“Was she then so beautiful?” was the question addressed many years

afterward, to on old man, one of the few remaining witnesses of this

scene.

“Beautiful!” he echoed enthusiastically, adding with the eternal regrets

of old age: “Ay, there are none such now!”

The commissary of police began his interrogatory in the saloon of

Marat’s apartment. She told him her name, how long she had been in

Paris, confessed her crime, and recognized the knife with which it had

been perpetrated. The sheath was found in her pocket, with a thimble,

some thread, money, and her watch.

“What was your motive in assassinating Marat?” asked the commissary.

“To prevent a civil war,” she answered.

“Who are your accomplices?”

“I have none.”

She was ordered to be transferred to the Abbaye, the nearest prison. An

immense and infuriated crowd had gathered around the door of Marat’s

house; one of the witnesses perceived that she would have liked to be

delivered to this maddened multitude, and thus perish at once. She was

not saved from their hands without difficulty; her courage failed her at

the sight of the peril she ran, and she fainted away on being conveyed

to the fiacre. On reaching the Abbaye, she was questioned until midnight

by Chabot and Drouet, two Jacobin members of the convention. She

answered their interrogatories with singular firmness; observing, in

conclusion: “I have done my task, let others do theirs.” Chabot

threatened her with the scaffold; she answered with a smile of disdain.

Her behavior until the 17th, the day of her trial, was marked by the

same firmness. She wrote to Barbaroux a charming letter, full of

graceful wit and heroic feeling. Her playfulness never degenerated into

levity: like that of the illustrious Thomas Moore, it was the serenity

of a mind whom death had no power to daunt. Speaking of her action, she

observes—

“I considered that so many brave men need not come to Paris for the head

of one man. He deserved not so much honor: the hand of a woman was

enough. . . . I have never hated but one being, and him with what

intensity I have sufficiently shown, but there are a thousand whom I

love still more than I hated him. . . . I confess that I employed a

perfidious artifice in order that he might receive me. In leaving Caen,

I thought to sacrifice him on the pinnacle of ‘the mountain,’ but he no

longer went to it. In Paris, they cannot understand how a useless woman,

whose longest life could have been of no good, could sacrifice herself

to save her country. . . . May peace be as soon established as I desire!

A great criminal has been laid low. . . . the happiness of my country

makes mine. A lively imagination and a feeling heart promise but a

stormy life; I beseech those who might regret me to consider this: they

will then rejoice at my fate.”

A tenderer tone marks the brief letter she addressed to her father on

the eve of her trial and death:

“Forgive me, my dear father,” she observed, “for having disposed of my

existence without your permission. I have avenged many innocent victims.

I have warded away many disasters. The people, undeceived, will one day

rejoice at being delivered from a tyrant. If I endeavored to persuade

you that I was going to England, it was because I hoped to remain

unknown: I recognized that this was impossible. I hope you will not be

subjected to annoyance: you have at least defenders at Caen; I have

chosen Gustave Doulcet de Pontecoulant for mine: it is a mere matter of

form. Such a deed allows of no defense. Farewell, my dear father. I

beseech of you to forget me; or, rather, to rejoice at my fate. I die

for a good cause. I embrace my sister, whom I love with my whole heart.

Do not forget the line of Corneille:

‘Le crime faite la honte, et non pas l’échafaud.’

To-morrow, at eight, I am to be tried.”

On the morning of the 17th, she was led before her judges. She was

dressed with care, and had never looked more lovely. Her bearing was so

imposing and dignified, that the spectators and the judges seemed to

stand arraigned before her. She interrupted the first witness, by

declaring that it was she who had killed Marat.

“Who inspired you with so much hatred against him?” asked the president.

“I needed not the hatred of others, I had enough of my own,” she

energetically replied. “Besides, we do not execute well that which we

have not ourselves conceived.”

“What, then, did you hate in Marat?”

“His crimes.”

“Do you think that you have assassinated all the Marats?”

“No; but now that he is dead, the rest may fear.”

She answered other questions with equal firmness and laconism. Her

project, she declared, had been formed since the 31st of May. “She had

killed one man to save a hundred thousand. She was a republican long

before the Revolution, and had never failed in energy.”

“What do you understand by energy?” asked the president.

“That feeling,” she replied, “which induces us to cast aside selfish

considerations, and sacrifice ourselves for our country.”

Fouquier Tinville here observed, alluding to the sure blow she had

given, that she must be well practiced in crime.

“The monster takes me for an assassin!” she exclaimed, in a tone

thrilling with indignation.

This closed the debates, and her defender rose. It was not Doulcet de

Pontecoulant—who had not received her letter—but Chauveau de la Garde,

chosen by the president. Charlotte gave him an anxious look, as though

she feared he might seek to save her at the expense of honor. He spoke,

and she perceived that her apprehensions were unfounded. Without

excusing her crime or attributing it to insanity, he pleaded for the

fervor of her conviction; which he had the courage to call sublime. The

appeal proved unavailing. Charlotte Corday was condemned. Without

deigning to answer the president, who asked her if she had aught to

object to the penalty of death being carried out against her, she rose,

and walking up to her defender, thanked him gracefully.

“These gentlemen,” said she, pointing to the judges, “have just informed

me that the whole of my property is confiscated. I owe something in the

prison: as a proof of my friendship and esteem, I request you to pay

this little debt.”

On returning to the conciergerie, she found an artist, named Hauer,

waiting for her, to finish her portrait, which he had begun at the

tribunal. They conversed freely together, until the executioner,

carrying the red chemise destined for assassins, and the scissors with

which he was to cut her hair off, made his appearance.

“What, so soon?” exclaimed Charlotte Corday, slightly turning pale; but

rallying her courage, she resumed her composure, and presented a lock of

her hair to M. Hauer, as the only reward in her power to offer. A priest

came to offer her his ministry. She thanked him and the persons by whom

he had been sent, but declined his spiritual aid. The executioner cut

her hair, bound her hands, and threw the red chemise over her. M. Hauer

was struck with the almost unearthly loveliness which the crimson hue of

this garment imparted to the ill-fated maiden. “This toilet of death,

though performed by rude hands, leads to immortality,” said Charlotte,

with a smile.

A heavy storm broke forth as the car of the condemned left the

conciergerie for the Place de la Revolution. An immense crowd lined

every street through which Charlotte Corday passed. Hootings and

execrations at first rose on her path; but as her pure and serene beauty

dawned on the multitude, as the exquisite loveliness of her countenance,

and the sculptural beauty of her figure became more fully revealed, pity

and admiration superseded every other feeling. Her bearing was so

admirably calm and dignified, as to rouse sympathy in the breasts of

those who detested not only her crime, but the cause for which it had

been committed. Many men of every party took off their hats and bowed as

the cart passed before them. Amongst those who waited its approach, was

a young German, named Adam Luz, who stood at the entrance of the Rue

Sainte Honore, and followed Charlotte to the scaffold. He gazed on the

lovely and heroic maiden with all the enthusiasm of his imaginative

race. A love, unexampled perhaps in the history of the human heart, took

possession of his soul. Not one wandering look of “those beautiful eyes,

which revealed a soul as intrepid as it was tender,” escaped him. Every

earthly grace so soon to perish in death, every trace of the lofty and

immortal spirit, filled him with bitter and intoxicating emotions

unknown till then. “To die for her; to be struck by the same hand; to

feel in death the same cold axe which had severed the angelic head of

Charlotte; to be united to her in heroism, freedom, love, and death, was

now the only hope and desire of his heart.”

Unconscious of the passionate love she had awakened, Charlotte now stood

near the guillotine. She turned pale on first beholding it, but soon

resumed her serenity. A deep blush suffused her face when the

executioner removed the handkerchief that covered her neck and

shoulders, but she calmly laid her head upon the block. The executioner

touched a spring, and the axe came down. One of Samson’s assistants

immediately stepped forward, and holding up the lifeless head to the

gaze of the crowd, struck it on either cheek. The brutal act only

excited a feeling of horror; and it is said that—as though even in

death her indignant spirit protested against this outrage—an angry and

crimson flush passed over the features of Charlotte Corday.

A few days after her execution, Adam Luz published a pamphlet, in which

he enthusiastically praised her deed, and proposed that a statue with

the inscription, “Greater than Brutus,” should be erected to her memory

on the spot where she had perished. He was arrested and thrown into

prison. On entering the Abbaye, he passionately exclaimed, “I am going

to die for her!” His wish was fulfilled ere long.

Strange, feverish times were those which could rouse a gentle and lovely

maiden to avenge freedom by such a deadly deed; which could waken in a

human heart a love whose thoughts were not of life or earthly bliss, but

of the grave and the scaffold. Let the times, then, explain those

natures, where so much evil and heroism are blended, that man cannot

mark the limits between both. Whatever judgment may be passed upon her,

the character of Charlotte Corday was certainly not cast in an ordinary

mould. It is a striking and noble trait, that to the last she did not

repent: never was error more sincere. If she could have repented, she

would never have become guilty.

Her deed created an extraordinary impression throughout France. On

hearing of it, a beautiful royalist lady fell down on her knees, and

invoked “Saint Charlotte Corday.” The republican Madame Roland calls her

a heroine worthy of a better age. The poet, Andre Chenier—who, before a

year had elapsed, followed her on the scaffold—sang her heroism in a

soul-stirring strain.

The political influence of that deed may be estimated by the exclamation

of Vergniaud: “She kills us, but she teaches us how to die!” It was so.

The assassination of Marat exasperated all his fanatic partisans against

the Girondists. Almost divine honors were paid to his memory; forms of

prayer were addressed to him; altars were erected to his honor, and

numberless victims sent to the scaffold as a peace-offering to his

manes. On the wreck of his popularity rose the far more dangerous power

of Robespierre; a new impulse was given to the Reign of Terror. Such was

the “peace” which the erring and heroic Charlotte Corday won for France.

-----

[12] Lamartine.

* * * * *

THE DYING ROSE.

BY MRS. E. J. EAMES.

The Queen of the Flowers sat on her throne,

But the rosy gems from her crown were falling—

A paleness was over her beauty thrown,

For she heard the death-spirit on her calling!

Lowly she bent her royal head,

And mourned in tones of plaintive sweetness

That mortals should call her the fading rose—

The rose of early, perishing fleetness!

“Ungrateful man! do I not make

My span of life, though short, delicious?

And yield you rich perfumes after death?

But there is no bound to human wishes

I see all my sister flow’rets fade,

In their blighted beauty around me lying;

Yet only of _me_ ’tis sung, and said—

Alas! for the rose—so early dying!”

“Be not displeased with us, loveliest one”—

Said a fair young maiden standing by her—

“’Tis not that thy race is so swiftly run,

But we wish that thy destiny were higher:

We see all the flowers around us die—

And deem it their fate; but _thee_, their sovereign,

We would give a lovelier home on high,

With sister spirits around thee hov’ring!

“Then call not that thankless, which is in truth

The prompting of tender and true affection;

And pardon the sorrow, with which our youth

Sees ever in thee but a sad reflection!

For all the beauty and joy of our life—

All the loves and the hopes we so fondly cherish,

We liken to _thee_—and when they fade

We say—‘Like the Rose, how soon they perish!’”

* * * * *

LOVE’S MESSENGER.

A Favorite Song.

COMPOSED BY

MATTHIAS KELLER.

WORDS FROM THE GERMAN.

Published by permission of Lee & Walker, 162 Chestnut Street,

_Publishers and Importers of Music and Musical Instruments_.

[Illustration: musical score]

My love is no writer,

Nor truly am I,

Or often a letter should bear her my

[Illustration: musical score]

sigh;

A promise most tender I gave to my love.

I would her remember

Where e’er I should rove

I would her remember

Where e’er I should rove.

II.

Could I write her a letter,

What joy would be mine,

But, alas! ’tis a pleasure

That I must resign;

For love’s messenger only

A ring I can take,

And kiss it most fondly

For her own sweet sake.

* * * * *

REVIEW OF NEW BOOKS.

_The Golden Legend. By Henry Wordsworth Longfellow. Boston:

Ticknor, Read & Fields. 1 vol. 16mo._

The readers of this charming poem, whatever may be their judgment of its

merits as compared with “The Spanish Student” and “Evangeline,” will be

compelled to acknowledge its originality of plan, and the new impression

it conveys of the author’s genius. Whatever it may be, it is most

assuredly no repetition of any of his former works, for the mark it

leaves upon the imagination is essentially novel. The poem is a

succession of highly colored pictures of life in the middle ages; and

though the fortunes of Prince Henry and Elsie give a certain unity to

the whole, it is a unity that admits of more variety than

“Evangeline”—a variety which, though purchased at some expense of

interest in the story, produces a more pleasing impression in the end.

Though the poem has not the continuous richness and warmth of fancy,

diction, and melody which commonly distinguish Longfellow’s writings, it

is by no means deficient in those qualities, and has scenes and passages

on which his imagination has expended the full pomp of its luxurious

images and subtle melodies. Though filled with vivid pictures of the

middle ages, the poem can hardly be called picturesque, for the

picturesque implies not succession but combination; and “The Golden

Legend” is a succession of pictures, not a combination of many into one.

The picturesque, as defined by Coleridge, is the “union, harmonious

melting-down and fusion of the different in kind and the disparate in

degree” and it is in this meaning of the word that Coleridge denies the

quality to Spenser, thereby much puzzling even Hallam, who could not

conceive why a poem so full of pictures as the Faery Queene, was not in

an eminent degree picturesque.

The volume opens with a scene representing the spire of the Strasburg

Cathedral, and Lucifer with the Powers of the Air, trying to tear down

the cross. This scene has a quaint sublimity which prepares the mind for

the strangeness of the representations of religion which follow; for

Longfellow, in his pictures of Catholicism, presents it, not in its

abstract doctrines, but in its concrete life—presents it as it really

existed in institutions, customs, and men, during the middle ages. This

idea must be perceived at the commencement, or else the reader, judging

not merely as a modern Protestant, but as a modern Catholic, will

condemn the poem at once as irreverently extravagant and bizarre. The

next scene introduces Prince Henry, sitting alone in his castle,

tormented with baffled aspiration and weariness of life—a sort of

Faust, but a Faust of sentiment rather than a Faust of intellect. In a

beautiful soliloquy, the prince mourns over the graves of his departed

hopes, loves, and aspirations, in a style very different from the sharp,

short, electric curses on the deceptions of life, which leap from the

lips of Goethe’s hero. We give a short extract, which is a poem in

itself:

They come, the shapes of joy and wo,

The airy crowds of long-ago,

The dreams and fancies known of yore,

That have been and shall be no more.

They change the cloisters of the night

Into a garden of delight;

_They make the dark and dreary hours_

_Open and blossom into flowers!_

I would not sleep, I love to be

Again in their fair company;

But ere my lips can bid them stay,

They pass and vanish quite away.

Just as the prince, in his hunger for rest, has asserted

Sweeter the undisturbed and deep

Tranquillity of endless sleep,

Lucifer appears, in his accustomed dress as a traveling physician, and

accompanied by his usual sign, a flash of lightning. He taunts and

cajoles his victim into drinking what he is pleased to call his water of

life. The immediate effect of this Satanic liquid is like that which the

cordial of the foul hag communicates to the Faust of Goethe:

It is like a draught of fire!

Through every vein

I feel again

The fever of youth, the soft desire;

A rapture that is almost pain

Throbs in my heart and fills my brain!

O joy! O joy! I feel

The band of steel

That so long and heavily has pressed

Upon my breast

Uplifted, and the malediction

Of my affliction

Is taken from me, and my weary breast

At length finds rest.

We are next transferred as spectators to the courtyard of the castle,

and a most beautiful scene occurs between Hubert, Prince Henry’s

seneschal, and Walter, the Minnesinger, a capital embodiment of the

knightly poet of the middle ages. The prince, it seems, has relapsed

from the glory of his exaltation, has become more soul-sick than ever,

has fallen under the malediction of the church; and has gone forth into

disgrace and banishment. We give the concluding passage of this scene,

where Walter speaks of the “beings of the wind” that attend the poet,

and, leaning over the parapet of the castle, describes the landscape:

_Walter._ I would a moment here remain.

But you, good Hubert, go before,

Fill me a goblet of May-drink,

As aromatic as the May

From which it steals the breath away,

And which he loved so well of yore;

It is of him that I would think.

You shall attend me, when I call,

In the ancestral banquet-hall.

Unseen companions, guests of air,

You cannot wait on, will be there;

They taste not food, they drink not wine,

But their soft eyes look into mine,

And their lips speak to me, and all

The vast and shadowy banquet-hall

Is full of looks and words divine!

_Leaning over the parapet._

The day is done; and slowly from the scene

The stooping sun upgathers his spent shafts,

And puts them back into his golden quiver!

Below me in the valley, deep and green

As goblets are, from which in thirsty draughts

We drink its wine, the swift and mantling river

Flows on triumphant through these lovely regions

Etched with the shadows of its sombre margent,

And soft, reflected clouds of gold and argent!

Yes, there it flows, for ever, broad and still,

As when the vanguard of the Roman legions

First saw it from the top of yonder hill!

How beautiful it is! Fresh fields of wheat;

Vineyard and town, and tower with fluttering flag,

The consecrated chapel on the crag,

And the white hamlet gathered round its base,

Like Mary sitting at her Saviour’s feet,

And looking up at his beloved face!

O friend! O best of friends! Thy absence more

Than the impending night darkens the landscape o’er!

The next three scenes are exquisite in conception and execution. Prince

Henry has found refuge

In the Odenwald.

Some of his tenants unappalled

By fear of death or priestly word—

_A holy family that make_

_Each meal a supper of the Lord—_

Have him beneath their watch and ward.

For love of him, and Jesus’ sake!

The pictures which follow of Gottlieb, his wife Ursula, and Elsie, his

daughter, the heroine of the poem, are beautiful and touching

representations of the sturdy honesty and sublime simplicity of faith,

which distinguished the religious German peasant-family of the old time.

A legend of the Monk Felix, which Prince Henry reads, while Elsie is

gathering flowers for him and for St. Cecelia, is truly “golden.” We

cannot resist the temptation to quote a portion of it.

One morning, all alone,

Out of his convent of gray stone,

Into the forest older, darker, grayer,

His lips moving as if in prayer,

His head sunken upon his breast

As in a dream of rest,

Walked the Monk Felix. All about

The brood, sweet sunshine lay without,

Filling the summer air;

And within the woodlands as he trod,

The twilight was like the Truce of God

With worldly wo and care;

Under him lay the golden moss;

And above him the boughs of hemlock-trees

Waved, and made the sign of the cross,

And whispered their Benedicites;

And from the ground

Rose an odor sweet and fragrant

Of the wild-flowers and the vagrant

Vines that wandered,

Seeking the sunshine, round and round.

These he heeded not, but pondered

On the volume in his hand,

A volume of Saint Augustine,

Wherein he read of the unseen,

Splendors of God’s great town

In the unknown land,

And, with his eyes cast down

In humility, he said:

“I believe, O God,

What herein I have read,

But alas! I do not understand!”

And lo! he heard

The sudden singing of a bird,

A snow-white bird, that from a cloud

Dropped down,

And among the branches brown

Sat singing

So sweet, and clear, and loud,

It seemed a thousand harp-strings ringing.

And the Monk Felix closed his book,

And long, long,

With rapturous look,

He listened to the song,

And hardly breathed or stirred,

Until he saw, as in a vision,

The land Elysian,

And in the heavenly city heard

Angelic feet

Fall on the golden flagging of the street.

And he would fain

Have caught the wondrous bird,

But strove in vain;

For it flew away, away,

Far over hill and dell,

And instead of its sweet singing

He heard the convent bell

Suddenly in the silence ringing

For the service of noonday.

And he retraced

His pathway homeward sadly and in haste.

When the monk returns to the convent, every thing is changed. He finds

himself a stranger among the brotherhood.

“Forty years,” said a Friar,

“Have I been Prior

Of this convent in the wood;

But for that space

Never have I beheld thy face.”

At last the oldest recluse of the cloister recollects his name as that

of a monk, who, a hundred years before, had left the convent, and never

returned.

And they knew, at last,

That such had been the power

Of that celestial, immortal song,

A hundred years had passed,

And had not seemed so long

As a single hour!

Elsie learns that the malady of the prince will never be cured unless by

a miracle, or unless (which some Benedicts would pronounce equally

miraculous) a maiden should offer her life for his, and die in his

stead. She immediately expresses her desire to save the prince at this

sacrifice; and to the exclamation of her mother, that she knows not what

death is, she answers with a burst of religious fervor almost celestial:

’Tis the cessation of our breath.

Silent and motionless we lie;

And no one knoweth more than this.

I saw our little Gertrude die;

She left off breathing, and no more

I smoothed the pillow beneath her head.

She was more beautiful than before.

Like violets faded were her eyes;

By this we knew that she was dead.

Through the open window looked the skies

Into the chamber where she lay,

And the wind was like the sound of wings,

As if angels came to bear her away.

Ah! when I saw and felt these things,

I found it difficult to stay;

I longed to die as she had died,

And go forth with her, side by side.

The Saints are dead, the Martyrs dead,

And Mary, and our Lord; and I

Would follow in humility

The way by them illumined!

Prince Henry, uncertain whether he shall selfishly avail himself of this

sacrifice, goes to take counsel of the priest. Lucifer, however, in the

absence of the regular clergy, has seated himself in the confessional,

and, preaching the gospel of expediency, convinces Henry that he can

accept the maiden’s offer. She is to go with him to Salerno to die; and

before they start she exacts a promise from him that he shall not

endeavor to turn her from her purpose, and does it in words

That fall from her lips

Like roses from the lips of angels; and angels

Might stoop to pick them up!

A large portion of the rest of the poem is devoted to representations of

the cities, towns, forests through which they pass on their way to

Salerno, the cloisters and convents where they stop, and the

many-colored and multiform life with which they come slightly in contact

or collision. The thread of the story is here spun very fine, and we

almost lose memory of the hero and heroine, while rapt in the gorgeous

pictures of medieval superstition, manners and character, with which the

page is crowded. It is evident that the story itself is too slight for

the bulk of the book, and that the majority of the scenes, vivid and

delightful as they are in themselves, have not that vital connection

with the chief characters and leading event which is demanded in a work

of art. And yet, if the reader sharply scrutinizes the whole impression

which the poem leaves on his imagination, he will, perhaps, discover

that there is a fine thread of union connecting the various parts, and

that the incidents and scenery of the journey have not that merely

mechanical juxtaposition which characterizes the events and scenes

recorded in a tourist’s journal. The prince and Elsie are felt when they

are not seen; and we do not know but that the poem may awake the

admiration of future critics for the singular refinement of the

imaginative power, by which the seemingly heterogeneous parts of the

work are subtly organized into a homogeneous whole, by the connection of

the profound Catholic sentiment of Elsie with the other expressions,

grotesque and besotted, of the operation of the same faith. But such

refinements are foreign to our purpose here. It is sufficient to say

that the prince and Elsie appear at least on the edges of all the

incidents which are so vividly presented. At the conclusion, the prince

repents just as Elsie is on the point of being immolated, and then finds

that his health recovers more rapidly on the prospect that she will live

for him, instead of die for him. They are accordingly married. The

account of the return to the cottage of Gottlieb and the castle of the

prince, is very beautiful. Elsie is, perhaps, Longfellow’s finest

creation, representing a woman so perfectly good, that her principles

have become instincts. The devil that appears in the book, though

sufficiently Satanic to frighten some sensitive readers, is rather a

languid Lucifer, as compared with Milton’s or Goethe’s.

Among the many curiosities of the poem is a play, ingeniously imitated,

in form and spirit, from those monstrosities of the early drama, the

Miracle Plays. The fourth part is devoted to a convent in the Black

Forest, and the soliloquy of Friar Claus, in the wine-cellar—of Friar

Pacificus, transcribing and illuminating MSS.—of the Abbot Ernestus,

pacing among the cloisters—and the convivial scene in the rectory—are

fine descriptions of cloistered life, true both to the ideas and facts

of the time. The passionate confession of the Abbess Irmingard to Elsie,

is in Longfellow’s most powerful style, and has a fire and fierceness of

outright and downright passion, not common to his representations of

emotion. All of these would afford many choice passages for quotation;

we have but room, however, for Friar Cuthbert’s sermon, delivered in

front of the Strasburg Cathedral, on Easter Day. This, with a quaint

audacity of its own, elbows out even its betters in verse and sentiment,

and vehemently claims the right to be cited:

Friar Cuthbert, _gesticulating and cracking a postilion’s whip_.

What ho! good people! do you not hear?

Dashing along at the top of his speed,

Booted and spurred, on his jaded steed,

A courier comes with words of cheer.

Courier! what is the news, I pray?

“Christ is arisen!” Whence come you? “From court.”

Then I do not believe it; you say it in sport.

_Cracks his whip again._

Ah, here comes another riding this way;

We soon shall know what he has to say.

Courier! what are the tidings to-day?

“Christ is arisen!” Whence come you? “From town.”

Then I do not believe it; away with you, clown.

_Cracks his whip more violently._

And here comes a third, who is spurring amain;

What news do you bring, with your loose-hanging rein,

Your spurs wet with blood, and your bridle with foam?

“Christ is arisen!” Whence come you! “From Rome.”

Ah, now I believe. He is risen, indeed.

Ride on with the news, at the top of your speed!

_Great applause among the crowd._

To come back to my text! When the news was first spread

That Christ was arisen indeed from the dead,

Very great was the joy of the angels in heaven;

And as great the dispute as to who should carry

The tidings thereof to the Virgin Mary,

Pierced to the heart with sorrows seven.

Old Father Adam was first to propose,

As being the author of all our woes;

But he was refused, for fear, said they,

He would stop to eat apples on the way!

Abel came next, but petitioned in vain,

Because he might meet with his brother Cain!

Noah, too, was refused, lest his weakness for wine

Should delay him at every tavern-sign;

And John the Baptist could not get a vote,

On account of his old-fashioned, camel’s-hair coat;

And the Penitent Thief, who died on the cross,

Was reminded that all his bones were broken!

Till at last, when each in turn had spoken,

The company being still at a loss,

The Angel, who rolled away the stone,

Was sent to the sepulchre, all alone,

And filled with glory that gloomy prison,

And said to the Virgin, “The Lord has arisen!”

We think we have sufficiently quoted from this delightful volume to give

our readers an idea of its poetical merit. But no analysis or quotation

can do justice to the wealth of knowledge it evinces of the middle ages,

and to the various scholarship it displays. Longfellow, with a true

poetic insight and power of assimilation, has given us here the life and

spirit as well as the form of a by-gone age, so that the reader of the

poem can obtain more of the substance of knowledge from its pictured

page than from history itself. The work is not only one of uncommon

poetical excellence, but it is a triumph over difficulties inherent in

the subject, and over the subjective limitations of the author’s own

mind. It is broader if not higher than any thing he has previously

written, promises to be more permanently popular, and has the great

merit of increasing in the reader’s estimation with a second or even a

third perusal.

* * * * *

_Miscellanies. By the Rev. James Martineau. Boston: Crosby &

Nichols. 1 vol. 12mo._

Mr. Martineau has long been known to a numerous class of readers in this

country as an eloquent preacher and essayist. The present volume is

composed of philosophical essays, selected from his contributions to the

Westminster and Prospective Reviews, and is edited by the Rev. Thomas S.

King, of Boston, himself one of the most eloquent and accomplished of

New England clergymen. Mr. Martineau’s sermons have been repeatedly

reprinted, but this volume of Miscellanies conveys an impression of the

independence and fertility of his mind and the reach of his

acquisitions, which his sermons, with all their peculiar merit, would

never give. It evinces not only an interest in all the social and

religious problems which puzzle the present age, but a grasp of

scholarship extending far back over the philosophies and literatures of

other times and nations. The bent of his nature, however, is toward

mental hospitality to the radical opinions of the day, and new thoughts,

new hopes, even new paradoxes, are ever welcomed by his heart and

disposition when his cool head doubts, discusses, demurs, and withholds

its assenting judgment. He seems to have more sympathy for reformers

than their productions, as his rich and various culture enables him to

detect one-sidedness or superficiality in many a plan of amelioration,

the spirit of which he approves. Both, however, in politics and religion

he would be classed with the extremely “liberal” party; and though the

conservative elements of his mind are, to a discriminating reader,

visible in almost every page of the present volume, the author appears

all the while desirous to share the glorious unpopularity of a class of

thinkers with whom he but imperfectly sympathizes rather than to

indicate his points of disagreement with their schemes and systems. He

has a deep mental disgust for the moral timidity and intellectual

feebleness which characterize so many of the fashionable and

conventional thinkers on politics and theology, and is perhaps from this

cause too apt to overlook defects in heretical systems in his admiration

of the courage of the heretics. In his own words, “it is a dishonorable

characteristic of the present age, that on its most marked intellectual

tendencies is impressed a character of FEAR. While its great practical

agitations exhibit a progress toward some positive and attainable good,

all its conspicuous movements of thought seem to be retreats from some

apprehended evil. The open plain of meditation, over which, in simpler

times, earnest men might range with devout and unmolested hope, bristles

all over with directions showing which way we are _not_ to go. Turn

where we may we see warnings to beware of some sophist’s pitfall, or

devil’s ditch, or fool’s paradise, or atheist’s desert.”

This “despair of truth,” this intellectual cowardice, is more offensive

to Mr. Martineau than unbelief itself. He describes the class of

thinkers he most dislikes in one sentence of beautiful sharpness.

“Checked and frightened,” he says, “at the entrance of every path on

which they venture, they _spend their strength in standing still_; or

devise ingenious proofs, that, in a world where periodicity is the only

progress, retrogradation is the discreetest method of advance.” His

whole volume is therefore a protest against the practice, common both in

England and the United States, of erecting in the republic of thought a

despotism of dullness and timidity, by which independent investigation

is to be allowed only so far as it results in fortifying accredited

systems, and a bounty is put on that worst form of disbelief, infidelity

to the laws of thought, the monitions of conscience, and the beckonings

of new and inspiring truths. But while he is properly angry at such

noodleism as this, which, if unlashed and unrebuked, would reduce men of

thought into a corporation of intellectual Jerry Sneaks, he does not

appear to us properly to distinguish between that independence which

seeks truth and that independence which is merely a blustering egotism,

and ostentatious exhibition of the commonplaces of error. His

discrimination is not always of that sort which detects through the

verbal disguises of moral energy the unmistakable features of moral

pertness. The charlatans of dignity and convention have provoked a

corresponding clique of charlatans, who revel in the bravadoes of

license and anarchy; and it is no part of a wise man’s duty to allow his

disgust of one form of nonsense to tempt him into championship of

another form, because it happens to be on the opposite extreme.

The defect of Mr. Martineau’s nature appears to be the dominion of the

reflective portion of his nature over all its other powers. He is

emphatically a thinker, but a thinker on subjects so allied to sentiment

and passion, that some action should be combined with it, in order that

the mind shall receive no morbid taint, be not “sicklied o’er” by a

thought that broadens into unpractical comprehension. The fertility of

his mind in thoughts is altogether out of proportion to the vigor of his

nature, and though intellectually brave he is not intellectually robust.

Hence a lack of muscle and nerve in his most beautiful paragraphs; hence

the absence of electric force and condensed energy of expression in his

finest statements; hence a certain sadness and languor in the atmosphere

spread over his writings, the breathing of which does not invigorate the

mind so much as it enlarges its view. He communicates thoughts, but he

does not always communicate the inspiration to think.

Although these drawbacks prevent us from ranking him, as a writer, in

the highest class—for a writer of the highest class impresses his

readers by the force of his character as much as by the affluence of his

conceptions and the beauties of his style—still Mr. Martineau ranks

high among contemporary prose writers for the sweetness, clearness,

pliancy and unity of his style, his happy felicities of imagery, his

unostentatious intellectual honesty, and his command of all the

rhetorical aids of metaphor, sarcasm and figurative illustration. His

style is also strictly vital, the exact expression of his nature as well

as opinions; but its melody is flute-like rather than clarion-like; is

so consistently ornate and so tuned on one key, that commonplaces and

originalities are equally clad in the same superb uniform, and move to

the music of the same slow march; and the sad earnestness and languor,

which we have mentioned as characterizing his will, steal mysteriously

out from his exquisite periods, and pass into the reader’s mind like an

invisible essence. Almost every professor of rhetoric would say that Mr.

Martineau is a better writer than the Bishop of Exeter, a church

dignitary for whom Mr. Martineau’s liberal mind has a natural antipathy.

Mr. Martineau has evidently a larger command of words and images, more

taste, more toleration, more intellectual conscientiousness and

comprehension, a better metaphysician, a more trustworthy thinker, with

less mosaic work in his logic, and less casuistry in his ethics. But

behind all the Bishop of Exeter’s sentences is a great, brawny,

hard-fisted, pugilistic, arrogant _man_, daring, confident, indomitable,

with as much will as reason, and with all his opinions so thoroughly

penetrated with the life-blood of his character that they have all the

force of bigotry and prejudice. He is equally unreasonable and

uncreative as a thinker, but his unreason has a vigor that Mr.

Martineau’s reason lacks. Wielding with his strong arm some piece of

medieval bigotry, he goes crashing on from sentence to sentence, angrily

pummeling and buffeting his opponents—a theological “ugly customer,”

who, when the rush of his coming is heard afar off, makes the

adversaries he is approaching glance instinctively to the

direction—“look out for the engine when the bell rings!” Mr.

Martineau’s large understanding would be benefited by some of the

Bishop’s will; and one is driven to the conclusion, that, a man of

purely independent thought, who abides in conceptions of his own,

entirely apart from authority, must be a genius of the first order to

escape from that weakness of will which distinguishes the most

adventurous of Mr. Martineau’s abstract and uninvigorating speculations.

Indeed, in all declamations about the advantages of strict individualism

in matters of faith and speculation, there is not the right emphasis

laid on the distinction between abstract and concrete ideas. A faith

which rests on some union of authority with reason, which is connected

with institutions, which combines the principle of obedience with that

of liberty, may be narrow but it is sure to be strong, and if not

distinguished by reach of thought will compensate for that deficiency by

force of character. Mr. Martineau’s tendency is to the abstract, the

impalpable, the unrealized in speculation, and spends much of his

strength in supporting himself at the elevation of his thought. But as

his thinking is not on the level of his character, he insensibly exalts

opinion over life, and is more inclined to tolerate the excesses of

unbridled and unreasonable egotism, than the prejudices of pious

humility. As a thinker his mind demands breadth and largeness of view,

and we hardly think he could be satisfied with a saint who was not

something of a philosopher. But while he has a literary advantage over

his adversaries, they have a personal advantage over him. In courage,

even, there can be little doubt that the Bishop of Exeter is his

superior, for all the coarser human elements which enter into courage

Mr. Martineau lacks. Mr. Martineau has the courage to deny in his Review

any proposition which any established church might proclaim; but he

could not have assailed the Archbishop of Canterbury, and bearded Lord

Campbell, like the bishop. The difference in the case is, that the

bishop battled for a positive institution around which for years his

affections and passions had clustered; while Mr. Martineau has no such

inspiration to support the abstract conclusions of his intellect.

The subjects of the essays in this volume are Dr. Priestley, Dr. Arnold,

Church and State, Theodore Parker’s Discourses of Religion, Phases of

Faith, The Church of England, and the Battle of the Churches. Of these

we have been particularly impressed with the analysis of the mental

character of Priestley, the review of Mr. Parker, and the articles

relating to the English Church. The essay on Dr. Arnold has something of

the some merit which distinguishes that on Dr. Priestley; it is acute in

the examination of principles but dull in the perception of character.

Mr. Martineau is always strong in the explication of ideas and the

statement and analysis of systems, but he constantly overlooks men in

his attention to the opinions they champion and represent. The dramatic

element not only does not exist in his mind, but he hardly accepts it as

a possibility of the human intellect; and therefore he always fails in

viewing ideas in connection with the individuality or nationality in

which they have their root, and is accordingly often unintentionally

intolerant to persons from his want of insight into the individual

conditions of their intellectual activity. But we gladly hasten from

these criticisms on his limitations to some examples of his peculiar

merits as a writer. In speaking of Dr. Priestley’s intellectual

processes as a scientific explorer and discoverer, he shrewdly remarks:

“He was the ample collector of materials for discovery rather than the

final discoverer himself; a sign of approaching order rather than the

producer of order himself. We remember an amusing German play, designed

as a satire upon the philosophy of atheism, in which Adam walks across

the stage, going to be created; and, though a paradox, it may be said

that truth, as it passed through Dr. Priestley’s mind, was going to be

created.” In referring to the purely independent action of Dr.

Priestley’s mind in the formation of his opinions, our analyst gives a

fine statement of the real sources of most men’s “positive” knowledge

and doctrines. “It would be difficult,” he says, “to select from the

benefactors of mankind one who was less acted upon by his age; whose

convictions were more independent of sympathy; in the whole circle of

whose opinions you can set down so little to the prejudgments of

education, to the attractions of friendship, to the perverse love of

opposition, to the contagion of prevailing taste, or to any of the

irregular moral causes which, independently of evidence, determine the

course of human belief.” Again, how fine is his statement of the

indestructibility of Christian faith: “Amid the vicissitudes of

intellect, worship retains its stability; and the truth, which, it would

seem, cannot be proved, is unaffected by an infinite series of

refutations. How evident that it has its ultimate seat, not in the

mutable judgments of the understanding, but in the native sentiments of

Conscience and the inexhaustible aspirations of Affection! The Supreme

certainly must needs be too true to be proved: and the highest

perfection can appear doubtful only to sensualism and sin.”

“The Battle of the Churches,” the most exquisite in thought and style of

all the essays in the volume, and well-known to most readers for its

clear statement of the hold which Romanism has upon the affections of

mankind, contains many examples of the fine irony and bland sarcasm

which enter into the more stimulating ingredients of Mr. Martineau’s

softly flowing diction. His statement of Comte’s Law of Progression, as

followed by his view of the complicated theological discussions which

now divide England into furious parties, is most demurely comical. “In

1822,” he commences, “a French philosopher discovered the grand law of

human progression, revealed it to applauding Paris, brought the history

of all civilized nations to pronounce it infallible, and computed from

it the future course of European society. The mind of man, we are

assured by Auguste Comte, passes by invariable necessity through three

stages of development: the state of religion, or fiction; of

metaphysics, or abstract thought; of science, or positive knowledge. No

change in this order, no return upon its steps, is possible; the shadow

cannot retreat upon the dial, or the man return to the nature of the

child. Every one who is not behind the age will tell you, that he has

outlived the theology of his infancy and the philosophy of his youth, to

settle down on a physical belief in the ripeness of his powers. And so,

too, the world, passing from myth to metaphysics, and from metaphysics

to induction, begins with the Bible and ends with the ‘_Cours de

Philosophie Positive_.’ To the schools of the prophets succeeds

‘_L’Ecole Polytechnique_;’ and our intellect, having surmounted the

meridians of God and the Soul, culminates in the apprehension of

material nature. Henceforth the problems so intensely attractive to

speculation, and so variously answered by faith, retire from the field

of thought. They have an interest, as in some sense the autobiography of

an adolescent world: but they were never to return in living action upon

the earth.”

We can only, in conclusion, recommend to our readers an examination of

this volume, and to its editor a continuation of his well-rewarded

labors in Mr. Martineau’s mine.

* * * * *

_The Women of Early Christianity. A Series of Portraits, with

appropriate Descriptions, by several American Clergymen. Edited

by Rev. J. A. Spencer, M. A. New York: D. Appleton & Co. 1 vol.

8vo._

This magnificent volume, with its superb illustrations, letter-press and

binding, seems to have been published with a determination to rival

those English houses who supply the American market with splendid

gift-books. It contains seventeen ideal portraits, engraved from

original designs for this work, and conveying all the varieties of

expression which religious emotion communicates to the human

countenance, from the humblest penitence to loftiest rapture. The

notices are by the editor, assisted by Dr. Sprague, Dr. Kip, Dr. Ingen,

Dr. Parks, the Rev. Mr. Osgood, and a few other eminent clergymen. The

volume will be found especially interesting to those who delight in

whatever increases their knowledge of the manners and the character, the

sufferings and the heroic resolution of the early Christians. The lives

of these women is a representation of Christianity as embodied in

feminine character; and the study is curious in its metaphysical as well

as its theological aspect. Among the best of the communicated articles,

is that of St. Agnes, by Mr. Osgood. The conclusion we quote for the

pointedness of its application. “To us,” says Mr. Osgood, “this Roman

girl stands as a sacred ideal of the Christian maiden. Her name we may

not invoke in prayer. Her purity and heroism we may admire and commend

to the honor of the maidens of our time, who are tempted by powers more

insidious than the arts and threats of Sempronius. The world has not

changed its heart so much as its creed and costume. Its corrupt fashions

would tyrannize over our daughters with the pride of the Cæsars, and a

meretricious literature lurks in our journals and romances more

dangerous to maidenly purity than the den of shame which assailed only

to illustrate the virtue of Agnes. True to her soul and to her Saviour,

the Christian maiden wins to her brow a radiance which, instead of being

dimmed by marriage, is rather brightened by the affections of the wife

and the sacrifices of the mother, into the aureola of the saint.”

* * * * *

_Greenwood Leaves. A Collection of Sketches and Letters. By

Grace Greenwood. Second Series. Boston: Ticknor, Reed & Fields.

1 vol. 12mo._

This series of sketches is superior to the first, and indicates plainly,

not only the growth of the author’s mind, but a firmer and more

confident grasp and control of her various resources of intellect,

sentiment and acquisition. It is the production of the same

individuality which gave zest to her first volume, but an individuality

of larger moral and mental stature. The full, easy, almost majestic flow

of emotion and sentiment, which gave vividness to the conceptions and

vigorous movement to the style of her former sketches, is visible here

in a brighter and more powerful form; and, it may be added, that the

faults proceeding from the intensity of her mind, and her custom of

surveying things which properly claim the decision of judgment through

an atmosphere of feeling, are not altogether absent from her present

work. She exaggerates both in her praise and blame; her eulogy being too

generous, her condemnation sometimes too sharp and indiscriminating; and

many of her criticisms are, therefore, but an ingenious and splendid

exhibition of likes and dislikes, rather than a record of intellectual

judgments. She has not yet obtained the faculty of viewing things as

they are in themselves, independent of the feelings they excite in her

own soul. This fault is a source of raciness, and doubtless makes her

books all the more stimulating to a majority of renders; but it would

seem that a mind which gives such unmistakable hints of sharp insight,

penetrating wit, and clear, intuitive reason as Grace Greenwood’s,

should keep the enthusiasm of her nature a little more under control;

and this could be done, we opine, without breaking up into waves and

ripples that superb sweep of her prose style, which is her great charm

as a writer. We may add that the Letters in this volume, especially

those from Washington, have often a delightful combination of

observation, wit and fancy, and in their rambling references to

individuals, almost raise gossip to the dignity of a fine art.

* * * * *

_Moby-Dick; or The Whale. By Herman Melville. New York: Harper

and Brothers. 1 vol. 12mo._

This volume sparkles with the raciest qualities of the author’s voluble

and brilliant mind, and whatever may be its reception among old salts,

it will be sure of success with the reading public generally. It has

passages of description and narration equal to the best that Melville

has written, and its rhetoric revels and riots in scenes of nautical

adventure with more than usual glee and gusto. The style is dashing,

headlong, strewn with queer and quaint ingenuities moistened with humor,

and is a capital specimen of deliberate and felicitous recklessness, in

which a seeming helter-skelter movement is guided by real judgment. The

whole work beams with the analogies of a bright and teeming fancy—a

faculty that Melville possesses in such degree that it sometimes betrays

his rhetoric into fantastic excesses, and gives a sort of unreality to

his most vivid descriptions. The joyous vigor and elasticity of his

style, however, compensate for all faults, and even his tasteless

passages bear the impress of conscious and unwearied power. His late

books are not only original in the usual sense, but evince originality

of nature, and convey the impression of a new individuality, somewhat

composite, it is true, but still giving to the jaded reader of every-day

publications, that pleasant shock of surprise which comes from a mental

contact with a character at once novel and vigorous.

* * * * *

_The Land of Bondage; its Ancient Monuments and Present

Condition: Being a Journal of a Tour in Egypt. By J. M.

Wainwright, D. D. New York: D. Appleton & Co. 1 vol. 8vo._

This volume, one of the most sumptuous in external appearance of the

season, beautifully printed and profusely illustrated, has many peculiar

excellencies also as a book of travels. Dr. Wainwright is both an eager

and acute observer, and his volume bears continual evidence of the

patience with which he investigated for himself, his disregard of

discomfort and danger, and his desire to see with his own eyes what any

eyes had seen. The book is full of information, much of which is

valuable, and all of which is entertaining. The illustrations,

twenty-eight in number, are exceedingly well executed, and are important

aids to the author’s descriptions. The volume is one of the most elegant

that ever the Appletons have issued.

* * * * *

_Sixteen Months in the Gold Diggings. By Daniel B. Woods. New

York: Harper & Brothers. 1 vol. 12mo._

The author of this valuable volume is a man of education and

intelligence, who gives us the results of his observations and

experience during sixteen months of practical mining, and who, as having

written the most sensible book on the subject, deserves to have his

facts and opinions carefully studied by every man who meditates a

California journey. The extravagant expectations formed by most

emigrants have been miserably baulked by the stern realities of the

case, and the plain facts given by Mr. Woods will, we hope, induce the

adventurous portion of the public to pause and reflect before they

undertake an enterprise whose common result is four dollars a day, and

broken health, instead of a fortune.

* * * * *

_The Practical Metal Worker’s Assistant. With Numerous

Engravings on Wood. Containing the Arts of Working all Metals

and Alloys, Forging of Iron and Steel, etc. etc. By Oliver

Byrne. Philadelphia: Henry Carey Baird, Successor to E. L.

Carey._

This is another of the very valuable series of works upon the Arts of

Mechanics, which Mr. Baird has, with great shrewdness, made his own. The

series embraces the whole, or nearly the whole, of the various

mechanical branches of trade, and cannot fail to reach a wide sale, and

to remain standard authorities upon the subjects of which they severally

treat.

* * * * *

GRAHAM’S SMALL-TALK.

Held in his idle moments, with his Readers, Correspondents and Exchanges.

Reader! we have determined to be more familiar with you. We shall talk

right at you, in defiance of any over nice rules. If you like us, we

shall have much to say to you—telling plain truths in our own off-hand

way, and occasionally giving you a punch in the ribs with our

fore-finger, by way of impressment. _Our_ punch, however, is “our own

peculiar”—with but little acid—and may be taken in moderation, without

fear of a headache from its excessive strength. It is new, and though

not as heady as the imported, it costs us no pains of conscience by way

of unpaid duties. Like the old lady’s gingerbread, “it costs nothing to

make, for the molasses is already in the house.” So you may make a meal

on ours, and spices being hot, you will find yourself comfortable

without a bear-skin. Indeed we hope to make “vituals and drink and

pretty good clothes” out of it ourself, and to be vulgar and quote a

proverb, “What is fat for the goose _ought_ to be fat for the gander.”

So you see you are in for a living as long as you read “Graham.” But

whether a person of robust constitution could survive long on the viands

that are served up at some of the other magazine tables, is a question

more in the line of another Graham to answer—who has invented a bran

new way of growing gracefully stout, on the shadow of cabbages, by a

process of “small by degrees and beautifully less.” It is expected that

any fellow who comes to our table shall smoke his cigar, and laugh with

the rest of the company, and not mar the general hilarity by looking

grave (? stupid) and asking when the fun is over—“What is it all

about?”

* * * * *

THAT BILL AGAIN!

[Illustration: A man is seated at a table and a woman presents him with

a magazine.]

_Wife._ Now here is my Graham for February, with 112 pages, as the

editor promised, and you have never sent him that $3. Aint you ashamed

of yourself!

_Husband._ Don’t bother me—I am busy.

_Wife._ Well—the money _shall_ go, as I shall put it in a letter—put a

three cent stamp upon it, and post it this very day.

_Cross Husband._ Money is worth 2 per cent. a month—let the fellow

wait!

Reader—that is the very reason we can’t wait. We are poor, and we want

every dollar. We have a fancy for _short_ paper ourself, now. “Cash on

the nail, or no books.” Having $10,000 at sea, that we should like to

see, of last year’s bright prospects, we shall trust no more, and go in

debt no deeper. Wisdom and Poverty are Fellows in our college.

If Magazine publishers could only, like cotton brokers, draw against

shipments, what a delightful business they would have. But who advances

cash upon snowed-up mails? Who has an available credit in bank, or can

go at the market rates upon over-due subscriptions? Not Graham!

You can’t conceive how agreeable it is not to have a discount—to be

able to look a Bank Director in the face without asking him if “they are

doing any thing now”—to feel perfectly indifferent as to whether your

friend has “any thing over”—to know that you have no interest in the

gold that is going to England—to be able to say to a dun, “look you,

fellow! I have no money, and you know it!”

[Illustration: hand with finger pointing] Mail the money at once, _at

our risk_—Don’t wait for

The Traveling Collector.

_For $10 we send Graham for five years._

* * * * *

A Horrible Deafness.—Godey, in praising the plates of his own number

for January, says, “We have never _heard_ of any other Magazine giving

an original plate.” Well! as we gave _four_ “original engravings” in

January, and three of them from original designs, we have hopes of

working a miracle on Godey. “The eagle suffers little birds to sing.”

* * * * *

Refreshing.—The editor of the International Magazine asserts that as

his German articles are _germaine_ to the American spirit—his is the

most _American_ of all the magazines. A nice Irish bull for a doctor of

divinity. “Cousin! let there be less of this, I pray you.”

The editor of the _Boston Farmer_, wearied with the toils of the field,

turns poet, and comes down upon our December number in the following

epigram. It is evident he is no judge of “picture books.”

Mr. Graham, now don’t you be vexed,

But own up to the insinuation;

You’ve given us _six_ pages of text,

And _fifty_ of mere illustration!

You shall not run the teeth of your poetical harrow over us in that

fashion, Mr. _Farmer_—so here’s at you!

’Tis plain you’re no judge of a baby,

Or ladies that we put much cost on;

Although we’ve no doubt that you may be

A very good farmer—_for Boston_.

Dost think because thou art virtuous there shall be no more cakes and

ale? Why, look you, sir! We were a farmer’s boy ourself once—but we

mowed, reaped, cradled, ploughed, ditched, and chopped wood—we didn’t

write execrable poetry, upon pretty women and innocent children. How are

crops in State Street?

* * * * *

“Bizarre.”—This is the title of a neat periodical—issued in the style

of Dickens’ Household Words, and it is filled with graceful and

sparkling tributes from the pen of Mr. Church, its editor. We have a

right to speak out in meeting about Church, for he was an associate of

ours in Auld Lang Syne—in a daily paper—and we know him. His modest,

gentlemanly demeanor conceals a world of honest good stuff, of which a

dozen literary reputations could be made, if cut up and divided among

the “distinguished contributors” of some periodicals. The readers of the

Bizarre will soon have occasion to admit this.

* * * * *

Arthur’s Home Gazette.—We call the attention of our readers to the

prospectus of this valuable literary Journal; and we do it with the more

heartiness as we have known its editor intimately for many years, and

have known him as one of the most upright, consistent, laborious,

talented, yet modest of our literary men. Mr. Arthur is an earnest, good

man—practically the moral editor he pretends to be—there is no sham or

flummery in his composition, but truthful and fearless, he conducts his

Journal as much as a matter of conscience, as a matter of dollars. He is

totally free, too, of all small jealousies of other people’s

success—but with a keen eye to life and its surroundings, he attends

rigidly to his own concerns, and labors to embody his observations and

experiences, so as to make men wiser and better.

To his well-known ability as an author, Mr. Arthur unites the rare gift

of a capital writer for a journal, seizing with happy tact upon the

passing occurrences of the hour, and so combining them with his own

manly reflections as to give us just views of life and of its

responsibilities, too, at the same glance. In the management of his

journal Mr. A. has had the sagacity to enlist brains—the best writers

are among his regular contributors, and without any parade or pretence,

he quietly issues his sheet each week, teeming with thought, and

overflowing with the generous sentiments of a thorough Christian

gentleman.

If any of our readers desire to see a copy of the Gazette, he will

furnish it upon application—if they desire to subscribe they can have

this Magazine and that paper for $4. We have spoken frankly of Mr.

Arthur and his paper—we have spoken what we believe.

* * * * *

Plain Talk.—It has become fashionable to tell all manner of fibs to the

country by _prospectus_ and editorial personal horn-blowing. We shall

stop this business right off, as if ’twere a sort of gas burner. Why not

tell the whole truth at once, without attempting to throw dust in

people’s eyes about extra pages when there are none—or new fashions,

which are but copies of old French designs—American literature

contributed by English and Swedish writers, or by Mrs. Hall, an Irish

lady. Jonathan is not as stupid as he looks, and we doubt whether there

is much _made_ in attempting to cheat him. So here’s into the

confessional—Jontey, my boy, the plate called “Sweet Sixteen,” in this

number, was not engraved for Graham—and you will observe he does not

say it was—but it cost us $120 for all that, on account of its beauty.

If you have never seen it, you will like it much—if you have, go one

eye on it from an original point of view, and refresh your

admiration—that’s a good boy! If that engraving don’t suit you, look at

Père-la-Chaise, which we paid Rolph, of New York, $175 for engraving; or

admire Devereux’s fine wood-engravings. Then take up the literary

department and read _that_, and if you haven’t got your “quarter’s

worth,” amuse yourself with reading the advertisements on the cover.

* * * * *

The Froth of Small Beer.—One word as to the sly hits at us for engaging

“Mr. James, an English writer.” Well! Mr. James _is_ a writer of

English, and notwithstanding the gnat-like buzzing of small critics who

singe their wings in his light, we think him one of the most agreeable

of all novel writers. He is a gentleman, of modest demeanor, who does

not come to this country to raise a hurrah, or a row, by flattering our

vanity or assailing our foibles. He has settled snugly down on his farm

at Stockbridge, Massachusetts—claims the proper protection of his

property as a resident citizen, by copyrighting his books; and attends

quietly to his own affairs. We paid him $1200 for his novel, and think

it a good one—he is satisfied—we are satisfied—and the readers of

Graham are delighted. So that we hope to survive the small malice of

small men. If Graham lives, he will, before he closes the year 1852,

have the largest list of good paying subscribers that ever blessed a

publisher’s eyes with the sight of dollars, and will show such energy

_in_ “Graham” as will astonish those who imitate, but can never excel,

and whose highest achievement it is, to be looking through a piece of

smoked glass, in the vain hope of seeing an eclipse of Graham’s

Magazine.

* * * * *

Always 112 Pages.—At the risk of being thought a little malicious, as

well as prophetical, we ask of our readers, and of editors with whom we

exchange, to compare the quantity of literary matter in Graham of this

month, with those who endeavor to follow in our footsteps with the

January number, but trip up, or get leg-weary as soon as the number is

published, and the _subscriptions_ are received.

We also ask—and in this we do _not_ think we are impertinent, that our

editorial friends will, in so far as their leisure will permit, look

over Graham before noticing it, even if the notice be delayed a week or

more. We are in no expiring agony or apprehension that we are forgotten

by our exchanges—so we can wait their pleasure about the notice always;

and should prefer a candid expression of sentiment, favorable or

adverse, to any solicited puffery. Indeed, it would be refreshing to be

scored up a little or quizzed once in a while. Only if you have but _a

word_ or _a line_, to say of Graham, don’t bundle him into a bag with

any body! He comes to your table by invitation—so give him his own

plate and knife and fork; and if you treat him to but plain fare, he

will be as jolly as if you champagned him, or killed the fattest

chicken, in your desire to honor his visit with a barbecue.

Our readers, of course, _read_ “Graham”—they can _tell_ their

acquaintances what a happy rascal he is, and how much they miss it by

not having him drop in upon them these long winter evenings. Will you do

this?—each _one_ of you—YOU!

* * * * *

A New Feature.—In addition to, and separate from, the regular review of

new books, we shall introduce a new feature in “Graham”—that of giving

well-chosen chapters of new books—bound volumes which do not readily

find their way into a large circulation—that our readers, far and near,

may be kept _booked_ up in all that appertains to the fresh literature

of the day. In this number, we give a short chapter from Ik Marvel’s new

work—“Dream-Land”—and in subsequent numbers of “Graham,” shall devote

some eight or ten pages to interesting and sparkling chapters or

passages of choice and rare volumes, the proof sheets of which we can

often obtain in advance. The great addition to _the size_ of the

Magazine, readily affords us space for this improvement—and if our

readers receive but half the gratification which we design to impart to

them by this new feature, Graham will be amply rewarded.

* * * * *

The Home Journal.—One of the most delightful of all the journals we

have upon our exchange—and they number _over twelve hundred_—is the

Home Journal of New York, Edited by N. Parker Willis and George P.

Morris, two men whose _names_ are household words, and whose fine genius

seems to expand in its sparkling pages. There is no paper in the country

upon which there is such manifest employment of brain-work or

pains-taking labor—of tact or taste. The editorial page alone will

furnish food, at any time, for a day of pleasant reflection—the whole

sheet, indeed, is the siftings of golden sand. It is a sort of

intellectual placer, where Beauty may grow radiant and wise.

* * * * *

Liberal.—Duval, of The Phœnix, Camden, Ala., offers to exchange his

Weekly with the Daily of the Boston Post, provided Green will publish

his prospectus _six times_. If Green declines that offer he don’t

deserve his name. Duval has a fair hit at the catch-penny affairs which

offer to give an exchange and an “engraving,” (? wood-cut) as a premium

to those who publish a two-column prospectus and get up a club.

It is about time the country press took this matter in hand. We send

“Graham” to whom we please, and if noticed—well, if not—weller. We

shall not die out from exhaustion if an editor with whom we exchange

fails to say that Graham _is_, or is not, “himself again”.

* * * * *

Welcome Brother.—We welcome to the corps editorial of the Magazine

fraternity, John Sartain, Esq., who, with all the blushing honors thick

upon him as an artist of the first ability, comes like another Alexander

to conquer in a new field. We have confidence in Mr. Sartain’s tact and

taste, and look for a very fresh, sparkling and original periodical. Mr.

S. is a disciple of the doctrine of progress—“_onward!_” is his

motto—though all the fiends oppose. He is a revolutionizer, and has

commenced _cutting_ the heads off in style. We don’t want to take off

any thing in Sartain, but if he can “keep it up” long, he must get a new

bat-man for his Puck’s port-folio—not even a Puck could _stand_ that.

* * * * *

Wont Do It.—The State Guard of Wetumpka, Ala., “hopes George R. will

forgive it, for lending “Graham” to six young ladies.” The sin is

unpardonable. Look you—Messrs. Hardy and Stephens! what right have you

to be making love to half a dozen pretty girls? Where are their beaux,

that each of them has not a “Graham” of her own? Inquire into this

business, and report at the next meeting. No young lady has a right to

read “Graham” unless her beau pays the damage.

* * * * *

Godey will find it impossible to get the Mote out of his own eye, when

he contrasts “Sweet Sixteen” in this number with his Americanized

Fashion plates, Our own have a beam of pleasure in them, as we gaze upon

its surpassing loveliness. The original _must be_ a beauty. We have

never seen her—indeed, should never have had this copy, were it not for

_a_ heart in the business, loading us to brave all dangers to conquer.

* * * * *

Robert Morris, of the Inquirer, is a friend that never wavers, but in

sunshine or in storm, his benignant countenance and cheering words are

never wanting Morris must have a rich treasury in the memory of good

deeds done—of kindly words spoken in dark hours to the sad and

desolate—a wealth of remembrance of generous hours, worth all the gold

of misers.

* * * * *

Acknowledged.—Godey had the most beautiful cover on his Magazine for

January that we have ever seen. Having beaten him in our Paris Fashion,

we submit and are penitent.

We shall start a bank with Godey on the profits of our January

numbers—notes to be kept at par for thirty days. There is no joke in

this—it is as serious as Sartain’s fun.

* * * * *

Curious, Isn’t?—They intend, in Kentucky, to blacken the _noses_ of all

convicts, so that if they escape, they may be detected. Pike, of the

Flag, suggests that the operation be extended to all delinquent

subscribers to periodicals and newspapers—he _knows_.

Graham lays down and expounds the law as it _ought to be_ applied to

those who _forget_ to pay up _once a year_.

“Lives there a man with soul so dead

Who _never_ to himself hath said,”

_This_ is _the_ paper—and ’tis read—

I’ll go and pay the printer.

Then let his face be covered o’er,

That he may _face it out_—no more,

But, if he don’t pay up his score,

Remain an _aquatint_—er.

Graham wrote the above under the inspiration of the discovery that he

has over $10,000 due on his books in little California lumps of $3—and

is poorer than he was last year—which he resists, and don’t intend to

stand.

Graham had occasion last year to say, “take your country papers”—and

good doctrine it is, too; he says, _now_ “GO AND PAY FOR THEM!—TIME’S

UP!”

[Illustration]

Reader—this is a mournful picture—a sad evidence of the depravity of

man. This fellow has read, and has allowed his family to read, his

cousins and his neighbors, too, to ponder over, the lessons of wisdom

imparted by “Graham,” and yet for a year, or two years, or more, has not

paid. We are giving him _the Kentucky benediction_! But he has a chance

yet, you see—he must pay up before the next number is out, or we shall

make him as black as Sambo, and _tell you who he is_!

* * * * *

Harry Hazel, the editor, says, “The sailing qualities of ‘The Yankee

Privateer’ come fully up to our expectations. The breezes of popular

opinion are blowing freshly in her favor, and there in every prospect

that she will walk ‘like a thing of life.’” We thought, from her rig and

stowage, that she was a sort of _clipper_—for she has all the good

things in her. We wish her a fresh breeze and flowing _sale_. Harry

offers to “pay liberally for tough yarns.” Here is a chance for the

writers of some of the Magazine Prospectuses—_All hands ahoy!_

* * * * *

Improving.—Brother Harper promises “_one_ or more original articles,”

and “_copious_ selections,” in the new volume.

“One swallow does not make a summer,” nor will one swallow sustain “an

author and his family.”

_Quære._ Whether “Swallow Barn” contains any allusion to authorial

capacity for gulping—Bird could tell.

* * * * *

Delusion Extraordinary.—To suppose that because a man is poor, he has

unlimited credit at bank, and can pay all manner of absurd bills and

drafts at sight—and gold going out at the rate of a million per

steamer, and the rocks in _California_ not all crushed, either.

* * * * *

Minute.—One of the Magazines, in _numbering_ the illustrations for the

month, treats us to the following:

“No. IX. Pattern for Baby’s Cap, _one_ engraving, with directions for

working it in crotchet.”

Who has a nice, small mitten

For a very young kitten?

Charley! I am afraid of your morals.

* * * * *

The Game Won.—Our January number was a “sensation number”—and the

press and the public are in ecstasies with it. “We turn up Jack” with

this number—having but one _point to make_.

* * * * *

Awful.—Snooks wants to know whether we have “still eighty thousand!”

No! we have a very noisy _one hundred and ten_—a good many of them

Temperance folk at that—clamorous for “more—still.”

* * * * *

Sartin.—A cotemporary says, “With the present number we _commence_

securing the copyright of our Magazine.” Where’s the International

Americanized German Frenchman?

* * * * *

A Proper Present.—The New York Tribune, in noticing appropriate gifts

to those we love, at New Year, says, “A year’s subscription to some good

Periodical is an appropriate and excellent gift.”

If you want to pay a delicate attention to your sweet-heart, send her

“Graham.”

* * * * *

Cheap Literature.—A new edition of Cooper’s novels is now in course of

publication in England, _in penny numbers_.

_Husband._ “Economy, my dear, is the source of wealth.”

_Wife._ “I wish, husband, you would go there.”

* * * * *

A “SPLENDID EMBELLISHMENT.”

[Illustration: A silouette of a hatless man, standing with his back

toward a mirror, holding a long barreled shotgun over his shoulder

pointing at the mirror which has been shattered.]

_A distressed black-man_, who seeing the portrait of his ladie-love in a

fashionable magazine, is driven to desperation, and blows the brains out

of—_his master’s best mirror!_—exclaiming, “Dat’s Dinah! _Sartin._”

* * * * *

Curious.—John S. Hart, L. L. D., has retired from the editorship of

Sartain’s Magazine, and the series of very funny religious illustrations

is ended. Sartain who is a graver man, now gives us comic cuts which are

sad enough to make a Momus weep.

* * * * *

Mr. James.—Several witty dogs wish to know “whether Mr. James has _the

solitary horseman_ in the novel now running through the pages of

Graham?” No. Any equestrian fond of solitary rides may put the novel in

his pocket without danger of having “the other fellow” with him.

By the way, the American gentleman mentioned in the opening chapters of

Mr. James’ novel, in the January number, as having first stimulated his

ambition to become a literary man, is our own distinguished countryman

Mr. Washington Irving, as will be seen by the following letter from Mr.

James, addressed to us, in answer to an inquiry upon the subject:

“_Stockbridge, Mass., 15 Dec., 1851._

“My Dear Sir—In answer to your note, inquiring, who was the

American gentleman to whom I alluded in the first part of the

work publishing in your Magazine, called “A Life of

Vicissitudes,” I have no reluctance at all to say that I spoke

of Mr. Washington Irving. My personal regard for that gentleman,

my esteem for him as a man, and my admiration of him as an

author are well known, and it must always be a pleasure to me to

acknowledge that a suggestion from him in early life, led me to

enter upon a career which has been eminently prosperous to

Yours, faithfully,

G. P. R. James.

“_Geo. R. Graham, Esq., Philadelphia._”

* * * * *

Scott’s Weekly Paper.—Scott, the great “Practical Printer” who was bred

in “Alexander’s time,” has, by eating a good deal of it, become a hero

in ours—and survived the decay which usually attaches itself to mortals

who press “the rugged pathway up the steeps of Fame.” He lives on

air—or at least on that _fast_ press which came off with a feed at the

Astor. Hoeing his own row most elegantly, he disdains in ’52 the mean

competition of trade, which leads men to haggle for sixpence profit, but

becomes a prophet himself, and carries out his own predictions.

Scott, last year, having announced a sheet “as big as all out doors”—if

we except one from a Dutch barn in Berks—was accused of endeavoring to

pull down the whole literary temple, like another Sampson—of proceeding

at a gait that would not pay, and of throwing dust in people’s eyes, who

were expected to go it blind. The charge was a plain one—being

delivered by people who use the plain language—the inclined plane—and

Scott, who having lived “in Alexander’s time,” had opportunities to

observe that people who play with “edged tools,” however expert, are apt

to suffer from such familiarity with such hardware—determined, like a

true Caledonian as he is, to make somebody smart for it, and to

“Meet the devil an’ Dundee.”

So, never minding the expense, but paying his price like a man, he

rushed into the fray, shouting his war cry:

“Cock up your beaver,

And cock it fu’ sprush,

We’ll over the border

And gie them a brush;

There’s something there

We’ll teach better behavior—

Hey, brave Johnnie lad,

Cock up your beaver.”

The foe, who in all his life was no “devil,” soon found his head in

chancery, and “suffered some”—as “the Fancy” say—realizing, too, the

proverb, “that listeners hear no good of themselves” in the freedom of

debate of a legal set-to.

Having witnessed the fight, and delivered a few hints in this game of

cross-purposes, we are testimony. In fact, we are rather more driven to

test other people’s money, now, than to handle our own. The battle was

not drawn—but a check for $500 was—to put a check upon future

proceedings out of the pale of equity—and Scott was conqueror!

“So said—so done—he made no more remark,

Nor waited for replies;

But marched off with his prize—

Leaving the vanquished merchants in the dark.”

Most men would have reposed upon their laurels, and considered the glory

sufficient, but the redoubted cotemporary of Alexander now “carries the

war into Africa,” and in abounding greatness—“very like a whale”—“_a

Leviathan_” great, he comes forth a terror to see.

There is nothing like Scott in the museum—indeed, he is a museum in

himself and a whole circulating-library in the bargain. He counts more

feet of paper than any poet could measure in a month, and threatens to

stop the supply of all small dealers. The rumor that Scott has

_purchased_ a paper-mill, is, we are assured, “an invention of the

enemy”—having been successful in one mill, he turns his thoughts to the

million, and _feels_ a good deal like Park Benjamin, when he exclaims,

“The whole boundless continent is ours!”

Though nobody ever believed Park, for he was never with Alexander in his

campaigns, when he took the world by arts—not arms. Not “The New

World,” for that was rather heavy. We speak the truth—but speak it in

sadness, Park! for the day of “first-rate notices is over”—unless Scott

chooses to call this “one of ’em”—and this is over.

* * * * *

The “Rival Captives.”—This story—the publication of which we were

obliged to suspend in November, in consequence of the severe illness of

the author—we shall conclude in our next issue; the _last part_ having

reached us too late for this number.

* * * * *

_Freas_, of the Germantown Telegraph, has justified his name, like a

good printer, as he is, and has locked up his notice of our January

number, in the ice, somewhere. His paper of Dec. 24th has never reached

us, breaking our file, and the heart, too, of a very lovely woman.

* * * * *

A loss.—Some of the most beautiful engravings printed up and intended

for forthcoming numbers of Graham’s Magazine, were ruined by the fire at

Hart’s Building. Graham was in the same predicament himself once, but he

rose like a phœnix from the ashes. He has already selected some of his

most beautiful original drawings and engravings, and has artists and

copper-plate printers at work night and day. Graham will be as handsome

as ever when he appears, and will be called “sweet” by whole bevies of

pretty girls. It is a fact worthy of mention, that there is not upon the

whole list of Graham a single ugly woman. There is something in

philosophy about _attraction_ and _repellents_, (or ought to be,) which

our friend Bird, of the North American, could _tell_ all about, but

which we realize in being surrounded by “a _blaze_ of beauty,” which

used to light Godey’s path when he was younger. It is astonishing how

popular Magazine publishers are when they are young! But Godey has been

“_a publisher_ for twenty-two years!” _Shocking!_ Yet there is

consolation in this, too, for some of the Magazines will never be able

to imitate Godey in that “feature”—we’ll bet a “dollar” on’t.

* * * * *

If people will say handsome things of “Graham,” the public must know it.

S. A. Godman, of South Carolina, has the following in his last week’s

paper:

“The Best of the Monthlies.”—We always have had a partiality for

Graham. Years agone, before we ever dreamed of inditing a line for the

printer, many and many are the pleasant hours we have spent, beguiled

from all surrounding things, by the captivating articles with which

Graham, by an art known only to himself, has for years past kept his

Magazine—filled. In the days of our juvenility, too, not a few thoughts

have we spent, wondering what manner of man he was, who could thus

monthly gather together such an amount of valuable and interesting

reading matter—to say nothing of the choice embellishments that

accompanied it. And, in after times, when we had the pleasure of forming

his acquaintance, we found that the pictures of the imagination had

scarcely done justice, fairly drawn as they were, to the original—for,

than George R. Graham, there is not a more whole-souled, liberal,

generous, or enterprising man in the Union. With a kindness that has no

ebb, he is ever ready to appreciate merit in the young, and by his

means, and through his encouragement, have some of the best authors that

America can now boast of been induced to launch their barks—which since

have made such successful voyages—upon the sea of public opinion. His

liberality, too, keeps pace with his kindness—and instead of

endeavoring to underrate the value of brain-labor—he always stretches

his figures to the utmost limits of prudence—and whilst he advises like

a friend, he pays like a prince. Success, then, say we, to Graham, and

his Magazine! They both deserve it! And with a people so prompt to

perceive, and so ready to reward merit, as are the inhabitants of the

Southern States, to be encouraged, it is only necessary to deserve

encouragement.

“Graham’s great rival now is Harper’s Magazine. But the palm by rights,

and all odds, belongs to the former. For whilst his January number now

lying before us, is equal to Harper’s in the amount and quality of its

literary contents, it far exceeds it in beauty of illustration—and in

the fact that its contributors are all honestly paid for their

labors.”—_Illustrated Family Friend, Columbia, S. C._

* * * * *

Graham’s Magazine.—The January number of Graham is incomparably the

most magnificent periodical ever issued from the American press.

_Gazette, Bellefontaine, Ohio._

CUT OFF,

AND

SHUT OUT.

[Illustration: A silouette of a man wearing a tophat, looking upward

while standing in front of a door, and holding the severed end of a

bell-rope in his hand.]

A young gentleman, who had failed to pay up for Graham, finds on

visiting the lady of his heart, that the bell-rope is cut, and the door

shut in his face. She having been notified that he had received _the

Kentucky benediction_. That is the word, and this the _style, now_.

Godey’s “Americanized Paris Fashions” are no touch to this—not half as

“truthful.”

* * * * *

Transcriber’s Notes:

Table of Contents has been added for reader convenience. Archaic

spellings and hyphenation have been retained. Obvious typesetting and

punctuation errors have been corrected without note. Other errors have

been corrected as noted below. For illustrations, some caption text may

be missing or incomplete due to condition of the originals available for

preparation of the eBook.

page 134, Father Bonneville. Sautane ==> Father Bonneville. Soutane

page 135, man or a paltroon, ==> man or a poltroon,

page 136, was gone we eat and ==> was gone we ate and

page 147, horses were unharnassed ==> horses were unharnessed

page 153, fearful _denouement_ of the ==> fearful _dénouement_ of the

page 153, whose näive and delicious ==> whose naïve and delicious

page 158, they had have little rest ==> they have had little rest

page 171, each others arms—and ==> each other’s arms—and

page 178, deep red dies of even ==> deep red dyes of even

page 189, of earlier day’s seemed ==> of earlier days seemed

page 216, joy of the angel’s ==> joy of the angels

page 219, Mobby-Dick; or The Whale. ==> Moby-Dick; or The Whale.

[End of Graham’s Magazine, Vol. XL, No. 2, February 1852]