So 's 't all the country dreads me onct a week,
But I 've consid'ble o' thet sort o' head
Thet sets to home an' thinks wut _might_ be said,
The sense thet grows an' werrits underneath,
Comin' belated like your wisdom-teeth,
An' git so el'kent, sometimes, to my gardin
Thet I don' vally public life a fardin'.
Our Parson Wilbur (blessin's on his head!)
'Mongst other stories of ole times he hed,
Talked of a feller thet rehearsed his spreads
Beforehan' to his rows o' kebbige-heads,
(Ef 'twarn't Demossenes, I guess 'twuz Sisro,)
Appealin' fust to thet an' then to this row,
Accordin' ez he thought thet his idees
Their diff'runt ev'riges o' brains 'ould please;
"An'," sez the Parson, "to hit right, you must
Git used to maysurin' your hearers fust;
For, take my word for 't when all 's come an' past,
The kebbige-heads 'll cair the day et last;
Th' ain't ben a meetin' sense the worl' begun
But they made (raw or biled ones) ten to one."
I 've allus foun' 'em, I allow, sence then
About ez good for talkin' to ez men;
They 'll take edvice, like other folks, to keep,
(To use it 'ould be holdin' on 't tu cheap,)
They listen wal, don' kick up when you scold 'em,
An' ef they 've tongues, hev sense enough to hold 'em;
Though th' ain't no denger we shall loose the breed,
I gin'lly keep a score or so for seed,
An' when my sappiness gits spry in spring
So 's 't my tongue itches to run on full swing,
I fin' 'em ready-planted in March-meetin',
Warm ez a lyceum-audience in their greetin',
An' pleased to hear my spoutin' frum the fence,--
Comin', ez 't doos, entirely free 'f expense.
This year I made the follerin' observations
Extrump'ry, like most other tri'ls o' patience,
An', no reporters bein' sent express
To work their abstrac's up into a mess
Ez like th' oridg'nal ez a woodcut pictur'
Thet chokes the life out like a boy-constrictor,
I've writ 'em out, an' so avide all jeal'sies
'Twixt nonsense o' my own an' some one's else's.
My feller kebbige-heads, who look so green,
I vow to gracious thet ef I could dreen
The world of all its hearers but jest you,
'T would leave 'bout all tha' is wuth talkin' to,
An' you, my venerable frien's, thet show
Upon your crowns a sprinklin' o' March snow,
Ez ef mild Time had christened every sense
For wisdom's church o' second innocence,
Nut Age's winter, no, no sech a thing,
But jest a kin' o' slippin'-back o' spring,--
We 've gathered here, ez ushle, to decide
Which is the Lord's an' which is Satan's side,
Coz all the good or evil thet can heppen
Is 'long o' which on 'em you choose for Cappen.
Aprul 's come back; the swellin' buds of oak
Dim the fur hillsides with a purplish smoke;
The brooks are loose an', singing to be seen,
(Like gals,) make all the hollers soft an' green;
The birds are here, for all the season 's late;
They take the sun's height an' don' never wait;
Soon 'z he officially declares it 's spring
Their light hearts lift 'em on a north'ard wing,
An' th'ain't an acre, fur ez you can hear,
Can't by the music tell the time o' year;
But thet white dove Carliny scared away,
Five year ago, jes' sech an Aprul day;
Peace, that we hoped 'ould come an' build last year
An' coo by every housedoor, is n't here,--
No, nor won't never be, for all our jaw,
Till we 're ez brave in pol'tics ez in war!
O Lord, ef folks wuz made so 's 't they could see
The bagnet-pint there is to an idee!
Ten times the danger in 'em th' is in steel;
They run your soul thru an' you never feel,
But crawl about an' seem to think you 're livin',
Poor shells o' men, nut wuth the Lord's forgivin',
Till you come bunt agin a real live fact,
An' go to pieces when you 'd ough' to act!
Thet kin' o' begnet 's wut we 're crossin' now,
An' no man, fit to nevvigate a scow,
'Ould stan' expectin' help from Kingdom Come
While t' other side druv their cold iron home.
My frien's, you never gethered from my mouth,
No, nut one word ag'in the South ez South,
Nor th' ain't a livin' man, white, brown, nor black,
Gladder 'n wut I should be to take 'em back;
But all I ask of Uncle Sam is fust
To write up on his door, "No goods on trust";
Give us cash down in ekle laws for all,
An' they 'll be snug inside afore nex' fall.
Give wut they ask, an' we shell hev Jamaker,
Wuth minus some consid'able an acre;
Give wut they need, an' we shell git 'fore long
A nation all one piece, rich, peacefle, strong;
Make 'em Amerikin, an' they'll begin
To love their country ez they loved their sin;
Let 'em stay Southun, an' you 've kep' a sore
Ready to fester ez it done afore.
No mortle man can boast of perfic' vision,
But the one moleblin' thing is Indecision,
An' th' ain't no futur' for the man nor state
Thet out of j-u-s-t can't spell great.
Some folks 'ould call thet reddikle; do you?
'T wuz commonsense afore the war wuz thru;
_Thet_ loaded all our guns an' made 'em speak
So 's 't Europe heared 'em clearn acrost the creek;
"They 're drivin' o' their spiles down now," sez she,
To the hard grennit o' God's fust idee;
"Ef they reach thet, Democ'cy need n't fear
The tallest airthquakes _we_ can git up here."
Some call 't insultin' to ask _ary_ pledge,
An' say 't will only set their teeth on edge,
But folks you 've jest licked, fur 'z I ever see,
Are 'bout ez mad ez they know how to be;
It 's better than the Rebs themselves expected
'Fore they see Uncle Sam wilt down henpected;
Be kind 'z you please, but fustly make things fast,
For plain Truth 's all the kindness thet 'll last;
Ef treason is a crime, ez _some_ folks say,
How could we punish it a milder way
Than sayin' to 'em, "Brethren, lookee here,
We 'll jes' divide things with ye, sheer an' sheer,
An' sence both come o' pooty strongbacked daddies,
You take the Darkies, ez we 've took the Paddies;
Ign'ant an' poor we took 'em by the hand,
An' the 're the bones an' sinners o' the land."
I ain't o' those thet fancy there 's a loss on
Every inves'ment thet don't start from Bos'on;
But I know this: our money 's safest trusted
In sunthin', come wut will, thet _can't_ be busted,
An' thet 's the old Amerikin idee,
To make a man a Man an' let him be.
Ez for their l'yalty, don't take a goad to 't,
But I do' want to block their only road to 't
By lettin' 'em believe thet they can git
More 'n wut they lost, out of our little wit:
I tell ye wut, I 'm 'fraid we 'll drif' to leeward
'Thout we can put more stiffenin' into Seward;
He seems to think Columby 'd better act
Like a scared widder with a boy stiff-necked
Thet stomps an' swears he wun't come in to supper;
She mus' set up for him, ez weak ez Tupper,
Keepin' the Constitootion on to warm,
Till he 'll accept her 'pologies in form:
The neighbors tell her he 's a cross-grained cuss
Thet needs a hidin' 'fore he comes to wus;
"No," sez Ma Seward, "he 's ez good 'z the best,
All he wants now is sugar-plums an' rest";
"He sarsed my Pa," sez one; "He stoned my son,"
Another edds. "O, wal, 't wuz jest his fun."
"He tried to shoot our Uncle Samwell dead."
"'T wuz only tryin' a noo gun he hed."
"Wal, all we ask 's to hev it understood
You'll take his gun away from him for good;
We don't, wal, nut exac'ly, like his play,
Seein' he allus kin' o' shoots our way.
You kill your fatted calves to no good eend,
'Thout his fust sayin', 'Mother, I hev' sinned!'"
The Pres'dunt _he_ thinks thet the slickest plan
'Ould be t' allow thet he 's our only man,
An' thet we fit thru all thet dreffle war
Jes' for his private glory an' eclor;
"Nobody ain't a Union man," sez he,
"'Thout he agrees, thru thick an' thin, with me;
War n't Andrew Jackson's 'nitials jes' like mine?
An' ain't thet sunthin' like a right divine
To cut up ez kentenkerous ez I please,
An' treat your Congress like a nest o' fleas?"
Wal, I expec' the People would n' care, if
The question now wuz techin' bank or tariff,
But I conclude they 've 'bout made up their mind
This ain't the fittest time to go it blind,
Nor these ain't metters thet with pol'tics swings,
But goes 'way down amongst the roots o' things;
Coz Sumner talked o' whitewashin' one day
They wun't let four years' war be throwed away.
"Let the South hev her rights?" They say, "Thet's you!
But nut greb hold of other folks's tu."
Who owns this country, is it they or Andy?
Leastways it ough' to be the People _and_ he;
Let him be senior pardner, ef he 's so,
But let them kin' o' smuggle in ez Co;
Did he diskiver it? Consid'ble numbers
Think thet the job wuz taken by Columbus.
Did he set tu an' make it wut it is?
Ef so, I guess the One-Man-power _hez_ riz.
Did he put thru' the rebbles, clear the docket,
An' pay th' expenses out of his own pocket?
Ef thet 's the case, then everythin' I exes
Is t' hev him come an' pay my ennooal texes.
Was 't he thet shou'dered all them million guns?
Did he lose all the fathers, brothers, sons?
Is this ere pop'lar gov'ment thet we run
A kin' o' sulky, made to kerry one?
An' is the country goin' to knuckle down
To hev Smith sort their letters 'stid o' Brown?
Who wuz the 'Nited States 'fore Richmon' fell?
Wuz the South needfle their full name to spell?
An' can't we spell it in thet short-han' way
Till th' underpinnin' 's settled so 's to stay?
Who cares for the Resolves of '61,
Thet tried to coax an airthquake with a bun?
Hez act'ly nothin' taken place sence then
To l'arn folks they must hendle facts like men?
Ain't _this_ the true p'int? Did the Rebs accep' 'em?
Ef nut, whose fault is 't thet we hev n't kep' 'em?
War n't there _two_ sides? an' don't it stend to reason
Thet this week's 'Nited States ain't las' week's treason?
When all these sums is done, with nothin' missed,
An' nut afore, this school 'll be dismissed.
I knowed ez wal ez though I 'd seen 't with eyes
Thet when the war wuz over copper 'd rise,
An' thet we 'd hev a rile-up in our kettle
'T would need Leviathan's whole skin to settle;
I thought 't would take about a generation
'Fore we could wal begin to be a nation,
But I allow I never did imegine
'T would be our Pres'dunt thet 'ould drive a wedge in
To keep the split from closin' ef it could,
An' healin' over with new wholesome wood;
For th' ain't no chance o' healin' while they think
Thet law an' gov'ment 's only printer's ink;
I mus' confess I thank him for discoverin'
The curus way in which the States are sovereign;
They ain't nut _quite_ enough so to rebel,
But, when they fin' it 's costly to raise h----,
Why, then, for jes' the same superl'tive reason,
They 're most too much so to be tetched for treason;
They _can't_ go out, but ef they somehow _du_,
Their sovereignty don't noways go out tu;
The State goes out, the sovereignty don't stir,
But stays to keep the door ajar for her.
He thinks secession never took 'em out,
An' mebby he 's correc', but I misdoubt;
Ef they war n't out, then why, 'n the name o' sin,
Make all this row 'bout lettin' of 'em in?
In law, p'r'aps nut; but there 's a diffurence, ruther,
Betwixt your brother-'n-law an' real brother,
An' I, for one, shall wish they 'd all ben _som'eres_,
Long 'z U. S. Texes are sech reg'lar comers.
But, O my patience! must we wriggle back
Into th' ole crooked, pettyfoggin' track,
When our artil'ry-wheels a road hev cut
Stret to our purpose ef we keep the rut?
War 's jes' dead waste excep' to wipe the slate
Clean for the cyph'rin' of some nobler fate.
Ez for dependin' on their oaths an' thet,
'T wun't bind 'em more 'n the ribbin roun' my het;
I heared a fable once from Othniel Starns,
Thet pints it slick ez weathercocks do barns:
Once on a time the wolves hed certing rights
Inside the fold; they used to sleep there nights,
An', bein' cousins o' the dogs, they took
Their turns et watchin', reg'lar ez a book;
But somehow, when the dogs hed gut asleep,
Their love o' mutton beat their love o' sheep,
Till gradilly the shepherds come to see
Things war n't agoin' ez they 'd ough' to be;
So they sent off a deacon to remonstrate
Along 'th the wolves an' urge 'em to go on straight;
They did n' seem to set much by the deacon,
Nor preachin' did n' cow 'em, nut to speak on;
Fin'ly they swore thet they 'd go out an' stay,
An' hev their fill o' mutton every day:
Then dogs an' shepherds, arter much hard dammin',
Turned tu an' give 'em a tormented lammin',
An' sez, "Ye sha' n't go out, the murrain rot ye,
To keep us wastin' half our time to watch ye!"
But then the question come, How live together
'Thout losin' sleep, nor nary yew nor wether?
Now there wuz some dogs (noways wuth their keep)
Thet sheered their cousins' tastes an' sheered the sheep;
They sez, "Be gin'rous, let 'em swear right in,
An', ef they backslide, let 'em swear ag'in;
Jes' let 'em put on sheep-skins whilst they 're swearin';
To ask for more 'ould be beyond all bearin'."
"Be gin'rous for yourselves, where _you_ 're to pay,
Thet 's the best practice," sez a shepherd gray;
"Ez for their oaths they wun't be wuth a button,
Long 'z you don't cure 'em o' their taste for mutton;
Th' ain't but one solid way, howe'er you puzzle:
Till they 're convarted, let 'em wear a muzzle."
I 've noticed thet each half-baked scheme's abetters
Are in the hebbit o' producin' letters
Writ by all sorts o' never-heared-on fellers,
'Bout ez oridge'nal ez the wind in bellers;
I 've noticed, tu, it 's the quack med'cines gits
(An' needs) the grettest heaps o' stiffykits;
Now, sence I lef' off creepin' on all fours,
I ha' n't ast no man to endorse my course;
It 's full ez cheap to be your own endorser,
An' ef I 've made a cup, I 'll fin' the saucer;
But I 've some letters here from t' other side,
An' them 's the sort thet helps me to decide;
Tell me for wut the copper-comp'nies hanker,
An' I 'll tell you jest where it 's safe to anchor.
Fus'ly the Hon'ble B. O. Sawin writes
Thet for a spell he could n' sleep o' nights,
Puzzlin' which side wuz preudentest to pin to,
Which wuz th' ole homestead, which the temp'ry leanto;
Et fust he jedged 't would right-side-up his pan
To come out ez a 'ridge'nal Union man,
"But now," he sez, "I ain't nut quite so fresh;
The winnin' horse is goin' to be Secesh;
You might, las' spring, hev eas'ly walked the course,
'Fore we contrived to doctor th' Union horse;
Now _we_ 're the ones to walk aroun' the nex' track:
Jest you take hold an' read the follerin' extrac',
Out of a letter I received last week
From an ole frien' thet never sprung a leak,
A Nothun Dem'crat o' th' ole Jarsey blue,
Born coppersheathed an' copperfastened tu."
"These four years past, it hez been tough
To say which side a feller went for;
Guideposts all gone, roads muddy 'n' rough,
An' nothin' duin' wut 't wuz meant for;
Pickets afirin' left an' right,
Both sides a lettin' rip et sight,--
Life war n't wuth hardly payin' rent for.
"Columby gut her back up so,
It war n't no use a tryin' to stop her,--
War's emptin's riled her very dough
An' made it rise an' act improper;
'T wuz full ez much ez I could du
To jes' lay low an' worry thru',
'Thout hevin' to sell out my copper.
"Afore the war your mod'rit men
Could set an' sun 'em on the fences,
Cyph'rin' the chances up, an' then
Jump off which way bes' paid expenses;
Sence, 't wuz so resky ary way,
_I_ did n't hardly darst to say
I 'greed with Paley's Evidences.
"Ask Mac ef tryin' to set the fence
War n't like bein' rid upon a rail on 't,
Headin' your party with a sense
O' bein' tipjint in the tail on 't,
And tryin' to think thet, on the whole,
You kin' o' quasi own your soul
When Belmont's gut a bill o' sale on 't?
"Come peace, I sposed thet folks 'ould like
Their pol'tics done ag'in by proxy,
Give their noo loves the bag an' strike
A fresh trade with their reg'lar doxy;
But the drag 's broke, now slavery 's gone,
An' there 's gret resk they 'll blunder on,
Ef they ain't stopped, to real Democ'cy.
"We've gut an awful row to hoe
In this 'ere job o' reconstructin';
Folks dunno skurce which way to go,
Where th' ain't some boghole to be ducked in;
But one thing 's clear; there _is_ a crack,
Ef we pry hard, 'twixt white an' black,
Where the old makebate can be tucked in.
"No white man sets in airth's broad aisle
Thet I ain't willin' t' own az brother,
An' ef he 's heppened to strike ile,
I dunno, fin'ly, but I 'd ruther;
An' Paddies, long 'z they vote all right,
Though they ain't jest a nat'ral white,
I hold one on 'em good 'z another.
"Wut _is_ there lef' I 'd like to know,
Ef 't ain't the difference o' color,
To keep up self-respec' an' show
The human natur' of a fullah?
Wut good in bein' white, onless
It 's fixed by law, nut lef' to guess,
Thet we are smarter an' they duller?
"Ef we 're to hev our ekle rights,
'T wunt du to 'low no competition;
Th' ole debt doo us for bein' whites
Ain't safe onless we stop th' emission
O' these noo notes, whose specie base
Is human natur', 'thout no trace
O' shape, nor color, nor condition.
"So fur I 'd writ an' could n' jedge
Aboard wut boat I 'd best take pessige,
My brains all mincemeat, 'thout no edge
Upon 'em more than tu a sessige,
But now it seems ez though I see
Sunthin' resemblin' an idee,
Sence Johnson's speech an' veto message.
"I like the speech best, I confess,
The logic, preudence, an' good taste on 't,
An' it 's so mad, I ruther guess
There 's some dependence to be placed on 't;
It 's narrer, but 'twixt you an' me,
Out o' the allies o' J. D.
A temp'ry party can be based on 't.
"Jes' to hold on till Johnson's thru'
An' dug his Presidential grave is,
An' _then_!--who knows but we could slew
The country roun' to put in ----?
Wun't some folks rare up when we pull
Out o' their eyes our Union wool
An' larn 'em wut a p'lit'cle shave is!
"O, did it seem 'z ef Providunce
_Could_ ever send a second Tyler?
To see the South all back to once,
Reapin' the spiles o' the Freesiler,
Is cute ez though an engineer
Should claim th' old iron for his sheer
Because 't wuz him that bust the biler!"
Thet tells the story! Thet 's wut we shall git
By tryin' squirtguns on the burnin' Pit;
For the day never comes when it 'll du
To kick off Dooty like a worn-out shoe.
I seem to hear a whisperin' in the air,
A sighin' like, of unconsoled despair,
Thet comes from nowhere an' from everywhere,
An' seems to say, "Why died we? war n't it, then,
To settle, once for all, thet men wuz men?
O, airth's sweet cup snetched from us barely tasted,
The grave's real chill is feelin' life wuz wasted!
O, you we lef, long-lingerin' et the door,
Lovin' you best, coz we loved Her the more,
Thet Death, not we, had conquered, we should feel
Ef she upon our memory turned her heel,
An' unregretful throwed us all away
To flaunt it in a Blind Man's Holiday!"
My frien's, I 've talked nigh on to long enough.
I hain't no call to bore ye coz ye 're tough;
My lungs are sound, an' our own v'ice delights
Our ears, but even kebbigeheads hez rights.
It 's the las' time thet I shell e'er address ye,
But you 'll soon fin' some new tormentor: bless ye!
QUESTION OF MONUMENTS.
In the beautiful life which the English-speaking foreigners lead at
Rome, the great sensations are purely æsthetic. To people who know one
another so familiarly as must the members of a community united in a
strange land by the ties of alien race, language, and religion, there
cannot, of course, be wanting the little excitements of personal gossip
and scandal; but even these have generally an innocent, artistic flavor,
and it is ladies' statues, not reputations, which suffer,--gentlemen's
pictures, not characters, which are called into question; while the
events which interest the whole community are altogether different from
those which move us at home. In the Capital of the Past, people meeting
at the _café_, or at the tea-tables of lady-acquaintance, speak, before
falling upon the works of absent friends, concerning the antique jewel
which Castellani lately bought of a peasant, and intends to reproduce,
for the delight of all who can afford to love the quaint and exquisite
forms of the ancient workers in gems and gold; or they talk of that
famous statue of the young Hercules, dug up by the lucky proprietor, who
received from the Pope a marquisate, and forgiveness of all his debts,
in return for his gift of the gilded treasure. At the worst these happy
children of art, and their cousins the connoisseurs, (every
English-speaking foreigner in Rome is of one class or the other,) are
only drawn from the debate of such themes by some dramatic aspect of the
picturesque Roman politics: a scene between the French commandant and
Antonelli, or the arrest of a restaurateur for giving his guests white
turnips, red beets, and green beans in the same revolutionary plate; or
the like incident.
At home, here, in the multiplicity of our rude affairs, by what widely
different events and topics are we excited to talk! It must be some
occurrence of very terrible, vile, or grotesque effect that can take our
minds from our business. We discuss the ghastly particulars of a
steamboat explosion, or the evidence in a trial for murder; or if the
chief magistrate addresses his fellow-citizens in his colloquial, yet
dignified way, we dispute whether he was not, at the time of the speech,
a martyr to those life-long habits of abstinence from which he is known
to have once suffered calamities spared the confirmed wine-bibber. Once,
indeed, we seemed as a nation to rise to the appreciation of those
beautiful interests which occupy our Roman friends, and once, not a
great while ago, we may be said to have known an æsthetic sensation. For
the first time in our history as a people, we seemed to feel the
necessity of art, and to regard it as a living interest, like commerce,
or manufacturing, or mining, when, shortly after the close of the war,
and succeeding the fall of the last and greatest of its dead, the
country expressed a universal desire to commemorate its heroes by the
aid of art. But we do not husband our sensations as our Roman friends do
theirs: the young Hercules lasted them two months, while a divorce case
hardly satisfies us as many days, and a railroad accident not longer. We
hasten from one event to another, and it would be hard to tell now
whether it was a collision on the Saint Jo line, or a hundred and thirty
lives lost on the Mississippi, or some pleasantry from our merry Andrew,
which distracted the public mind from the subject of monumental honors.
It is certain, however, that, at the time alluded to, there was much
talk of such things in the newspapers and in the meetings. A popular
subscription was opened for the erection of a monument to Abraham
Lincoln at his home in Springfield; each city was about to celebrate him
by a statue in its public square; every village would have his bust or a
funeral tablet; and our soldiers were to be paid the like reverence and
homage. Then the whole affair was overwhelmed by some wave of novel
excitement, and passed out of the thoughts of the people; so that we
feel, in recurring to it now, like him who, at dinner, turns awkwardly
back to a subject from which the conversation has gracefully wandered,
saying, "We were speaking just now about"--something the company has
already forgotten. So far as we have learned, not an order for any
memorial sculpture of Lincoln has been given in the whole country, and
we believe that only one design by an American sculptor has been offered
for the Springfield monument. There is time, however, to multiply
designs; for the subscription, having reached a scant fifty thousand
dollars, rests at that sum, and rises no higher.
But we hope that the people will not altogether relinquish the purpose
of monumental commemoration of the war, and we are not wholly inclined
to lament that the fever-heat of their first intent exhausted itself in
dreams of shafts and obelisks, groups and statues, which would probably
have borne as much relation to the real idea of Lincoln's life, and the
war and time which his memory embodies and represents, as the poetry of
the war has borne. In the cool moments of our convalescence from civil
disorder, may we not think a little more clearly, and choose rather more
wisely than would have been possible earlier?
No doubt there is in every epoch a master-feeling which art must obey,
if it would flourish, and remain to represent something intelligible
after the epoch is past. We know by the Gothic churches of Italy how
mightily the whole people of that land were once moved by the impulses
of their religion (which might be, and certainly was, a thing very
different from purity and goodness): the Renaissance temples remind us
of a studious period passionately enamored of the classic past; in the
rococo architecture and sculpture of a later time, we have the idle
swagger, the unmeaning splendor, the lawless luxury, of an age corrupted
by its own opulence, and proud of its licentious slavery. Had anything
come of the æsthetic sensation immediately following the war, and the
spirit of martial pride with which it was so largely mixed, we should
probably have had a much greater standing-army in bronze and marble than
would have been needed for the suppression of any future rebellion. An
excitement, a tumult, not a tendency of our civilization, would thus
have been perpetuated, to misrepresent us and our age to posterity; for
we are not a military people, (though we certainly know how to fight
upon occasion,) and the pride which we felt in our army as a body, and
in the men merely as soldiers, was an exultation which has already in a
great part subsided. Indeed, the brave fellows have themselves meantime
given us a lesson, in the haste they have made to put off their
soldier-costume and resume the free and individual dress of the
civilian. The ignorant poets might pipe of the glory and splendor of
war, but these men had seen the laurel growing on the battle-field, and
knew
"Di che lagrime grondi e di che sangue"
its dazzling foliage. They knew that the fighting, in itself horrible,
and only sublime in its necessity and purpose, was but a minor part of
the struggle; and they gladly put aside all that proclaimed it as their
vocation, and returned to the arts of peace.
The idea of our war seems to have interpreted itself to us all as faith
in the justice of our cause, and in our immutable destiny, as God's
agents, to give freedom to mankind; and the ideas of our peace are
gratitude and exultant industry. Somehow, we imagine, these ideas should
be represented in every memorial work of the time, though we should be
sorry to have this done by the dreary means of conventional allegory. A
military despotism of martial statues would be far better than a
demagogy of these virtues, posed in their well-known attitudes, to
confront perplexed posterity with lifted brows and superhuman simpers. A
sublime parable, like Ward's statue of the Freedman, is the full
expression of one idea that should be commemorated, and would better
celebrate the great deeds of our soldiers than bass-reliefs of battles,
and statues of captains, and groups of privates, or many
scantily-draped, improper figures, happily called Liberties.
With the people chosen to keep pure the instinct of the Beautiful, as
the Hebrews were chosen to preserve a knowledge of the Divine, it was
not felt that commemorative art need be descriptive. He who triumphed
the first and second time in the Olympic games was honored with a
statue, but not a statue in his own likeness. Neither need the
commemorative art of our time be directly descriptive of the actions it
celebrates. There is hardly any work of beautiful use which cannot be
made to serve the pride we feel in those who fought to enlarge and
confirm the freedom of our country, and we need only guard that our
monuments shall in no case express funereal sentiment. Their place
should be, not in the cemeteries, but in the busy hearts of towns, and
they should celebrate not only those who fought and died for us in the
war, but also those who fought and lived, for both are equally worthy of
gratitude and honor. The ruling sentiment of our time is triumphant and
trustful, and all symbols and images of death are alien to it.
While the commemoration of the late President may chiefly take visible
shape at the capital, or at Springfield, near the quiet home from which
he was called to his great glory, the era of which he was so grand a
part should be remembered by some work of art in every community. The
perpetuation of the heroic memories should in all cases, it seems to us,
be committed to the plastic arts, and not, as some would advise, to any
less tangible witness to our love for them. It is true that a community
might endow a charity, to be called forever by some name that would
celebrate them, or might worthily record its reverence for them by
purchase of a scholarship to be given in our heroes' names to
generations of struggling scholars of the place. But the poor we have
always with us; while this seems the rare occasion meant for the plastic
arts to supply our need of beautiful architecture and sculpture, and to
prove their right to citizenship among us, by showing themselves
adequate to express something of the spirit of the new order we have
created here. Their effort need not, however, be toward novel forms of
expression. That small part of our literature which has best answered
the want of our national life has been the most jealous in its regard
for the gospels of art, and only incoherent mediums and false prophets
have disdained revelation. Let the plastic arts, in proving that they
have suffered the change which has come upon races, ethics, and ideas in
this new world, interpret for us that simple and direct sense of the
beautiful which lies hidden in the letter of use. There is the great,
overgrown, weary town of Workdays, which inadequately struggled at the
time of our national æsthetic sensation, in all its newspapers, pulpits,
and rostrums, with the idea of a monument to the regiments it sent to
the war. The evident and immediate want of Workdays is a park or public
garden, in which it can walk about, and cool and restore itself. Why
should not the plastic arts suggest that the best monument which
Workdays could build would be this park, with a great triumphal gateway
inscribed to its soldiers, and adorned with that sculpture and
architecture for which Workdays can readily pay? The flourishing village
of Spindles, having outgrown the days of town-pumps and troughs, has
not, in spite of its abundant water-power, a drop of water on its public
ways to save its operatives from drunkenness or its dogs from madness. O
plastic arts! give Spindles a commemorative fountain, which, taking a
little music from the mills, shall sing its heroes forever in drops of
health, refreshment, and mercy. In the inquiring town of Innovation,
successive tides of doubt and revival and spiritualism have left the
different religious sects with little more than their names; let
Innovation build a votive church to the memory of the Innovators sent to
the war, and meet in it for harmonious public worship. At Dulboys and
Slouchers, it must be confessed that they sadly need a new union
school-house and town-hall, (the old school-house at Dulboys having been
at last whittled to pieces, and no town-hall having ever been built in
Slouchers,) and there seems no good reason why these edifices should not
be given the honor to proclaim the pride of the towns in the deeds of
their patriots.
On their part, we hope none of these places will forget that it is bound
to the arts and to itself not to build ignobly in memory of its great. A
commemorative edifice, to whatever purpose adapted, must first be
beautiful, since a shabby or ugly gateway, fountain, or church would
dishonor those to whom it was dedicated; a school-house or town-hall
built to proclaim pride and reverence cannot be a wooden box; but all
must be structures of enduring material and stately architecture. All
should, if possible, have some significant piece of statuary within or
upon them, or at least some place for it, to be afterwards filled; and
all should be enriched and beautified to the full extent of the people's
money and the artist's faculty.
For the money, the citizens will, of course, depend upon themselves; but
may we pray them to beware of the silliness of local pride--(we imagine
that upon reading this paper the cities and towns named will at once
move in the business of monuments, and we would not leave them unadvised
in any particular)--in choosing their sculptors and architects? Home
talent is a good thing when educated and developed, but it must be
taught in the schools of art, and not suffered to spoil brick and mortar
in learning. Our friends, the depraved Italian popes and princes (of
whom we can learn much good), understood this, and called to their
capitals the best artist living, no matter what the city of his birth.
If a famous sculptor or architect happens to be a native of any of the
places mentioned, he is the man to make its monument; and if he is a
native of any other place in the country, he is equally the man, while
home talent must be contented to execute his design.
REVIEWS AND LITERARY NOTICES.
_Mind in Nature; or the Origin of Life, and the Mode of Development of
Animals._ By HENRY JAMES CLARK, A. B., B. S., Adjunct Professor of
Zoölogy in Harvard University, Cambridge, Mass. New York: D. Appleton &
Co.
When all lower branches of Natural History have been finally exhausted,
and we begin upon the Natural History of Scientific Men, we shall no
doubt discover why it is necessary for each _savant_ to season his mild
pursuits by some desperate private feud with the nearest brother in the
service. The world of scoffers no doubt revels in this particular
weakness, and gladly omits all the rest of the book, in haste to get at
the personalities. But to the sedate inquirer it only brings dismay. How
painful, as one glides pleasantly on amid "concentric vesicles" and
"albuminous specialization," tracing the egg from the germinal dot to
the very verge of the breakfast-table, to be suddenly interrupted, like
Charles O'Malley's pacific friend in Ireland, by the crack of a
duelling-pistol and the fracture of all the teacups! It makes it all the
worse to know that the brother professor thus assailed is no mean
antagonist, and certainly anything but a non-resistant; and that
undoubtedly in his next book our joys will again be disturbed by an
answering volley.
Yet it should be said, in justice to Professor Clark, that all this
startling fusillade occurs at two or three points only, and that reading
the rest of the book is like a peaceful voyage down the Mississippi
after the few guerilla-haunted spots are passed. The general tone of the
book is eminently quiet, reasonable, and free from partisanship. Indeed,
this studied moderation of statement sometimes mars even the clearness
of the book, and the reader wishes for more emphasis. Professor Clark
loves fact so much better than theory, that he sometimes leaves the
theory rather obscure, and the precise bearing of the facts doubtful. To
this is added the difficulty of a style, earnest and laborious indeed,
but by no means luminous. In a treatise professedly popular, one has a
right to ask a few more facilities for the general reader. It can hardly
be expected of all scientific men to attain the singular success, in
this direction, of Professor Huxley; but the art of popularization is
too important a thing to be ignored, and much may be done to cultivate
the gift by literary training and by persistent effort. The new
researches into the origin of life are awakening the interest of all;
and though the popular tendency is no doubt towards the views mainly
held by Professor Clark, yet most men prefer an interesting speech on
the wrong side of any question to a dull speech in behalf of the right.
When one takes the book piecemeal, however, the author's statements of
his own observations and analysis are so thorough and so admirable, his
drawings so good, and the interest of many separate portions so great,
that it seems hardly fair to complain of the rather fragmentary effect
of their combination, and the rather obscure tenor of the whole.
Professor Clark holds that the old doctrine, _Omne vivum ex ovo_, is now
virtually abandoned by all, since all admit the origin of vast numbers
of animated individuals by budding and self-division. There are, in
fact, types of animals, as the Zoöphyta, where these appear the normal
modes of reproduction, and the egg only an exceptional process. From
this he thinks it but a slight step to admit the possibility of
spontaneous generation, and he accordingly does admit it. Touching the
development theory, his conclusion is that the barriers between the five
great divisions of the animal world are insurmountable, but "that, by
the multiplication and intensifying of individual differences, and the
projection of these upon the branching lines of the courses of
development from a lower to a higher life, the diverse and successively
more elevated types among each grand division have originated upon this
globe." (p. 248.) This sentence, if any, gives the key-note of the book.
To say that this is one of its clearest statements, may help to justify
the above criticisms on the rest.
_A Noble Life._ By the Author of "John Halifax, Gentleman," etc. New
York: Harper and Brothers. 1866.
The story of a man born cruelly deformed and infirm, with a body
dwarfish, but large enough to hold a good heart and clear brain,--and of
such a man's living many years of pain, happy in the blessings which his
great wealth and high rank, and, above all, his noble nature, enable him
to confer on every one approaching him,--could hardly have been told
more simply and pathetically than it is in this book, but it might
certainly have been told more briefly. The one slight incident of the
fiction--the marriage of the Earl of Cainforth's _protégée_ and
protectress and dearest friend to his worthless cousin, who, having
found out that the heirless Earl will leave her his fortune, wins her
heart by deceit, and then does his worst to break it--occurs when the
book is half completed, and scarcely suffices to interest, since it is
so obvious what the end must be; while the remaining pages, devoted to
study of the Earl's character, do not develop much that is new in
literature or humanity. Still, the story has its charm: it is healthful,
unaffected, and hopeful; and most people will read it through, and be
better for having done so.
_Literature in Letters; or, Manners, Art, Criticism, Biography, History,
and Morals, illustrated in the Correspondence of Eminent Persons._
Edited by JAMES HOLCOMBE, LL. D. New York: D. Appleton & Co. 1866.
The very comprehensive title of this work leaves us little to say in
explanation of its purpose, and we can only speak in compliment of the
taste with which the editor has performed a not very arduous task. As a
matter of course, the famous epistles of Lady Mary Wortley Montague,
Pope, Horace Walpole, Madame de Sévigné, Miss Burney, Lady Russell, and
Hannah More go to form a large part of the collection; but Mr. Holcombe
has drawn from other sources epistolary material of interest and value,
and has performed a service to literature by including in his book the
occasional letters of great men not addicted to letter-writing, but no
doubt as natural and true to themselves and their time as habitual
letter-writers. It is curious to note the deterioration in the artistic
quality of the letters as the period of their production approaches our
own, when people dash off their correspondence rapidly and incoherently,
instead of bestowing upon it the artifice and care which distinguished
the epistolarians of an elder date, whose letters, fastidiously written,
faithfully read, and jealously kept and shown about in favored circles,
supplied the place of newspapers. The lowest ebb of indifference seems
to be reached in a letter by Daniel Webster, written from Richmond, and
devoted to some very commonplace and jejune praises of morning and early
rising. Except as an instance of our epistolary degeneracy, we could
hardly wish it to have a place in Mr. Holcombe's collection, which is
otherwise so judiciously made.
_The Criterion; or the Test of Talk about Familiar Things. A Series of
Essays._ By HENRY T. TUCKERMAN. New York: Hurd and Houghton. 1866.
Mr. Tuckerman's books, if they possess no great value as works of
original thought, are characterized by the hardly less desirable quality
of unfailing good taste. He has a quiet and meditative way of treating
those topics of literature and art with which he chiefly loves to deal,
and has much in him which reminds of the race of essayists preceding the
brilliant dogmatists of our time; and we confess that we find a great
enjoyment in the lazy mood in which he here gossips of twenty desultory
matters. The name of the present work is, to be sure, a somewhat
formidable mask under which to hide the cheerful visage of a rambler
among Inns, Pictures, Sepulchres, Statues and Bridges, and a tattler of
Authors, Doctors, Holidays, Lawyers, Actors, Newspapers, and Preachers;
but it is only a mask after all, and the talk really tests nothing,--not
even the reader's patience. With much charming information from books
concerning these things, Mr. Tuckerman agreeably blends personal
knowledge of many of the subjects. Bits of reminiscence drift down the
tranquil current of story and anecdote, and there is just enough of
intelligent comment and well-bred discussion to give each paper union
and direction. In fine, "The Criterion" is one of the best of that very
pleasant class of books made for the days of unoccupied men and the
half-hours of busy ones,--which may be laid down at any moment without
offence to their purpose, and taken up again with profit to their
readers.
_The History of Henry the Fifth: King of England, Lord of Ireland, and
Heir of France._ By GEORGE MAKEPEACE TOWLE. New York: D. Appleton & Co.
The doubt whether Mr. Towle is writing historical romance or romantic
history must often embarrass the reader of a work uniting the amiable
weaknesses of both species of composition, and presenting much more that
is tedious in narration, affected in style, and feeble in thought, than
we have lately found in any large octavo volume of five hundred pages.
We begin with four introductory chapters recounting the events which led
to the usurpation of Bolingbroke, and the succession of Mr. Towle's hero
to the English throne; we go on with two chapters descriptive of the
youthful character and career of Henry the Fifth; we end with six
chapters devoted to the facts of his reign. Through all this, it appears
to us, we are conducted at a pace of singular equality, not to be
lightened by the triviality of minor incidents, nor greatly delayed by
the most important occurrences. Nearly all the figures of the picture
are in the foreground, and few are more prominent than the least
significant accessory of the landscape; and, for once, it is scarcely
possible to say that the picture would have been better if the painter
had taken more pains. Indeed, we incline to think the contrary, and
would have been willing to accept a result somewhat less labored than
that given us. We confess, for example, that it is a matter of small
interest to us to know that the Duke of Lancaster's wife is the "fair
Blanche"; that, when Katharine consented to wed Henry, "a blush mounted
her clear temple"; that over every part of her wedding dress "glittered
the rarest gems of Golconda"; that Henry's heart "ever beat
affectionately for his beloved isle" of England; that at a certain
moment of the battle of Agincourt a large body of the French forces
"shook in their shoes"; that the crossbow was "an object of wonder and
delight to the children of olden chivalry"; that Shakespeare "caressed
the fame of the hero-king with the richest coruscations of his
genius";--not to name a multitude of other facts stated with equal cost
of thought and splendor of diction. But Mr. Towle spares us nothing, and
sometimes leaves as little to the opinion of his readers as to their
imagination. Having to tell us that Henry learned, in his boyhood, to
play upon the harp, he will not poorly say as much, but will lavishly
declare, "He learned, with surprising quickness, to play upon that
noblest of instruments, the harp"; which is, indeed, a finer turn of
language, but, at the same time, an invasion of the secret preference
which some of us may feel for the bass-viol or the accordion.
The same excellent faculty for characterization serves our historian on
great occasions as well as small ones. Of an intriguing nobleman like
the Duke of Norfolk, he is as prompt to speak as of the harp itself: "He
was one of those politicians who are never contented; who plot and
counterplot incessantly; who are always running their heads fearlessly,
to be sure, but indiscreetly, into danger of decapitation." This fine
analytic power appears throughout the book. Describing the enthusiasm of
the Londoners for Henry of Bolingbroke, and their coldness towards the
captive King Richard, the historian acutely observes: "Ever thus, from
the beginning of the world, have those been insulted who have fallen
from a high estate. The multitude follows successful usurpation, but
never offers a shield to fallen dignity." The bashfulness and silence of
Prince Henry an ordinary writer would perhaps have called by those
names; but Mr. Towle says: "He was neither loud nor forward in giving
his views; he apparently felt that one so young should never seem
dogmatic or positive on questions in regard to which age and learning
were in doubt." Such a sentence might perhaps suggest the idea that Mr.
Towle's History was intended for the more youthful reader, but when you
read, farther on, in the analysis of Henry's character, "It was fitting
that so fine a soul should be illustrated by brilliancy of intellect and
eloquence of speech, that so precious a jewel should be encased in a
casket of beauty and graceful proportion,"--or when you learn, in
another place, that "the eloquence of Stephen Partington stirred the
religious element of Henry's _character, which appreciated and admired_
superior ability of speech,"--we say, you can no longer doubt that Mr.
Towle addresses himself to minds as mature as his own. It is natural
that an historian whose warmth of feeling is visible in his glow of
language should be an enthusiastic worshipper of his hero, and should
defend him against all aspersions. Mr. Towle finds that, if Henry was a
rake in youth and a bigot in manhood, he was certainly a very amiable
rake and a very earnest bigot. "There can be no doubt," says our
historian, in his convincing way, "that he often paused in his reckless
career, filled with remorse, wrestling with his flighty spirit, to
overcome his unseemly sports"; and as to the sincerity of his
fanaticism, "to suppose otherwise is to charge a mere youth with a
hypocritical cunning worthy of the Borgias in their zenith." Masterly
strokes like these are, of course, intended to console the reader for a
want of distinctness in Mr. Towle's narrative, from which one does not
rise with the clearest ideas of the civilization and events of the time
which he describes.
We can understand how great an attraction so brilliant and picturesque
an epoch of history should have for a spirit like Mr. Towle's; but we
cannot help thinking it a pity that he should have attempted to
reproduce, in such an ambitious form, the fancies which its
contemplation suggested. The book is scarcely too large for the subject,
but it is much too large for Mr. Towle, whose grievous fashion of
_padding_ must be plain enough, even in the few passages which we have
quoted from his book. A writer may, by means of a certain dead-a-lively
expansive style of narration, contrived out of turns of expression
adapted from Percy's Reliques, the Waverly Novels, the newspapers, and
the imitators of Thackeray's historical gossip, succeed in filling five
hundred pages, but he will hardly satisfy one reader; and we are
convinced by Mr. Towle's work that, whatever other species of literature
may demand the exercise of a childish imagination,--a weak fancy easily
caught with the prettiness as well as the pomp of words,--a slender
philosophy incapable of grasping the true significance of events,--a
logic continually tripped upon its own rapier,--and a powerful feeling
for anti-climax, with no small sentiment for solecism,--History, at
least, has little to gain from them.
_War of the Rebellion; or, Scylla and Charybdis. Consisting of
Observations upon the Causes, Course, and Consequences of the Late Civil
War in the United States._ By H. S. FOOTE. New York: Harper and
Brothers. 1866.
The slight value which this volume possesses is of a nature altogether
different from that which the author doubtless ascribes to it, though we
imagine most of his readers will agree with us in esteeming it chiefly
for its personal reminiscences of great events and people. As for Mr.
Foote's philosophization of the history he recounts, it is so generally
based upon erroneous views of conditions and occurrences, that we would
willingly have spared it all, if we could have had in its place a full
and simple narrative of his official career from the time he took part
in secession up to the moment of his departure from the Rebel territory.
We find nothing new in what he has to say concerning the character of
our colonial civilization and the unity of our colonial origin; and, as
we get farther from the creation of the world and approach our own era,
we must confess that the light shed upon the slavery question by Mr.
Foote seems but vague and unsatisfactory. A few disastrous years have
separated us so widely from all the fallacies once current here, that
Mr. Foote's voice comes like an utterance from Antediluvia, when he
tells us how compromises continually restored us to complete
tranquillity, which the machinations of wicked people, North and South,
instantly disturbed again. There was once a race of feeble-minded
politicians who thought that, if the Northern Abolitionists and Southern
fire-eaters were destroyed, there could be no possible disagreement
between the sections concerning slavery; and Mr. Foote, surviving his
contemporaries, still clings to their delusions, and believes that the
late war resulted from the conflict of ambitious and unscrupulous men,
and not from the conflict of principles. Now that slavery is forever
removed, it might seem that this was a harmless error enough, and would
probably hurt nobody,--not even Mr. Foote. But the fact is important,
since it is probable that Mr. Foote represents the opinions of a large
class of people at the South, who were friendly to the Union in the
beginning of the war, but yielded later to the general feeling of
hostility. They were hardly less mischievous during the struggle than
the original Secessionists, and, now that the struggle is ended, are
likely to give us even more trouble.
Mr. Foote offers no satisfactory explanation of his own course in taking
part in the Rebel government, which was founded upon a principle always
abhorrent to him, and opposed to all his ideas of good faith and good
policy; but he gives us to understand that he was for a long time about
the only honest man unhanged in the Confederacy. Concerning the
political transactions of that short-lived state, he informs us of few
things which have not been told us by others, and his criticism of
Davis's official action has little to recommend it except its
disapproval of Davis.
We must do Mr. Foote the justice to say that his book is not marred by
any violence towards the great number of great men with whom he has
politically differed; that he frankly expresses his regret for such of
his errors as he now sees, and is not ashamed to be ashamed of certain
offences (like that which won him a very unpleasant nickname) against
good taste and good breeding, which the imperfect civilization of
Southern politicians formerly tempted them to commit. Remoteness from
the currents of modern thought--such as life in a region so isolated as
the South has always been involves--will account for much cast-off
allusion in his book to Greece and Rome, as well as that inflation of
style generally characteristic of Southern literature.
_Poems in Sunshine and Firelight._ By JOHN JAMES PIATT. Cincinnati: R.
W. Carroll & Co. 1866.
Among the best poems of the earlier days of the Atlantic was Mr. Piatt's
"Morning Street," which we think some of our readers may remember even
at this remote period, after so much immortality in all walks of
literature has flourished and passed away. Mr. Piatt later published a
little volume of verses together with another writer of the West; and
yet later, "The Nests at Washington,"--a book made up of poems from his
own pen and from that of Mrs. Piatt. He now at last appears in a volume
wholly his, which we may regard as the work of a mind in some degree
confirmed in its habits of perception and expression.
We must allow to the author as great originality as belongs to any of
our younger poets. It is true that the presence of the all-pervading
Tennyson is more sensibly felt here than in the first poems of Mr.
Piatt; but even here it is very faint, and if the diction occasionally
reminds of him, Mr. Piatt's poems are undoubtedly conceived in a spirit
entirely his own. This spirit, however, is one to which its proper sense
of the beautiful is often so nearly sufficient, that the effort to
impart it is made with apparent indifference. The poet's ideal so wins
him and delights him, in that intangible and airy form which it first
wore to his vision, that he seems to think, if he shall put down certain
words by virtue of which he can remember its loveliness, he shall also
have perfectly realized its beauty to another. We do not know one poem
by Mr. Piatt in which a full and clear sense of his whole meaning is at
once given to the reader; and he is obscure at times, we fear, because
he has not himself a distinct perception of that which he wishes to say,
though far oftener his obscurity seems to result from impatience, or the
flattery of those hollow and alluring words which beset the dreams of
poets, and must be harshly snubbed before they can be finally banished.
There are many noble lines in his poems, but not much unity of effect or
coherence of sentiment; and it happens now and then that the idea which
the reader painfully and laboriously evolves from them is, after all,
not a great truth or beauty, but some curious intellectual toy, some
plaything of the singer's fancy, some idle stroke of antithesis.
In the poem called "At Evening," in which the poet can be so
preposterous as to say,
"Twilight steals
Great stealthy veils of silence over all,"
occur the following lines, full of the tranquil sweetness and the
delicacy of feeling characteristic of Mr. Piatt's best mood:--
"O, dear to me the coming forth of stars!
After the trivial tumults of the day
They fill the heavens, they hush the earth with awe,
And when my life is fretted pettily
With transient nothings, it is good, I deem,
From darkling windows to look forth and gaze
At this new blossoming of Eternity,
'Twixt each To-morrow, and each dead To-day;
Or else, with solemn footsteps modulate
To spheral music, wander forth and know
Their radiant individualities,
And feel their presence newly, hear again
The silence that is God's voice speaking, slow
In starry syllables, forevermore."
Such thoughts as these are themselves like the star-rise described, and
shine out distinctly above the prevailing twilight of the book,
everywhere haunted by breaths of fragrance, and glimpses of beautiful
things, which cannot be determined as any certain scent or shape. For
example, who can guess this riddle?
"Come from my dreaming to my waking heart!
Awake, within my soul there stands alone
Thy marble soul; in lonely dreams apart,
Thy sweet heart fills the stone!"
It is altogether probable that here the poet had some meaning, though it
is entirely eclipsed in its expression. At other times his meaning is
not to be detached from the words by any violence of utterance; and if,
speaking of the winged steed, he says,
"When in the unbridled fields he flew,"
we understand perfectly that the steed flew unbridled in the limitless
fields. But no thanks to the poet!
Among the poems of Mr. Piatt which we understand best and like most,
"Riding the Horse to Market"--or the poet's experience of offering his
divine faculty to the world's rude uses--is in a spirit of fine and
original allegory; "September" and "Travellers" are very noble sonnets;
"Fires in Illinois," though a little thin in thought, is subtly and
beautifully descriptive, and so is "Sundown," with the exception of a
few such unmeaning lines as
"Where the still waters glean
The melancholy scene."
"The Ballad of a Rose" is lovely and pathetic; and in "Riding to Vote"
the poet approaches the excellent naturalness and reality of "The Mower
in Ohio," which is so simple and touching, so full of homelike, genuine
feeling, unclouded by the poet's unhappy mannerism, that we are tempted
to call it his best poem, as a whole, and have little hesitation in
calling it one of the few good poems which the war has yet suggested.
"The Pioneer's Chimney," which is the first thing in the present book,
is almost as free from Mr. Piatt's peculiar defects as "The Mower in
Ohio," and it is a very charming idyl. We observe in it no strife for
remote effect, while there is visible, here and there, as in the lines
below, a delicate and finely tempered power of expression, which can
only come from the patient industry of true art, and from which we
gather more hope for the poet's future than from anything else in the
present book:--
"The old man took the blow, but did not fall,--
Its weight had been before. The land was sold,
The mortgage closed. The winter, cold and long,
(Permitted by the hand that grasped his all,
That winter passed he here,) beside his fire,
He talked of moving in the spring....
"In the spring,
When the first warmth had brooded everywhere,
He sat beside his doorway in that warmth,
Watching the wagons on the highway pass,
_With something of the memory of his dread
In the last autumn._"
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