literary point of view, they are also highly creditable to their authors.
Mr. Lincoln supports the necessity and dignity of labor with unanswerable
argument and felicitous illustrations. Much, says he, in a few segregated
sentences, 'has been written, with truth and eloquence, by great minds,
upon the dignity of labor; but it is the dignity of _the laborer_ which is
the vital point that demands attention. Labor or industry needs no
apology, no advocates; it is the very instinct of our being, and one of
the first to develop itself; it is only when performed in a peculiar way,
or associated with a particular class, that it is considered disreputable.
How is this evil to be remedied? Not by assuming a superiority, but by
_attaining_ to it. You have it in your power to make the profession of a
mechanic as honorable as any avocation in life. The dignity of a
profession depends upon the character of those who are in its ranks. If
the individual is low or mean, no occupation can confer upon him
respectability or regard. On the other hand, no useful employment, however
trivial, in the social state, can degrade him who faithfully performs its
duties. It is not always the men of genius, those gifted with
extraordinary natural endowments, who are the greatest benefactors of our
race, or who enjoy in a greater degree personal happiness themselves.
WASHINGTON and FRANKLIN were not men of genius, as the world understands
that term. It was by probity, industry, perseverance, a well-strung nerve,
and an iron will, that they conquered the obstacles before them, and
acquired that true greatness which has made their names preeminent among
the famous of earth, and their example the inspiration of American youth.
Circumstances may do something for us; we can do more for ourselves. We
must have faith, we must be in earnest.' The healthful American spirit
which pervades the 'Address,' characterizes not less prominently the poem
of Mr. COOLIDGE. A passage from this performance, commencing 'List to the
Psalm of Labor!' speaks of what we intended our readers should have had an
opportunity to 'hearken to;' but the tyranny of space is despotic.
DRAWINGS AND TINTINGS. By ALFRED B. STREET. pp. 48. Albany: W. C.
LITTLE. New-York: BURGESS, STRINGER AND COMPANY and M. Y. BEACH.
We cannot aver that we greatly affect the title given by Mr. Street to the
collection of Sketches from Nature which we find upon our table; but for
the sketches themselves, as our readers well know, we have a cordial
affection. Many of them have already been encountered in our pages; and
after winning cordial admiration in the journals of the day, they have
been arrested as 'fugitives' by their author, brought home, and bound
together, preparatory to receiving sentence at the hands of that
many-headed monster, the Public. As a careful and minute observer of
nature, in every phase of season and change of the hours; from the wide
and comprehensive general view, to the most delicate scanning of the
aspect of the lowliest shrub or flower; we scarcely know our author's
superior, after BRYANT. Our readers, however, are so well acquainted with
the marked peculiarities of Mr. STREET'S style, that we shall content
ourselves with a single Daguerreotype sketch from 'The School-house:'
'A picture of soft beauty is the scene
When painted by the sinking summer sun
In tints of light and shade; but winter's gloom
Shows nothing but a waste, with one broad track
Stamp'd to the humble door-post from the lane;
The snow-capp'd wood-pile stretching near the walls;
And the half severed log with axe that leans
Within the gaping notch.
'The room displays
Long rows of desk and bench; the former stain'd
And streak'd with blots and trickles of dried ink,
Lumbered with maps and slates and well-thumb'd books,
And carved with rude initials; while the knife
Has hack'd and sliced the latter. In the midst
Stands the dread throne whence breathes supreme command,
And in a lock'd recess well known, is laid
The dread regalia, gifted with a charm
Potent to the rebellious. When the bell
Tinkles the school hour, inward streams the crowd,
And bending heads proclaim the task commenc'd.
Upon his throne with magisterial brow
The teacher sits, round casting frowning looks
As the low giggle and the shuffling foot
Betray the covert jest, or idleness.
Oft does he call with deep and pompous voice,
The class before him, and shrill chattering tones
In pert or blundering answers, break the soft
And dreamy hum of study, heretofore
Like beehive sounds prevailing.'
We could wish to have seen this volume make a more forcible appeal to the
eye than it will be likely to do in the pamphlet form; but then it would
not have been so widely diffused; and that is a 'compensating' feature, to
the producer, which must not be forgotten by writers who would be read;
and Mr. STREET _will_ be.
MR. CHEEVER'S LECTURES ON THE PILGRIM'S PROGRESS, AND ON THE LIFE AND
TIMES OF JOHN BUNYAN. To Number Four, inclusive. New-York: WILEY AND
PUTNAM.
We have perused these Lectures, as far as they have advanced, not only
with unabated but with increasing interest. For many years the Pilgrim's
Progress of BUNYAN has been one of our 'standard' take-downable books from
our library-shelf; and now that we have 'a new lease' of the imaginations
of our early years, in the eager perusal of a second generation, the old
feeling of admiration and delight, in following the narrative which
records the trials and triumphs of CHRISTIAN, HOPEFUL and FAITHFUL,
CHRISTIANA, Mr. GREATHEART and MERCY, comes back upon us in all the
freshness of its prime. With a quick eye to all the _pictorial_ beauties,
so to speak, of BUNYAN'S matchless limnings, Mr. CHEEVER adds a thorough
knowledge and appreciation of all their high spiritual teachings.
Moreover, his own doctrinal views have given him a keen scent for the
intolerant evils against which BUNYAN warred, and of which he was the
victim. We had marked for insertion three or four striking and
characteristic passages, in the colloquy between BUNYAN, the Justice who
committed him to his twelve years' imprisonment, and the Clerk of the
Peace who came to remonstrate with him for his conscientious 'obstinacy;'
but are compelled to omit them for the present. These passages, however,
like his entire life, illustrate this eloquent sketch of Mr. CHEEVER:
'He kept on his course, turning neither to the right hand nor the
left, in his MASTER'S service, but he made all ready for the
tempest, and familiarized himself to the worst that might come, be
it the prison, the pillory, or banishment, or death. With a
magnanimity and grandeur of philosophy which none of the princes
or philosophers or sufferers of this world ever dreamed of, he
concluded that 'the best way to go through suffering, is to trust
in GOD through CHRIST as touching the world to come; and as
touching this world to be dead to it, to give up all interest in
it, to have the sentence of death in ourselves and admit it, to
count the grave my house, to make my bed in darkness, and to say
to corruption, thou art my father; and to the worm, thou art my
mother and sister; that is, to familiarize these things to me.'
With this preparation, when the storm suddenly fell, though the
ship at first bowed and labored heavily under it, yet how like a
bird did she afterward flee before it! It reminds me of those two
lines of Wesley:
'The tempests that rise.
Shall gloriously hurry our souls to the skies!'
So BUNYAN'S bark sped onward, amidst howling gales, with rattling
hail and thunder, but onward, still onward, and upward, still
upward, to heaven!'
EDITOR'S TABLE.
THE INNER LIFE OF MAN.--We are indebted to the kindness of an esteemed
friend who was present at the recent delivery of a lecture before the
'Young Men's Society' of Newark, New-Jersey, by Mr. CHARLES HOOVER, upon
'_The Inner Life of Man_,' for a few passages from that admirable
performance, which may be relied upon as very nearly identical with the
language that fell from the lips of the speaker. We cannot but hope, on
behalf of our citizens, that Mr. HOOVER may be invited to repeat his
lecture in this city. Surely, its enlarged views, its benign inculcations,
its tender remonstrances, are needed among us; nor will the good seed fall
altogether upon stony ground, nor be utterly choked by the tares that
abound in our field of bustling and busy existence. 'But what,' the reader
may ask, 'is this inner, higher life, concerning which we hear so much in
these latter days?' Let Mr. HOOVER make answer: 'IT is that ethereal,
spiritual nature, which by an incarnation only less mysterious than that
of the SON of GOD, is in present temporary alliance and partnership with
our animal nature; which, itself imperishable and immortal, measures the
cycle of its probation burthened with a dead body. It is that in man which
loves the beautiful and the good, which expands and warms to the breathing
and the voice of love; which, like the child listening to the murmuring
sea-shell, catches the far-off sound of the solemn future, and hears
celestial harmonies in silentest hours. It is that which in infancy
gathers in its first excursion the stuff that infant dreams are made of;
which in childhood makes the welkin ring with joy and laughter, crowns
itself with flowers, and arches life and the world, and all inaccessible
things and places, with airy bridges; which sees angel-forms in flitting
clouds, and in the gorgeous glory of setting suns beholds the vestibule
and drapery of other worlds: which holds communion with flowers as things
of life, and with birds as beautiful and gentle friends; which rebounds
like a liberated bow from the touch of grief to the freedom of joy, and
sees in its own tear-drop a perfect rainbow. To the inner life of man, in
its gradual and successive unfoldings, belong those deep musings of the
heart, which suggested perhaps by trifles light as air, become mighty,
like pent-up fires in a mountain's bosom, and tossing off the
superincumbent pressure, burst forth in a flame of patriotism to unyoke a
nation, or in heroic religious love to bless a world. In the inner life of
man are born and nurtured those deep and intense affections which make a
man willing to die for his country, his faith, and his friends; which
purified, lift him up an angel; which poisoned, burn to hell, and turn him
into a fiend; there rise the fountains of generous sensibility; there dawn
hope and love, and reverence and faith; there yearn the immortal desires
of continued existence and eternal joy; there is the chamber of prophetic
visions and poetic fires; there conscience holds its court, and in God's
stead utters its solemn decision. There too the acutest of our
sensibilities to suffering reside. . . . AND this inner, spiritual nature
of man is his distinguishing glory, the priceless, inalienable treasure
which he carries with him amid all the changes of time, and all the
disasters of the universe. It is his all. It is his proper self. Other
things are circumstances of his being. This is his being, subsisting
independently of every other thing and being except the DEITY. It invests
all external objects with its own character and coloring; paints its own
image on the sky, the floods, the fields, and faces of men, and turns the
world into a thousand-faced mirror, and every face flings back upon the
soul its own likeness, and all its flitting, changeful phases of mood and
feeling. Is it guilty? 'The fiends of its own bosom people air with
kindred fiends that hunt it to despair.' Is it sad? The sighing of the
softest breeze is heard as a requiem, and the natural beatings of its own
heart sound like 'funeral marches and muffled drums.' Is it glad,
innocent, and happy? All nature smiles and puts on the garments of beauty;
the stars sing together, the trees of the forest rejoice, and the floods
clap their hands. Thus the visible universe becomes a mere reproduction of
the spirit of man that beholds it. Create a mind, and it creates for its
residence an external world of its own hue and character. Make that mind
happy, and its external world, from pole to pole and from the zenith to
its centre, is resplendent with light and beauty; balm-like airs, soft and
fragrant as those of uncursed Eden, breathe upon it, and all its life is
love. Dreaming, it sees a ladder reaching to heaven, and the angels of GOD
ascending and descending on errands of mercy, and waking, exclaims with
reverential joy, 'Surely GOD is in this place.' Make a mind miserable, and
you darken its universe. The stars fall from its heaven, the golden
fruitage of its paradise decays, and winter winds wail around it, and
night and storm mingle their pitiless elements on its unsheltered head.
Intertwined and involved in the inner life, are occurring at all times the
great things of human history. In the sanctuary of unrevealed bosoms, in
the 'silent, secret sessions' of thought, and in the glow of individual
feeling, in the field, at the fire-side, in the closet, or on the
sleepless bed, there is man's history: there, unfolding to act, or
infolding itself to die, the soul is in its greatness, is in labor with
itself, and struggling with big, burning thoughts, and 'truths that wake
to perish never;' decreeing with solemn form and force what is to be done,
and what endured. Let no man despise what is revolved in the private
mind.'
We scarcely know which most to admire, the nervous thoughts embodied in
the following passage, or the fervent and beautiful language in which a
just reproof is conveyed:
'IN all our wanderings round this world of care, we have been deeply moved
and amazed at the fact, that down into the world of troubled, sorrowing
mind and tortured sensibilities, the professors and light-bearers of the
religion of JESUS have thrown so few of its melting beams. Of transcendent
mysteries this is not the least, that of those who hold to a religion that
is comprehended in one burning word, one transforming principle, LOVE;
which is not a theory, but a divine passion, and whose hopes all rest on
the doctrine of forgiveness; so few practically and heartily pity,
forgive, and love the erring and the wretched of the family of man. Oh! it
was not thus when PITY, eighteen hundred years ago, habited as a man, and
leaning upon a pilgrim's staff, set out from the brow of Nazareth to the
hill of Calvary, tracing with tearful eye and weary foot the roads of
Judea and the streets of Jerusalem! . . . IN an age which, in sorrow not
in anger, in heart-felt regret, not in bitterness, we are compelled to
regard as extensively pseudo-philanthropic; when a vaunting benevolence is
current, which hovers every where and alights no where; which loves all
men in general and no man in particular; profuse of pity to the heathen,
while bloated with poisonous hate to its neighbor; it is refreshing to see
occasional instances of practical brotherhood with poor, down-trodden,
benumbed and forsaken humanity. That is true benevolence, which with
mingled faith, reverence, and love, descends in quest of the inner life
beneath repulsive appearances, and tainted name, and shattered fortune,
and from the depths brings up a bleeding heart, a scathed soul, and speaks
to it of hope and consolation, and cheers it up to the purpose of
self-recovery, and the recommencement of a virtuous life, and the
reconstruction of a broken, blasted fame; that rekindles with vestal care
its dying fires, and like a pious mother, nurses it through weakness,
infirmity, irresolution, and despondency, back to hale strength and vigor;
that by a generous confidence in its earliest repentings, and a generous
forgiveness of its gravest faults, lends strength to its purposes and
permanence to its reform. Oh! there are such hearts all around us, still
warm and beating, though pierced through with many sorrows, goaded it may
be at once by a sense of guilt and the horrors of abandonment, yet not
dead to virtue, nay, sensitively alive to it; 'for as certain flowers open
only in the night, so often in the dark hours of a great sorrow the human
soul first opens to the light of the eternal stars.' There _are_ such
hearts buried all around us; and from their unquiet graves come up the low
wail, the stifled sob, the muttered curse, the anguished prayer, appealing
to the thoughtless brotherhood above them for a ray of light, and a breath
of the free air of heaven! Hearken, and ye shall hear the tones of an
eternal _miserere_, mingling and swelling like distant organ-peals,
drowned by the din of day-light, but re-heard in all hours of thought and
stillness, in all places of meditative retirement. Listen, and ye shall
hear soliloquies of the heart with itself, revealing pleasant memories and
hopes, and tendernesses and joys, that come up from the past in shadowy
troops, with lights and garlands--and vanish, making the darkness more
visible and solitude more hideous. Blessed, we say, for Heaven has said
it, blessed are they whose ministry of love is in that unquiet inner
world; whose sympathies intertwine themselves with its strained, snapped
fibres and ligaments; whose hand gently withdraws the barbed arrows of
outrageous fortune, and into the ragged wound pours the oil of consolation
and the balm of joy! Select, sacred, and heaven-ordained and anointed
priests and priestesses they, of a GOD of love in a world of sorrow. Not
their commission is it to declare to cowering criminals a GOD wrathful,
vindictive, and scarcely less bloody than the Druid's deity, hating with
infinite venom the unhappy violator of his laws; not theirs to deal out
curious metaphysics and cold abstractions, giving a stone for bread and an
adder for an egg to the sons of sorrow and the daughters of misfortune;
but to inspire hope in the desponding and peace in the troubled bosom; to
give light for darkness, the oil of joy for mourning, and the garment of
praise for the spirit of heaviness; to bring back the lost to their
FATHER'S house, and raise the dead to life again.'
A BRACE OF PELLETS FROM 'JULIAN.'--Not one of our readers, we will venture
to say, has forgotten the spiritual JULIAN, whose 'Top of New-York,' and
the inquiry concerning 'the law' between man and wife, in regard to
getting up first in the morning, attracted so much attention and remark
two or three months since. We annex two late paper-pellets of his brain;
and must ask the reader to admire with us the fervent feeling of new
paternity wreaked upon expression in the first, and the ease and
simplicity of style which mark the unstudied sketch that succeeds it:
'HAVE you ever any nervous days, my kind EDITOR? Nervous, beyond
publishing days, or the want of copy; beyond excesses, the reaction of
excitement, fast-days, and the giving of thanks?--for these last are
animal only, and for such, doctors are made and abound every where. The
cure for them you may get in a brown-paper parcel; it is buyable; and of
late it is eatable; you may take it in a lozenge. But the days of which I
speak are such as you must endure patiently unto the end. 'They come like
shadows, so depart,' but the cloud that gives the shadow is beyond your
reach. A new doubt or apprehension, or an old one with an uglier face than
usual; a hideousness not before seen, a devilishness of malice flashing
upon you for the first time, or even an unkind word, added to your
previous gathering of materiel, may tip the balance of your pleasant
thoughts, and then, all colors changing into one, the black cloud rolls
over you, and dark thoughts, wholly foreign to your nature, throng round
and stab at you, till at last, by that old snakish sympathy of excitement,
your own dark passions rise and embrace them, and the sensitive guardians
of the brain, mingling in the fray, give you up, one by one, captive to
the devil. In the lighter hours of the day, the dead hopes of the Past,
the beauties of other days, throng round you, and shake their dry bones;
and oh, what efforts at sprightliness! what ravishing of graces! what
whirling and rattling of bare bones, as they waltz round to that music of
other days! And now, born of these, comes another group, with the laughing
eye of young years and a full heart; and ah! the tempting lip, the heaving
bosom, the light step of the perfect form; ha! ha! there is life, there is
beauty in the world again! But then will they betray you? Will they grow
old and ugly? Will they live to mock at you? And now the words, 'No you
don't, you can't come it,' tremble upon your lips; but then, oh! the
delight of giving up to it; going the whole, the entire, the unclipt, the
blind-folded, the universal; 'ha! ha! come to my heart, my beauties!' and
with open arms you stagger to their embraces. But in that long, long,
kiss, with the hot breath of passion, and the bounding blood and brain
reeling to madness, there is the bitterness of death. _Dust and
ashes!_--take them away. . . . THE drop too much in all this is, that you
get no sympathy from others; it is quite too personal, too exclusive for
that. Whereas, in the solemnities of New-Year's, and in all the
concernments of that day, the whole world beareth company. Not but that we
have occasion for all our bravery, our greetings and rejoicings; it is
well to affect that, for there is a strange man about town, all that day,
and a _disci mori_ whispered about the streets; and although we pretend
not to know, or to hear him, there is one at our house who hath let him
in; and all day long is he parleying and protesting and offering
refreshments, forsooth, to that unwelcome visitor. But there is a pleasure
in the assurance that the cunning of our neighbors shall not avail more
than ours with his impertinence; that he shall be stabbed under the fifth
rib, that he shall wince under his hits, his jokes, his stinging rebuke!
There is also something companionable in the thought, that we are not
alone in this onward movement of years, this stern necessity of motion,
this tread-mill step! No one can defalcate in this particular; no one can
Texas-ize and be quit of his transgressions and his onward travel. But
millions of our own kith and kin travel the same way; England goes with
us; Europe goes with us; and let not the indolent Turk dream that he is
becalmed the while; let not the exclusives of the rising sun imagine that
they in their nearness to Heaven do not, nevertheless, whirl on in the
general motion, even as the outer barbarians! Decidedly, they _do_; their
somersets avail not, and the edicts of the great Ching-poo are astounded
at their non-effect. This is one pleasant reflection born of New-Year's;
beside, it would be amusing, if one could laugh at any thing so sad, to
observe the humors of the few who think upon the bearings of that solemn
time. In the year to be, there are many to come, many to go, and but few
to tarry; yet _all_ have their ambitions of a life-time; those even, to
whom the stars have grown dim, and life become almost a mockery under
Heaven, dashing into the coming day with something of the old zest; while
the many, the _oi polloi_, who have not yet made their grand move, are now
ready, and think that therefore the earth is to take a new route in
creation; forgetting that the old round must be the round for ever. Nights
sleepless with joy, nights sleepless with pain, nights long with watching,
feverish thought; crime that stings like an adder, and nights short with
perfect rest; days long and weary, days bright and dashing, hot and cold,
wet and dry, and days and nights with all of these--as hath been in the
time that's past, and will be in the time to come.
'There is something very pitiable in these humors, Mr. EDITOR; indeed very
laughable, if your mouth is shaped to that effect; but as it happens with
me to-night, my mouth refuses to twitch except in one direction. Its
corners have what Prof. P---- used to call the 'downward tendencies.'
Perhaps it is because this is with me the anniversary of a day upon the
events of which are hanging the movements of all after-life; it may be
this, and there may be thereto added the coloring of a winter's day. The
wind howls about the house-tops, and the air pierces like needles; even
the stars, when they look down in thousands, as the rack goes by, seem to
shiver in their high places; yet perhaps there is nothing so personal in
all that, considering that just so the wind howled last night, and may for
a month to come; but oh! as I am a nervous man, and look back upon the
circling months, and feel the sting here and the stab there, in that
galvanic battery; and as I look forward with eager eye, and ear open to
the faintest whisper of the dim to-morrow, it is not as the stars shiver
from excess of light, but with a shudder at the heart from the cooler
blood of----Good night, my kind EDITOR; that sentence is quite too long
already, and there are some things too personal to tell.
* * * * *