The old methods of covering metals with a plating of silver were so

difficult and laborious, that durable ware could never have been

produced by them except at an expense which would have defeated the

object. In those slow and costly ways plated articles were made as late

as the year 1840; and thus they might be made at the present moment, if

Signora Galvani had been looking the other way when the student touched

the frog with his knife. More than fifty years elapsed before that

chance discovery was made available in the art we are considering. For

many years the discoveries of Galvani and Volta did not appear to add

much to the resources of man, though they excited his "special wonder,"

Elderly readers can perhaps remember the appalling accounts that used to

be published, forty years ago or more, of the galvanizing of criminals

after execution. In 1811, at Glasgow, a noted chemist tried the effect

of a voltaic "pile" of two hundred and seventy pairs of plates upon the

body of a murderer. As the various parts of the nervous system were

subjected to the current, the most startling results followed. The whole

body shuddered as with cold; one of the legs nearly kicked an attendant

over; the chest heaved, and the lungs inhaled and exhaled. At one time,

when all the power of the instrument was exerted, we are told that

"every muscle of the countenance was simultaneously thrown into fearful

action. Rage, horror, despair and anguish, and ghastly smiles, united

their hideous expression on the murderer's face, surpassing far the

wildest representations of a Fuseli or a Kean. At this period several of

the spectators were obliged to leave the room from terror or sickness,

and one gentleman fainted." The bodies of horses, oxen, and sheep were

galvanized, with results the most surprising. Five men were unable to

hold the leg of a horse subjected to the action of a powerful battery.

So far as we know, nothing of much importance has yet been inferred from

such experiments as these. Davy and Faraday, however, and their pupils,

did not confine their attention to these barren wonders. Sir Humphry

Davy took the "pile" as invented by Volta, in 1800, and founded by its

assistance what may be styled a new science, and developed it to the

point where it became available for the arts and utilities of man. The

simple and easy process by which silver and gold are decomposed, and

then deposited upon metallic surfaces, is only one of many ways in which

the galvanic battery ministers to our convenience and pleasure. If the

reader will step into a manufactory of plated ware, he will see, in the

plating-room, a trough containing a liquid resembling tea as it comes

from the teapot. Avoiding scientific terms, we may say that this liquid

is a solution of silver, and contains about four ounces of silver to a

gallon of water. There are also thin plates of silver hanging along the

sides of the trough into the liquid. The galvanic battery which is to

set this apparatus in motion is in a closet near by. The vessels to be

plated, after being thoroughly cleaned and exactly weighed, are

suspended in the liquid by a wire running along the top of the trough.

When all is ready, the current of electricity generated by the small

battery in the closet is made to pass through the trough, and along all

the metallic surfaces therein contained. When this has been done, the

spectator may look with all his eyes, but he cannot perceive that

anything is going on. There is no bubbling, nor fizzing, nor any other

noise or motion. The long row of vessels hang silently at their wire,

immersed in their tea, and nobody appears to pay any attention to them.

And so they continue to hang for hours,--for five or six or seven hours,

if the design is to produce work which will answer some other purpose

than selling. All this time a most wonderful and mysterious process is

going on. That gentle current of electricity, noiseless and invisible as

it is, is taking the silver held in the solution, and laying it upon the

surfaces of those vessels, within and without; and at the same time it

is decomposing the plates of silver hanging along the sides of the

trough in such a way as to keep up the strength of the solution. We

cannot recover from the wonder into which the contemplation of this

process threw us. There are some things which the outside and occasional

observer can never be done marvelling at. For our part, we never hear

the click of a telegraphic apparatus without experiencing the same spasm

of astonishment as when we were first introduced to that mystery. The

beautiful manner, too, in which this silvering work is done! The most

delicate brush in the most sympathetic hand could not lay on the colors

of the palette so evenly, nor could a crucible melt the metals into a

completer oneness.

And here is the opportunity for fraud. In five minutes an article is

coated with silver in every part, inside and out; and that mere "blush"

of silver, as the platers term it, will receive as brilliant a polish,

and look as well (for a month) as if it were solid plate. Nay, it will

look rather better; since the silver deposited by this exquisite process

is perfectly pure, while the silver employed in solid ware is of the

coin standard,--one tenth alloy. The plater can deposit upon his work as

little silver as he chooses, either by weakening his solution, or by

leaving the articles in it for a very short time; and no man can detect

the cheat with certainty except by an expensive and troublesome process.

Nor will it suffice for the operator to attend to the strength of his

solutions, and keep his eye upon the clock. As in certain conditions of

the atmosphere we can scarcely get a spark from the electrical machine,

so there are times when the galvanic battery works feebly, and when the

silvering goes on much more slowly than usual. To guard against errors

from this cause, there is no sure resource but a system of careful

weighings. In such establishments as that of the Gorham Company of

Providence, Tiffany's or Haughwout's of New York, Bailey's of

Philadelphia, and Bigelow Brothers and Kennard's, or Palmer and

Batchelder's, of Boston, each article is weighed before it is immersed

in the solution, its weight is recorded, and it is allowed to remain in

the solution until it has taken on the whole of the precious metal it

was designed to receive.

There was a lawsuit the other day in New York, which turned upon the

quantity of silver deposited upon sundry gross of forks and spoons. The

plater agreed to put upon them twelve ounces of silver to the gross,

which is about as much as is ever deposited upon spoons or forks. If he

had performed his contract, he would have spread over each table-spoon

about as much silver as there is in a ten-cent piece; and such is the

nature of silver that these spoons would have worn well for five or six

years. In fact, there are no better plated spoons yet in use than these

were designed to be. The plater meant to comply with the usages of the

trade. He meant to put upon those spoons the quantity of silver which,

in the trade, _stands_ for twelve ounces to the gross, which is about

ten ounces to the gross. Such, was probably his virtuous intention, and

he supposed he had carried out that intention. But when the spoons were

put to the test, it was discovered that upon one hundred and forty-four

table-spoons there were but three ounces and a half of silver. It came

out on the trial that the plater never weighed his work, and trusted

wholly to the length of time he left it in the solution. He appeared to

be honestly indignant at the testimony showing that his spoons, which

had been left four hours subject to the action of the battery, had

acquired only a film of silver. To the eye of the purchaser, these

spoons would have presented precisely the same appearance as the best

plated ware in existence. For two or three months, or even for six

months, they would have retained their brilliancy. What their appearance

would have been at the end of a year or two we need not say, for most

readers have encountered the spectacle in their pilgrimage through a

world which is said to resemble plated articles of this quality in being

"all a fleeting show."

Every one is familiar with the gold lining that is now so generally seen

in silver vessels. This is laid on by the same process as that which

covers the outside with silver. The vessel is filled with a solution of

gold, and in this solution a thin plate of gold is suspended. The

electric current being made to pass through the interior thus prepared,

the liquid bubbles up like soda-water, and in three or four minutes

enough gold is deposited upon the inside surface for the purpose

designed. When this is accomplished, nothing remains but to polish the

vessel, within and without, and we have a piece of ware which is silver

when we look at it, and golden when we drink from it.

The obstacle to the introduction of the superior plated ware now made by

the Gorham Company is its costliness. The best plated ware costs five

times as much as the worst, and one fourth as much as solid silver. We

saw the other day three large salvers, which, at a distance of six feet,

looked very nearly alike. All of them bore a most brilliant polish, and

all were elaborately decorated. One of them was a trashy article, made

of an alloy of lead and tin, covered with a "blush" of silver. It had

been stamped out and shaped at one blow by a stamping-machine, and left

in the silver solution subject to the action of the battery for perhaps

fifteen minutes. It was very heavy, and when it was suspended and struck

it gave forth a dull leaden sound. The price of this abomination was

thirty-seven dollars and a half, and it would last, with careful

occasional usage, for a year. Daily use would disclose its real quality

in a few weeks. Another of these salvers was of solid silver, to which

no objection could be made except that its price was nine hundred and

fifty dollars. The third was of that superior plated ware introduced

recently by the Gorham Company of Providence. The base of this article

was the metal now called nickel silver,--a mixture of copper, nickel,

and zinc,--3 very hard and ringing compound, perfectly white, and

capable of a high polish. Upon this hard surface as much silver had been

deposited as upon the best Sheffield plated ware, which is about as

much as can be smoothly put upon it by the electro-plating process. When

this salver was struck, it rang like a bell, and it would not bend under

the weight of a man. Such a salver, used continually, will retain its

lustre for a whole generation, and when, after that long period, it

begins to lose its silver coating, it can be re-silvered and made as

good as ever. But the price of this article was two hundred

dollars,--more than five times the cost of the leaden trash, and a

fourth of the price of the solid salver. Nevertheless, plated ware of

this quality is the only kind which it is good economy to buy. There are

few more extravagant purchases we can make in housekeeping than lead and

brass ware, covered with a film of silver so thin that one ounce of the

precious metal can actually be spread over two acres of it.

One fact can easily be borne in mind: good serviceable plated articles

cost, and _must_ cost, from one fourth to one third as much as similar

articles of solid silver. Anything of a much lower standard than this is

trash and vulgarity.

For our part, we prefer good plated ware to solid plate. In plated ware

we can now have all the beauty of form, all the brilliancy of surface,

all the durability and utility of solid silver, without its excessive

costliness, without appearing to be guilty of ostentation, without

putting our neighbors to shame, and without offering a perpetual

temptation to burglars.

WHAT WE FEEL.

It would seem to be folly for any one to maintain that grass is not

green, that sugar is not sweet, that the rose has no odor and the

trumpet no tone. A man would seem to be out of his senses deliberately

to doubt what the world thinks to be simple truths. Yet this paper will

deliberately question these truths. It will endeavor to demonstrate that

the greenness, the sweetness, the fragrance, the music, are not inherent

qualities of the objects themselves, but are cerebral sensations, whose

existence is limited to the senses of organized beings.

Is grass green? First let us inquire what green is,--what color is.

Light is now understood to be an undulation of the interstellar ether,

that inconceivably rare, elastic expanse of matter which occupies all

space,--an undulation communicated by the incandescent envelope of suns.

It moves with such wondrous rapidity as to traverse hundreds of

thousands of miles in a second. Such is the generally received

explanation of the phenomenon of light; but there is much yet to be

explained for which this simple undulation of matter seems to be an

insufficient cause. These waves of motion have different lengths and

rates of velocity; but the union of them all gives to the human eye the

impression of white light. When a prism intercepts their flow, it, so to

speak, assorts these differing waves; and, being separated, they then

impress the eye with the color of the spectrum, the retina being

differently affected by the differing velocities with which it is

touched by the ethereal waves. Color, then, is the sensation of the

brain, responsive to the touch of the motion of ether; and the brain is

only thus affected when these waves are thrown back from some object to

the eye. The multiplicity of tints and hues are reflections from the

objects which appear to possess them as structural characters. Some of

the waves pass into the objects and through them, others are arrested by

them and absorbed, others rebound from them like a ball from a wall; and

these last, breaking upon the optic nerve, give to it certain sensations

which we designate as colors. A wave of a certain velocity and length

gives us a certain sensation which we call blue; another awakens the

sensation we call yellow. The two series of waves, mingling, produce a

new sensation which we call green. The necessity of reflection for the

production of these sensations is evident. The mingled waves have no

color in their incident flow; but, striking some object, these waves

become separated, some being absorbed, and the reflected ones produce

the peculiar sensation we call color.

We know that these varying conditions of light which affect us as color

have an absolute being. The photographer carries on his nice operations

behind a yellow screen undisturbed, when the substitution of a pink one

would at once allow of the chemical action of the other rays of light on

his plate, to the destruction of his image. Still, the pink and the

yellow, as colors, are brain sensations. We feel them with our eyes, and

the feeling they awaken we call color. The optic nerve receives the

undulations of ether thrown back from grass, and the peculiar sensation

thus awakened by their touch is called green. The color is not a part of

the grass, not a quantitative constituent, like its carbon or silex. The

grass has no color, because color is something existent in the eye of

the beholder, not in the object awakening that something by its peculiar

mode of reflecting light. A looking-glass does not possess, as a

constituent part, the image of a human face; but that face, when put

before it, appears to be a part of the glass; and if no looking-glass

had ever existed except with a certain face before it, that face would

be just as much a part of the glass as the color green is of grass. They

both reflect. Some people are color-blind. They cannot perceive any

difference between the rose and the leaves around it. Color is

inconceivable to them. Let us suppose, then, that all men were

color-blind. They would be fully cognizant of light, shadow, darkness;

but the nicer sensations of the brain which we call colors would be

utterly unknown to senses unable to feel their delicate touch. At the

same time, the different undulations of the different colors might have

been detected by other means than the sense of sight, as unseen gases

have been discovered by the chemist. And we cannot say that Nature may

not possess an inconceivable variety of influences inappreciable by our

senses. We say grass is green; but is it always so? What varying colors

does it possess under the varying light to which it is exposed. The same

grass is light green in the sun, dark green in the shadow, almost black

in the twilight, and at night what color is it? We may say that it is

green, but that we cannot see it. By no means. If greenness were an

inherent attribute, it would be persistent. The weight, density,

chemical construction, and size of the plant do not change from midday

to midnight. They are identical in the dark and the light. But the color

depends entirely on the character of light poured upon it; as that color

is only a peculiar reflection of that light, or part of it, and that

reflection is only green when it stimulates an optic nerve to a

sensation peculiar to its touch. The same grass becomes yellow or brown

in autumn, possessing then new powers of absorption and reflection. The

very limited capacity of the eye to receive sensation from light rays is

proved by the discovery that the spectrum possesses other rays, called

heat-rays, which the eye cannot perceive. Only about a third of the

spectrum is visible to the eye. The other portion appears in the form of

heat, inappreciable by the optic nerve as light.

Color, therefore, is not a physical thing,--a quantity in Nature. Her

beauty and glory, visible in her tints and hues, are in the brain of the

observer,--a play of light reflected from the myriad objects upon which

it breaks in infinite diversity of ethereal wavelet's. One may see

colors which do not exist as undulations. For example, let one look

fixedly at a brilliant red object for a while, and then close his eyes.

He will behold an image of the same object of a green color. This green

color, then, is a sensation in the optic nerve, which, being powerfully

stimulated by the red, undergoes a reaction, resulting in a sensation

similar to that which it would experience were it looking at the object

in green. The color green, in this case, is certainly only nervous

sensation. As light is now known to be the motion of matter, color, as

the result of light, must inevitably be limited by it. The touch of the

light-waves upon our nerves causes certain contractions which we call

color, the contractions ceasing when the touch is withdrawn. A pane of

green glass will cast upon a white marble a green light. Let us suppose

that this play of light had always existed, so far as those two objects

were concerned. The marble would appear to be permanently green, and not

white; and if we had not a simple way of removing the light, we should

certainly say it was green marble. Could we as effectually change the

play of light which causes grass to appear green, we should at once

demonstrate as readily, that its color was an appearance to the eye, not

a part of the grass itself. It is very probable that we are extensively

deceived in this way,--that many appearances in nature are only

simulations which we have no means of detecting. Isomerism in minerals

has been discovered,--a state in which quite different physical

properties are coexistent with identity of component parts. What we

always see, and what seems to be permanent, we naturally accept as a

physical fact; and yet we can understand that our senses may, in many

instances, be the sport of appearances which, because permanent, we

conceive to be reality. Thus color is a cerebral sensation only, and

grass is not green.

Is sugar sweet? That sugar has certain chemical constituents which go to

make up a saccharine compound we know. But what evidence have we of its

sweetness, except that the nerves of taste are peculiarly affected when

brought in contact with it. Its sweetness is not measurable in the

chemist's scales. It can be analyzed, and its constituent elements

accurately defined. But sweetness is not one of those elements. The test

of that is the tongue. Pure sugar of milk has scarce any sweetness at

all; nevertheless, it is pure sugar. The influence which it has on the

nerves of taste is only different from that of cane-sugar. Destroy the

nice nervous connection between the tongue and the brain, and sweetness

disappears. A severe cold will accomplish this, and while the touch of

the sugar is felt, the delicate sympathy which is awakened by the sugar

and is felt in the brain as sweetness is destroyed. The sweetness, like

the color, is a nervous sensation. We can conceive of a development of

the nerves of taste which might receive a host of new impressions from

contact with objects now tasteless. The saccharine compound does exist

as a chemical quantity, and has a special effect on the nerves of taste,

exciting them peculiarly, the result of the excitement being the idea of

sweetness.

Is the rose fragrant? The sense of smell is indeed only a continuation

of that of taste. In smelling, the nerves are touched by only

infinitesimally small particles of the substances reaching them, and are

only able to receive an impression from this excessive distribution.

This is also true of taste, to a certain degree, as it is impossible to

fully perceive a flavor until the substance is tolerably comminuted, as

we smack our lips to obtain it. Indeed, it may be questioned whether

the whole of taste may not lie in the capabilities of different

substances for great subdivision of particles. If quartz could be made

to dissolve into excessively minute particles as readily as sugar, it

might have its own special flavor. Some odors are offensive in dense

quantities which are highly agreeable when wafted to us in delicate

atoms,--musk, for instance. The rose secretes a volatile oil, the

wonderfully small atoms of which, on touching the nerves of smell,

communicate a peculiar sensation. This odor, like the sweetness, exists

only in the nerves affected; and a trifling disaffection of the nerves

suffices to destroy it entirely. The chemist can also analyze the oil,

but he does not enumerate in its elements odor. In fact, we have no

words to express the sensation of smell. We say sweet, sour, bitter; but

have no terms to express the differing sensations produced on us by the

rose, lily, violet, and pink. Their oily atoms awaken different

sensations in the delicate nerves they touch. The sensation awakened may

be due to chemical action induced by them in the system. But whether

chemical or physical, the result of their touch is a motion of matter,

an impulse communicated to the brain, the sensation of the organ

being--the reception of this initiative force being--what we designate

as odor. The fragrance of the rose lies, then, in the contractions of

special nerves, which thus respond to the touch of the oily particles

that are blown against them.

Does the trumpet sound? A vibration of matter causes the surrounding air

to vibrate in consonance with it; and the waves of air thus created,

breaking against the auditory nerve, awaken a peculiar sensation which

we call sound. The trumpet, vibrating variously, as the valves are moved

and the air forced through it, initiates waves of air of different

lengths; and as they are communicated to the surrounding air with

amazing rapidity, they successively strike the listener's ear. As the

waves of light touch the optic nerve, so do the grosser waves of air

touch the auditory nerve. But sound is only a recognized sensation when

the waves of air are within a certain measurement, a maximum and minimum

of length. The rush of a whirlwind has no sound, except when arrested by

some object, and smaller waves of the vast billows of rolling air are

created. We say that the wind roars. But the tremendous currents above

us, which sweep along the vast masses of vapor, are noiseless until they

touch the earth, and some little trifling eddies are made in their lower

sweep by hills and trees and houses. It is then only noise. The ear

requires yet smaller waves of air to experience the sensation of tone.

The lowest note of a piano has barely enough of it to give a definite

idea. As the waves become shorter, the ear begins to be pleasantly

affected, and the realm of music is reached. Within a certain restricted

length of air-waves lies all of the pleasurable sensation which we call

musical tone. But as we rise in the scale the tone begins to become

uncertain, until the highest note of the instrument is again indefinite

noise. The attenuated tone-waves of Nature are also inappreciable by the

auditory nerves, and an obscure hum or buzz is all that can be

perceived, until, finally, the eye detects motion which the ear utterly

fails to perceive as sound. The results of the air-waves are appreciable

by sight and feeling; but the waves which are heard are not those which

create the disturbance in nature we see and feel. The wild gust which

seizes a tree and bows it to the earth is only heard when the branches

it sways, or the leaves which it rustles, give out a secondary and far

more attenuate series of waves. A locust, on a warm, sunny day, will

agitate the air around him with a series of waves which affect the ear

far more powerfully than the wind which sighs in the waving trees above

him. Thus sound is the answering sensation of the auditory nerve to the

touch of air-waves; and these waves must be within certain

circumscribed limits of magnitude to awaken that sensation at all. The

greater or less violence with which they strike the ear causes them to

appear loud or soft. We can imagine a development of the nerves, or of

the ear apparatus, which might allow them to be influenced by waves of

greater volume and less rapid flow, and also by those of diminished size

and accelerated movement The trumpet then does not sounds the ear

sounds, and in the ear alone lies the music that it makes. The deaf man,

whose auditory nerves are not sensitive to air-waves, sees the clouds

move and the trees sway, the brook ripple and the trumpeter with his

tube at his lips; but the air-waves they all create pass by him, and

sound is inconceivable. That sound is a mere nervous sensation is

further proved by the fact that we have disturbances of the auditory

nerve which we call singing in the ears. No waves of air create this

disagreeable music. It arises from some affection of the nerve, which

irritates it to a vibration similar to that which it undergoes when

air-waves of a certain intensity reach it.

We say the sound rolled on, the odor was wafted, the color was printed,

our language and our thoughts implying that the sound, the odor, the

color, are things, when in reality they are all mere sensations,

answering to the touch of physical agents. All sensation is

nerve-motion. Outer stimulus, applied to the nerves, causes contractions

which, communicating with the brain, give the idea of color or taste or

sound.

The sense of feeling is a recognition of the existence of objects by a

duller perception than the others, though all of the senses attain their

perceptions by feeling, in the strict meaning of the word. We say things

feel hard or soft, the varying density of the objects being the cause of

the varying sensations they awaken. Smoothness and roughness are varying

outlines of surface, existing as physical conformation; the pleasurable

or disagreeable sensations awakened in us by contact being due to the

greater or less irritation of the nerves of feeling that attrition with

it occasions. Motion is absolutely necessary to give us an ides of the

density or configuration of an object. The mere touch of that object is

insufficient to possess us with its nature. Iron and down are

indistinguishable, unless we, to a certain extent, manipulate them.

Glass would be indistinguishable from sand-paper did we not to a certain

extent pass our fingers over the different surfaces. Mere touch would

not suffice. We have the evidence of all of our senses to prove to us

the nature of an object. It tastes or smells or vibrates or is colored;

the varied sensations thus awakened combining to give us our totality of

conception. The rose reflects light-waves which the eye feels red; it

emits oil-particles which the nose feels fragrant; it touches our

tongue, and feels pleasantly; it touches our fingers, and feels soft and

smooth. It exists in nature as a physical structure, and its existence

is evident to us through the various sensations it creates in different

nerves of our bodies, and through them alone.

One of the ancient philosophies maintained that all Nature is but the

phantasm of our senses. Had it, after first granting that the senses

themselves were evidences of matter and motion, maintained that Nature

was only evident to us through them, it would have been simple truth.

Our perceptions of Nature are limited to the capacity of our nervous

structure. We frequently make the mistake of endowing matter with

attributes which it does not possess, and which are resident only in the

impression communicated to us by forces emanating from it, the forces

being we know not what. And we can understand that there may be forces

in nature as powerful as those which we perceive by our senses, but

which are utterly unrecognized by them. We can understand that it were

possible for organized beings to possess fifty instead of five senses,

which might receive from nature other impressions and awaken other

emotions as beautiful and as beneficent as those arising from sight and

hearing.

SONNET.

Rather, my people, let thy youths parade

Their woolly flocks before the rising sun;

With curds and oat-cakes, when their work is done,

By frugal handmaids let the board be laid;

Let them refresh their vigor in the shade,

Or deem their straw as down to lie upon,

Ere the great nation which our sires begun

Be rent asunder by hell's minion, Trade!

If jarring interests and the greed of gold,

The corn-rick's envy of the mined hill,

The steamer's grudge against the spindle's skill,--

If things so mean our country's fate can mould,

O, let me hear again the shepherds trill

Their reedy music to the drowsing fold!

LITERATURE AS AN ART.

As one looks forward to the America of fifty years hence, the main

source of anxiety appears to be in a probable excess of prosperity, and

in the want of a good grievance. We seem nearly at the end of those

great public wrongs which require a special moral earthquake to end

them. Except to secure the ballot for woman,--a contest which is thus

far advancing very peaceably,--there seems nothing left which need be

absolutely fought for; no great influence to keep us from a commonplace

and perhaps debasing success. There will, no doubt, be still need of the

statesman to adjust the details of government, and of the clergyman to

keep an eye on private morals, including his own. There will also be

social and religious changes, perhaps great ones; but there are no omens

of any very fierce upheaval. And seeing the educational value to this

generation of the reforms for which it has contended, and especially of

the antislavery enterprise, one must feel an impulse of pity for our

successors, who seem likely to have no convictions that they can

honestly be mobbed for.

Can we spare these great tonics? It is the experience of history that

all religious bodies are purified by persecution, and materialized by

peace. No amount of accumulated virtue has thus far saved the merely

devout communities from deteriorating, when let alone, into

comfort and good dinners. This is most noticeable in detached

organizations,--Moravians, Shakers, Quakers, Roman Catholics,--they all

go the same way at last; when persecution and missionary toil are over,

they enter on a tiresome millennium of meat and pudding. To guard

against this spiritual obesity, this carnal Eden, what has the next age

in reserve for us? Suppose forty million perfectly healthy and virtuous

Americans, what is to keep them from being as uninteresting as so many

Chinese?

I know of nothing but that aim which is the climax and flower of all

civilization, without which purity itself grows dull and devotion

tedious,--the pursuit of Science and Art. Give to all this nation peace,

freedom, prosperity, and even virtue, still there must be some absorbing

interest, some career. That career can be sought only in two

directions,--more and yet more material prosperity on the one side.

Science and Art on the other. Every man's aim must either be riches, or

something better than riches. Now the wealth is to be respected and

desired, nor need anything be said against it. And certainly nothing

need be said in its behalf, there is such a vast chorus of voices

steadily occupied in proclaiming it. The Instincts of the American mind

will take care of that; but to advocate the alternative career, the

striving of the whole nature after something utterly apart from this

world's wealth,--it is for this end that a stray voice is needed. It

will not take long; the clamor of the market will re-absorb us

to-morrow.

It can scarcely be said that Science and Art have as yet any place in

America; or if they have, it is by virtue of their prospective value, as

with the bonds of a Pacific railway. I use the ordinary classification,

Science and Art, though it is literature only of which I now aim to

speak. For under one of these two heads all literature must fall; it may

be either a contribution to science through its matter, or to art

through its form. The _form_ of literature is usually called _style_ and

of the highest kind of literature, called poetry or _belles-lettres_,

the style is an essential, and almost the essential part. It is in this

aspect that the matter is now to be considered,--literature as an art.

The latest French traveller, Ernest Duvergier de Hauranne, says well,

that, for what he calls the academic class--or class devoted to pure

literature--there is as yet no place in America. Such a class must

conceal itself, he says, beneath the politician's garb, or the

clergyman's cravat. We may observe that, when our people speak of

literature, they are very apt to mean a newspaper article, or perhaps a

sermon, or a legal plea. One editor said that it could be no more

asserted that literature was ill paid in America, since Governor Andrew

received ten thousand dollars for an argument against the prohibitory

liquor law. Even in our largest cities, there are scarcely the rudiments

of a literary class, apart from the newspapers. Now, journalism is an

invaluable outlet for the leisure time of a literary man; but his main

work must be given to something else, or his vocation must change its

name. He needs the experience of journalism, as he needs that of the

lyceum and the caucus,--nay, as he needs the gymnasium and the

wherry,--to keep himself healthy and sound. But when he gives the main

energy of his life to either, though he may not cease to be useful, he

ceases to be a literary man.

It is useless to complain that, in America, Science is preceding Art;

that is inevitable. As yet there is a shrinking even from pure

science,--that is, from all science which is not directly marketable;

and while this is so, art must be still further postponed. We have

hitherto valued science for its applications, natural history as a

branch of agriculture, mathematics for the sake of life-assurance

tables, and even a college education as a training for members of

Congress. Just so far as any of these departments have failed of these

ends, there is a tendency to disparage them. We are a little like the

President Dupaty of the French Assembly, who told the astronomer Laplace

that he considered the discovery of a new planet to be far less

important than that of a new pudding, as we have already more planets

than we know what to do with, while we never can have puddings enough.

We are now outgrowing this limited view of science, but in regard to

literature the delusion still remains; if it is anything more than an

amusement, it must afford solid information; it is not yet owned that it

has value for itself, as an art. Of course, all true instruction,

however conveyed, is palatable; to a healthy mind the _Mecanique

Celeste_ is good reading; so is Mill's "Political Economy," or De

Morgan's "Formal Logic." But words are available for something which is

more than knowledge. Words afford a more delicious music than the chords

of any instrument; they are susceptible of richer colors than any

painter's palette; and that they should be used merely for the

transportation of intelligence, as a wheelbarrow carries brick, is not

enough. The highest aspect of literature assimilates it to painting and

music. Beyond and above all the domain of use lies beauty, and to aim at

this makes literature an art.

A book without art is simply a commodity; it may be exceedingly valuable

to the consumer, very profitable to the producer, but it does not come

within the domain of pure literature. It is said that some high legal

authority on copyright thus cites a case: "One Moore had written a book

which he called 'Irish Melodies,'" and so on. Now, as Aristotle defined

the shipbuilder's art to be all of the ship but the wood, so the

literary art displayed in Moore's Melodies was precisely the thing

ignored in this citation.

To pursue literature as an art is not therefore to be a mathematician

nor a political economist; still less to be a successful journalist,

like Greeley, or a lecturer with a thousand annual invitations, like

Gough. These careers have really no more to do with literature than has

the stage or the bar. Indeed, a man may earn twenty thousand dollars a

year by writing "sensation stories," and have nothing to do with

literature as an art. But to devote one's life to perfecting the manner,

as well as the matter, of one's work; to expatriate one's self long

years for it, like Motley; to overcome vast physical obstacles for it,

like Prescott or Parkman; to live and die only to transfuse external

nature into human words, like Thoreau; to chase dreams for a lifetime,

like Hawthorne; to labor tranquilly and see a nation imbued with one's

thoughts, like Emerson,--this it is to pursue literature as an art.

There is apparently something in the Anglo-Saxon mind which causes a

slight shrinking from art as such, perhaps associating it with deception

or frivolity,--which tolerates it, and, strange to say, even produces it

in verse, but really shrinks from it in prose. Across the water, this

tendency seems to increase. Just as an Englishman is ashamed to speak

well, and pooh-poohs all oratory, so he is growing ashamed even to write

well, at least in anything beyond a newspaper; and we on this side have

emancipated our tongues more than our pens. What stands between

Americans and good writing is usually want of culture; we write as well

as we know how, while in England the obstacle seems to be merely a

boorish whim. The style of English books and magazines is growing far

less careful than ours,--less finished, less harmonious, more slipshod,

more slangy. What second-rate American writer would see any wit in

describing himself, like Dean Alford in his recent book on language, as

"an old party in a shovel"? These bad examples are to be regretted; for

doubtless ten times as many original works are annually published in

England as in America, and we have an hereditary right to seek from that

nation those models of culture for which we must now turn to France.

In a late English magazine, there is an elaborate attempt to prove the

inferiority in manliness of the French mind as compared with the

English. "Frenchmen are less manly, and Frenchwomen less womanly, than

English men and women." And one of the illustrations seriously offered

is this: "In literature they think much of the method, style, and what

they themselves call the art of making a book."

The charge is true. In France alone among living nations is literature

habitually pursued as an art; and, in consequence of this, despite the

seeds of all decay which imperialism sows, French prose-writing has no

rival in contemporary literature. We cannot fully recognize this fact

through translations, because only the most sensational French books

appear to be translated. But as French painters and actors now

habitually surpass all others even in what are claimed as the English

qualities,--simplicity and truth,--so do French prose-writers excel. To

be set against the brutality of Carlyle and the shrill screams of

Ruskin, there is to be seen across the Channel the extraordinary fact of

an actual organization of good writers, the French Academy, whose

influence all nations feel. Under their authority we see introduced into

literary work an habitual grace and perfection, a clearness and

directness, a light and pliable strength, and a fine shading of

expression, such as no other tongue can even define. We see the same

high standard in their criticism, in their works of research, in the

_Revue des Deux Mondes_, and, in short, throughout literature. What is

there in any other language, for instance, to be compared with the

voluminous writings of Sainte-Beuve, ranging over all history and

literature, and carrying into all that incomparable style, so delicate,

so brilliant, so equable, so strong,--touching all themes, not with the

blacksmith's hand of iron, but with the surgeon's hand of steel?

In the average type of French novels, one feels the superiority to the

English in quiet power, in the absence of the sensational and

exaggerated, and in keeping close to the level of real human life. They

rely for success upon perfection of style and the most subtile analysis

of human character; and therefore they are often painful,--just as

Thackeray is painful,--because they look at artificial society, and

paint what they see. Thus they dwell often on unhappy marriages, because

such things grow naturally from the false social system in France. On

the other hand, in France there is very little house-breaking, and

bigamy is almost impossible, so that we hear delightfully little about

them; whereas, if you subtract these from the current English novels,

what is there left?

Germany furnishes at present no models of prose style; and all her past

models, except perhaps Goethe and Heine, seem to be already losing their

charm. Yet for knowledge we still go to Germany, and there is a certain

exuberant wealth that can even impart fascination to a bad style, as to

that of Jean Paul. Such an author may therefore be very useful to a

student who can withstand him, which poor Carlyle could not. There was a

time, it is said, when English and American literature seemed to be

expiring of conventionalism. Carlyle was the Jenner who inoculated and

saved us all by this virus from Germany, and then died of his own

disease. It now seems a privilege, perhaps, to be able to remember the

time when all literature was in the inflammatory stage of this

superinduced disorder; but does any one now read Carlyle's French

Revolution? Every year now shows that the whole trick of style with

which it was written was false from beginning to end. For surely no

style can be permanently attractive that is not simple.

_Simplicity_ must be the first element of literary art. This assertion

will no doubt run counter to the common belief. Most persons have an

impression of something called style in writing,--as they have an

impression of something called architecture in building,--as if it were

external, superadded, whereas it is in truth the very basis and law of

the whole. There is the house, they think, and, if you can afford it,

you put on some architecture; there is the writing, and a college-bred

man is expected to put on some style. The assumption is, that he is less

likely to write simply. This shows our school-boy notions of culture. A

really cultivated person is less likely to waste words on mere

ornamentation, just as he is less likely to have gingerbread-work on his

house. Good taste simplifies. Men whose early culture was deficient are

far more apt to be permanently sophomoric than those who lived through

the sophomore at the proper time and place. The reason is, that the

habit of expression, in a cultivated person, matures as his life and

thought mature; but when a man has had much life and very little

expression, he is confused by his own thoughts, and does not know how

much to attempt or how to discriminate. When such a person falls on

honest slang, it is usually a relief, for then he uses language which is

fresh and real to him; whereas such phrases in a cultivated person

usually indicate mere laziness and mental undress. Indeed, almost all

slang is like parched corn, and should be served up hot, or else not at

all.

But it is evident that mere simplicity of style is not enough, for there

is a manner of writing which does not satisfy us, though it may be

simple and also carefully done. Such, for instance, is the prose style

of Southey, which was apparently the model for all American writing in

its day. We see the result in the early volumes of the North American

Review, whose traditions of rather tame correctness were what enabled us

to live through the Carlyle epoch with safety. The aim of this style was

to avoid all impulse, brilliancy, or surprise,--to be perfectly

colorless; it was a highly polished smoothness, on which the thoughts

slid like balls. But style is capable of something more than smoothness

and clearness; you see this something more when you turn from Prescott

to Motley, for instance; there is a new quality in the page,--it has

become alive. _Freshness_ is perhaps the best word to describe this

additional element; it is a style that has blood in it. This may come

from various sources,--good health, animal spirits, outdoor habits, or

simply an ardent nature. It is hard to describe this quality, or to give

rules for it; the most obvious way to acquire it is to keep one's life

fresh and vigorous, to write only what presses to be said, and to utter

that as if the world waited for the saying. Where lies the extraordinary

power of "Jane Eyre," for instance? In the intense earnestness which

vitalizes every line; each atom of the author's life appears to come

throbbing and surging through it; every sentence seems endowed with a

soul of its own, and looks up at you with human eyes.

The next element of literary art may be said to be _structure_. So

strong in the American mind is the demand for system and completeness,

that the logical element of style, which is its skeleton, is not rare

among us. But this is only the basis; besides the philosophical

structure of a statement which comes by thought, there is an artistic

structure which implies the education of the taste. So, in the human

body, there is a symmetry of the bony frame, and there is a further

symmetry of the rounded flesh which should cover it; and in literature

it is not enough to have a perfectly framed logical skeleton,--there

should be also a well-proportioned beauty of utterance, which is the

flesh. Unless this inward and outward structure exist, although a book

may be never so valuable, it hardly comes within the domain of literary

art.

These different types of structure may perhaps be illustrated by three

different books, all belonging to the intermediate ground between

science and art. I should say that Buckle's "History of Civilization,"

with all its wealth and vigor, is exceedingly loose-jointed in all its

logical structure, and also very defective in its literary structure,

although it happens to have an element of freshness which is rare in

such a work, and carries the reader along. Darwin's "Origin of Species"

is better; that has at the bottom a strong logic, whether conclusive or

otherwise, but is so rambling and confused in its merely literary

statement, that it does itself no justice. A third book, Huxley's

"Lectures," combines with its logic a power of clear and symmetrical

statement that gives it a rare charm, and makes it a contribution, not

to science alone, but to literature.

In what is called poetry, _belles-lettres_ or pure literature, the

osseous structure is of course hidden; and the symmetry suggested is

always that of taste rather than of logic, though logic must be always

implied, or at least never violated. In some of the greatest modern

authors, however, there are limitations or drawbacks to this symmetry.

Margaret Fuller said admirably of her favorite Goethe, that he had the

artist's hand, but not the artist's love of structure; and in all his

prose writings one sees a certain divergent and centrifugal habit, which

completely overpowers him before the end of "Wilhelm Meister," and shows

itself even in the "Elective Affinities," which is, so far as I know,

his most perfect prose work.

In Emerson, again, one observes a similar defect; his unit of structure

is the sentence, and the periods seem combined merely by the accident of

juxtaposition; each sentence is a pearl, and the whole essay is so much

clipped from the necklace; but it is fastened at neither end, and the

beads roll off.

Yet it is not enough for human beauty to possess symmetry of structure,

within and without: there must be a beautiful coloring also, wealth of

complexion, fineness of texture. So the next element of literary art

lies in the _choice of words_. Style must have richness and felicity.

Words in a master's hands seem more than words; he can double or

quadruple their power by skill in using; and this is a result so

delightful, as to give to certain authors a value out of all proportion

to their thought. There are books which are luxuries, _livres de luxe_,

whose pages seem builded of more potent words than those of common life.

Keats, for example, in poetry, and Landor in prose, are illustrations of

this; and perhaps the representative instance, in all English

literature, of the prismatic resources of mere words is the poem of "The

Eve of St. Agnes." But thus to be crowned monarch of the sunset, to

trust one's self with full daring in these realms of glory, demands

such a balance of endowments as no one in English literature save

Shakespeare has attained.

In choosing words, it is to be remembered that there is not a really

poor one in any language; each had originally some vivid meaning, but

most of them have been worn smooth by passing from hand to hand, and

hence the infinite care required in their use. "Language," says Max

Mueller, "is a dictionary of faded metaphors"; and every writer who

creates a new image, or even reproduces an old one by passing it through

a fresh mind, enlarges this vast treasure-house. And this applies not

only to words of beauty, but to words of wit. "All wit," said Mr. Pitt,

"is true reasoning "; and Rogers, who preserved this saying, added, that

he himself had lived long before making the discovery that wit was

truth.

A final condition of literary art is _thoroughness_, which must be shown

both in the preparation and in the revision of one's work. The most

brilliant mind yet needs a large accumulated capital of facts and

images, before it can safely enter on its business, Coleridge went to

Davy's chemical lectures, he said, to get a new stock of metaphors.

Addison, before beginning the Spectator, had accumulated three folio

volumes of notes. "The greater part of an author's time," said Dr.

Johnson, "is spent in reading in order to write; a man will turn over

half a library to make one book." Unhappily, with these riches comes the

chance of being crushed by them, of which the agreeable Roman Catholic

writer, Digby, is a striking recent example. There is no satisfaction in

being told, as Charles Lamb told Godwin, that "you have read more books

that are not worth reading than any other man"; nor in being described,

as was Southey by Shelley, as "a talking album, filled with long

extracts from forgotten books on unimportant subjects." One must not

have more knowledge than one can keep in subjection; but every literary

man needs to accumulate a whole tool-chest in his memory, and another

in his study, before he can be more than a journeyman at his trade.

Yet the labor of preparation is not, after all, more important than that

of final revision. The feature of literary art which is always least

appreciated by the public, and even by young authors, is the amount of

toil it costs. But all the standards, all the precedents of every art,

show that the greatest gifts do not supersede the necessity of work. The

most astonishing development of native genius in any direction, so far

as I know, is that of Mozart in music; yet it is he who has left the

remark, that, if few equalled him in his vocation, few had studied it

with such persevering labor and such unremitting zeal. There is still

preserved at Ferrara the piece of paper on which Ariosto wrote in

sixteen different ways one of his most famous stanzas. The novel which

Hawthorne left unfinished--and whose opening chapters when published

proved so admirable--had been begun by him, as it appeared, in five

different ways. Yet how many young collegians have at this moment in

their desks the manuscript of their first novel, and have considered it

a piece of heroic toil if they have once revised it!

It is to rebuke this literary indolence, and to afford a perpetual

standard of high art, that the study of Greek ought to be retained in

our schools. The whole future of our literature may depend upon it; to

abandon it is deliberately to forego the very highest models. There is

no other literature which so steadily reproaches a young

writer,--nothing else by which he may sustain himself till he forms a

high standard of his own. Not that he should attempt direct imitations,

which are almost always failures as such, however attractive in other

respects; witness Swinburne's "Atalanta." But the true use of Greek

literature is perpetually to remind us what a wondrous thing literary

art may be,--capable of what range of resources, of what thoroughness in

structure, of what perfection in detail. It is a remarkable fact, that

the most penetrating and fearless of all our writers, Thoreau,--he who

made Nature his sole mistress, and shook himself utterly free from human

tradition,--yet clung to Greek literature as the one achievement of man

that seemed worthy to take rank with Nature, pronouncing it "as refined,

as solidly done, and as beautiful almost as the morning itself."

These are the qualities of style that seem most obviously

important,--simplicity, freshness, structure, choice of words, and

thoroughness both of preparation and of finish. Yet, in aiming at

literary art, it must be remembered that all the cardinal virtues go

into a good style, while each of the seven deadly sins tends to vitiate

a bad one. What a charm in the merit of humility, for instance, as it is

sometimes seen in style, leading to a certain self-restraint and

moderation of tone, however weighty the argument! How great the power of

an habitual under-statement, on which in due season one strong thought

rises like an ocean-crest, and breaks, and sweeps onward, lavishing

itself in splendor! What a glorious gift of heaven would have been the

style of Ruskin, for instance, could he but have contained himself, and

put forth only half his strength, instead of always planting, in the

words of old Fuller, "a piece of ordnance to batter down an aspen-leaf"!

It would be hardly safe to illustrate what has been said by any

multiplication of examples from our own literature. Yet perhaps there

will be no danger in saying that America has as yet produced but two

authors of whom we may claim that their style is in all respects

adequate to their wants, and the perfect vehicle of their thought. It is

not always the greatest writers of whom this is true, for one's demands

upon the vehicle of thought are in proportion to his thoughts, and great

ideas strain language more than small ones. We cannot say of either

Emerson or Thoreau, for instance, that his style is adequate to his

needs, because the needs are immense, and Thoreau, at least, sometimes

disdains effort. But the only American authors, perhaps, whose style is

an elastic garment that fits all the uses of the body, are Irving and

Hawthorne.

This has no reference to the quality of their thought, as to which in

Irving we feel a slight mediocrity; no matter, there is the agreeable

style, and it does him all the service he needs. By its aid he reached

his limit of execution, and we can hardly imagine him, with his

organization, as accomplishing more. But in Hawthorne we see astonishing

power, always answered by the style, and capable of indefinite expansion

within certain lateral limits. His early solitude narrowed his

affinities, and gave a kind of bloodlessness to his style; clear in hue,

fine in texture, it is apt to want the mellow tinge which indicates a

robust and copious life. Even such a criticism seems daring, in respect

to anything so beautiful; and I can conceive of no other defect in the

style of Hawthorne.

Perhaps the conclusion of the whole matter may seem to be that literary

art is so lofty a thing as to be beyond the reach of any of us; as the

sage in Rasselas, discoursing on poetry, only convinces his hearers that

no one ever can be a poet. After so much in the way of discouragement,

it should be added,--what the most limited experience may teach us

all,--that there is no other pursuit so unceasingly delightful. As some

one said of love, "all other pleasures are not worth its pains." But the

literary man must love his art, as the painter must love painting, out

of all proportion to its rewards; or rather, the delight of the work

must be its own reward. Any praise or guerdon hurts him, if it bring any

other pleasure to eclipse this. The reward of a good sentence is to have

written it; if it bring fame or fortune, very well, so long as this

recompense does not intoxicate. The peril is, that all temporary

applause is vitiated by uncertainty, and may be leading you right or

wrong. Goethe wrote to Schiller, "We make money by our poor books."

The impression is somehow conveyed to the young, that there exists

somewhere a circle of cultivated minds, gifted with discernment, who can

distinguish at a glance between Shakespeare and Tupper. One may doubt

the existence of any such contemporary tribunal. Certainly there is none

such in America. Provided an author says something noticeable, and obeys

the ordinary rules of grammar and spelling, his immediate public asks

little more; and if he attempts more, it is an even chance that it leads

him away from favor. Indeed, within the last few years, it has come to

be a sign of infinite humor to dispense with even these few rules, and

spell as badly as possible. Yet even if you went to London or to Paris

in search of this imaginary body of critics, you would not find them;

there also you would find the transient and the immortal confounded

together, and the transient often uppermost. Even a foreign country is

not always, as has been said, a contemporaneous posterity. It is said

that no American writer was ever so warmly received in England as

Artemus Ward. It is only the slow alembic of the years that finally

eliminates from this vast mass of literature its few immortal drops, and

leaves the rest to perish.

I know of no tonic more useful for a young writer than to read

carefully, in the English Reviews of sixty or seventy years ago, the

crushing criticisms on nearly every author of that epoch who has

achieved lasting fame. What cannot there be read, however, is the

sterner history of those who were simply neglected. Look, for instance,

at the career of Charles Lamb, who now seems to us a writer who must

have disarmed opposition, and have been a favorite from the first.

Lamb's "Rosamond Gray" was published in 1798, and for two years was not

even reviewed. His poems appeared during the same year. In 1815 he

introduced Talfourd to Wordsworth as his own "only admirer." In 1819 the

series of "Essays of Elia" began, and Shelley wrote to Leigh Hunt that

year: "When I think of such a mind as Lamb's, when I see how unnoticed

remain things of such exquisite and complete perfection, what should I

hope for myself, if I had not higher objects in view than fame?" These

Essays were published in a volume in 1823; and Willis records that when

he was in Europe, ten years later, and just before Lamb's death, "it was

difficult to light upon a person who had read Elia."

This brings us to a contemporary instance. Willis and Hawthorne wrote

early, side by side, in "The Token," about 1827, forty years ago. Willis

rose at once to notoriety, but Mr. S. G. Goodrich, the editor of the

work, states in his autobiography, that Hawthorne's contributions "did

not attract the slightest attention." Ten years later, in 1837, these

same sketches were collected in a volume, as "Twice-Told Tales"; but it

was almost impossible to find a publisher for them, and when published

they had no success. I well remember the apathy with which even the

enlarged edition of 1842 was received, in spite of the warm admiration

of a few; nor was it until the publication of "The Scarlet Letter," in

1850, that its author could fairly be termed famous. For twenty years he

was, in his own words, "the obscurest man of letters in America"; and it

is the thought to which the mind must constantly recur, in thinking of

Hawthorne, How could any combination of physical and mental vigor enable

a man to go on producing works of such a quality in an atmosphere so

chilling?

Probably the truth is, that art precedes criticism, and that every great

writer creates or revives the taste by which he is appreciated. True, we

are wont to claim that "one touch of nature makes the whole world kin";

but it sometimes takes the world a good while to acknowledge its poor

relations. It seems hard for most persons to recognize a touch of nature

when they see it. The trees have formed their buds in autumn every year

since trees first waved; but you will find that the great majority of

persons have never made that discovery, and suppose that Nature gets up

those ornaments in spring. And if we are thus blind to what hangs

conspicuously before our eyes for the whole long winter of every year,

how unobservant must we be of the rarer phases of earthly beauty and of

human life? Keep to the conventional, and you have something which all

have seen, even if they disapprove; copy Nature, and her colors make art

appear incredible. If you could paint the sunset before your window as

gorgeous as it is, your picture would be hooted from the walls of the

exhibition. If you were to write into fiction the true story of the man

or woman you met yesterday, it would be scouted as too wildly unreal.

Indeed, the literary artist may almost say, as did the Duke of

Wellington when urged to write his memoirs, "I should like to speak the

truth; but if I did, I should be torn in pieces."

Therefore the writer, when he adopts a high aim, must be a law to

himself, bide his time, and take the risk of discovering, at last, that

his life has been a failure. His task is one in which failure is easy,

when he must not only depict the truths of Nature, but must do this with

such verisimilitude as to vindicate its truth to other eyes, And since

this recognition may not even begin till after his death, we can see

what Rivarol meant by his fine saying, that "genius is only great

patience," and Buffon, by his more guarded definition of genius as the

aptitude for patience.

Of all literary qualities, this patience has thus far been rarest in

America. Therefore, there has been in our literature scarcely any quiet

power; if effects are produced, they must, in literature as in painting,

be sensational, and cover acres of canvas. As yet, the mass of our

writers seek originality in mere externals; we think, because we live in

a new country, we are unworthy of ourselves if we do not Americanize the

grammar and spelling-book. In a republic, must the objective case be

governed by a verb? We shall yet learn that it is not new literary forms

we need, but only, fresh inspiration, combined with cultivated taste.

The standard of good art is always much the same; modifications are

trifling. Otherwise we could not enjoy any foreign literature. A fine

phrase in AEschylus or Dante affects us as if we had read it in Emerson.

A structural completeness in a work of art seems the same in the

_Oedipus Tyrannus_ as in "The Scarlet Letter." Art has therefore its

law; and eccentricity, though sometimes promising as a mere trait of

youth, is only a disfigurement to maturer years. It is no discredit to

Walt Whitman that he wrote "Leaves of Grass," only that he did not burn

it afterwards. A young writer must commonly plough in his first crop, as

the farmer does, to enrich the soil. Is it luxuriant, astonishing, the

wonder of the neighborhood; so much the better,--in let it go!

Sydney Smith said, in 1818, "There does not appear to be in America, at

this moment, one man of any considerable talents." Though this might not

now be said, we still stand before the world with something of the Swiss

reputation, as a race of thrifty republicans, patriotic and courageous,

with a decided turn for mechanical invention. What we are actually

producing, even to-day, in any domain of pure art, is very little; it is

only the broad average intelligence of the masses that does us any

credit. And even this is easily exaggerated. The majority of members of

Congress talk bad grammar; so do the majority of public-school teachers.

I do not mean merely that they speak without elegance, but that in

moments of confidence they say "We was," and "Them things," and "I done

it." With the present predominance of merely scientific studies, and the

increasing distaste for the study of language, I do not see how this is

to diminish. For all that, there are already visible, in the American

temperament, two points of great promise in respect to art in general,

and literary art above all.

First, there is in this temperament a certain pliability and

impressibility, as compared with the rest of the Anglo-Saxon race; it

shows a finer grain and a nicer touch. If this is not yet shown in the

way of literature, it is only because the time has not come. It is

visible everywhere else. The aim which Bonaparte avowed as his highest

ambition for France, to convert all trades into arts, is being rapidly

fulfilled all around us. There is a constant tendency to supersede brute

muscle by the fibres of the brain, and thus to assimilate the rudest

toil to what Bacon calls "sedentary and within-door arts, that require

rather the finger than the arm." It is clear that this same impulse, in

higher and higher applications, must culminate in the artistic creation

of beauty.

And to fortify this fine instinct, we may trust, secondly, in the

profound earnestness which still marks our people. With all this

flexibility, there is yet a solidity of principle beneath, that makes

the subtile American mind as real and controlling as that of the robust

race from which it sprang. Though the present tendency of our art is

towards foreign models, this is but a temporary thing. We must look at

these till we have learned what they can teach, but a race in which the

moral nature is strongest will be its own guide at last.

And it is a comfort thus to end in the faith that, as the foundation of

all true greatness is in the conscience, so we are safe if we can but

carry into science and art the same earnestness of spirit which has

fought through the great civil war and slain slavery. As "the Puritan

has triumphed" in this stern contest, so must the Puritan triumph in the

more graceful emulations that are to come; but it must be the Puritanism

of Milton, not of Cromwell only. The invigorating air of great moral

principles must breathe through all our literature; it is the expanding

spirit of the seventeenth century by which we must conquer now.

It is worth all that has been sacrificed in New England to vindicate

this one fact, the supremacy of the moral nature. All culture, all art,

without this, must be but rootless flowers, such as flaunt round a

nation's decay. All the long, stern reign of Plymouth Rock and Salem

Meeting-House was well spent, since it had this for an end,--to plough

into the American race the tradition of absolute righteousness, as the

immutable foundation of all. This was the purpose of our fathers. There

should be here no European frivolity, even if European grace went with

it. For the sake of this great purpose, history will pardon all their

excesses,--overwork, grim Sabbaths, prohibition of innocent amusements,

all were better than to be frivolous. And so, in these later years, the

arduous reforms into which the life-blood of Puritanism has passed have

all helped to train us for art, because they have trained us in

earnestness, even while they seemed to run counter to that spirit of joy

in which art has its being. For no joy is joyous which has not its root

in something noble. In what awful lines of light has this truth been

lately written against the sky! What graces might there not have been in

that Southern society before the war? It had ease, affluence, leisure,

polished manners, European culture,--all worthless; it produced not a

book, not a painting, not a statue; it concentrated itself on politics,

and failed; then on war, and failed; it is dead and vanished, leaving

only memories of wrong behind. Let us not be too exultant; the hasty

wealth of New York may do as little. Intellect in this age is not to be

found in the circles of fashion; it is not found in such society in

Europe, it is not here. Even in Paris, the world's capital, imperialism

taints all it touches; and it is the great traditions of a noble nation

which make that city still the home of art. We, a younger and cruder

race, yet need to go abroad for our standard of execution, but our ideal

and our faith must be our own.

A YOUNG DESPERADO.

When Johnny is all snugly curled up in bed, with his rosy cheek resting

on one of his scratched and grimy little hands, forming altogether a

perfect picture of peace and innocence, it seems hard to realize what a

busy, restive, pugnacious, badly ingenious little wretch he is! There is

something so comical in those funny little shoes and stockings sprawling

on the floor,--they look as if they could jump up and run off, if they

wanted to,--there is something so laughable about those little trousers,

which appear to be making vain attempts to climb up into the

easy-chair,--the said trousers still retaining the shape of Johnny's

little legs, and refusing to go to sleep,--there is something, I say,

about these things, and about Johnny himself, which makes it difficult

for me to remember that, when Johnny is awake, he not unfrequently

displays traits of character not to be compared with anything but the

cunning of an Indian warrior, combined with the combative qualities of a

trained prize-fighter.

I'm sure I don't know how he came by such unpleasant propensities. I am

myself the meekest of men. Of course, I don't mean to imply that Johnny

inherited his warlike disposition from his mother. She is the gentlest

of women. But when you come to Johnny--he's the terror of the whole

neighborhood.

He was meek enough at first,--that is to say, for the first six or seven

days of his existence. But I verily believe that he wasn't more than

eleven days old when he showed a degree of temper that shocked

me,--shocked me in one so young. On that occasion he turned very red in

the face,--he was quite red before,--doubled up his ridiculous hands in

the most threatening manner, and finally, in the impotency of rage,

punched himself in the eye. When I think of the life he led his mother

and Susan during the first eighteen months after his arrival, I shrink

from the responsibility of allowing Johnny to call me father.

Johnny's aggressive disposition was not more early developed than his

duplicity. By the time he was two years of age, I had got the following

maxim by heart: "Whenever J. is particularly quiet, look out for

squalls." He was sure to be in some mischief. And I must say there was a

novelty, an unexpectedness, an ingenuity, in his badness that constantly

astonished me. The crimes he committed could be arranged alphabetically.

He never repeated himself. His evil resources were inexhaustible. He

never did the thing I expected he would. He never failed to do the thing

I was unprepared for. I am not thinking so much of the time when he

painted my writing-desk with raspberry jam, as of the occasion when he

perpetrated an act of original cruelty on Mopsey, a favorite kitten in

the household. We were sitting in the library. Johnny was playing in the

front hall. In view of the supernatural stillness that reigned, I

remarked, suspiciously, "Johnny is very quiet, my dear." At that moment

a series of pathetic _mews_ was heard in the entry, followed by a

violent scratching on the oil-cloth. Then Mopsey bounded into the room

with three empty spools strung upon her tail. The spools were removed

with great difficulty, especially the last one, which fitted remarkably

tight. After that, Mopsey never saw a work-basket without arching her

tortoise-shell back, and distending her tail to three times its natural

thickness. Another child would have squeezed the kitten, or stuck a pin

in it, or twisted her tail; but it was reserved for the superior genius

of Johnny to string rather small spools upon it. He never did the

obvious thing.

It was this fertility and happiness, if I may say so, of invention, that

prevented me from being entirely dejected over my son's behavior at this

period. Sometimes the temptation to seize him and shake him was too

strong for poor human nature. But I always regretted it afterwards. When

I saw him asleep in his tiny bed, with one tear dried on his plump

velvety cheek and two little mice-teeth visible through the parted lips,

I couldn't help thinking what a little bit of a fellow he was, with his

funny little fingers and his funny little nails; and it didn't seem to

me that he was the sort of person to be pitched into by a great strong

man like me.

"When Johnny grows older," I used to say to his mother, "I'll reason

with him."

Now I don't know when Johnny will grow old enough to be reasoned with.

When I reflect how hard it is to reason with wise grown-up people, if

they happen to be unwilling to accept your view of matters, I am

inclined to be very patient with Johnny, whose experience is rather

limited, after all, though he is six years and a half old, and naturally

wants to know why and wherefore. Somebody says something about the duty

of "blind obedience," I can't expect Johnny to have more wisdom than

Solomon, and to be more philosophic than the philosophers.

At times, indeed, I have been led to expect this from him. He has shown

a depth of mind that warranted me in looking for anything. At times he

seems as if he were a hundred years old. He has a quaint, bird-like way

of cocking his head on one side, and asking a question that appears to

be the result of years of study. If I could answer some of those

questions, I should solve the darkest mysteries of life and death. His

inquiries, however, generally have a grotesque flavor. One night, when

the mosquitoes were making lively raids on his person, he appealed to

me, suddenly: "How does the moon feel when a skeeter bites it?" To his

meditative mind, the broad, smooth surface of the moon presented a

temptation not to be resisted by any stray skeeter.

I freely confess that Johnny is now and then too much for me. I wish I

could read him as cleverly as he reads me. He knows all my weak points;

he sees right through me, and makes me feel that I am a helpless infant

in his adroit hands. He has an argumentative, oracular air, when things

have gone wrong, which always upsets my dignity. Yet how cunningly he

uses his power! It is only in the last extremity that he crosses his

legs, puts his hands into his trousers-pockets, and argues the case with

me. One day last week he was very near coming to grief. By my

directions, kindling-wood and coal are placed every morning in the

library grate, in order that I may have a fire the moment I return at

night. Master Johnny must needs apply a lighted match to this

arrangement early in the forenoon. The fire was not discovered until the

blower was one mass of red-hot iron, and the wooden mantelpiece was

smoking with the intense heat.

When I came home, Johnny was led from the store-room, where he had been

imprisoned from an early period, and where he had employed himself in

eating about two dollars' worth of preserved pears.

"Johnny," said I, in as severe a tone as one could use in addressing a

person whose forehead glistened with syrup,--"Johnny, don't you remember

that I have always told you never to meddle with matches?"

It was something delicious to see Johnny trying to remember. He cast one

eye meditatively up to the ceiling, then he fixed it abstractedly on the

canary-bird, then he rubbed his ruffled brows with a sticky hand; but

really, for the life of him, he couldn't recall any injunctions

concerning matches.

"I can't, papa, truly, truly," said Johnny at length. "I guess I must

have forgot it."

"Well, Johnny, in order that you may not forget it in future--"

Here Johnny was seized with an idea. He interrupted me.

"I'll tell you what you do, papa,--_you just put it down in writin_'."

With the air of a man who has settled a question definitely, but at the

same time is willing to listen politely to any crude suggestions that

you may have to throw out, Johnny crossed his legs, and thrust his hands

into those wonderful trousers-pockets. I turned my face aside, for I

felt a certain weakness creeping into the corners of my mouth. I was

lost. In an instant the little head, covered all over with yellow curls,

was laid upon my knee, and Johnny was crying, "I'm so very, very sorry!"

I have said that Johnny is the terror of the neighborhood. I think I

have not done the young gentleman an injustice. If there is a window

broken within the radius of two miles from our house, Johnny's ball, or

a stone known to come from his dexterous hand, is almost certain to be

found in the battered premises. I never hear the musical jingling of

splintered glass, but my _porte-monnaie_ gives a convulsive throb in my

breast-pocket. There is not a doorstep in our street that hasn't borne

evidences in red chalk of his artistic ability; there isn't a bell that

he hasn't rung and run away from at least three hundred times. Scarcely

a day passes but he falls out of something, or over something, or into

something. A ladder running up to the dizzy roof of an unfinished

building is no more to be resisted by him than the back platform of a

horse-car, when the conductor is collecting his fare in front.

I should not like to enumerate the battles that Johnny has fought during

the past eight months. It is a physical impossibility, I should judge,

for him to refuse a challenge. He picks his enemies out of all ranks of

society. He has fought the ash-man's boy, the grocer's boy, the rich

boys over the way, and any number of miscellaneous boys who chanced to

stray into our street.

I can't say that this young desperado is always victorious. I have known

the tip of his nose to be in a state of unpleasant redness for weeks

together. I have known him to come home frequently with no brim to his

hat; once he presented himself with only one shoe, on which occasion

his jacket was split up the back in a manner that gave him the

appearance of an over-ripe chestnut bursting out of its bur. How he will

fight! But this I can say,--if Johnny is as cruel as Caligula, he is

every bit as brave as Agamemnon. I never knew him to strike a boy

smaller than himself. I never knew him to tell a lie when a lie would

save him from disaster.

At present the General, as I sometimes call him, is in hospital. He was

seriously wounded at the battle of The Little Go-Cart, on the 9th

instant. On returning from my office yesterday evening, I found that

scarred veteran stretched upon a sofa in the sitting-room, with a patch

of brown paper stuck over his left eye, and a convicting smell of

vinegar about him.

"Yes," said his mother, dolefully, "Johnny's been fighting again. That

horrid Barnabee boy (who is eight years old, if he is a day) won't let

the child alone."

"Well," said I, "I hope Johnny gave that Barnabee boy a thrashing."

"Didn't I, though?" cries Johnny, from the sofa. "_I_ bet!"

"O Johnny!" says his mother.

Now, several days previous to this, I had addressed the General in the

following terms:--

"Johnny, if I ever catch you in another fight of your own seeking, I

shall cane you."

In consequence of this declaration, it became my duty to look into the

circumstances of the present affair, which will be known in history as

the battle of The Little Go-Cart. After going over the ground very

carefully, I found the following to be the state of the case.

It seems that the Barnabee Boy--I speak of him as if he were the Benicia

Boy--is the oldest pupil in the Primary Military School (I think it

_must_ be a military school) of which Johnny is a recent member. This

Barnabee, having whipped every one of his companions, was sighing for

new boys to conquer, when Johnny joined the institution. He at once

made friendly overtures of battle to Johnny, who, oddly enough, seemed

indisposed to encourage his advances. Then Barnabee began a series of

petty persecutions, which had continued up to the day of the fight.

On the morning of that eventful day the Barnabee Boy appeared in the

school-yard with a small go-cart. After running down on Johnny several

times with this useful vehicle, he captured Johnny's cap, filled it with

sand, and dragged it up and down the yard triumphantly in the go-cart.

This made the General very angry, of course, and he took an early

opportunity of kicking over the triumphal car, in doing which he kicked

one of the wheels so far into space that it has not been seen since.

This brought matters to a crisis. The battle would have taken place then

and there; but at that moment the school-bell rang, and the gladiators

were obliged to give their attention to Smith's Speller. But a gloom

hung over the morning's exercises,--a gloom that was not dispelled in

the back row, when the Barnabee Boy stealthily held up to Johnny's

vision a slate, whereon was inscribed this fearful message:--

[Illustration]

Johnny got it "put down in writin'" this time!

After a hasty glance at the slate, the General went on with his studies

composedly enough. Eleven o'clock came, and with it came recess, and

with recess the inevitable battle.

Now I do not intend to describe the details of this brilliant action,

for the sufficient reason that, though there were seven young gentlemen

(connected with the Primary School) on the field as war correspondents,

their accounts of the engagement are so contradictory as to be utterly

worthless. On one point they all agree,--that the contest was sharp,

short, and decisive. The truth is, the General is a quick, wiry,

experienced old hero; and it didn't take him long to rout the Barnabee

Boy, who was in reality a coward, as all bullies and tyrants ever have

been, and always will be.

I don't approve of boys fighting; I don't defend Johnny; but if the

General wants an extra ration or two of preserved pear, he shall have

it!

* * * * *

I am well aware that, socially speaking, Johnny is a Black Sheep. I know

that I have brought him up badly, and that there is not an unmarried man

or woman in the United States who wouldn't have brought him up very

differently. It's a great pity that the only people who know how to

manage children never have any! At the same time, Johnny is not a black

sheep all over. He has some white spots. His sins--if wiser folks had no

greater!--are the result of too much animal life. They belong to his

evanescent youth, and will pass away; but his honesty, his generosity,

his bravery, belong to his character, and are enduring qualities. The

quickly crowding years will tame him. A good large pane of glass, or a

seductive bell-knob, ceases in time to have attractions for the most

reckless spirit. And I am quite confident that Johnny will be a great

statesman, or a valorous soldier, or, at all events, a good citizen,

after he has got over being A Young Desperado.

REVIEWS AND LITERARY NOTICES.

_The First Canticle_ [_Inferno_] _of the Divine Comedy of_

DANTE ALIGHIERI. Translated by THOMAS WILLIAM PARSONS. Boston:

De Vries, Ibarra, and Company.

While we must own that we have no sympathy with the theory of free

translation, we recognize the manifold merits of execution in this work,

and accept it as one which, together with Mr. Longfellow's version of

the whole of Dante's _Divina Commedia_, and Mr. Norton's translation of

the _Vita Nuova_, will make the present year memorable in our

literature. It does not necessarily stand in antagonism to works

executed in a spirit entirely different, and we shall make no comparison

of it with the "Inferno" by Mr. Longfellow, the admirers of which will

be among the first to feel its characteristic and very striking

excellences.

In substituting the decasyllabic quatrain for the triple rhyme of the

Italian, we suppose Dr. Parsons desired rather to please the reader's

ear with a familiar stanza, than to avoid the difficulties (exaggerated,

we think, by critics) of the _terza rima_, and he could certainly have

chosen no more felicitous form after once departing from that of his

original. He has almost re-created the stanza for his purpose, giving it

new movement, and successfully adapting to the exigencies of dialogue

and of narrative what has hitherto chiefly been associated with elegiac

and didactic poetry. Something of this may be seen in the following

passages (from the description of the transit through the frozen circle

of Caina), which moreover appear to us among the best sustained of the

version.

"And as a frog squats croaking from a stream,

With nose put forth, what time the village maid

Oft in her slumber doth of gleaning dream,

Stood in the ice there every doleful shade.

Livid as far as where shame paints the cheek,

And doomed their faces downward still to hold.

Chattering like storks, their weeping eyes bespeak

Their aching hearts, their mouths the biting cold."

"A thousand visages I saw, by cold

Turned to dog-faces; horror chills me through

Whenever of those frozen fords I think.

And as we nearer to the centre drew,

Towards which all bodies by their weight must sink,

There, as I shivered in the eternal chill,

Trampling among the heads, it happed, by luck,

Or destiny--or, it may be, my will--

Hard in the face of one my foot I struck.

Weeping he cried, 'What brings thee bruising us?

Unless on me fresh vengeance thou wouldst pile

For Mont' Aperti, why torment me thus?'

And I: 'My Master, wait for me awhile,

That I through him may set one doubt at rest;

Then, if thou bid me hasten on, I will.'

My leader stopped; and I the shade addressed

Who kept full bitterly blaspheming still,

'Say, who art thou whose tongue so foully speaks?'

'Nay, who art thou that walk'st the withering air

Of Antemora, smiting others' cheeks

That, wert thou living, 't were too much to bear?'

'Living I am; and thou, if craving fame,

Mayst count it precious,'--this was my reply,--

'That I with other notes record thy name.'

He answered thus: 'Far other wish have I.

Trouble me now no longer,--get thee gone:

Thine is cold flattery in this waste of Hell.'

At this his hindmost hairs I fastened on,

And cried, 'Thy name! I'll force thee now to tell.

Or not one hair upon thy head shall grow.'

He answered thus: 'Although thou pluck me bare,

I'll neithertell my name, nor visage show;

Nay, though a thousand times thou rend my hair,'

"I held his tresses in my fingers wound,

And more than one tuft had I twitched away

As he, with eyes bent down, howled like a hound;

When one cried out, 'What ails thee, Bocca? say,--

Canst thou not make enough clack with thy jaws,

But thou must bark too! What fiend pricks thee now?'

'Aha!' said I, 'henceforth I have no cause

To bid thee speak, thou cursed traitor thou!

I'll shame thee, bearing truth of thee to men.'

'Away!' he answered: 'what thou wilt, relate:

But, shouldst thou get from hence with breath again,

Mention him too so ready with his prate."

The encounter of Dante with Farinata and Cavalcante in their fiery tombs

is also painted with such animated and fortunate strokes that we must

reproduce some of them here:--

"'O Tuscan! thou who com'st with gentle speech.

Through Hell's hot city, breathing from the earth,

Stop in this place one moment, I beseech:

Thy tongue betrays the country of thy birth.

Of that illustrious land I know thee sprung,

Which in my day perchance I somewhat vexed.'

Forth from one vault these sudden accents rung,

So that I trembling stood with fear perplexed.

Then as I closer to my master drew.

'Turn back! what dost thou?' he exclaimed in haste;

'See! Farinata rises to thy view;

Now mayst behold him upward from his waist.'

"Full in his face already I was gazing,

While his front lowered, and his proud bosom swelled,

As though even there, amid his burial blazing,

The infernal realm in high disdain he held."

In this scene, however, the radical defect of Dr. Parsons's work

appears: it is unequal, and unsustained even in some of its best parts.

It seems scarcely credible that the poet who could produce the grand

lines just given, could also mar the whole effect of the father's

frantic appeal to know if his son Guido be no longer alive, by putting

in his mouth the melodramatic words,

"Sayest thou, 'he had'? _what mean ye!_ is he dead?"

But our translator does this, and he makes Ugolino report little Anselm

as saying,

"Thou look'st so, father! what's the matter, what?"

--a line that Melpomene herself could not read with tragic effect,--for,

"Disse; tu guardi si, padre; che hai?"

As he likewise causes Francesca to say,

"Love quick to kindle every gentler breast

_Fired this fond being with the lovely shape_

Bereft me so!"

for,

"Amor, che al cor gentil ratto s'apprende;

Prese costui della bella persona

Che mi fu tolta ";

and,

"Where Po descends in Adria's peace to rest

_Raging with all his rivulets no more,"_

for,

"Su la marina dove 'l Po descende

Per aver pace co' seguaci sui,"

Indeed, we have to confess that the present is on the whole not a

satisfactory translation of the episode of Francesca da Rimini. The

inscription on the gate of hell, also, is rendered in a manner scarcely

to be called successful, and not bearing comparison with that of the

other rhyming translators,--Ford, Wright, and Cayley. As to the

beginning of the seventh canto, we must think that Dr. Parsons was

chiefly moved by the prevailing sentiment of mankind to translate

"Pape Satan! pape Satan aleppe!"

into

"Ho! Satan! Popes--more Popes--head Satan here!"

These and other blemishes arrest the most casual glance. The merits of

any work are harder to prove than its faults, though they are quite as

deeply felt; and, as we have already intimated, it is the misfortune of

Dr. Parsons that some of his greatest defects are in passages otherwise

the most generally successful. There are probably few pages of the

translation which do not offend by some lapse; but at the same time

there is no page which will not command admiration by sublime and

striking lines. We think the whole of the following passage from the

thirteenth canto (it is the well-known description of the sentient wood

into which the self-violent are turned) has a peculiar strength and

dignity:--

"Amid the branches of this dismal grove,

Their loathsome nests the brutal Harpies build,

Who from the Strophades the Trojans drove

With woful auguries erelong fulfilled.

Huge wings they have, men's faces, human throats,

Feet armed with claws, vast bellies clothed with plumes:

From those strange trees they pour their doleful notes.

'Now, ere thou further penetrate these glooms,'

Said my good master, 'thou shouldst understand

Thou'rt in the second circlet, and shall be,

Until thou come upon the horrid sand.

Give good heed then: more wonders thou shall see,

Yea, to confirm all stories I have told.'

On every side I heard heart-rending cries,

But not a person could I there behold:

Wherefore I stopped, bewildered with surprise.

Methinks he thought I thought the voices came

From some that, hiding, in the thicket lay:

Because the Master said, 'If thou but maim

One of these plants, yen, pluck a branch away,

Then shall thy judgment be more just than now.'

Therefore my hand I slightly forward reached;

And while I wrenched away a little bough

From a huge bush, 'Why mangle me?' it screeched.

Then, as the dingy drops began to start,

'Why dost thou tear me?' shrieked the trunk again,

'Hast thou no touch of pity in thy heart?

We that now here are planted, once were men;

But, were we serpents' souls, thy hand might shame

To have no more compassion on our woes';

Like a green log, that hisses in the flame,

Groaning at one end, as the other glows,--

Even as the wind comes sputtering forth, I say,

Thus oozed together from the splintered wood

Both words and blood. I dropped the broken spray,

And, like a coward, faint and trembling stood."

This picture, also, of the apparition of the angel who opens the gates

of Dis is done with a hand as firm as it is free:--

"As frogs before their enemy, the snake,

Quick scattering through the pool in timid shoals,

On the dankooze a huddling cluster makes'

I saw above a thousand mined souls

Flying from one who passed the Stygian bog,

With feet unmoistened by the sludgy wave;

Oft from his face his left hand brushed the fog

Whose weight alone, it seemed, annoyance gave.

At once the messenger of Heaven I kenned,

And toward my master turned, who made a sign

That hushed I should remain, and lowly bend.

Ah me, how full he looked of scorn divine!"

_Ornithology and Ooelogy of New England: containing full

Descriptions of the Birds of New England, and adjoining States

and Provinces, arranged by a long-approved Classification and

Nomenclature; together with a complete History of their Habits,

Times of Arrival and Departure, their Distribution, Food, Song,

Time of Breeding, and a careful and accurate Description of

their Nests and Eggs; with Illustrations of many Species of the

Birds, and accurate Figures of their Eggs_. By EDWARD A.

SAMUELS, Curator of Zooelogy in the Massachusetts State Cabinet.

Boston: Nichols and Noyes.

The strong point of this book is, that it monopolizes the ground, and

has no rivals. While no branch of natural history has called forth in

America such arduous research as ornithology, or such eloquent writing,

there has yet been for many years no popular manual in print. Audubon,

Wilson, Nuttall, are all practically inaccessible to the ordinary

purchaser. Moreover, there have been great advances in scientific

classification, and also in field knowledge, since those earlier works

appeared. There is therefore an admirable field for any new writer.

Mr. Samuels frankly acknowledges on his first page that he is mainly

indebted to Professor Baird of the Smithsonian Institute for what is by

far the most valuable portion of his book,--the classification, the

nomenclature, and the generic and specific descriptions. He is only

responsible for the popular descriptions; but even these consist so very

largely of quotations that the whole book must evidently be judged

rather as a compilation than as an original work.

Considered as a compilation, it is valuable, though its title-page

unfortunately promises more than any work on natural history ever yet

performed, and so prepares the way for disappointment. Mr. Samuels

appears to be a zealous and accurate ornithologist, with plenty of

field-knowledge, but very little descriptive power. Being apparently

conscious of this, he is shy of delineating the rarer birds, because he

does not personally know them, while he passes hastily over the more

familiar, because "their habits are known to all." This last piece of

abstinence is greatly to be regretted. For a local manual has two main

objects, to furnish to young students the means of identifying species,

and to give remote students the means of comparing species. For both

purposes the commonest birds are most important, since everybody begins

with these. A boy wishes, for instance, to identify the wood-thrush; or

a Southern naturalist wishes to compare its traits with those of the

mocking-bird. He finds that in this book the wood-thrush is dismissed

with two pages, while there is a quotation from Wilson seven pages long

upon the habits of the mocking-bird. When will naturalists learn that

the first duty of each observer is to make a thorough study of his own

locality, and meanwhile to let the rest of the world alone?

One looks in vain in these pages for any good description of the

song-sparrow, the blue-bird, the blue-jay, the kingfisher, or the

oriole. These birds are allowed but a page or two each, although, for

some reason, more liberal space is given to the robin and the crow. But

there is no bird so familiar that it does not offer subjects for

interesting speculation and study. The pretty nocturnal trill of the

hairbird; the remarkable change which civilization has wrought in the

habits of the cliff-swallow; the disputed question whether the cat-bird

is or is not a mocker;--these and a hundred similar points relate to

very common birds, and are accordingly unnoticed by Mr. Samuels. Eggs

really interest him, and his descriptions and measurements of these

constitute the most original part of the book, and are highly valuable.

On the other hand, the notes of birds are very inadequately described,

and sometimes not at all; he does not mention that the loon has a voice.

Again, he does full justice to the chronology of bird biography, and

gives ample dates as to their coming and going, nesting and hatching.

But as to their geographical distribution the information is scanty, and

not always quite reliable. Thus the snowy-owl is described (p. 78) as

occurring "principally on the sea-coast," whereas it is tolerably

abundant in the very heart of Massachusetts, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois,

etc.; the snow-bird is described as nesting in the White Mountains (p.

314), while the more remarkable fact that it nests on Monadnock is

omitted; the meadow-lark is described as only remaining in New England

through "mild winters" (p. 344), whereas near Newport it remains during

the coldest seasons, more abundantly than any other conspicuous bird.

These, however, are subordinate points, and there is no important matter

in which we have seen any reason to impugn the author's accuracy.

The inequality which marks the internal execution of this book marks

also its externals. The plates of eggs--four in number, comprising

thirty eggs--are admirable; while the plates representing birds are Of

the most mediocre description, and do discredit to the work. With all

these merits and demerits, the book is of much value, because an

unsatisfactory manual is far better than none. It does not take the

place of that revised edition of Nuttall, which is still the great

desideratum, but we may use meanwhile an eminently ornithological

proverb, and say that a Samuels in the hand is worth two Nuttalls in the

bush.

_Richmond during the War. Four Years of Personal Observation_.

By a Richmond Lady. New York: G. W. Carleton and Company.

Mr. Curtis, in his charming book, "Prue and I," speaks of the novel

effect of landscape which Mr. Titbottom got by putting down his head,

and regarding the prospect between his knees; and we suppose that most

ingenious boys, young and old, have similarly contemplated nature, and

will understand what we mean when we say that the world shows to much

the same advantage through the books of Southern writers. Especially in

Southern histories of the late war is the effect noticeable. The general

outline is the same as when viewed in the more conventional manner, with

ideas and principles right side up; the objects are the same, the events

and results are the same; but there is a curious glamour over all, and

the spectator has a mystical feeling of topsy-turvy, ending in vertigo

and a disordered stomach.

The present book is in the spirit of all other subjugated literature

concerning the war,--a vainglorious and boastful spirit as to events

that led only to the destruction of the political power of the South; a

wronged and forgiving, if not quite cheerful, spirit as to the end

itself. Vivid and powerful presentation of facts would not perhaps be

expected of an author who calls herself "A Richmond Lady," and there is

nothing of the sort in the book. It contains sketches of public Rebels

in civil and military station, washed in with the raw yellows, reds, and

blues of Southern eulogy; and there is a great deal of gossip concerning

private life in Richmond, where everybody appears to have spoken and

acted during the four years of the war as if in the presence of the

photographers and short-hand writers, and with an eye single to the

impression upon posterity. It is an eloquent book, and--need we say?--a

dull one.

_Kathrina: her Life and mine, in a Poem_, By J. G. HOLLAND,

Author of "Bitter-Sweet." New York: Charles Scribner and

Company.

Let us tell without any caricature of ours, in prose that shall be just

if not generous, the story of Mr. Holland's hero as we have gathered it

from the work which the author, for reasons of his own, calls a poem.

The petted son of a rich widow in Northampton, Massachusetts, whose

father has killed himself in a moment of insanity, reaches the age of

fourteen years without great event, when his mother takes him to visit a

lady friend living on the other side of the Connecticut River. In this

lady's door-yard the hero finds a little lamb tethered in the grass, and

decked with a necklace of scarlet ribbon, and, having a mind for a

frolic with the pretty animal, the boy unties it. Instantly it slips its

tether from his hand, leaps the fence, and runs to the top of the

nearest mountain, whither he follows it, and where, exalted by the

magnificence of the landscape, he is for the first time conscious of

being a poet. Returning to his anxious mother, she too is aware of some

wondrous change in him, and says:

"My Paul has climbed the noblest mountain height

In all his little world, and gazed on scenes

As beautiful as rest beneath the sun.

I trust he will remember all his life

That to his best achievement, and the spot

Nearest to heaven his youthful feet have trod,

He has been guided by a guileless lamb.

It is an omen which his mother's heart

Will treasure with her jewels."

Resolved to give him the best educational advantages his mother sends

him to Mr. Bancroft's school; or, as Mr. Holland sings, permits him

"To climb the goodly eminence where he

In whose profound and stately pages live

His country's annals, ruled his little realm."

Here the hero surpasses all the other boys in everything, and but

repeats his triumphs later when he goes to Amherst College. His mother

lives upon the victories which he despises; but at last she yields to

the taint which was in her own blood as well as her husband's, and

destroys herself. The son, who was aware of her suicidal tendency, and

had once overheard her combating it in prayer, curses the God who would

not listen to her and help her, and rejects Him from his scheme of life.

In due time he falls in love with Kathrina, a young lady whom he first

sees on the occasion of her public reception into the Congregational

Church at Hadley. Later he learns that she is staying with the lady

whose pet lamb led him such a chase,--that she is in fact her niece, and

that she has seen better days. We must say that this good lady does

everything in her power to make a match between the young people; and

she is more pleased than surprised at the success of her efforts. It has

been the hero's idea that human love will fill up the void left in his

life by the rejection of God and religion; but he soon finds himself

vaguely unhappy and unsatisfied, and he determines to glut his heart

with literary fame. He goes, therefore, to New York, and succeeds as a

poet beyond all his dreams of success. For ten years he is the most

popular of authors; but he sickens of his facile triumph, and imagines

that to be happy he must write to please himself, and not the multitude.

He writes with this idea, but pleases nobody, and is as unhappy as ever.

Meanwhile, Kathrina has fallen into a decline. On her death-bed she

tells him that it is religion alone which can appease and satisfy him;

but she pleads with him in vain, till one day, when he enters her room,

and is startled by a strange coincidence: the lamb, which led him to the

mountain-top and the consciousness of poetic power, had a scarlet ribbon

on its neck, and now he finds this ribbon

"at her throat

Repeated in a bright geranium-flower!"

Then Kathrina tells him that his mother's spirit has talked with her,

and bidden her say to him this:--

"The lamb has slipped the leash by which his hand

Held her in thrall, and seeks the mountain-height;

And he, if he reclaim her to his grasp,

Must follow where she leads, and kneel at last

Upon the summit by her side. And more,

Give him my promise that, if he do this,

He shall receive from that fair altitude

Such a vision of the realm that lies around,

Cleft by the river of immortal life,

As shall so lift him from his selfishness,

And so enlarge his soul, that he shall stand

Redeemed from all unworthiness, and saved

To happiness and heaven."

Whereupon, having delivered her message, Kathrina bids him kneel. It is

the supreme moment of her life. He hears his mother's voice, and the

voice of the innumerable heavenly host, and even the voice of God

repeating her mandate. He kneels, and she bids him pray, and, as before,

all the celestial voices repeat her bidding. He prays and is saved.

Such is the story of Kathrina, or rather of Kathrina's husband, for she

is herself scarcely other than a name for a series of arguments, with

little of the flesh and blood of a womanly personality. We have too much

reverence for high purposes in literature not to applaud Mr. Holland's

good intent in this work, and we accept fully his theory of letters and

of life. Both are meagre and unsatisfactory as long as their motive is

low; both must yield unhappiness and self-despite till religion inform

them. This is the common experience of man; this is the burden of the

sayings of the sage from the time of Solomon to the time of Mr. Holland;

and we can all acknowledge its truth, however we may differ as to the

essence of religion itself. But we conceive that repetition of this

truth in a long poem demands of the author an excellence, or of the

reader a patience, all but superhuman.

How Mr. Holland has met the extraordinary demand upon his powers is

partly evident from the outline of the poem as we have given it. It must

be owned that it is rather a feeble fancy which unites two vital epochs

by the incident of the truant lambkin, and that the plot of the poem

does not in any way reveal a great faculty of invention. A parable,

moreover, teaches only so far as it is true to life; and in a tale

professing to deal with persons of our own day and country, we have a

right to expect some fidelity to our contemporaries and neighbors. But

we find nothing of this in "Kathrina,"--not even in the incident of a

young gentleman of fourteen sporting with a lambkin; or in the talk of

young people who make love in long arguments concerning the nature and

office of genius and the intermediary functions of the teacher.

Polemically considered, there is nothing very wrong in the discussions

between those metaphysical lovers, and no one need raise the question as

to how far Kathrina's peculiar ideas are applicable to the work of

genius bearing her name.

"The greatest artists speak to fewest souls,

... The bread that comes from heaven

Needs finest breaking. Some there doubtless are,

Some ready souls, that take the morsel pure

Divided to their need; but multitudes

Must have it in admixtures, menstruums,

And forms that human hands or human life

Have moulded."

Such passages, though they add nothing to the verisimilitude of

Kathrina's character, help to make her appear consistent in not laughing

at a certain weird poem which her lover reads to her. Few ladies in real

life, however great a tenderness they might feel for a morbid young

poet, could practise Kathrina's self-control, when, depicting himself as

a godless youth imprisoned by phantoms "among the elves of the silent

land," he sings:

"Under the charred and ghastly gloom,

Over the flinty stones,

They led him forth to his terrible doom,

And, plunged in a deep and noisome tomb,

They sat him among the bones."

Where, crouching, he beholds, through a "loop" in the wall, "a sweet

angel from the skies":--

"Could she not loose him from his thrall,

And lead him into the light?

'Ah me!' he murmured, 'I dare not call,

Lest she may doubt it a goblin's waul,

And leave me in swift affright!'"

The question is of the poet himself, immersed in his own gloomy

thoughts, and of Kathrina, who could rescue him from them; but she has

heard "only a wild, weird story," and her lover is obliged to explain

it, and still we are to suppose that she did not laugh. Nay, we are told

that she instantly accepted the poet, who exclaims:

"Are there not lofty moments when the soul

Leaps to the front of being, casting off

The robes and clumsy instruments of sense,

And, postured in its immortality,

Reveals its independence of the clod

In which it dwells?--moments in which the earth

And all material things, all sights and sounds,

All signals, ministries, interpreters,

Relapse to nothing, and the interflow

Of thought and feeling, love and life, go on

Between two spirits, raised to sympathy

The body dust, within an orb outlined,

It shall go on forever?"

We have no reason to suppose that this is not thought a fine passage by

the author, who will doubtless find readers enough to agree with him, if

he should not care to accept our estimate of his whole poem.

Nevertheless, we must confess that it appears to us puerile in

conception, destitute of due motive, and crude and inartistic in

treatment. But we should be unjust both to ourselves and our author, if

we left his work without some allusion to its highly embellished style,

or, having failed to approve the whole design, refused to notice at all

the elaborate ornamentation of the parts. Not to be guilty, then, of

this unfairness, let us cull here some of the fanciful tropes and

figures which enamel these flowery pages. The oriole is "a torch of

downy flame"; the "reiterant katydids rasp the mysterious silence"; a

mother's loss and sorrow are "twin leeches at her heart"; the frosty

landscape is "fulgent with downy crystals"; Kathrina wears a "pale-blue

muslin robe," which the hero fancies "dyed with forget-me-nots"; and the

landscape has usually some effect of dry-goods to the poet's eye. We

might almost believe that this passage,

"We touched the hem

Of the dark mountain's robe, that falls in folds

Of emerald sward around his feet, and there

Upon its tufted velvet we sat down,"

was inspired by perusal of Dr. Holmes's ode to "Evening--by a Tailor":--

"Day hath put on his jacket, and around

His burning bosom buttoned it with stars

Here will I lay me on the velvet grass,

That is like padding to earth's meagre ribs."

But Mr. Holland's fancy is of a quality which transcends all feigning in

others. Whatever it touches it figures in gross material substance,

preferably wood or some sort of upholstery. When, however, his hero

first stood in Broadway, he seems to have found no fabric of the looms,

no variety of plumage, no sort of precious wood or dye-stuff equal to

the allegory, and he wreaks himself in the following tremendous

hydraulic image;--

"I saw the waves of life roll up the steps

Of great cathedrals and retire; and break

In charioted grandeur at the feet

Of marble palaces, and toss their spray

Of feathered beauty through the open doors,

To pile the restless foam within; and burst

On crowded caravansaries, to fall

In quick return; and in dark currents glide

Through sinuous alleys, and the grimy loops

Of reeking cellars, and with softest plash

Assail the gilded shrines of opulence,

And slide in musical relapse away."