he wept to hear.

'Drop thy pipe, thy happy pipe,

Sing thy songs of happy cheer--'

So I sang the same again,

While he wept with joy to hear.

'Piper, sit thee down and _write_,

In a book that all may read.'

Then he vanished from my sight;

And I plucked a hollow reed,

And I made a rural pen,

And I stained the water clear,

And I wrote my happy songs,

Every child may joy to hear."

Such was the form under which the muse may be said to have visited and

inspired Andersen. He ought to have been exclusively the poet of

children and of childhood. He ought never to have seen, or dreamed, of

an Apollo six feet high, looking sublime, and sending forth dreadful

arrows from the far-resounding bow; he should have looked only to that

"child upon the cloud," or rather, he should have seen his little muse

as she walks upon the earth--we have her in Gainsborough's picture--with

her tattered petticoat, and her bare feet, and her broken pitcher, but

looking withal with such a sweet sad contentedness upon the world, that

surely, one thinks, she must have filled that pitcher and drawn the

water which she carries--without, however, knowing any thing of the

matter--from the very well where Truth lies hidden.

We should like to quote at once, before proceeding further, one of

Andersen's tales for children. We _will_ venture upon an extract. It

will at all events be new to our readers, and will be more likely to

interest them in the history of its author than any quotation we could

make from his more ambitious works. Besides, the story we select will

somewhat foreshadow the real history which follows.

A highly respectable matronly duck introduces into the poultry-yard a

brood which she has just hatched. She has had a deal of trouble with one

egg, much larger than the rest, and which after all produced a very

"ugly duck," who gives the name, and is the hero of the story.

"'So, we are to have this tribe, too!' said the other ducks, 'as if

there were not enough of us already! And only look how ugly one is!

we won't suffer that one here.' And immediately a duck flew at it,

and bit it in the neck.

"'Let it alone,' said the mother; 'it does no one any harm.'

"'Yes, but it is so large and strange looking, and therefore it

must be teased.'

"'These are fine children that the mother has!' said an old duck,

who belonged to the noblesse, and wore a red rag round its leg.

'All handsome, except one; it has not turned out well. I wish she

could change it.'

"'That can't be done, your grace,' said the mother; 'besides, if it

is not exactly pretty, it is a sweet child, and swims as well as

the others, even a little better. I think in growing it will

improve. It was long in the egg, and that's the reason it is a

little awkward.'

"'The others are nice little things,' said the old duck: 'now make

yourself quite at home here.'

"And so they did. But the poor young duck that had come last out of

the shell, and looked so ugly, was bitten, and pecked, and teased

by ducks and fowls. 'It's so large!' said they all; and the

turkey-cock, that had spurs on when he came into the world, and

therefore fancied himself an emperor, strutted about like a ship

under full sail, went straight up to it, gobbled, and got quite

red. The poor little duck hardly knew where to go, or where to

stand, it was so sorrowful because it was so ugly, and the ridicule

of the whole poultry-yard.

"Thus passed the first day, and afterwards it grew worse and worse.

The poor duck was hunted about by every one; its brothers and

sisters were cross to it, and always said, 'I wish the cat would

get you, you frightful creature!' and even its mother said, 'Would

you were far from here!' And the ducks bit it, and the hens pecked

at it, and the girl that fed the poultry kicked it with her foot.

So it ran and flew over the hedge.

"On it ran. At last it came to a great moor where wild-ducks lived;

here it lay the whole night, and was so tired and melancholy. In

the morning up flew the wild-ducks, and saw their new comrade; 'Who

are you?' asked they; and our little duck turned on every side, and

bowed as well as it could. 'But you are tremendously ugly!' said

the wild-ducks. 'However, that is of no consequence to us, if you

don't marry into our family.' The poor thing! It certainly never

thought of marrying; it only wanted permission to lie among the

reeds, and to drink the water of the marsh.

"'Bang! bang!' was heard at this moment, and several wild-ducks lay

dead amongst the reeds, and the water was as red as blood. There

was a great shooting excursion. The sportsmen lay all round the

moor; and the blue smoke floated like a cloud through the dark

trees, and sank down to the very water; and the dogs spattered

about in the marsh--splash! splash! reeds and rushes were waving on

all sides; it was a terrible fright for the poor duck.

"At last all was quiet; but the poor little thing did not yet dare

to lift up its head; it waited many hours before it looked round,

and then hastened away from the moor as quickly as possible. It ran

over the fields and meadows, and there was such a wind that it

could hardly get along.

"Towards evening, the duck reached a little hut. Here dwelt an old

woman with her tom-cat and her hen; and the cat could put up its

back and purr, and the hen could lay eggs, and the old woman loved

them both as her very children. For certain reasons of her own, she

let the duck in to live with them.

"Now the tom-cat was master in the house, and the hen was mistress;

and they always said, 'We and the world.' That the duck should

have any opinion of its own, they never would allow.

"'Can you lay eggs?' asked the hen.

"'No!'

"'Well, then, hold your tongue.'

"Can you put up your back and purr?' said the tom-cat.

"'No.'

"'Well, then, you ought to have no opinion of your own, where

sensible people are speaking.'

"And the duck sat in the corner, and was very sad; when suddenly it

took it into its head to think of the fresh air and the sunshine;

and it had such an inordinate longing to swim on the water, that it

could not help telling the hen of it.

"'What next, I wonder!' said the hen, 'you have nothing to do, and

so you sit brooding over such fancies. Lay eggs, or purr, and

you'll forget them.'

"'But it is so delightful to swim on the water!' said the duck--'so

delightful when it dashes over one's head, and one dives down to

the very bottom.'

"'Well, that must be a fine pleasure!' said the hen. 'You are

crazy, I think. Ask the cat, who is the cleverest man I know, if he

would like to swim on the water, or perhaps to dive, to say nothing

of myself. Ask our mistress, the old lady, and there is no one in

the world cleverer than she is; do you think that she would much

like to swim on the water, and for the water to dash over her

head?'

"'You don't understand me,' said the duck.

"'Understand, indeed! If we don't understand you, who should? I

suppose you won't pretend to be cleverer than the tom-cat, or our

mistress, to say nothing of myself? Don't behave in that way,

child; but be thankful for all the kindness that has been shown

you. Have you not got into a warm room, and have you not the

society of persons from whom something is to be learnt? But you are

a blockhead, and it is tiresome to have to do with you. You may

believe what I say; I am well disposed towards you; I tell you what

is disagreeable, and it is by that one recognises one's true

friends.'

"'I think I shall go into the wide world,' said the duckling.

"'Well then, go!' answered the hen.

"And so the duck went. It swam on the water, it dived down; but was

disregarded by every animal on account of its ugliness.

"One evening--the sun was setting most magnificently--there came a

whole flock of large beautiful birds out of the bushes; never had

the duck seen any thing so beautiful. They were of a brilliant

white, with long slender necks: they were swans. They uttered a

strange note, spread their superb long wings, and flew away from

the cold countries (for the winter was setting in) to warmer lands

and unfrozen lakes. They mounted so high, so very high! The little

ugly duck felt indescribably--it turned round in the water like a

mill-wheel, stretched out its neck towards them, and uttered a cry

so loud and strange that it was afraid even of itself. Oh, the

beautiful birds! the happy birds! it could not forget them; and

when it could see them no longer, it dived down to the very bottom

of the water; and when it came up again it was quite beside itself.

"And now it became so cold! But it would be too sad to relate all

the suffering and misery which the duckling had to endure through

the hard winter. It lay on the moor in the rushes. But when the sun

began to shine again more warmly, when the larks sang, and the

lovely spring was come, then, all at once it spread out its wings,

and rose in the air. They made a rushing noise louder than

formerly, and bore it onwards more vigorously; and before it was

well aware of it, it found itself in a garden, where the

apple-trees were in blossom, and where the syringas sent forth

their fragrance, and their long green branches hung down in the

clear stream. Just then three beautiful white swans came out of the

thicket. They rustled their feathers, and swam on the water so

lightly--oh! so very lightly! The duckling knew the superb

creatures, and was seized with a strange feeling of sadness.

"'To them will I fly!' said it, 'to the royal birds. Though they

kill me, I must fly to them!' And it flew into the water, and swam

to the magnificent birds, that looked at, and with rustling plumes,

sailed towards it.

"'Kill me!' said the poor creature, and bowed down its head to the

water, and awaited death. But what did it see in the water? It saw

beneath it its own likeness; but no longer that of an awkward

grayish bird, ugly and displeasing--it was the figure of a swan.

"It is of no consequence being born in a farm-yard, if only it is

in a swan's egg.

"The large swans swam beside it, and stroked it with their bills.

There were little children running about in the garden; they threw

bread into the water, and the youngest cried out, 'There is a new

one!' And the other children shouted too; 'Yes, a new one is

come!'--and they clapped their hands and danced, and ran to tell

their father and mother. And they threw bread and cake into the

water; and every one said, 'The new one is the best! so young, and

so beautiful!'

"Then the young one felt quite ashamed, and hid its head under its

wing; it knew not what to do: it was too happy, but yet not

proud--for a good heart is never proud. It remembered how it had

been persecuted and derided, and now it heard all say it was the

most beautiful of birds. And the syringas bent down their branches

to it in the water, and the sun shone so lovely and so warm. Then

it shook its plumes, the slender neck was lifted up, and, from its

very heart, it cried rejoicingly--'Never dreamed I of such

happiness when I was the little ugly duck!'"

It is not only in writing for children that our author succeeds; but

whenever childhood crosses his path, it calls up a true pathos, and the

playful tenderness of his nature. The commencement of his serious

novels, where he treats of the infancy and boyhood of his heroes, is

always interesting. Amongst the translated works of Andersen is one

entitled "A Picture-Book without Pictures." The author describes himself

as inhabiting a solitary garret in a large town, where no one knew him,

and no friendly face greeted him. One evening, however, he stands at the

open casement, and suddenly beholds "the face of an old friend--a round,

kind face, looking down on him. It was the moon--the dear old moon! with

the same unaltered gleam, just as she appeared when, through the

branches of the willows, she used to shine upon him as he sat on the

mossy bank beside the river." The moon becomes very sociable, and breaks

that long silence which poets have so often celebrated--breaks it, we

must confess, to very little purpose. "Sketch what I relate to you,"

says the moon, "and you will have a pretty picture-book." And

accordingly, every visit, she tells him "of one thing or another that

she has seen during the past night." One would think that such a

sketch-book, or album, as we have here, might easily have been put

together without calling in the aid of so sublime a personage. But

amongst the pictures that are presented to us, two or three, where the

moon has had her eye upon children in their sports or their distresses,

took hold of our fancy. Here Andersen is immediately at home. We give

one short extract.

"It was but yesternight (said the moon) that I peeped into a small

court-yard, enclosed by houses: there was a hen with eleven

chickens. A pretty little girl was skipping about. The hen chicked,

and, affrighted, spread out her wings over her little ones. Then

came the maiden's father, and chid the child; and I passed on,

without thinking more of it at the moment.

"This evening--but a few minutes ago--I again peeped into the same

yard. All was silent; but soon the little maiden came. She crept

cautiously to the hen-house, lifted the latch, and stole gently up

to the hen and the chickens. The hen chicked aloud, and they all

ran fluttering about: the little girl ran after them. I saw it

plainly, for I peeped in through a chink in the wall. I was vexed

with the naughty child, and was glad that the father came and

scolded her still more than yesterday, and seized her by the arm.

She bent her head back; big tears stood in her blue eyes. She wept.

'I wanted to go in and kiss the hen, and beg her to forgive me for

yesterday. But I could not tell it you.' And the father kissed the

brow of the innocent child; and I kissed her eyes and her lips."

Our poet--we call him such, though we know nothing of his verses, for

whatever there is of merit in his writings is of the nature of

poetry--our poet of childhood and of poverty, was born at Odense, a town

of Funen, one of the green, beech-covered islands of Denmark. It bears

the name of the Scandinavian hero, or demigod, Odin; Tradition says he

lived there. The parents of Andersen were so poor that when they married

they had not wherewithal to purchase a bedstead, or at least thought it

advisable to make shift by constructing one out of the wooden tressels

which, a little time before, had supported the coffin of some

neighbouring count as he lay in state. It still retained a part of the

black cloth, and some of the funeral ornaments attached to it, when in

the year 1805 there lay upon it, not in any peculiar state, the solitary

fruit of their marriage--the little Hans Christian Andersen. He was a

crying infant, and when carried to the baptismal font, sorely vexed the

parson with his outcries. "Your young one screams like a cat!" said the

reverend official. The mother was hurt at this reflection upon her

offspring; but a prophetic god-papa, who stood by, consoled her by

saying, "that the louder he cried when a child, all the more beautifully

would he sing when he grew older."

Those who are disposed to trace a hereditary descent in mental

qualifications, will find an instance to their purpose in the case of

Andersen. His mother, we are told, was utterly ignorant of books and of

the world, "but possessed a heart full of love!" From her he may be said

to have derived a singular frankness and amiability of disposition--a

fond, open, affectionate temper. For the more intellectual qualities, by

which this temper, through the medium of authorship, was to become

patent to the world, he must have been indebted to his father. This poor

and hapless shoemaker (such was his trade) seems to have been a singular

person. To use a favourite phrase of Napoleon, "he had missed his

destiny." His parents had been country people of some substance, but

misfortune falling upon misfortune had reduced them to poverty. Finally,

the father had become insane; the mother had been glad to obtain a

menial situation in the very asylum where her husband was confined; and

there was nothing better to be done for the son than to apprentice him

to a shoemaker. Some talk there was amongst the neighbours of raising a

subscription to send him to the grammar-school, and thus give him a

start in life; but it never went beyond talk. A shoemaker he became. But

to the leather and the last he never took kindly. He would read what

books he could get--Holberg's plays and the Bible--and ponder over them.

At first he would make his wife a sharer in his reflections, but as she,

good woman, never understood a word of what he said, he learned to

meditate in silence. On Sundays he would go out into the woods

accompanied only by his child; then he would sit down, sunk in

abstraction and solitary thought, while young Hans gathered flowers or

wild strawberries. "I recollect," says the son, in his Autobiography,

"that once, as a child, I saw tears in his eyes; and it was when a youth

from the grammar-school came to our house to be measured for a new pair

of boots, and showed us his books, and told us what he learned, 'That

was the path on which I ought to have gone!' said my father; he kissed

me passionately, and was silent the whole evening."

There surely went out of the world something still undeveloped in that

poor shoemaker. At a subsequent period of the history we find him fairly

abandoning his unchosen trade. The name of Napoleon resounded even in

Odense--even in Odense could find a heart that is disquieted. He would

follow the banner of him who had "opened a career to all the talents."

But the regiment in which he enlisted got no further than Holstein.

Peace was concluded; he had to return to his native place, and fall back

as well as he could into the old routine. His march to Holstein had,

however, shaken his health, and he died shortly after his return.

"I was," says our author, "the only child, and was extremely spoilt; but

I continually heard my mother say how very much happier I was than she

had been, and that I was brought up like a nobleman's child." No

nobleman's child could, at all events, be brought up with less

restraint, or more completely left to his own fancies. Poor as were his

parents, he never felt want; he had no care; he was fed and clothed

without any thought on his part; he lived his own dreamy life, nourished

by scraps of plays, songs, and all manner of traditionary stories. There

was a theatre at Odense, and young Andersen was now and then taken to it

by his parents. He himself constructed a puppet-show, and the dressing

and drilling of his dolls was for a long time the chief occupation of

his life. As he could rarely go to the theatre, he made friends with the

man who sold the play-bills, who was charitable enough to give him one.

With this upon his knee, he would sit apart and construct a play for

himself; putting the _dramatis personae_ into movement as well as he

could, and at all events despatching them all at the close; for he had

no idea, he tells us, of a tragedy "that had not plenty of dying."

Of what is commonly called education he had little enough. He was sent

to a charity-school, where, by a somewhat startling error of the press,

Mrs Howitt is made to say "he learned only _religion_, writing, and

arithmetic." Of the _reading_, writing, and arithmetic there taught, he

seemed to have gained little; certainly the writing, and the arithmetic

went on very slowly. To make amends, he used to present his master on

his birth-day with a poem and a garland. Both the wreath and the verses

seemed to have been but churlishly received, and the last time they were

offered, he got scolded for his pains.

It would be difficult, however, to conceive of a life more suitable to

the fostering of the imagination than that which little Hans was

leading. Besides the play-house, and the scraps of dramas read to him by

his father, himself a strange and dreamy man, we catch sight of an old

grandmother, she who resided in the lunatic asylum where her husband was

confined. Young Hans was occasionally permitted to visit her; and here

he was a great favourite with certain old crones, who told him many a

marvellous and terrible story. These stories, and the insane figures

which he caught sight of around him, operated, he tells us, so

powerfully upon his imagination that when it grew dark he scarcely dared

to go out of the house. His own mother was extremely superstitious. When

her husband was dying, she sent her son, not to the doctor, but to a

wise-woman, who, after measuring the boy's arm with a woollen thread,

and performing some other ceremonies, bade him go home by the river

side, "and if he did not see the ghost of his father, he was to be sure

that he would not die this time." He did _not_ see the ghost of his

father--which, considering all things, was rather surprising; but his

father died nevertheless.

After the death of her husband, the mother of Andersen found another

object for her affections, for that "heart so full of love." She married

again. But the stepfather was "a grave young man, who would have nothing

to do with Hans Christian's education;" refused, we presume, all

responsibility on so delicate a business. He was still left to himself.

He had now grown a tall lad, with long yellow hair, which the sun

probably had assisted to dye, as he was accustomed to go bare-headed. He

continued to amuse himself with dressing his theatrical puppets. His

mother reconciled herself to the occupation, as it formed, she thought,

no bad introduction to the trade of a tailor, to which she now destined

him. On the other hand, Hans partly reconciled himself to the idea of

being a tailor, because he should then have plenty of cloth, of all

colours, for his puppets. Meanwhile it was to a very different trade or

destiny that these puppets were conducting him.

About this time, not for the money, said the warm-hearted mother, but

that the lad, like the rest of the world, might be doing something, Hans

was sent, for a short interval, to a cloth factory. But it was fated

that he should never work. He had a beautiful voice, and could sing. The

people at the factory asked him to sing. "He began, and all the looms

stood still." He had to sing again and again, whilst the other boys had

his work given them to do. He was not long, however, at the factory. The

coarse jests and behaviour of its inmates drove out the shy and solitary

boy.

And now came the crisis. He would go forth into the world. He would be

famous. All his early aspirations for distinction and celebrity had

become, as might be expected, associated with the theatre. But as yet he

had not the least idea in what department he was to excel--whether as

actor or poet, dancer or singer--or rather he seems to have thought

himself capable of success in them all. The passion for fame, or rather

for distinction, had been awakened before the passion for any particular

art. All he knew was, that he was to be a celebrated man; by what sort

of labour, what kind of performance, he had no conception. Indeed, the

remarkable performance, the work to be done, was not the most essential

thing in his calculation. "People suffer a deal of adversity, and then

they become famous." It was thus he explained the matter to himself. He

was on the right road, at all events, for the adversity.

We must relate his going forth in his own words. Never, surely, on the

part of all the actors in it, was there a scene of such singular

simplicity.

"My mother said that I must be confirmed, in order that I might be

apprenticed to the tailor trade, and thus do something rational.

She loved me with her whole heart, but she did not understand my

impulses and my endeavours, nor, indeed, at that time did I myself.

The people about her always spoke against my odd ways, and turned

me into ridicule. (They only saw the ugly duckling in the young

swan.)

"We belonged to the parish of St Knud, and the candidates for

confirmation could either enter their names with the provost or

with the chaplain. The children of the so-called superior families,

and the scholars of the grammar-school, went to the first, and the

children of the poor to the second. I, however, announced myself as

a candidate to the provost, who was obliged to receive me, although

he discovered vanity in my placing myself among his catechists,

where, although taking the lowest place, I was still above those

who were under the care of the chaplain. I would, however, hope

that it was not alone vanity that impelled me. I had a sort of fear

of the poor boys, who had laughed at me, and I always felt as it

were an inward drawing towards the scholars of the grammar-school,

whom I regarded as far better than other boys. When I saw them

Playing in the churchyard, I would stand outside the railings, and

wish that I were but among the fortunate ones--not for the sake of

the play, but for the many books they had, and for what they might

be able to become in the world.

"An old female tailor altered my deceased father's greatcoat into a

confirmation suit for me; never before had I worn so good a coat. I

had also, for the first time in my life, a pair of boots. My

delight was extremely great; my only fear was that every body would

not see them, and therefore I drew them up over my trousers, and

thus marched through the church. The boots creaked, and that

inwardly pleased me, for thus the congregation would hear that they

were new. My whole devotion was disturbed. I was aware of it, and

it caused me a horrible pang of conscience that my thoughts should

be as much with my new boots as with God. I prayed him earnestly

from my heart to forgive me, and then again I thought upon my new

boots.

"During the last year I had saved together a little sum of money.

When I counted it over, I found it to be thirteen rix-dollars banco

(about thirty shillings.) I was quite overjoyed at the possession

of so much wealth; and as my mother now most resolutely required

that I should be apprenticed to a tailor, I prayed and besought her

that I might make a journey to Copenhagen, that I might see the

greatest city in the world.

"'What wilt thou do there?' asked my mother.

"'I will become famous,' returned I; and I then told her all that I

had read about extraordinary men. 'People have,' said I, 'at first

an immense deal of adversity to go through, and then they will be

famous.'

"It was a wholly unintelligible impulse that guided me. I wept and

prayed, and at last my mother consented, after having first sent

for a so-called wise-woman out of the hospital, that she might read

my future fortune by the coffee-grounds and cards.

"'Your son will become a great man!' said the old woman; 'and in

honour of him all Odense will one day be illuminated.'

"My mother wept when she heard that, and I obtained permission to

travel."--(p. 27.)

So, at the age of fourteen, with thirty shillings in his pocket, and his

idea of becoming famous by going through a deal of adversity, he comes

to Copenhagen--the Paris, the more than the Paris of Denmark, for, in

respect to all that a great town collects or fosters, Copenhagen is

literally Denmark. There never was a stranger history than this of young

Andersen's. It is more like a dream than a life; it is like one of his

own tales for children, where the rigid laws of probability are

dispensed with in favour of a quite free and rapid invention. The

theatre is his point of attraction: but he was by no means determined in

what department, or under what form, his universal genius shall make its

appearance. He will first try dancing. He had heard of a celebrated

_danseuse_, a Madame Schall. To her he goes with a letter of

introduction, which he had coaxed out of an old printer in Odense, who,

though he protested he did not know the lady, was still prevailed upon

to write the letter. Dressed in his confirmation suit, a broad hat upon

his head, his boots, we may be sure, not forgotten, which were worn,

however, this time under the trousers, he finds out the residence of

Madame Schall, rings at the bell, and is admitted. "She looked at me

with great amazement," writes our author, "and then heard what I had to

say. She had not the slightest knowledge of him from whom the letter

came, and my whole appearance and behaviour seemed very strange to her.

I confessed to her my heartfelt inclination for the theatre; and upon

her asking me what character I thought I could represent, I replied

Cinderella. This piece had been performed in Odense by the royal

company, and the principal character had so taken my fancy, that I could

play the part perfectly from memory. In the mean time I asked her

permission to take off my boots, otherwise I was not light enough for

this character; and then, taking up my broad hat for a tambourine, I

began to dance and sing--

'Here below nor rank nor riches

Are exempt from pain and wo.'

My strange gestures and my great activity caused the lady to think me

out of my mind, and she lost no time in getting rid of me."

We should think so. Only imagine some wild colt of a boy, one of those

young Savoyards, for instance, who are in the habit of dancing round the

organ they are grinding, apparently to convince the world how sprightly

the tune is--imagine a genius of this natural description introducing

himself into the drawing-room of a Taglioni or an Elssler, and

commencing forthwith, "with great activity," to give a specimen of his

talent! Just such as this must have been the part which young Andersen

performed in the saloon of Madame Schall.

As the dancing does not succeed, he next offers himself as an

actor--proceeding, quite as a matter of course, to the manager of a

theatre to ask for an engagement. The manager was facetious--said he was

"too thin for the theatre." Hans would be facetious too. "Oh," he

replied, "if you will but engage me at one hundred rix-dollars banco

salary, I shall soon get fat." Then the manager looked grave, and bade

him go his way, adding, that he engaged only people of education.

But he had many strings to his bow--he could sing. It was at the opera

evidently that he was destined to become famous. Here he met with what,

for a moment, looked like success. A voice he certainly possessed,

though uncultivated, and Seboni, the director of the Academy of Music,

promised to procure instruction for him. But a short time afterwards he

lost his voice, through insufficient clothing, as he thinks, and bad

shoe leather. (Those boots could not be new always--doubtless got sadly

worn tramping through the streets of Copenhagen.) Seboni dropped his

_protege_, counselled him to go back to Odense, and learn a trade.

As well learn a trade in Copenhagen, if it was to come to that. He still

stayed in the capital, and still lingered round the theatre, sometimes

getting a lesson in recitation, sometimes one in dancing, and overjoyed

if only as one of a crowd of masked people he could stand before the

scenes. There never surely was so irrepressible a vanity combined with

so sensitive a temperament; never so strong an impulse for distinction

accompanied with such vague notions of the means to attain it. At this

period of his life his utter childishness, his affectionate simplicity,

his superstition, his unconquerable vanity, present a picture quite

unexampled in all biographies we have ever read. He has to make a

bargain with an old woman (no better than she should be) for his board

and lodging. She had left the room for a short time; there was in it a

portrait of her deceased husband. "I was so much a child," he says,

"that, as the tears rolled down my own cheeks, I wetted the eyes of the

portrait with my tears, in order that the dead man might feel how

troubled I was, and influence the heart of his wife."

Great as his susceptibility to ridicule, his vanity is always greater,

can surmount it, and find a gratification where a sterner nature would

have felt only mortification. In a scene of an opera where a crowd is to

be represented, he edges himself upon the stage. He is very conscious of

the ill condition of his attire: the confirmation coat did but just hold

together; and he did not dare to hold himself upright lest he should

exhibit the more plainly the shortness of the waistcoat which he had

outgrown. He had the feeling very plainly that people would be making

themselves merry with him; yet at this moment, he says, "he felt nothing

but the happiness of stepping for the first time before the footlamps."

Of his superstition he records the following amusing instance. "I had

the notion that as it went with me on New Year's Day, so would it go

with me through the whole year; and my highest wishes were to obtain a

part in a play. It was now New Year's Day. The theatre was closed, and

only a half-blind porter sat at the entrance to the stage, on which

there was not a soul. I stole past him with a beating heart, got between

the moveable scenes and the curtain, and advanced to the open part of

the stage. Here I fell down upon my knees, but not a single verse for

declamation could I recall to my memory. I then said aloud the Lord's

Prayer. I went out with the persuasion that, because I had spoken from

the stage on New Year's Day, I should, in the course of the year,

succeed in speaking still more, as well as in having a part assigned to

me."--(p. 50.)

We must quote the paragraph that immediately follows this extract,

because it shows that, after all, there was something better stirring at

his heart than this vague theatrical ambition, this empty vanity. There

was the love of nature there. "During the two years of my residence in

Copenhagen, I had never been out into the open country. Once only had I

been in the park, and there I had been deeply engrossed by studying the

diversions of the people and their gay tumult. In the spring of the

third year, I went out for the first time amid the verdure of a spring

morning. I stood still suddenly under the first large budding

beech-tree. The sun made the leaves transparent--there was a fragrance,

a freshness--the birds sang. I was overcome by it--I shouted aloud for

joy, threw my arms around the tree, and kissed it. 'Is he mad?' said a

man close behind me."

His good fortune provided him at length with a sincere and serviceable

friend in the person of Collins--conference-councillor, as his title

runs, and one of the most influential men at that time in Denmark.

Through his means a grant was obtained from the royal purse, and access

procured to something like regular education in the grammar-school at

Slagelse. His place in the school was in the lowest class amongst little

boys. He knew indeed nothing at all--nothing of what is taught by the

pedagogue. At the age of eighteen, after having written a tragedy, which

had been submitted to the theatre at Copenhagen, and we know not what

poems besides,--after having versified a dance, and recited a song, he

begins at the very beginning, and seats himself down in the lowest form

of a grammar-school.

It is not our intention to pursue the biography of Andersen beyond what

is necessary for understanding the singular circumstances in which his

mind grew up; we shall not, therefore, detain our readers much longer on

this part of our subject. His scholastic progress appears to have been

at first slow and painful; the rector of the grammar-school behaved

neither kindly nor generously towards him; and on him he afterwards took

his revenge in the character of Habbas Dahdah, in "The Improvisatore."

But he was docile, he was persevering, and passed through the school,

and afterwards the college, not discreditably. In 1829, he was launched

again into the world, a member of the educated class of society.

After supporting himself some time by his pen, he received from his

government a stipend for travelling, which, it appears, in Denmark is

bestowed on young poets as well as artists. And now he started on his

travels--evidently the best school of education for a mind like his. For

whatever use books may have been of to Andersen, in teaching him to

_write_, they have had nothing to do with teaching him to _think_. No

one portion of his writings of any value can be traced to his

acquaintance with books. What knowledge he got from this source he could

never rightly use. What his eye saw, what his heart felt--that alone he

could work with. The slowly won reflection, the linked thought--any

thing like a train of reasoning, seems to have been an utter stranger

to his mind. Throughout his life, he is an observant child. From books

he can gather nothing: severe analytic thinking he knows nothing of; he

must see the world, must hear people talk, must remember how his own

heart beat, and thus only can he find something for utterance.

What a change now in his destiny! The poor shoemaker's child, that

wandered wild in the woods of Odense, and afterwards wandered almost as

wild and as solitary in the streets of Copenhagen--who was next

imprisoned in a school with dictionary and grammar--is now free

again--may wander with wider range of vision--is a traveller--and in

Italy! But the sensitive temper of Andersen, we are afraid, hardly

permitted him to enjoy, as he might have done, his full cup of

happiness. Vanity is an unquiet companion; he should have left it behind

him at home; then the little piece of malice which he records of one of

his friends would not have disturbed him as it appears to have done.

"During my journey to Paris, and the whole month that I spent there, I

heard not a single word from home. Could it be that my friends had

nothing agreeable to tell me? At length, however, a letter arrived; a

large letter, which cost a large sum in postage. My heart beat with joy,

and yearning impatience; it was indeed my first letter. I opened it, but

I discovered not a single written word--nothing but a Copenhagen

newspaper, _containing a lampoon upon me_, and that was sent to me all

that distance with postage unpaid, probably by the anonymous writer

himself. This abominable malice wounded me deeply. I have never

discovered who the author was; perhaps he was one of those who

afterwards called me friend, and pressed my hand. Some men have base

thoughts; I also have mine."

Poor Andersen has all his life long been sorely plagued by his critics.

Those who peruse his Autobiography to the close, and every part of it is

worth reading, will find him in violent ill humour with the theatrical

public, whom he describes as taking a malicious and diabolical pleasure

in damning plays. To hiss down a piece, he declares, is one of the chief

amusements that fill the house. "Five minutes is the usual time, and the

whistles resound, and the lovely women smile and felicitate themselves

like the Spanish ladies at their bloody bull-fights." His second journey

into Italy seems to have been in part occasioned by some quarrel with

the theatre. "If I would represent this portion of my life more clearly

and reflectively, it would require me to penetrate into the mysteries of

the theatre, to analyse our aesthetic cliques, and to drag into

conspicuous notice many individuals who do not belong to publicity; many

persons in my place would, like me, have fallen ill, or would have

resented it vehemently. Perhaps the latter would have been the most

sensible."

Oh, no! Hans Christian--by no means the most sensible. Better even to

have fallen ill. An author by his quarrel with the public, whether the

reading or theatrical public, can gain nothing for himself but added

torment. The more vehemently he contests and resents, the louder is the

laugh against him. Whether the right is upon his side, time alone can

show; time alone can redress his wrongs. When the poet has written his

best, he has done all his part. If he cannot feel perfectly tranquil as

to the result, let him at least affect tranquillity--let him be silent,

and silence will soon bring that peace it typifies.

Henceforward, however, upon the whole, the career of Andersen is

prosperous, and his life genial. We find him in friendly intercourse

with the best spirits of the age. The lad who walked about Odense with

long yellow locks, bare-headed, and bare-footed, and who was half

reconciled to being a tailor's apprentice, because he should get plenty

of remnants to dress his puppets with--is seen spending the evening with

the royal family of Denmark, or dining with the King of Prussia, who

decorates him with his order of the Red Eagle! He has exemplified his

text--"people have a deal of adversity to go through, and then they

become famous."

Those who have read "The Improvisatore," the most ambitious of the

works of Andersen, and by far the most meritorious of his novels, will

now directly recognise the materials of which it has been constructed.

His own early career, and his travels into Italy, have been woven

together in the story of Antonio. So far from censuring him--as some of

his Copenhagen critics appear to have done--for describing himself and

the scenes he beheld, we are only surprised when we read "The True Story

of his Life," that he has not been able to employ in a still more

striking manner, the experience of his singular career. But, as we have

already observed, he betrays no habit or power of mental analysis; he

has not that introspection which, in the phrase of our poet Daniel,

"raises a man above himself;" so that Andersen could contemplate

Andersen, and combine the impartial scrutiny of a spectator with the

thorough knowledge which self can only have of self. So far from

censuring him for the frequent use he makes of the materials which his

own life and travels afforded him, we could wish that he had never

attempted to employ any other. Throughout his novels, whenever he

departs from these, he is either commonplace or extravagant,--or both

together, which, in our days, is very possible. If he imitates other

writers, it is always their worst manner that he contrives to seize; if

he adopts the worn-out resources of preceding novelists, it is always

(and in this he may be doing good service) to render them still more

palpably absurd and ridiculous than they were before. He has dreams in

plenty--his heroes are always dreaming; he has fevered descriptions of

the over-excited imagination--a very favourite resource of modern

novelists; he has his moral enigmas; and of course he has a witch

(Fulvia) who tells fortunes and reads futurity, and reads it correctly,

let philosophy or common sense say what it will. His Fulvia affords his

readers one gratification; they find her fairly hanged at the end of the

book.

We are far enough from attempting to give an outline of the story of

this or any other novel--such skeletons are not attractive; but the

extracts, and the observations we have to make, will best be understood

by entering a few steps into the narrative.

Antonio, the Improvisatore, is born in Rome of poor parents. He is

introduced to us as a child, living with his fond mother, his only

surviving parent, in a room, or rather a loft, in the roof of a house.

She is accidentally run over and killed by a nobleman's carriage. A

certain uncle Peppo, a cripple and a beggar, claims guardianship of the

orphan. Of this Peppo we have a most unamiable portrait. His withered

legs are fastened to a board, and he shuffles himself along with his

hands, which were armed with a pair of wooden hand clogs. He used to sit

upon the steps of the Piazza de Spagna. "Once I was witness," says the

Improvisatore, who tells his own story, "of a scene which awoke in me

fear of him, and also exhibited his own disposition. Upon one of the

lowest flights of stairs sat an old blind beggar, and rattled with his

little leaden box that people might drop a _bajocco_ therein. Many

people passed by my uncle without noticing his crafty smile and the

waivings of his hat; the blind man gained more by his silence--they gave

to him. Three had gone by, and now came the fourth, and threw him a

small coin. Peppo could no longer contain himself: I saw how he crept

down like a snake, and struck the blind man in his face, so that he lost

both money and stick. 'Thou thief!' cried my uncle, 'wilt thou steal

money from me--thou who art not even a regular cripple--cannot see--that

is all! And so he will take my bread from my mouth.'"

On great occasions Peppo could quit his board and straddle upon an ass.

And now he came upon his ass, set Antonio before him, and carried him

off to his home or den. The boy was put into a small recess contiguous

to the apartment which his uncle occupied with some of his guests. He

overheard this conversation: "Can the boy do any thing?" asked one; "Has

he any sort of hurt?"

"No; the Madonna has not been so kind to him," said Peppo; "he is

slender and well formed, like a nobleman's child."

"That is a great misfortune," said they all; and some suggestions were

added, that he could have some little hurt to help him to get his

earthly bread until the Madonna gave him the heavenly. Conversation such

as this filled him with alarm; he crept through the aperture which

served for window to his dormitory; slid down the wall, and made his

escape. He ran as fast as he could, and found himself at length in the

Coliseum.

Antonio, at this time, is a poor boy about nine or ten years old; we

have seen from what sort of guardian the terrified lad was making his

escape. Now, observe the exquisite appropriateness, taste, and judgment

of what follows. It is precisely here that the author makes parade of

the knowledge he has lately gained in the grammar-school of

Slagelse--precisely here that he throws his Antonio into a classical

dream or vision!

"Behind one of the many wooden altars which stand not far apart

within the ruins, and indicate the resting-points of the Saviour's

progress to the cross,[3] I seated myself upon a fallen capital,

which lay in the grass. The stone was as cold as ice, my head

burned, there was fever in my blood; I could not sleep, and there

occurred to my mind all that people had related to me of this old

building; of the captive Jews who had been made to raise these huge

blocks of stone for the mighty Roman Caesar; of the wild beasts

which, within this space, had fought with each other, nay, even

with men also, while the people sat upon stone benches, which

ascended step-like from the ground to the loftiest colonnade.

"There was a rustling in the bushes above me; I looked up, and

fancied that I saw something moving. Oh, yes! my imagination showed

to me pale dark shapes, which hewed and builded around me; I heard

distinctly every stroke that fell, saw the meagre black-bearded

Jews tear away grass and shrubs to pile stone upon stone, till the

whole monstrous building stood there newly erected; and now all was

one throng of human beings, head above head, and the whole seemed

one infinitely vast living giant body.

"I saw the vestals in their long white garments; the magnificent

court of the Caesar; the naked bleeding gladiators; then I heard how

there was a roaring and a howling round about, in the lowest

colonnades; from various sides sprang in whole herds of tigers and

hyaenas; they sped close past the spot where I lay; I felt their

burning breath; saw their red fiery glances, and held myself fast

upon the stone upon which I was seated, whilst I prayed the Madonna

to save me. But wilder still grew the tumult around me; yet I could

see in the midst of all the holy cross as it still stands, and

which, whenever I had passed it, I had piously kissed. I exerted

all my strength, and perceived distinctly that I had thrown my arms

around it; but every thing that surrounded me trembled violently

together,--walls, men, beasts. Consciousness had left me,--I

perceived nothing more. When I again opened my eyes, my fever was

over."

Sadder trash than this it were almost impossible to write. It is

necessary to make some quotations to justify the terms of censure, as

well as of praise, which we have bestowed upon Andersen; but our readers

will willingly excuse the infliction of many such quotations; they might

be made abundantly enough, we can assure them.

On awaking from this vision, Antonio finds himself in the presence of

some worthy monks. They take charge of him, and ultimately give him over

to the protection of an old woman, a relative, Dominica, who is living

the most solitary life imaginable, in one of the tombs of the Campagna.

Here there is a striking picture presented to the imagination--of the

old woman and the little boy, shut up in the ruined tomb, in the almost

tropical heat, or the heavy rains, that visit the Campagna. He who

erewhile had visions of vestals and captive Jews, Caesar and the

gladiators, is more naturally represented as amusing himself by floating

sticks and reeds upon the little canal dug to carry the water from their

dwelling;--"they were his boats which were to sail to Rome."

One day a young nobleman, pursued by an enraged buffalo, takes refuge in

this tomb, and thus becomes acquainted with Antonio. He is a member of

the Borghese family, and proves to be the very nobleman whose carriage

had accidentally occasioned the death of his mother. Antonio becomes the

protege of the Borghese, returns to Rome, receives an education, and is

raised into the high and cultivated ranks of society. He is put under

the learned discipline of Habbas Dahdah--an excellent name, we confess,

for a fool--in whose person, we presume, he takes a sly revenge upon his

late rector of Slagelse. But he has not been fortunate in the invention

of parallel absurdities in his Italian pedagogue to those which he may

have remembered of some German prototype. He describes him as animated

with a sort of insane aversion to the poet Dante, whom he decries on

every occasion in order to exalt Petrarch. A Habbas Dahdah would be much

more more likely to feign an excessive admiration for the idol and glory

of Italy. However, his pupil stealthily procures a Dante; reads him, of

course _dreams_ of him; in short, there is an intolerable farago about

the great poet.

But the time now comes when the great business of all novels--love--is

brought upon the scene. And here we have an observation to make which we

think may be deserving of attention.

Antonio, the Improvisatore, is made, in the novel, to love in the

strangest fashion imaginable. He loves and he does not love; he never

knows himself, nor the reader either, whether, or with whom, to

pronounce him in love. Annunciata, the first object of this uncertain

passion, behaves herself, it must be confessed, in a very extraordinary

manner. We suppose the exigencies of the novel must excuse her; it was

necessary that her lover should be plunged in despair, and therefore she

could not be permitted to behave as any other woman would have done in

the same circumstances. She has a real affection for Antonio; yet at the

critical moment--the last moment he will be able to learn the truth, the

last time he will see her unless her response be favourable--she behaves

in such a manner as to lead him inevitably to the conclusion that his

rival is preferred to him. This Annunciata, the most celebrated singer

of her day, loses her voice, loses her beauty,--a fever deprives her of

both;--and not till her death does Antonio learn that he, and not

another, was the person really beloved. Meanwhile, in his travels,

Antonio meets with a blind girl, whom he does or does not love, on whom

at least he poetises, and whose forehead, _because she was blind_, he

had kissed. He is afterwards introduced, at Venice, to a young lady,

(Maria) who bears a striking resemblance to this blind girl. She is, in

fact, the same person, restored to sight, though he is not aware of it.

Maria loves the Improvisatore; he says, he believes that his affection

is _not_ love. He quits Venice--he returns--he is ill. Then follows one

of those miserable scenes which novelists will inflict upon us--of

dream, or delirium--what you will,--and, in this state, he fancies Maria

is dead; he finds then that he really loved; and, in his sleep or

trance, he expresses aloud his affection. His declaration is overheard

by Maria and her sister, who are watching over his couch. He wakes, and

Maria is there, alive before him. In his sleep he has become aware of

the true condition of his own heart; nay, he has leapt the Rubicon,--he

has declared it. He becomes a married man.

Now, in the confused and contradictory account of Antonio's passion, we

see a truth which the author drew from his own nature and experience,--a

truth which, if he had fully appreciated, or had manfully adhered to,

would have enabled him to draw a striking, consistent, and original

portrait. In such natures as Andersen's, there is often found a modesty

more than a woman's, combined with a vivid feeling of beauty, and a

yearning for affection. Modesty is no exclusive property of the female

sex, and there may be so much of it in a youth as to be the impediment,

perhaps the unconscious impediment, to all the natural outpouring of his

heart. The coyness of the virgin, the suitor, by his prayers and wooing,

does all he can to overcome; but here the coyness is in the suitor

himself. He has to overcome it by himself, and he cannot. He hardly

knows the sort of enemy he has to conquer. Every woman seems to him

enclosed in a bell-glass, fine as gossamer, but he cannot break it. He

feels himself drawn, but he cannot approach. His heart is yearning; yet

he says to himself, no, I do not love. A looker-on calls him inconstant,

uncertain, capricious. He is not so; he is bound by viewless fetters,

nor does he know where to strike the chain that is coiled around him.

Such was the truth, we apprehend, such the character, that Andersen had

indistinctly in view. He drew from himself, but he had not previously

analysed that self. It is, therefore, not so much a false as a confused

and imperfect representation that he has given, which the reader, if he

thinks it worth his while, must explain and complete for himself.

Perhaps, too, a fear of the ridicule which an exhibition of modesty in

man might draw down from certain slender witlings, from the young

gentlemen, or even the young ladies, of Copenhagen, may have, in part,

deterred him from a faithful portraiture. To people of reflection, who

have learned to estimate at its true value the laugh of coxcombs, and

the wisdom of the so-called man of the world--the shallowest bird of

passage that we know of--such a portrait would have been attractive for

the genuine truth it contains. It would require, indeed, a master's hand

to deal both well and honestly with it.

The descriptions of Italy which "The Improvisatore" contains are

sufficiently striking and faithful to recall the scenes to those who

have visited them; which is all, we believe, the best descriptions can

effect. What is absolutely new to a reader cannot be described to him.

If all the poets and romancers of England were to unite together in a

committee of taste, they could not frame a description which would give

the effect of mountainous scenery to one who had never seen a mountain.

The utmost the describer call do, in all such cases, is to liken the

scene to something already familiar to the reader's imagination. Though

generally faithful, we cannot say that our author never sacrifices

accuracy of detail to the demands of the novelist, never sacrifices the

actual to the ideal. For instance, his account of the _Miserere_ in the

Sistine Chapel, is rather what one is willing to anticipate it might be,

than what a traveller really finds it. To be sure, he has a right to

place his hero of the novel where he pleases in the chapel, relieve him

from the crowd, and give him all the advantages of position: still his

perfect enjoyment of all that both the arts of painting and music can

afford, and that overpowering _sentiment_ which he finds in the great

picture of the Last Judgment by Michel Angelo, (a picture which

addresses itself far more to the artist than the poet,) strikes us as a

description more from imagination than experience.

A little satire upon the travelling English seems, by the way, to be as

agreeable at Copenhagen as at Paris. Our Danish friends are quite

welcome to it; we only wish for their sakes that, in the present

instance, it had been a little more lively and pungent. Our Hans

Andersen is too weak in the wrist, has not arm strong enough "to crack

the satyric thong." Mere exaggeration maybe mere nonsense, and very dull

nonsense. The scene is at the hotel at Terracina, so well known by all

travellers.

"The cracking of whips re-echoed from the wall of rocks; a carriage

with four horses rolled up to the hotel. Armed servants sat on the

seat at the back of the carriage; a pale thin gentleman, wrapped in

a large bright-coloured dressing-gown, stretched himself within it.

The postilion dismounted and cracked his long whip several times,

whilst fresh horses were put to. The stranger wished to proceed,

but as he desired to have an escort over the mountains where Fra

Diavolo and Cesari had bold descendants, he was obliged to wait a

quarter of an hour, and now scolded, half in English and half in

Italian, at the people's laziness, and at the torments and

sufferings which travellers had to endure; and at length knotted up

his pocket-handkerchief into a night-cap, which he drew on his

head, and then, throwing himself into a corner of the carriage,

closed his eyes, and seemed to resign himself to his fate.

"I perceived that it was all Englishman, who already, in ten days,

had travelled through the north and the middle of Italy, and in

that time had made himself acquainted with this country; had seen

Rome in one day, and was now going to Naples to ascend Vesuvius,

and then by the steam-vessel to Marseilles, to gain a knowledge

also of the south of France, which he hoped to do in a still

shorter time. At length eight well-armed horsemen arrived, the

postilion cracked his whip, and the carriage and the out-riders

vanished through the gate between the tall yellow rocks."--(Vol.

ii. p. 6.)

"_Only a Fiddler_" proceeds, in part, on the same plan as "The

Improvisatore." Here, too, the author has drawn from his own early

experience; here, too, we have a poor lad of genius, who will "go

through an immense deal of adversity and then become famous;" here too

we have the little ugly duck, who, however, was born in a swan's egg.

The commencement of the novel is pretty, where it treats of the

childhood of the hero; but Christian (such is his name) does not win

upon our sympathy, and still less upon our respect. We are led to

suspect that Christian Andersen himself, is naturally deficient in

certain elements of character, or he would have better upheld the

dignity of his namesake, whom he has certainly no desire to lower in our

esteem. With an egregious passion for distinction, a great vanity, in

short, we are afraid that he himself (judging from some passages in his

Autobiography) hardly possesses a proper degree of pride, or the due

feeling of self-respect. The Christian in the novel is the butt and

laughing-stock of a proud, wilful young beauty of the name of Naomi; yet

does he forsake the love of a sweet girl Lucie, to be the beaten spaniel

of this Naomi. He has so little spirit as to take her money and her

contempt at the same time.

This self-willed and beautiful Naomi is a well-imagined character, but

imperfectly developed. Indeed the whole novel may be described as a

jumble of ill-connected scenes, and of half-drawn characters. We have

some sad imitations of the worst models of our current literature. Here

is a Norwegian godfather, the blurred likeness of some Parisian

murderer. Here are dreams and visions, and plenty of delirium. He has

caught the trick, perhaps, from some of our English novelists, of

infusing into the persons of his drama all sorts of distorted

imaginations, by way of describing the situation he has placed them in.

We will quote a passage of this nature: it is just possible that some of

our countrymen, when they see their own style reflected back to them

from a foreign page, may be able to appreciate its exquisite truth to

nature. Christian, still a boy, is at play with his companions; he hides

from them in the belfry of a church. It was the custom to ring the bells

at sunset. He had ensconced himself between the wall and the great bell,

and "when this rose, and showed to him the whole opening of its mouth,"

he found he was within a hair's breadth of contact with it. Retreat was

impossible, and the least movement exposed his head to be shattered. The

conception is terrible enough, but by no means a novel one, as all

readers conversant with the pages of this Magazine will readily allow,

by reference to the story of "The Man in the Bell," in our tenth

volume,[4] one of the late Dr Maginn's most powerful and graphic

sketches. But the natural horror of the situation by no means satisfies

this novelist; he therefore engrafts the following imaginations

thereupon, as being such as were most likely to occur to the lad,

frightened out of his senses, stunned by the roar of the bell, winking

hard, and pressing himself closer and closer to the wall to escape the

threatened blow.

"Overpowered to his very inmost soul by the most fearful anguish,

the bell appeared to him the jaws of some immense serpent; the

clapper was the poisonous tongue, which it extended towards him.

Confused imaginations pressed upon him; feelings similar to the

anguish which he felt when the godfather had dived with him beneath

the water, took possession of him; but here it roared far stronger

in his ears, and the changing colours before his eyes formed

themselves into gray figures. The old pictures in the castle

floated before him, but with threatening mien and gestures, and

ever-changing forms; now long and angular, again jelly-like, clear

and trembling; they clashed cymbals and beat drums, and then

suddenly passed away into that fiery glow in which every thing had

appeared to him, when, with Naomi, he looked through the red

window-panes. It burned, that he felt plainly. He swam through a

burning sea, and ever did the serpent exhibit to him its fearful

jaws. An irresistible desire seized him to take hold on the clapper

with both hands, when suddenly it became calm around him, but it

still raged within his brain. He felt that all his clothes clung

to him, and that his hands seemed fastened to the wall. Before him

hung the serpent's head, dead and bowed; the bell was silent. He

closed his eyes and felt that he fell asleep. He had

fainted."--(Vol. i. p. 59.)

Are these some of the "beautiful thoughts" which Mrs Howitt finds it the

greatest delight of her literary life to translate? One is a little

curious to know how far this beauty has been increased or diminished by

their admiring translator; but unfortunately we can boast no

Scandinavian scholarship. This novel, however, is not without some

striking passages, whether of description of natural scenery, or of

human life. Of these, the little episode of the fate of Steffen-Margaret

recurs most vividly to our recollection. Mrs Howitt, in her translation

of "The True Story of my Life," draws our attention, in a note, to this

character of Steffen-Margaret, informing us that it is the reproduction

of a personage whom Andersen becomes slightly acquainted with in the

early part of his career. She thus points out a striking passage in the

novel; but the translator of the Autobiography and of "Only a Fiddler,"

might have found more natural opportunities for illustrating the

connexion between the novel and the life of the author. There is no

resemblance whatever between the two characters alluded to, except that

they both belong to the same unfortunate class of society. Of the young

girl mentioned in the life, nothing indeed is said, except that she

received once a week a visit from her papa, who came to drink tea with

her, dressed always in a shabby blue coat; and the point of the story

is, that in after times, when Andersen rose into a far different rank of

society, he encountered in some fashionable saloon the papa of the

shabby blue coat in a bland old gentleman glittering with orders.

Christian, the hero of the novel, a lad utterly ignorant of life, has

come for the first time to Copenhagen. Whilst the ship in which he has

arrived is at anchor in the port, it is visited by some _ladies_, one of

whom particularly fascinates him. She must be a princess, or something

of that kind, if not a species of angel. The next day he finds out her

residence, sees her, tells her all his history, all his inspirations,

all his hopes; he is sure that he has found a kind and powerful

patroness. The lady smiles at him, and dismisses him with some cakes and

sweetmeats, and kindly taps upon the head. This is just what Andersen at

the same age would have done himself, and just in this manner would he

have been dismissed and comforted. There is a scene in the Autobiography

very similar. He explains to some kind old dames, whom he encounters at

the theatre, his thwarted aspirations after art; they give him

cakes;--he tells them again of his impulses, and that he is dying to be

famous; they give him more cakes;--he eats and is pacified.

The ship, however, had not been long in the harbour before his princess

visited it again. It was evening--Christian was alone in the cabin.

"He was most strangely affected as he heard at this moment a voice

on the cabin steps, which was just like hers. She, perhaps, would

already present herself as a powerful fairy to conduct him to

happiness. He would have rushed towards her, but she came not

alone; a sailor accompanied her, and inquired aloud, on entering,

if there were any one there. But a strange feeling of distress

fettered Christian's tongue, and he remained silent.

"'What have you got to say to me?' asked the sailor.

"'Save me!' was the first word, which Christian heard from her lips

in the cabin; she whom he had regarded as a rich and noble lady. 'I

am sunk in shame!' said she. 'No one esteems me; I no longer esteem

myself. Oh, save me, Soeren! I have honestly divided my money with

you; I yet am possessed of forty dollars. Marry me, and take me

away out of this wo, and out of this misery! Take me to a place

where nobody will know me, where you may not be ashamed of me. I

will work for you like a slave, till the blood comes out at my

finger-ends. Oh, take me away with you! In a year's time it may be

too late.'

"'Should I take you to my old father and mother?' said the sailor.

"'I will kiss the dust from their feet they may beat me, and I will

bear it without a murmur--will patiently bear every blow. I am

already old, that I know. I shall soon be eight-and-twenty; but it

is an act of mercy, which I beseech of you. If you will not do it,

nobody else will; and I think I must drink--drink till my brain

reels--and I forget what I have made myself!'

"'Is that the very important thing that you have got to tell me?'

remarked the sailor, with a cold indifference.

"Her tears, her sighs, her words of despair, sank deep into

Christian's heart. A visionary image had vanished, and with its

vanishing he saw the dark side of a naked reality.

"He found himself again alone.

"A few days after this, the ice had to be hewed away from the

channel. Christian and the sailor struck their axes deeply into the

firm ice, so that it broke into great pieces. Something white hung

fast to the ice in the opening; the sailor enlarged the opening,

and then a female corpse presented itself, dressed in white as for

a ball. She had amber leads round her neck, gold earrings, and she

held her hands closely folded against her breast as if for prayer.

It was Steffen-Margaret."

"O.T." commences in a more lively style than either of the preceding

novels, but soon becomes in fact the dullest and most wearisome of the

three. During a portion of this novel he seems to have taken for his

model of narrative the "Wilhelm Meister" of Goethe; but the calm

domestic manner which is tolerable in the clear-sighted man, who we know

can rise nobly from it when he pleases, accords ill enough with the

bewildered, most displeasing, and half intelligible story which Andersen

has here to relate.

We have occupied ourselves quite sufficiently with these novels, and

shall pass over "O.T." without further comment. Neither shall we bestow

any of our space upon "The Poet's Bazaar," which seems to be nothing

else than the Journal which the author may be supposed to have kept

during his second visit to Italy, when he also extended his travels into

Greece and Constantinople.

We take refuge in the nursery--we will listen to these tales for

children--we throw away the rigid pen of criticism--we will have a

story.

What precisely are the laws, what the critical rules, on which tales for

children should be written, we will by no means undertake to define. Are

they to contain nothing, in language or significance, beyond the

apprehension of the inmates of the nursery? It is a question which we

will not pretend to answer. Aristotle lays down nothing on the subject

in his "Poetici;" nor Mr Dunlop in his "History of Fiction." If this be

the law, if every thing must be level to the understanding of the

frock-and-trousers population, then these, and many other Tales for

Children, transgress against the first rule of their construction. How

often does the story turn, like the novels for elder people, upon a

marriage! Some king's son in disguise marries the beautiful princess.

What idea has a child of marriage?--unless the sugared plum-cake

distributed on such occasions comes in aid of his imagination. Marriage,

to the infantine intelligence, must mean fine dresses, and infinite

sweetmeats--a sort of juvenile party that is never to break up. Well,

and the notion serves to carry on the tale withal. The imagination

throws this temporary bridge over the gap, till time and experience

supply other architecture. Amongst this collection, is a story in which

vast importance is attached to a kiss. What can a curly-headed urchin,

who is kissing, or being kissed, all day long, know of the value that

may be given to what some versifier calls,

"The humid seal of soft affections!"

To our apprehension, it has always appeared that the best books for

children were those not written expressly for them, but which,

interesting to all readers, happened to fasten peculiarly upon the

youthful imagination,--such as "Robinson Crusoe," the "Arabian Nights,"

"Pilgrim's Progress," &c. It is quite true that in all these there is

much the child does not understand, but where there is something vividly

apprehended, there is an additional pleasure procured, and an admirable

stimulant, in the endeavour to penetrate the rest. There is all the

charm of a riddle combined with all the fascination of a story. Besides,

do we not throughout our boyhood and our youth, read with intense

interest, and to our great improvement, books which we but partly

understand? How much was lost to us of our Milton and our Shakspeare at

an age when nevertheless we read them with intense interest and

excitement, and therefore, we may be sure, with great profit. Throughout

the whole season of our intellectual progress, we are necessarily

reading works of which a great part is obscure to us; we get half at

one time, and half at another.

Not, by any means, that we intend to say a word against writing books

for children; if they are good books we shall read them too. A clever

man talking to his child, in the presence of his adult friends,--has it

never been remarked, how infinitely amusing he may be, and what an

advantage he has from this two-fold audience? He lets loose all his

fancy, under pretence that he is talking to a child, and he couples this

wildness with all his wit, and point, and shrewdness, because he knows

his friend is listening. The child is not a whit the less pleased,

because there is something above its comprehension, nor the friend at

all the less entertained, because he laughs at what was not intended for

his capacity. A writer of children's tales--(If they are any thing

better than what every nursery-maid can invent for herself)--is

precisely in this position: he will, he _must_ have in view the adult

listener. While speaking to the child, he will endeavour to interest the

parent who is overhearing him; and thus there may result a very amusing

and agreeable composition.

We have met with some children's tales which, we thought, were so

plainly levelled at the parent, that they seemed little more than

lectures to grown-up people in the disguise of stories to their

children. Some of the very clever stories of Miss Edgeworth appear to be

more evidently designed for the adult listener, than to the little

people to whom they are immediately addressed. And they may perhaps

render good service in this way. Perhaps some mature matron, far above

counsel, may take a hint which she thinks was not _intended_--may accept

that piece of good advice which she fancies her own shrewdness has

discovered, and which the subtle, Miss Edgeworth had laid, like a trap,

in her path.

We are happy, we repeat, that we do not feel it incumbent upon us to

settle the rules, the critical canon, of this nursery literature. We

have no objection, however, to peep into it now and then, and we shall

venture to give our readers another of Andersen's little stories, and so

take our leave of him. We omit a sentence, here and there, where we can

without injury to the tale; yet we have no fear that our gravest readers

will think the extract too long. Our quotation is from the volume called

"Tales from Denmark." There is another collection called, "The Shoes of

Fortune;" these are higher in pretension, and inferior in merit.

THE EMPEROR'S NEW CLOTHES.

"One day a couple of swindlers, who called themselves first-rate

weavers, made their appearance in the imperial town of----. They

pretended that they were able to weave the richest stuffs, in which

not only the colours and the pattern were extremely beautiful, but

that the clothes made of such stuffs possessed the wonderful

property of remaining invisible to him who was unfit for the office

he held, or was extremely silly.

"'What capital clothes they must be!' thought the Emperor. 'If I

had but such a suit, I could directly find out what people in my

empire were not equal to their office; and besides, I should be

able to distinguish the clever from the stupid. By Jove, I must

have some of this stuff made directly for me!' And so he ordered

large sums of money to be given to the two swindlers, that they

might set to work immediately.

"The men erected two looms, and did as if they worked very

diligently; but in reality they had got nothing on the loom. They

boldly demanded the finest silk, and gold thread, put it all in

their own pockets, and worked away at the empty loom till quite

late at night.

"'I should like to know how the two weavers are getting on with my

stuff,' said the Emperor one day to himself; 'but he was rather

embarrassed when he remembered that a silly fellow, or one unfitted

for his office, would not be able to see the stuff. 'Tis true, he

thought, as far as regarded himself, there was no risk whatever;

but yet he preferred sending some one else, to bring him

intelligence of the two weavers, and how they were getting on,

before he went himself; for every body in the whole town had heard

of the wonderful property that this stuff was said to possess.

"'I will send my worthy old minister,' said the Emperor at last,

after much consideration; 'he will be able to say how the stuff

looks better than anybody.'

"So the worthy old minister went to the room where the two

swindlers were' working away with all their might and main. 'Lord

help me!' thought the old man, opening his eyes as wide as

possible--'Why, I can't see the least thing whatever on the loom.'

But he took care not to say so.

"The swindlers, pointing to the empty frame, asked him most

politely if the colours were not of great beauty. And the poor old

minister looked and looked, and could see nothing whatever. 'Bless

me!' thought he to himself, 'Am I, then, really a simpleton? Well,

I never thought so. Nobody knows it. I not fit for office! No,

nothing on earth shall make me say that I have not seen the stuff!'

"'Well, sir,' said one of the swindlers, still working busily at

the empty loom, 'you don't say if the stuff pleases you or not.'

"'Oh beautiful! beautiful! the work is admirable!' said the old

minister looking hard through his spectacles. 'This pattern, and

these colours! Well, well, I shall not fail to tell the Emperor

that they are most beautiful!'

"The swindlers then asked for more money, and silk, and gold

thread; but they put as before all that was given them into their

own pocket, and still continued to work with apparent diligence at

the empty loom.

"Some time after, the Emperor sent another officer to see how the

work was getting on. But he fared like the other; he stared at the

loom from every side; but as there was nothing there, of course he

could see nothing. 'Does the stuff not please you as much as it did

the minister?' asked the men, making the same gestures as before,

and talking of splendid colours and patterns, which did not exist.

"'Stupid I certainly am not!' thought the new commissioner; 'then

it must be that I am not fitted for my lucrative office--that were

a good joke! However, no one dare even suspect such a thing.' And

so he began praising the stuff that he could not see, and told the

two swindlers how pleased he was to behold such beautiful colours,

and such charming patterns. 'Indeed, your majesty,' said he to the

Emperor on his return, 'the stuff which the weavers are making, is

extraordinarily fine.'

"It was the talk of the whole town.

"The Emperor could no longer restrain his curiosity to see this

costly stuff; so, accompanied by a chosen train of courtiers, among

whom were the two trusty men who had so admired the work, off he

went to the two cunning cheats. As soon as they heard of the

Emperor's approach they began working with all diligence, although

there was still not a single thread on the loom.

"'Is it not magnificent?' said the two officers of the crown, who

had been there before. 'Will your majesty only look? What a

charming pattern! What beautiful colours!' said they, pointing to

the empty frames, for they thought the others really could see the

stuff.

"'What's the meaning of this?' said the Emperor to himself, 'I see

nothing! Am _I_ a simpleton! I not fit to be Emperor? Oh,' he cried

aloud, 'charming! The stuff is really charming! I approve of it

highly;' and he smiled graciously, and examined the empty looms

minutely. And the whole suite strained their eyes and cried

'Beautiful!' and counselled his Majesty to have new robes made out

of this magnificent stuff for the grand procession that was about

to take place. And so it was ordered.

"The day on which the procession was to take place, the two men

brought the Emperor's new suit to the palace; they held up their

arms as though they had something in their hands, and said, 'Here

are your Majesty's knee-breeches; here is the coat, and here the

mantle. The whole suit is as light as a cobweb; and when one is

dressed, one would almost fancy one had nothing on: but that is

just the beauty of this stuff!'

"'Of course!' said all the courtiers, although not a single one of

them could see any thing of the clothes.

"'Will your imperial Majesty most graciously be pleased to undress?

We will then try on the new things before the glass.'

"The Emperor allowed himself to be undressed, and then the two

cheats did exactly as if each one helped him on with an article of

dress, while his Majesty turned himself round on all sides before

the mirror.

"'The canopy which is to be borne above your Majesty in the

procession, is in readiness without,' announced the chief master of

the ceremonies.

"'I am quite ready,' replied the Emperor, turning round once more

before the looking-glass.

"So the Emperor walked on, under the high canopy, through the

streets of the metropolis, and all the people in the streets and at

the windows cried out, 'Oh, how beautiful the Emperor's new dress

is!' In short there was nobody but wished to cheat himself into the

belief that he saw the Emperor's new clothes.

"'But he has nothing on!' said a little child.'

"And then all the people cried out, 'He has nothing on!'

"But the Emperor and the courtiers--they retained their seeming

faith, and walked on with great dignity to the close of the

procession."

FOOTNOTES:

[1] _The Improvisatore; or, Life in Italy_, from the Danish of HANS

CHRISTIAN ANDERSEN. Translated by MARY HOWITT.

_Only a Fiddler!_ and _O.T. or, Life in Denmark_, by the Author of _The

Improvisatore_. Translated by MARY HOWITT.

_A True Story of my Life_, by HANS CHRISTIAN ANDERSEN. Translated by

MARY HOWITT.

_Tales from Denmark_. Translated by CHARLES BONAR.

_A Picture-Book without Pictures_. Translated by META TAYLOR.

_The Shoes of Fortune, and other Tales_.

_A Poet's Bazaar_. Translated by CHARLES BECKWITH, Esq.

[2] See Allan Cunningham's _Lives of the Painters and Sculptors_, vol.

ii. p. 150.

[3] Not very clearly expressed by the translator. One would think that

our Saviour, in his progress to the cross, had passed through the area

of the Coliseum, and not that each of the pictures on these altars

represented one of the resting-points, &c. Mrs Howitt is sometimes hasty

and careless in her writing. And why does she employ such expressions as

these:--"many white buttons," "beside of it," "beside of us?" We have

read _a many_ English books, but never met them in anyone beside of

this.

[4] Vol. x, Nov. 1821, p. 373.

THE VISION OF CAGLIOSTRO.

"In the horror of a vision by night, when deep sleep is wont to

hold men, fear seized upon me, and trembling, and all my bones were

affrighted; and when a spirit passed before me, the hair of my

flesh stood up."--_The Book of Job._

The last, and perhaps the most renowned of the Rosicrucians, was,

according to a historical insinuation, implicated in that notorious

juggle of the Diamond Necklace, which tended so much to increase the

popular hatred towards the evil-doomed and beautiful Marie Antoinette.

Whether this imputation were correct, or whether the Cardinal Duc de

Rohan was the only distinguished person deluded by the artifices of the

Countess de la Motte, it is certain that Joseph Balsamo, commonly called

Alexandre, Count de Cagliostro, was capable of any knavery, however

infamous. Guile was his element; audacity was his breastplate; delusion

was his profession; immorality was his creed; debauchery was his

consolation; his own genius--the genius of cunning--was the god of his

idolatry. Had Cagliostro been sustained by the principles of rectitude,

he must have become the idol as well as the wonder of his

contemporaries; his accomplishments must have dazzled them into

admiration, for he possessed all the attributes of a Crichton. Beautiful

in aspect, symmetrical in proportions, graceful in carriage, capacious

in intellect, erudite as a Benedictine, agile as an Acrobat, daring as

Scaevola, persuasive as Alcibiades, skilled in all manly pastimes,

familiar with the philosophies of the scholar and the worldling, an

orator, a musician, a courtier, a linguist,--such was the celebrated

Cagliostro. In his abilities, he was as capricious as Leonardo, and as

subtle as Macchiavelli; but he was without the magnanimity of the one,

or the crafty prudence of the other. Lucretius so darkened the glories

of nature by the glooms of his blasphemous imagination, that he might

have described this earth as a golden globe animated by a demon.

Fashioned in a mould as marvellous as that golden orb, and animated in

like manner by a devilish and wily spirit, was Balsamo the Rosicrucian.