from her hand. “They are offerings from your captive knights, fair
princess; now choose the one you like best, and then I will tell you;
but be as wary as Portia’s lovers in your choice, for I have determined
in my mind that on whichever your selection falls, the fortunate donor
shall also be the fortunate suitor for your hand—come, choose!”
The bouquets were both beautiful. One was composed of the rarest and
most brilliant green-house flowers arranged with exquisite taste; the
other simply of the modest little Forget-me-not, rose-buds, and sweet
mignonette.
“In the words of Bassanio, then, I will say,
Outward shows be least themselves,
The world is still deceived with ornament;
and thus I make my choice,“ answered Lucia, smiling, and blushing as she
took the forget-me-not, and pressed them to her bosom.
“O happy, happy Mr. Gadsby!” cried Charlotte, laughing and clapping her
hands.
“Are these from him, then!” exclaimed Lucia, as she cast the beautiful
flowers from her. “Then pardon me, Charlotte, if I make a new choice;
Mr. Gadsby is too officious—pray bring me no more flowers from him!”
“You are really ungenerous, Lucia,” said Mrs. Laurence; “no one has been
so attentive in their inquiries since you have been ill as Mr. Gadsby. I
believe not a day has passed without his calling; they have not been
merely formal inquiries either—his countenance betrays a real
interest.”
Lucia colored, and a gentle sigh heaved her bosom—but she said, coldly,
“It is not difficult, dear mother, for Mr. Gadsby to feign an interest
for any lady upon whom he chooses to inflict his attentions.”
“Now, Lucia, I take a bold, defensive ground for Mr. Gadsby,” exclaimed
Charlotte. “You have abused the poor man unmercifully since you first
knew him, nor given him credit for one honest feeling. Well, there is
one comfort, you do not think worse of him than he does of you.”
“Then there is no love lost!” said Lucia, rather hastily.
“No, I am sure of that!” replied Charlotte, laughing. “There is none
lost, it is true, but treasured in your very hearts, hidden away as fire
beneath the snowy surface of Hecla, and which will one day suddenly
burst its frigid bonds—now mark my words!”
“You talk in enigmas, Charlotte, and I am too weary to solve them,” said
Lucia.
“Pardon me, dearest, I forgot you were sitting up so long—you must lie
down;” and as Charlotte turned to arrange the pillows for the fair
invalid, in an opposite mirror she saw Lucia take up the discarded
flowers, and—_press them to her lips_.
CHAPTER VI.
For the first time for many weeks, Lucia once more left her chamber, and
was able to receive the congratulatory visits of her friends. It was not
long ere Mr. Gadsby took advantage of her convalescence to express in
person his own pleasure at her recovered health.
She had never looked more lovely in his eyes than when he thus met her.
If, at the moment when he first looked upon her, her paleness pained
him, the bright color which instantly mantled her cheek, and the
agitation of her manner, sent a thrill of happiness to his heart. He
took her small, attenuated hand, and pressed it tenderly, as, in an
agitated voice, he told the happiness it gave him to see her again; and
as Lucia raised her eyes to reply, she saw his fine countenance beaming
with an expression which deepened her bloom and increased her
embarrassment.
“You have been very kind, Mr. Gadsby, during my illness,” she said, at
length, averting her face, “and I have to thank you for the many
beautiful flowers with which you have cheered my sick chamber.”
These kind words from her—from the proud Lucia, rendered Gadsby almost
beside himself with joy.
“Do not thank me for so trifling a favor, when, if I could, I would so
gladly have poured out my life’s blood to have saved you a moment’s
pain! O, my dear Miss Laurence—”
Now spare me, kind reader; I was never good at a love scene. Only just
fancy as pretty a declaration of love as you ever listened to, or poured
from your own throbbing heart, and you will have the result of Mr.
Gadsby’s interview with the fair Lucia, the self-styled “champion of her
sex”—yet proving herself a recreant, after all her boasting; for I have
been told, confidentially, that, so far from spurning this
“hollow-breasted Frank Gadsby” from her feet, when Miss Atwood rather
abruptly entered the drawing-room, she actually found her with her
beautiful head resting on his shoulder, while his manly arm was thrown
around her delicate waist—you must remember she was an invalid, and
required support!
There is a snug little house not a stone’s throw from the residence of
Mr. Laurence. It is furnished with perfect neatness and taste, and
there, loving and beloved, our two coquettes have settled themselves
down, in the practice of those domestic virtues and kindly affections
which contribute so largely to the happiness of life. Frank Gadsby is
now respected as an able lawyer, and bids fair to attain to great
eminence in his profession; and never did Lucia, even in the most
brilliant assembly, receiving the homage of so many eyes and hearts,
look more lovely than now, as in her neat morning dress, with her
beautiful hair in “braided tramels ’bout her daintie ears,” and
“Household motions light and free,
And steps of virgin liberty,”
she goes about dispensing order in her cherished home.
* * * * *
THE GENIUS OF BYRON.
BY REV. J. N. DANFORTH.
Twenty-five years ago it was announced, in an Edinburgh Journal, by Sir
Walter Scott: “That mighty genius, which walked among men as something
superior to ordinary mortality, and whose powers were beheld with
wonder, and something approaching to terror, as if we knew not whether
they were of good or of evil, is laid as soundly to rest as the poor
peasant, whose ideas never went beyond his daily task. The voice of just
blame, and that of malignant censure, are at once silenced; and we feel
almost as if the great luminary of heaven had suddenly disappeared from
the sky, at the very moment when every telescope was leveled for the
examination of the spots which dimmed its brightness.” Thus did the
great “Wizard of the North” open his beautiful tribute to the memory of
the Noble Enchanter of the South, within whose fascinated circle had
been drawn the beauty, fashion, genius and literature of England. It was
as if the light of one star answered to that of another, or as if the
music of the one responded to the dying strains of the other—each in
his exalted sphere, when the “Great Unknown” thus uttered his voluntary
eulogy on a kindred genius, not to say imperial rival, of the first
magnitude, if the magnanimous spirit of the former could so conceive of
any cotemporary. The first fervor of admiring enthusiasm of the genius
of Byron having been cooled by the lapse of time, we are enabled to form
a more judicious estimate of it, and of the treasures it poured forth
with such lavish profusion. It is not now the image of the young lord we
see in the brilliant saloon, surrounded by gay admirers, with a face of
classic beauty, expressive eyes, an exquisite mouth and chin, hands
aristocratically small and delicately white, while over his head strayed
those luxuriant, dark-brown curls, that seem to constitute the mystery
of finishing beauty about the immortal brow of man and womankind, and
quite to defy the art of the sculptor. It is not such an one we see—a
living, moving form, like our own; but we think of the ghastly image of
death, we revert to the form mouldering in its subterranean bed,
relapsing into as common dust as that of the poorest beggar. But the
MIND remains—that which has stamped its burning thoughts on the poetic
page; it survives, imperishable, in another, an etherial sphere. It has
sought congenial companionship in one of the two states of perpetual
being, as inevitably demonstrated by reason as taught by revelation.
Byron himself might scorn to aspire after celestial purity and glory,
but he could draw with a dark and flagrant pencil the terrors of remorse
and retribution. He believed in the future existence of the soul,
whatever words of ominous meaning might at times be inserted to complete
a line or to indulge a whim of fancy. “Of the immortality of the soul,”
said he, “it appears to me there can be but little doubt, if we attend
for a moment to the action of mind; it is in perpetual activity. I used
to doubt it, but reflection has taught me better. It acts also so very
independent of the body—in dreams, for instance. . . I have often been
inclined to materialism in philosophy, but could never bear its
introduction into Christianity, which appears to me essentially founded
on the soul. For this reason Priestly’s materialism always struck me as
deadly. Believe the resurrection of the _body_, if you will, but not
without the _soul_.” Thus there were times when the “divinity stirred
within him,” and the soul asserted its regal prerogatives, and
vindicated its own expectations of the future. Nay, the sentiment must
have been habitual, for how often is it naturally implied in the ardor
of composition, as in those beautiful lines:
“Remember me! Oh, pass not thou my grave,
Without one thought whose relics there recline.
The only pang my bosom dare not brave,
Would be to find forgetfulness in thine.”
But our chief concern is with the _Poet_ Byron, not with the Philosopher
or the Peer. It has been said that in reviewing the lives of the most
illustrious poets—the class of intellect in which the characteristic
features of genius are most strongly marked—we shall find that, from
Homer to Byron, they have been restless and solitary spirits, with minds
wrapped up, like silk-worms, in their own tasks, either strangers or
rebels to domestic ties, and bearing about with them a deposit for
posterity in their souls, to the jealous watching and enriching of which
most all other thoughts and considerations have been sacrificed. In
accordance with this theory, Pope said: “One misfortune of extraordinary
geniuses is, that their very friends are more apt to admire than to love
them.” True, they have often “dwelt apart,” have been so engaged in
cultivating the imaginative faculty, as to become less sensible to the
objects of real life, and have substituted the sensibilities of the
imagination for those of the heart. Thus Dante is accused of wandering
away from his wife and children to nurse his dream of Beatrice, Petrarch
to have banished his daughter from his roof, while he luxuriated in
poetic and impassioned ideals, Alfieri always kept away from his mother,
and Sterne preferred, in the somewhat uncouth language of Byron,
“whining over a dead ass to relieving a living mother.” But did not
Milton love his daughter with an intense tenderness? Than Cowper who a
more filial and devoted son to the memory of his mother? A fond father
as well as faithful son was Campbell. Burns, too, delighted in his
“fruitful vine,” and “tender olive plants.” In Wordsworth the beauty and
purity of domestic life shone forth to the end. Southey had a home of
love and peace. Scott was a model of a husband and father. Nothing can
exceed the exquisite tenderness of some passages in his diary at the
death of his wife. Goldsmith was neither husband nor father, yet his
fine poetry never alienated his heart from the softer scenes and
sympathies of life. It seemed rather to augment their claims, and the
clear current from the fountain of the imagination is seen to flow right
through the channel of the heart, sparkling with beauty and murmuring
natural music in the enchanted ear. Even the voluptuous Moore is said to
have repaired his fame and prolonged his days by settling down into the
sobrieties of domestic life.
To return to Byron. He might be said to be unfortunate in his cradle.
His young days were brought under sinister influences and associations.
The youth that is deprived of a healthy maternal guardianship, is to be
pitied. Such was Byron’s lot. Alternately indulged and abused, petted
and irritated, his temper was formed in a bad mould. Never could he
forget the feeling of horror and humiliation that came over him when his
mother, in one of her fits of passion, called him a “lame brat.”
Now, as men of genius, being by a law of genius itself susceptible of
strong impressions, are in the habit of reproducing those impressions in
their works, a man of a sensitive poetic temperament, like Byron, and
one so highly, so dangerously endowed with intellect, and a vigorous
power of expression, would give to all these thoughts and associations a
local habitation, a living permanence in poetry, romance, and even in
history, so far as it could be turned to such a purpose. In his Deformed
Transformed, Bertha says: “Out, hunchback!” Poor Arnold replies: “I was
born so, mother!” If, then, we find the traits of misanthropy, scorn,
hate, revenge, and others of the serpent brood, so often obtruding
themselves in his poetry as to compel us to believe they were combined
with the very texture of his thoughts and the action of his imagination,
imparting to it a sombre and menacing aspect, we must refer much of this
melancholy idiosyncracy to his early education. He was always grieving
over the malformation of his foot. Far more lamentable was the
malformation of his mental habits. But this, unlike the other, could be
corrected. He should have exerted himself to achieve so noble a victory.
Instead of this he resigned himself to the strength of the downward
current, and was finally dashed among the rocks, where other stranded
wrecks uttered their warning voice in vain. There did he take up the
affecting lamentation:
“The thorns which I have reaped are of the tree
I planted—they have torn me, and I bleed.
I should have known what fruit would spring from such a seed.”
Goethe said of him, that he was inspired with the _genius of Pain_. The
joyous, cheerful spirit that pervades the works of men who, like Scott
and Southey, were educated under auspicious influences, and by a healthy
process grew up to manhood with an habitual regard to the sacred
sanctions annexed to their physical and moral being, contrasts strongly
with the morbid, gloomy, and often bitter and sarcastic temper of that
poetry, which seems to flow as if from some poisoned fountain of
Helicon. Sometimes, indeed, he forgets his fancied wrongs and real woes,
as when walking amid the ruins of imperial Rome, and kindred
contiguities, he throws himself back into the very bosom of classic
antiquity, and pours out the purest strains of eloquence, enriched with
the glowing sunlight of poetry. For a time the shadow of the evil spirit
appears to depart from him, and the true glory of his genius shines
forth without a cloud, while the sentiments that rise in his soul ascend
to a pitch of moral sublimity beyond which the ambition of the human
imagination could not desire to go. In the fourth canto of Childe Harold
his power of conception and expression culminated, and the publication
of that poem called forth a judgment of the Lord Chief Justice of the
Bench of Literature, Francis Jeffrey, which almost deserves a coequal
immortality with the poem itself, and it is impossible to account for
this splendid piece of criticism being left out of the recent collection
of the elegant Critic and Essayist, except on the supposition that the
most accomplished judges of other men’s works are some times incompetent
to fix the right estimate of their own. Genius does not always
accurately weigh its own productions, since Milton preferred his
Paradise Regained to his Paradise Lost, and Byron himself was
inveterately attached to a poem, or rather a translation, to restrain
him from publishing which cost the strongest efforts of his most
influential friends.
He was then a voluntary exile from his native land, that noble England,
which should be dear to all great men, because the mother of so many; he
was nursing many fictitious sorrows; affecting a scorn for his country
he could not feel; defying the judgments of men to which he was
painfully sensitive; mourning over the blasted blossoms of domestic
happiness; seeking new sources of gratification, or old gratifications
in new forms; in the midst of all he plunges into the arcana of classic
lore; he dives into the crystal depths of classic antiquity, to draw
forth beautiful gems, dripping with the sparkling element, untainted by
its passage through centuries of time. He reconstructs the whole scene
to our view, mingling his illustrations from those severer arts with the
sweet and graceful touches of a pencil that seems capable of catching
and delineating every form of beauty that can engage the fancy or awaken
the imagination. We have been filled with admiration, we have been fired
with enthusiasm, at some of these magnificent strains of poetry, noble
ideas, burning thoughts, assuming precisely the dress, the costume,
which best became them. Whether the poet takes us along the bank of some
classic stream, places us before some romantic city, flies over the
battle-field, luxuriates in a moonlight scene, lingers amid broken
columns and bubbling fountains, gazes on the splendid remnants of
statues that almost seem instinct with the breath of life, conducts us
to the roaring of the cataract, across whose dread chasm, “the hell of
waters,” is arched here and there the lovely Iris, with her seven-fold
dyes, “like Hope upon a death-bed,” then upward passes and beholds the
solemn mountains, the Alps or Appenines, scenes of heroic daring and
suffering, contemplates the mighty ocean, “dark, heaving, boundless,
endless and sublime, the image of eternity,” over whose bosom ten
thousand fleets have swept, and left no marks; finally, if he leads us
back to the Eternal City, not as in her pride of place and power, but as
oppressed with the “double night of ages,” as the “Niobe of nations,”
the “lone mother of dead empires,” sitting in solitude, “an empty urn
within her withered hands,” and draws mighty lessons from all these
objects, in all this we behold the splendor of true genius; we feel its
power; we wonder at the gifts of God thus bestowed; we tremble at the
responsibility of the man thus rarely endowed by his Creator. That regal
imagination, disdaining at times the vulgarities to which a depraved
heart would subject it, asserts its native dignity, and as it ranges
among more quiet scenes utters, with the solemnity of a prophet, such a
lesson as this:
“If from society we learn to live,
’Tis solitude should teach us how to die.
It hath no flatterers; vanity can give
No hollow aid; alone, man with his God must strive.”
Besides that ORIGINALITY, which is a distinguishing attribute of the
genius of Byron, there is in his language a power of concentration,
which adds greatly to its vigor; some condensing process of thought is
going on, the result of which is much meaning in few words, and those
words kept under the law of fitness with more than military precision,
yet without constraint. Few feeble words or straggling lines disfigure
his poetry. That infamous effusion of a putrid mind, Don Juan, has most
of them, while it has also some exquisite gems of beauty. As the last
offspring of a teeming mind, it evidences a progress in sensual
depravity, and an effrontery in publishing it to the world, seldom
adventured by the most reckless contemner of the opinion of his fellow
men, or the most impious blasphemer of the majesty of God. Indeed, his
moral sense must have reached that region said to be inhabited by
demons, who “impair the strength of better thoughts,”
“Making the sun like blood, the earth a tomb,
The tomb a hell, and hell itself a murkier gloom.”
It was of this last, deeply characteristic work, that Blackwood’s
Magazine said, at the time: “In its composition there is unquestionably
a more thorough and intense infusion of genius and vice, power and
profligacy, than in any poem which had ever been written in the English,
or indeed in any other modern language.” No poem, perhaps, ever
exhibited a more remarkable mixture of ease, strength, fluency, gayety,
mock-seriousness, and even refined tenderness of sentiment along with
coarse indecency. Love, honor, purity, patriotism, chastity, religion,
are all set forth or set at naught, just as suits the present, vagrant
fancy of the author. The Edinburgh Review justly said: “We are
acquainted with no writings so well calculated to extinguish in young
minds all generous enthusiasm and gentle affection, all respect for
themselves, and all love for their kind; to make them practice and
profess hardly what it teaches them to suspect in others, and actually
to persuade them that it is wise and manly, and knowing, to laugh, not
only at self-denial and restraint, but at all aspiring ambition, and all
warm and constant affection.”
The opinion of admiring and impartial critics, indeed, was, that the
tendency of his writings was to destroy all belief in the reality of
virtue, to make constancy of devotion ridiculous; not so much by direct
maxims and examples of an imposing or seducing kind, as by the habitual
exhibition of the most profligate heartlessness in the persons who had
been represented as actuated by the purest and most exalted emotions,
and in the lessons of that same teacher who, a moment before, was so
pathetic and eloquent in the expression of the loftiest conceptions.
How nobly different was Burns, the peer of Byron in genius—analogous to
him, as well in the strength of passion as in the beauty of imagination;
attracted, like him, by the Circean cup, absorbed at times in his
convivialities, but never jesting with virtue, jeering at religion, or
scorning the recollections of a pious home and a praying father. They
rose by the force of their genius—they fell by the strength of their
passions; but the fall of the one was only a repetition of the lapses of
apostate humanity—guilty, indeed, but profoundly self-lamented, often
expiated in tears wept on the bosom of domestic affection. The fall of
the other was like that of the arch-angel ruined, defying Omnipotence,
even when rolling in agony on a sea of fire. Even when feeding his fancy
and invigorating his imagination amid the rural charms and sublimities
of Switzerland, Byron thus writes in his journal: “I am a lover of
nature and an admirer of beauty. I can bear fatigue and welcome
privation, and have seen some of the noblest views in the world. But in
all this, the recollection of bitterness, and more especially of more
recent and more home desolation, which must accompany me through life,
have preyed upon me here; and neither the music of the shepherd, the
crashing of the avalanche, nor the torrent, the mountain, the glacier,
the forest, nor the cloud, have for one moment lightened the weight upon
my heart, nor enabled me to lose my own wretched identity in the
majesty, and the power, and the glory around, above, and beneath me.”
Or, as expressed in another form:
“——I have thought
Too long and darkly, till my brain became,
In its own eddy, boiling and o’er wrought—
A whirling gulf of phantasy and flame.”
Why all this? A part of the secret is disclosed by himself, in a letter
to his friend Dallas: “My whole life has been at variance with
propriety, not to say decency. . . . My friends are dead or estranged,
and my existence a dreary void.” It had not been so had passion been
held in check by principle, instead of principle being subjected to
passion. There is, indeed, too much reason to believe the truth, that in
connection with great versatility of powers, there is too often found a
tendency to versatility of principle. So the unprincipled Chatterton
said: “he held that man in contempt who could not write on both sides of
a question.” Byron delights in sketching the most odd and opposite sorts
and styles of pictures, and in abruptly bringing into rude collision the
most opposite principles, as if he would amuse himself with the shock
while he distresses the sensibilities of others. His powers were mighty,
various, beautiful; but they needed adjustment. There was no regular
balance-wheel in his intellectual and moral system. In another, or more
painful sense, than the pensive and drooping genius of Cowper expressed
it, might Byron say:
“The howling blasts drive devious, tempest-tossed,
Sails ripped, seams opening wide, and compass lost,
And day by day some current’s thwarting force
Sets me more distant from a prosperous course.”
His refined and exquisite sense of the beautiful in poesy could not be
surpassed. His pictures of mortal loveliness are quite inimitable, and
there is at times in the strains of his muse, in the very structure of
his language, a tenderness, which it would seem impossible could
co-exist with that severity so often, so naturally sharpening into
sarcasm, as if it were a part of the staple of his mind. The lash of
criticism having first roused up the dormant energies of his genius, his
first impulse was to seize the sharpest weapons of satire he could find,
and even the poisoned arrows of vituperation and slander, and with a
power and precision of archery seldom surpassed, to take his full
measure of retaliation. Nay, he became so fond of the sport, or so
unable otherwise to satisfy his revenge, that he multiplied innocent
victims, assailing his own relations, and even the noble, generous,
genial Scott, whose maxim it was never to provoke or be provoked,
especially in his intercourse with the irritable tribe of authors.
Firmly and calmly Scott resolved to receive the fire of all sorts of
assailants, who were engaged in the “raving warfare of satire, parody,
and sarcasm.” This sudden, bellicose production of Byron’s impulsive
genius—English Bards and Scotch Reviewers—cost even him shame and
sorrow the rest of his life. But still he was ever fond of sailing on
that quarter. His impulses must ever be of the fiery, fitful kind. It is
a wonder that, among all his paradoxes and peregrinations, he did not
pay a visit to the _Dead Sea_. That _would_ have been a congenial
pilgrimage for Childe Harold; and, then, for such a drake as he was to
swim in its waters! The exploit of Leander was only repeated by him from
Sestus to Abydos. The other would have been an original feat, worthy of
the taste of a man who preferred drinking out of a skull to the usual
mode of potation out of the ordinary goblets of civilization.
Severe, scornful, passionate, vengeful, as he often was, how do those
stern features relax, and the milder sensibilities rise into tender
exercise, when, as a father in exile, he writes:
“My daughter! with thy name this song begun,
My daughter! with thy name thus much shall end.
I see thee not—I hear thee not—but none
Can be so wrapt in thee; thou art the friend
To whom the shadows of far years extend;
Albeit my brow thou never shouldst behold,
My voice shall with thy future visions blend,
And reach into thy heart—when mine is cold,
A token and a tone, even from thy father’s mould.”
Thus, with a certain style of uniformity everywhere observable,
especially in his characters, there is much variety of thought, emotion
and passion, evidential of great fertility of mind. If he does reproduce
the same hero under different names, and even give strong indications of
his identification with himself, still the wand of the enchanter invests
him with so many brilliant aspects, places him in so many imposing
attitudes, as to produce all the effect of novelty. His muse less
delights in planning incidents and grouping characters, than in working
out, as with the sculptor’s energetic art, single, stern, striking
models of heroic humanity, albeit stained with dangerous vices. His very
genius has been declared to be inspired with the classic enthusiasm that
has produced some of the most splendid specimens of the chisel; “his
heroes stand alone, as upon marble pedestals, displaying the naked power
of passion, or the wrapped up and reposing energy of grief.” Medora,
Gulnare, Lara, Manfred, Childe Harold, might each furnish an original
from which the sculptor could execute copies, that would stand the proud
impressive symbols of manliness or of loveliness, satisfying even those
intense dreams of beauty which poets and lovers sometimes indulge in
their solitary musings.
“There, too, the goddess loves in stone, and fills
The air around with beauty; we inhale
The ambrosial aspect, which, beheld, instils
Part of its immortality.” Childe Harold.
This poem, indeed, is a perfect gallery of art, whose paintings and
statues are drawn and fashioned from the life, with the skill of a
consummate master and the facility of a powerful creative, divinely
endowed genius. He places his hand on the broad canvas of life, and
behold the figures that rise under his magic pencil! They are, indeed,
too often dark, stern, mysterious and awful, stained with vices, and
pre-doomed, for their guilt, to the pains of a terrible reprobation.
With such characters the genius of Byron had a strange sympathy. Hence
his admiration of that historical passage in the Scriptures, in which
the crime and the doom of Saul is so solemnly set forth at the tomb of
the prophet Samuel, whose sepulchral slumbers were so rudely disturbed
by the intrusion of the anxious and distressed monarch, now forsaken by
his God. Shakspeare, having finished off one of these dark and repulsive
pictures, as in his Macbeth or Lear, passes to the sketching of more
cheerful and even humorous portraits; but Byron, for the most part,
delights to dwell in darkness. Thus, in this poem, when the curse is
imprecated, the time midnight, the scene the ruined site of the temple
of the Furies, the auditors the ghosts of departed years, the imprecator
a spirit fallen from an unwonted height of glory to the depths of wo.
Principals and accessaries assume the sombre coloring of his
imagination, from which, however, at times, shoots a gleam of beauty,
that imparts loveliness to the whole scene. Milton, with his almost
perfect sense of beauty, and the fitness of things, would never have put
such words as these in the mouth of his Eve:
“May the grass wither from thy foot! the woods
Deny thee shelter—earth a home—the dust
A grave! the sun his light! and Heaven her God!”
Cain.
It was quite suitable for Byron to talk so in his Cain, but he has not
unsettled the position of the world’s estimate of its first mother, so
firmly established by Milton. He was, at the time, perhaps, thinking of
himself as Cain, and of his own mother as in one of her imprecating
paroxysms. Alas, that he should have gone on in lawless indulgence,
insulting, both in poetry and practice, the sanctity of domestic,
heaven-constituted, earth-blessing ties, until, after an abortive,
ill-directed struggle for poor Greece, he sunk into an early grave, at
36 aet., the very meridian of life! He was never satisfied with his
earthly lot, not even with the rare gifts of his genius, nor with the
achievements it made. He professed to consider a poet, no matter what
his eminence, as quite a secondary character to a great statesman or
warrior. As he had failed in the first character, he resolved to try the
second, and strike for the liberty he had sung. But Fame had no place
for him in this part of her temple. With the rest of the tuneful tribe,
he descends to the judgment of posterity as a Poet; with all men of
genius above the million, as more deeply responsible than they to the
author of all mercies; with all men whatever, as a MORAL AND IMMORTAL
BEING, accountable at the tribunal of God.
The mind would fail in any attempt to estimate the immense influence of
his genius and writings upon the youthful mind and morals of the past
generation—an influence to be augmented in a geometrical ratio in the
future. What is written, is written, constituting a portion of the
active influence circulating in the world—not to be recalled, not to be
extinguished, but to move on to the end of time, and finally to be met
by its originator, where all illusions will vanish, and all truth,
justice and purity be vindicated.
* * * * *
OUTWARD BOUND.
BY THOMAS BUCHANAN READ.
Fare ye well, our native valleys,
And our native hills farewell;
Though we part, your blessed memory
Shall be with us like a spell:—
For with you are souls in silence
Breathing for us hopes and prayers,
Loving eyes that weep in secret
Gazing on the vacant chairs.
Tender hearts made dear unto us
By unnumbered sacred ties,
Bend at eve their tearful vision
To the stars that o’er us rise.
There are children, darling children,
In the April of their years,
In their play they cease and call us,
And their laughter melts to tears.
There are maidens overshadowed
With a transient cloud of May,
There are wives who sit in sorrow
Like a rainy summer day.
There our parents sit dejected
In the darkness of their grief,
Mourning their last hope departed
As the autumn mourns its leaf.
But the prayers of these are with us
Till the winds that fill the sails
Seem to be the breath of blessings
From our native hills and vales.
Then farewell, the breeze is with us,
And our vessel ploughs the foam;
God, who guides the good ship seaward
Will protect the loved at home.
* * * * *
[Illustration: HE COMES NOT.
Painted by W. Brown and Engraved expressly for Graham's Magazine by W.
Holl]
* * * * *
HE COMES NOT.
[WITH AN ENGRAVING.]
BY C. SWAIN.
Night throws her silver tresses back,
And o’er the mountain-tops afar
She leaves a soft and moonlight track,
More glorious than the day-beams are;
And while she steers her moonlight barque
Along that starry river now,
Each leaf, each flower, each bending bough,
Starts into beauty from the dark;
Each path appears a silver line,
And naught in earth—but all divine.
Oh, never light of moon was shed
Upon a maid’s more timid tread;
And never star of heaven shone
On face more fair to look upon.
Hark! was not that a whisper light?
A step—a movement—yet so slight,
That silence holds its breath in vain
To catch that fleeting sound again.
Well may’st thou start, lone, timid dove,
To-night he comes not to thy love.
* * * * *
RAIL AND RAIL SHOOTING.
BY HENRY WILLIAM HERBERT, AUTHOR OF FRANK FORESTER’S “FIELD SPORTS,” “FISH
AND FISHING,” ETC.
[Illustration: THE VIRGINIA RAIL. (_Rallus Virginianus._)
THE SORA RAIL. (_Rallus Carolinensis._)]
With the present month commences the pursuit of this singular and
delicious species of game, and, although as a sport it is not to be
compared with the bolder and more varied interest of shooting over dogs
on the upland, still the great numbers which are killed, and the
rapidity with which shot after shot is discharged in succession, render
Rail-shooting a very favorite pastime, more especially with the
sportsmen of Philadelphia, in the vicinity of which city this curious
little bird is found in the greatest abundance.
Of the _rallidæ_, or Rail family, there are many varieties in America,
all of them more or less aquatic in their habits, and none of them
being, as the Corncrake, or Land Rail, of Europe, purely terrestrial;
though the little Yellow-Breasted, or New York Rail, _Rallus
Noveboracencis_, approaches the most nearly to that type, being
frequently killed in upland stubble or fallow fields.
The principal of these species, and those most worthy of notice,
are—the Clapper Rail, or great Salt-Water Rail, variously known as the
Meadow Hen, or Mud Hen; found very extensively along all the tide
morasses, and salt meadows of the Atlantic coast, but more especially on
the shores of Long Island, and in New Jersey, at Barnegat and Egg
Harbor. This, the scientific name of which is _Rallus crepitans_, is the
largest of the species; it is shot from row boats in high spring tides,
when the water has risen so much as to render it impossible for the
Rails either to escape by running, which they do at other times with
singular fleetness, baffling the best dogs by the celerity with which
they pass between the thick-set stalks of the reeds and wild oats,
constituting their favorite covert, or to lurk unseen among the dense
herbage.
This Rail, like all its race, is a slow and heavy flyer, flapping
awkwardly along with its legs hanging down and a laborious flutter of
the wings. It is, of course, very easily shot, even by a bungler, and
there is little or no sport in the pursuit, though its flesh is tender
and delicate, so that it is pursued on that account with some eagerness.
Second to the Clapper Rail, in size, and infinitely superior to it in
beauty and excellence of flesh, is the King Rail, _Rallus elegans_,
which is by far the handsomest of the species. It is commonly known as
the Fresh-Water Meadow Hen, though it is not with us to the northward a
frequent or familiar visitant, the Delaware river being for the most
part its northeastern limit, and very few being killed to the eastward
of that boundary. A few are found, it is true, from time to time, in New
Jersey, and it has occurred on Long Island, and in the southern part of
New York, though rather as an exception than as a rule.
Next to these come the Virginia Rail, which is represented to the right
hand of the cut at the head of this paper, and the Sora, which
accompanies it.
The Virginia Rail, _Rallus Virginianus_, notwithstanding its
nomenclature, which would seem to indicate its peculiar local
habitation, is very generally found throughout the United States, and
very far to the northward of the Old Dominion. I have myself killed it
in the State of Maine, as well as in New York, New Jersey, and
Pennsylvania, at the marsh of the _Aux Canards_ river, in Canada East,
and on the head waters of the Lake Huron Rivers. In the great wild rice
marshes of the St. Clair river, the Virginia Rail, like most of the
aquatic birds and waders, is very common. It is rather more upland in
its habits than its companion, the Sora, which delights in the wettest
tide-flowed swamps where the foot of man can scarcely tread, being
frequently killed by the Snipe-shooter in wet inland meadows, which is
rarely or never the case with the Sora.
The Virginia Rail is, however, not unfrequently found in company with
the other on the mud flats of the Delaware, and, with it, is shot from
skiffs propelled by a pole through the reed beds at high water.
The Virginia Rail is a pretty bird, measuring about eight inches in
length. The bill is about an inch long, slightly decurved, red at the
base and black at the extremity; the nostrils linear. The top of the
head is dark-brown, with a few pale yellowish streaks; a blackish band
extends from the base of the bill to the eye, and a large, ash-colored
spot, commencing above the eye posteriorily, occupies the whole of the
cheeks. The throat, breast, and belly, so far as to the thighs, which
partake the same color, are of a rich fulvous red, deepest on the belly.
The upper parts, back of the neck, scapulars, and rump, are dark
blackish-brown, irregularly streaked and dashed with pale
yellowish-olive. The wing-coverts are bright bay, the quills and tail
blackish-brown. The vent black, every feather margined with white. The
legs are red, naked a little way up the tibia. It is a very rapid
runner, but flies heavily. It affords a succulent and highly flavored
dish, and is accordingly very highly prized, though scarcely equal in
this respect to its congener, the Sora, which is regarded by many
persons as the most delicious of all game, though for my own part I
would postpone it to the Canvas-Back, _Fuligula valisneria_, the Upland
Plover, _Totanus Bartramius_, and the Pinnated Grouse, or Prairie Fowl,
_Tetrao cupido_.
The Sora Rail, _Rallus Carolinus_, which is more especially the subject
of this paper, is somewhat inferior in size to the last species, and is
easily distinguished from it by the small, round head, and short bill,
in which it differs from all the rest of its family. This bill is
scarcely half an inch in length, unusually broad at the base, and
tapering regularly to a bluntly rounded point. At the base and through
nearly the whole length of the lower mandible it is pale
greenish-yellow, horn-colored at the tip. The crown of the head, nape,
and shoulders, are of a uniform pale olive-brown, with a medial black
stripe on the crown. The cheeks, throat, and breast, pale rufous brown,
fading into rufous white on the belly, which is mottled with broad
transverse gray lines. The back, scapulars, wing-coverts, and rump, are
olive-brown, broadly patched with black, and having many of the feathers
margined longitudinally with white, the quills dark blackish-brown, the
tail dark reddish-brown. The lower parts from the tail posteriorily to
the vent transversely banded with black and white. The legs long and
slender, bare a short way up the tibia, of a pale greenish hue. The iris
of the eye is bright chestnut. The male bird has several black spots on
the neck.
This bird is migratory in the United States, passing along the sea-coast
as well as in the interior; a few breed in New Jersey, on the Raritan,
Passaic, and Hackensack rivers; but on the Delaware and its tributaries,
which abound with wild rice, it is exceedingly abundant, as it is also
in the great northwestern lakes and rivers which are all plentifully
supplied with this its favorite food. It is rarely killed in New York or
to the eastward, though a few are found on the flats of the Hudson. It
winters for the most part to the south of the United States, although a
few pass the cold season in the tepid swamps and morasses of Florida and
Louisiana. All this is now ascertained beyond doubt, but till within a
few years all sorts of strange fabulous tales have been in circulation
concerning the habits of this bird; arising from the circumstance of its
very sudden and mysterious arrival and disappearance on its
breeding-grounds, the marshes being one day literally alive with them,
and the next solitary and deserted. Add to this its difficult, short,
and laborious flight, apparently so inadequate to the performance of
migrations thousands of miles in length, and it will be easy to conceive
that the vulgar, the ignorant, and the prejudiced, should have been
unable to comprehend the possibility of its aërial voyages, and should
have endeavored to account for their disappearance by insisting that
they burrow into the mud and become torpid during the winter, as I have
myself heard men maintain, incredulous and obstinate against conviction.
Audubon has thought it necessary gravely, and at some length, to
controvert this absurd fallacy, and in doing so has recorded the
existence of a planter on the James River, in Virginia, who is well
convinced that the Sora changes in the autumn into a frog, and resumes
its wings and plumage in the spring, thus renewing the absurd old legend
of Gerardus Cambrensis in relation to the tree which bears shell-fish
called _barnacles_, whence in due season issue _barnacle geese_.
The Sora Rail arrives in the Northern States in April or May. I saw one
killed myself this spring in a deep tide marsh on the Salem creek, near
Pennsville, in New Jersey, on the 25th of the former month, which was in
pretty good condition. They migrate so far north as to Hudson’s Bay,
where they arrive early in June, and depart again for the south early in
the autumn. They breed in May and June, making an inartificial nest of
dry grass, usually in a tussock in the marsh, and laying four or five
eggs of dirty white, with brown or blackish-white spots. The young run
as soon as they are hatched, and skulk about in the grass like young
mice, being covered with black down. The Sora Rail is liable to a
curious sort of epileptic fit, into which it appears to fall in
consequence of the paroxysms of fear or rage to which it is singularly
liable.
The following account of the habits and the method of shooting this
bird, from Wilson’s great work on the Birds of America, is so admirably
graphic, truthful, and life-like, that I prefer transcribing it for my
own work on Field Sports, into which I copied it entire as incomparably
superior to any thing I have elsewhere met on the subject, to recording
it myself with, perhaps, inferior vigor.
“Early in August, when the reeds along the shores of the Delaware have
attained their full growth, the Rail resort to them in great numbers, to
feed on the seeds of this plant, of which they, as well as the
Rice-birds, and several others, are immoderately fond. These reeds,
which appear to be the _Zizania panicula effusa_ of Linnæus, and the
_Zizania clavulosa_ of Willenden, grow up from the soft muddy shores of
the tide-water, which are, alternately, dry, and covered with four or
five feet of water. They rise with an erect tapering stem, to the height
of eight or ten feet, being nearly as thick below as a man’s wrist, and
cover tracts along the river for many acres. The cattle feed on their
long, green leaves, with avidity, and wade in after them as far as they
dare safely venture. They grow up so close together, that except at or
near high water, a boat can with difficulty make its way through among
them. The seeds are produced at the top of the plant, the blossoms, or
male parts, occupying the lower branches of the panicle, and the seeds
the higher. The seeds are nearly as long as a common-sized pin, somewhat
more slender, white, sweet to the taste, and very nutritive, as appears
by their effects on the various birds that feed on them at this season.
When the reeds are in this state, and even while in blossom, the Rail
are found to have taken possession of them in great numbers. These are
generally numerous, in proportion to the full and promising crop of the
former. As you walk along the embankment of the river, at this season,
you hear them squeaking in every direction, like young puppies. If a
stone be thrown among the reeds, there is a general outcry, and a
reiterated _kuk, kuk, kuk_—something like that of a Guinea-fowl. Any
sudden noise, or discharge of a gun, produces the same effect. In the
meantime, none are to be seen, unless it be at or near high water—for
when the tide is low, they universally secrete themselves among the
insterstices of the reeds; and you may walk past, and even over them,
where there are hundreds, without seeing a single individual. On their
first arrival, they are generally lean and unfit for the table, but as
the seeds ripen, they rapidly fatten, and from the 20th September to the
middle of October, are excellent, and eagerly sought after. The usual
method of shooting them in this quarter of the country is as follows.
“The sportsman furnishes himself with a light batteau, and a stout,
experienced boatman, with a pole of twelve or fifteen feet long,
thickened at the lower end, to prevent it from sinking too deep in the
mud. About two hours or so before high water, they enter the reeds, and
each takes his post—the sportsman standing in the bow, ready for
action, the boatman on the stern-seat, pushing her steadily through the
reeds. The Rail generally spring singly as the boat advances, and at a
short distance a-head, are instantly shot down, while the boatman,
keeping his eye on the spot where the bird fell, directs the boat
forward, and picks the bird up, while the gunner is loading. It is also
the boatman’s business to keep a sharp look out, and give the word
‘Mark,’ when a Rail springs on either side, without being observed by
the sportsman, and to note the exact spot where it falls, until he has
picked it up; for this once lost sight of, owing to the sameness in the
appearance of the reeds, is seldom found again. In this manner the boat
moves steadily through and over the reeds, the birds flushing and
falling, the gunner loading and firing, while the boatman is pushing and
picking up. The sport continues an hour or two after high water, when
the shallowness of the water, and the strength and weight of the
floating reeds, as also the backwarkness of the game to spring, as the
tide decreases, oblige them to return. Several boats are sometimes
within a short distance of each other, and a perpetual cracking of
musketry prevails above the whole reedy shores of the river. In these
excursions, it is not uncommon for an active and expert marksman to kill
ten or twelve dozen in a tide. They are usually shot singly, though I
have known five killed at one discharge of a double-barrelled piece.
These instances, however, are rare. The flight of these birds among the
reeds, is usually low, and shelter being abundant, is rarely extended to
more than fifty or one hundred yards. When winged, and uninjured in
their legs, they swim and dive with great rapidity, and are seldom seen
to rise again. I have several times, on such occasions, discovered them
clinging with their feet to the reeds under the water, and at other
times skulking under the reeds, with their bills just above the surface;
sometimes, when wounded, they dive, and rising under the gunwale of the
boat, secrete themselves there, moving round as the boat moves, until
they have an opportunity of escaping unnoticed. They are feeble and
delicate in every thing except the legs, which seem to possess great
vigor and energy; and their bodies being so remarkably thin, and
compressed so as to be less than an inch and a quarter through
transversely, they are enabled to pass between the reeds like rats. When
seen, they are almost constantly jetting up the tail, yet though their
flight among the reeds seems feeble and fluttering, every sportsman who
is acquainted with them here, must have seen them occasionally rising to
a considerable height, stretching out their legs behind them, and flying
rapidly across the river, where it is more than a mile in width. Such is
the mode of Rail shooting in the neighborhood of Philadelphia.
“In Virginia, particularly along the shores of James River, within the
tide-water, where the Rail, or Sora, are found in prodigious numbers,
they are also shot on the wing, but more usually taken at night in the
following manner:—
“A kind of iron grate is fixed on the top of a stout pole, which is
placed like a mast in a light canoe, and filled with fire. The darker
the night, the more successful is the sport. The person who manages the
canoe, is provided with a light paddle, ten or twelve feet in length;
and about an hour before high water, proceeds through among the reeds,
which lie broken and floating on the surface. The whole space, for a
considerable way round the canoe, is completely enlightened—the birds
start with astonishment, and, as they appear, are knocked over the head
with a paddle, and thrown into the canoe. In this manner, from twenty to
eighty dozen have been killed by three negroes in the short space of
three hours.
“At the same season, or a little earlier, they are very numerous in the
lagoons near Detroit, on our northern frontier, where another species of
reed, of which they are equally fond, grows in shallows, in great
abundance. Gentlemen who have shot them there, and on whose judgment I
can rely, assure me that they differ in nothing from those they have
usually killed on the shores of the Delaware and Schuylkill; they are
equally fat, and exquisite eating.”
To this I shall only add, that a very light charge of powder and
three-quarters of an oz. of No. 9 shot will be found quite sufficient to
kill this slow flying bird. I have found it an excellent plan to have a
square wooden box, with two compartments, one holding ten lbs. of shot,
with a small tin scoop, containing your charge, and the other containing
a _quantum suff._ of wadding, placed on the thwarts of the boat, before
you, and to lay your powder flask beside it, by doing which you will
save much time in loading; a great desideratum where birds rise in such
quick succession as these will do at times, a couple of hundred being
some times killed by one gun in a single tide.
A landing net on a long light pole will be found very convenient for
recovering dead birds. No rules are needed for killing rail, as they lie
so close and fly so slowly that a mere bungler can scarce miss them,
unless he either gets flurried or tumbles overboard. When dead he is to
be roasted, underdone, like the snipe, served on a slice of crisp
buttered toast, with no condiment save a little salt and his own gravy.
If you are wise, gentle reader, you will lay his ghost to rest with red
wine—Burgundy if you can get it, if not, with claret. For supper he is
undeniable, and I confess that, for my own part, I more appreciate the
pleasure of eating, than the sport of slaying him; and so peace to him
for the present, of which he surely will enjoy but little after the
twentieth of September, until the early frosts shall drive him to his
asylums, in the far southern wilds and waters.
* * * * *
THE FINE ARTS.
Twenty-Seventh Annual Exhibition of the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine
Arts.—Viewed in all its bearings and relations, we believe this to have
been the most important exhibition of this excellent institution. Not
that we think the present by any means the best collection of paintings
we remember to have seen in these same rooms. We believe it is generally
known that for some time past a considerable business has been done in
the way of importing paintings, statues, etc., for purposes of
speculation. Through the exertions of the individuals engaged in this
traffic, scores of foreign pictures have been scattered over the
country. With this business it is not our purpose to meddle. Undoubtedly
these gentlemen possess the right to invest their money in whatever will
yield the largest per centage, and we are glad to perceive that a
fondness for art exists to such an extent as tempts shrewd speculators
and financiers to enter into operations of this description. But,
keeping in view the state of affairs induced by the exertions of these
gentlemen, no surprise will exist in the mind of any one at the
unparalleled interest created in the public mind by the announcement
that the Directors of the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, impelled by
a laudable desire to patronize art and artists, had offered certain
“prizes or sums of money,” to be competed for by artists all over the
world. The mere announcement put public curiosity on the _qui vive_.
Expectation was on tip-toe. At length, after protracted delay, on the
16th of May last, the Academy was thrown open to the public.
The two galleries—the south-east and the north-east—those usually
appropriated to the new works, contained one hundred and eighty
pictures, which, with some half dozen scattered through the old
collection, made about one hundred and ninety new pictures, by modern
artists. Of this number some seventy or eighty were foreign—the
majority of these German. How many were submitted for the “prizes or
sums of money” we are not informed.
328 of the catalogue—Death of Abel, etc., by Edward du Jardin, is
probably, so far as subject is involved, the most important work in the
collection. As a whole, we look on these pictures as a failure, as a
_dead failure_. Parts of the works are well drawn, and carefully, even
laboriously studied, but what could be more absurd than the habiliments,
attitude and expression of the angel in the first of the three? The Adam
in the centre is a regular _property_ figure—one of those _stock_
studies which embellish the portfolio of every young artist who has ever
been to Europe. The attitude and expression are such as can be purchased
by the franc’s worth from any one of the scores of models to be found in
almost every city in Europe. The Eve possesses more of the character of
a repentant Magdalene than the “mother of mankind.” The third picture is
to our mind the best; but, taken all together, the works are barely
passable—not by any means what we should have expected from a professor
of painting in one of the first schools in Europe. Religious art
requires abilities and perceptions of the first order—feelings
different from any manifested in this production.
Of a different order is 56—Rouget de Lisle, a French officer, singing
for the first time the Marsellaise Hymn, (of which he was the author,)
at the house of the Mayor of Strasburg, 1792—Painted by Godfroi
Guffens. Every thing here is fire and enthusiasm—the enthusiasm that
ought to pervade _every work of art_—which makes the intelligent
spectator _feel_ as the artist felt in its production. We have heard
various and conflicting remarks made upon this work, and the general
feeling among competent judges is that it is the best of the foreign
works. In our opinion it is, perhaps, _the best_ modern picture in the
collection. The grouping, actions, and expressions of the figures are in
admirable keeping with the subject, and the color is rich, agreeable,
and subdued.
_Murray’s Defense of Toleration._—P. F. Rothermel. If to the exquisite
qualities of color, composition, etc., Mr. Rothermel would add (we know
he can) _expression_, he would unquestionably be _the_ historical
painter of America. In a refined, intellectual perception of the general
character of his subject, Mr. R. is unsurpassed, perhaps unapproached by
any painter in the country. His pictures give evidence of the greatest
care and study—no part is slighted—nothing done with the “that will
do” feeling, which dreads labor. The picture under consideration
embraces a great number of figures—in fact the canvas is literally
covered, but not crowded, every inch giving evidence of intelligence and
design. Concerning the work, we have heard, from the public press as
well as from individuals, but one expression, that of the strongest
commendation—in which we heartily concur.
150, from the Midsummer Night’s Dream, Act IV., Scene 1st., also by Mr.
Rothermel, is conceived in the true feeling of the great poet. The
figures of Bottom, and Titania and the other fairies, are fine
conceptions. Some comparatively unimportant defects in drawing might be
remedied, without injuring the general effect.
Mr. Winner contributes a large work—Peter Healing the Lame Man at the
Beautiful Gate of the Temple. This picture possesses great merit, and
evinces a most commendable ambition. The grouping is well managed—the
expressions of Peter and John are good—the cripple capital. A stumpy
shortness of the figures mars the general character of this otherwise
beautiful production. Mr. Winner paints drapery well, and perhaps
unconsciously loads his figures with it. This defect is conspicuous in
his grand work of “Christ raising the Daughter of Jairus,” now in our
Art Union Gallery. The heads and extremities of Mr. Winner’s pictures
are perfect studies of color and modeling, and evince a masterly
knowledge of anatomy. We should be rejoiced to see the efforts of our
artists liberally sustained, as they ought to be, in the higher
departments of art.
41, The Happy Moment—105, The Recovery—Carl Hubner. These, no doubt,
are _popular_ works—as works of certain classes always will be. We have
heard much said in praise of them. They are beautifully, exquisitely
painted—especially the “Happy Moment,” in which the color and execution
are admirable. But in _sentiment_, or any of the _ideal_ qualities of
such subjects, they are lamentably deficient. Like nearly all the German
painters, Carl Hubner possesses much greater _executive_ than
_imaginative_ powers—he is more of a _mechanic_ than an _artist_. He
gratifies the _eye_ at the expense of the _mind_. Surely rustic love is
suggestive of something more than any thing hinted at in the “Happy
Moment.” “The Recovery” is composed of the usual conventional material
of such subjects—a simpering physician, with a nice diamond ring on his
finger, friends, with the old, upturned eyes and clasped hands, are
mechanically put together—all standing or sitting evidently on purpose
to be painted.
In landscape, the best works in the collection are Nos. 35 and 136, by
Diday, a Geneva artist—a Moonlight, No. 46, B. Stange, and No. 78, a
Roman Aqueduct at Alcala, with caravans of muleteers, F. Bossuet. The
two first are grand and imposing representations of scenery in the High
Alps—in color they are deep and rich in tone. The Moonlight, by Stange,
is the best we have ever seen. The tremulous luminousness of the
moonshine is rendered with matchless truth. The Roman Aqueduct, by
Bossuet, is, beyond question, the finest landscape in the collection.
Sunlight, local color, and texture were never painted with greater truth
than in this splendid production. Light and heat pervade every nook and
corner of the picture, from the dry, dusty foreground, off to the
distant mountains which close the scene. The work furnishes a grand
example of artistic execution and detail. No 52—Lake George—Russel
Smith—is a beautiful piece of open daylight effect, possessing great
truth. A Scene on the North River—Paul Weber—possesses much merit. The
color is fresh and natural, and the sky is the best we have seen by this
artist.
In the Marine department we have works from Schotel, De Groot, Pleysier,
Mozin, and other foreign artists, and from Birch, Bonfield, and
Hamilton, American. Hamilton stands preeminent in this department—his
“Thunder Storm,” and a poetic subject from Rogers’ Columbus, are the
best marines in the Academy. All his works in the present exhibition
have been so minutely described in the daily and weekly papers, and so
universally commended, that we deem it unnecessary to do more than add
our unqualified acquiescence in the favorable judgment thus far
expressed concerning them. Not one of our artists is attracting so much
attention at the present moment as Mr. Hamilton. We have no doubt he is
fully able to sustain the high expectations created by his works within
the last two years. Birch and Bonfield, each, maintain their well-earned
and well-deserved reputations. Of the foreign marines, those of Pleysier
and De Groot are the best—but there is nothing remarkable in either.
A Still Life piece by Gronland, a French artist, is a splendid example
of its class—as is, also, one of a similar character by J. B. Ord, the
best painter of such subjects in the United States.
Want of space prevents our entering into the discussion of the
comparative merits of native and foreign works. We feel no hesitation,
however, in saying that our artists, as a body, have every reason to
congratulate themselves upon the probable results of the present
exhibition.
* * * * *
The Madonna del Velo.—Among the many works of art, which the unsettled
state of the Continent has brought into the London market, are a
collection formerly the property of the Bracca family of Milan. The gem
of the gallery is a remarkably fine and beautifully finished Madonna del
Velo by Raffaelle. This attractive picture derives its title from the
Virgin being represented as lifting a transparent veil from the face of
the sleeping Jesus. She is gazing on the infant with all the devoted
love of a mother, and with all a Madonna’s reverence beaming from her
eyes and depicted in her countenance and her posture; while the young
St. John is standing by, an attentive and interested spectator of the
proceeding. The colors are very beautiful, and are blended with the
highest taste and judgment. The details of the painting bear the closest
examination, and every new inspection brings to view some unobserved
charm, some previously undetected beauty. The figures are worthy in all
respects of the highest praise, and the landscape forms a delightful and
effective back-ground. To mention one little example of the singular
skill and finish displayed in this beautiful work, the veil which the
Virgin is represented as lifting from the sleeping infant’s face, is
marvelously painted. It is perfectly transparent, and seems so
singularly fine, filmy and light, that it has all the appearance of what
a silken cobweb might be imagined to be. It is a remarkable specimen of
the skill of the great artist even in the most difficult and delicate
matters. Indeed, the whole painting is a “gem of purest ray.”
* * * * *
“La Tempesta”—a new opera, the joint composition of Halevy and Scribe,
has been produced in London, with Sontag as Miranda, Lablache as
Caliban, Coletti as Prospero, and Carlotta Grisi as Ariel. Whether its
original source, the renown of the author of the libretto, the
reputation of the composer, or the combination of artistic talent
engaged, be considered, the opera is a work of unprecedented magnitude,
and naturally excited unusual interest on the part of all lovers of art.
Monsieur Scribe has made legitimate use of Shakspeare’s “Tempest” in its
transmutation into a libretto—supernatural agency and music are
employed, even Caliban sings, and Ariel, besides being an essentially
musical part, heads a band of sprites and elves “who trip on their toes,
with mops and mows.” But it was necessary, for lyrical purposes, that a
greater intensity of human interest should be added. M. Scribe has found
means of drawing these new points from Shakspeare’s own text. He says in
a letter to the lessee of Her Majesty’s Theatre, “I have done the utmost
to respect the inspirations of your immortal author. All the musical
situations I have created are but suggestions taken from Shakspeare’s
ideas; and as all the honor must accrue to him, I may be allowed to
state that there are but few subjects so well adapted for musical
interpretation.” We hope before long to have this last work from Halevy
transferred to the boards of the American Opera.
* * * * *
A Drama Thirty Centuries Old Revived.—A recent great theatrical wonder
of the hour in Paris, has been the revival of a piece from the Hindoo
theatre, “which was performed for the first time” some three thousand
years ago, in a city which no longer has an existence on the earth, and
written by the sovereign of a country whose very name has become a
matter of dispute. The piece was translated from the original Sanscrit
by Gerald de Nerval, and met unbounded success. All Paris has been
aroused by this curious contemplation of the ideas and motives of these
remote ages, and a whimsical kind of delight is experienced at finding
the human nature of Hindostan of so many centuries ago, and the human
nature of modern Paris, so exactly alike in their puerility and
violence, their audacity and absurdity, that the play may verily be
called a _pièce de circonstance_. King Sondraka, the author, seems to
have anticipated the existence of such men as Louis Blanc and Proudhon,
of Louis Bonaparte and Carlier; so true it is, that there is nothing new
under the sun, and that not an idea floats on the tide of human
intelligence but what has been borne thither by the waters of oblivion,
where it had been already flung.
* * * * *
Statue of Calhoun.—The marble statue of the late John C. Calhoun,
executed by Hiram Powers, at Leghorn, for the State of South Carolina,
was lost on the coast of Long Island, in July, by the wreck of the brig
Elizabeth.
* * * * *
Horace Vernet, the great historical printer, has been to St. Petersburg,
having been requested by the Emperor of Russia to furnish several battle
pieces illustrative of the principal scenes in the Hungarian campaign.
* * * * *
[Illustration: Drawn by Ch. Bodmer
Eng^{d} by Rawdon, Wright & Hatch
_Dance of the Mandan Indians._]
* * * * *
MANDAN INDIANS.
[WITH AN ENGRAVING.]
“The Mandans are a vigorous, well-made race of people, rather above the
middling stature, and very few of the men could be called short. The
tallest man now living was Mahchsi-Karehde, (the flying war eagle,) who
was five feet ten inches two lines, Paris measure, (above six feet
English.) In general, however, they are not so tall as the Manitaries.
Many of them are robust, broad-shouldered and muscular, while others are
slender and small limbed. Their physiognomy is, in general, the same as
that of most of the Missouri Indians, but their noses are not so long
and arched as those of the Sioux, nor have they such high cheek-bones.
The nose of the Mandans and Manitaries is not broad—sometimes aquiline,
or slightly curved, and often quite straight. Their eyes are, in
general, long and narrow, of a dark brown color; the inner angle is
often rather lower in childhood, but it is rarely so in maturer age. The
mouth is broad, large, rather prominent, and the lower jaw broad and
angular. No great difference occurs in the form of the skull; in general
I did not find the facile angle smaller than in Europeans, yet there are
some exceptions. Their hair is long, thick, lank, and black, but seldom
as jet and glossy as that of the Brazilians; that of children is often
only dark brown, especially at the tips; and Bradbury speaks of brown
hair among the Mandans. There are whole families among them, as well as
among the Blackfeet, whose hair is gray, or black mixed with white, so
that the whole head appears gray. The families of Sih-Chida and
Mato-Chiha are instances of this peculiarity. The latter chief was
particularly remarkable in this respect; his hair grew in distinct locks
of brown, black, silver gray, but mostly white, and his eyebrows
perfectly white, which had a strange effect in a tall, otherwise
handsome man, between twenty and thirty years of age. They encourage the
growth of their hair, and often lengthen it by artificial means. Their
teeth, like those of all the Missouri Indians, are particularly fine,
strong, firm, even, and as white as ivory. It is very seldom that you
see a defect or a tooth wanting even in old people, though, in the
latter, they are often worn very short, which is chiefly to be
attributed to their chewing hard, dry meat. The women are pretty robust,
and sometimes tall, but, for the most part, they are short and
broad-shouldered. There are but few who can be called handsome as
Indians, but there are many tolerable and some pretty faces among them.”
The engraving shows them in one of their celebrated dances, and is
beautifully done by the artists.
* * * * *
THE BRIGHT NEW MOON OF LOVE.
BY T. HOLLEY CHIVERS, M. D.
At the dawn she stood debating
With the angels at the door
Of Christ’s sepulchre, in waiting
For his body evermore.
Pure as white-robed Faith to Sorrow,
Pointing back to Heaven above—
(Happy Day for every Morrow)—
Was the Bright New Moon of Love.
Nun-like, chaste in her devotion,
All the stars in heaven on high,
With their radiant, rhythmic motion,
Chimed in with her from the sky.
Sweeter far than day when breaking,
Angel-like, in heaven above,
On the traveler lost, when waking,
Was the Bright New Moon of Love.
Thus she glorified all sweetness
With the angel-light she shed
From her soul in such completeness,
That she beautified the dead.
When an angel, sent on duty
From his Father’s throne above,
Saw the heaven-surpassing beauty
Of this Bright New Moon of Love.
For the Truth she loved was Beauty,
Because Beauty was her Truth;
And to love her was his duty,
Such as Boas owed to Ruth.
God had set his seal upon her,
Her divinity to prove,
And this angel wooed her—won her—
Won the Bright New Moon of Love.
Thus the Mission of True Woman
She did act out in this life—
Showed the Divine in the Human,
In her duties of the Wife.
For the Heaven that he had taken
Was so much like that above,
That the heaven he had forsaken
Was the Bright New Moon of Love.
For the kingdom of Christ’s glory,
Angel-chanted at her birth,
Is the theme now of the story
Which I warble through the earth.
And because this fallen angel
Took her home to heaven above,
I now write this New Evangel
Of the Bright New Moon of Love.
* * * * *
BARCAROLE.
WRITTEN AND COMPOSED FOR
G R A H A M ’ S M A G A Z I N E .
BY R. J. DE CORDOVA.
[Illustration]
Come Love with me, the moonlit sea
Invites our barque to wander o’er
Its glassy face where e’en a trace
Of angry
[Illustration]
wave is seen no more.
Let Love repeat in accents sweet,
The joys which only Love can tell
And Passion’s strain sing o’er again,
In those fond tones I love so well.
SECOND VERSE.
Put fear away, and in the lay
Of love be all but love forgot;
Renounce the care of worldly glare.
Oh heed its glittering falseness not,
But come with me, with spirit free,
United, never more to part,
We’ll seize the time of youth’s gay prime.
The summer of the heart.
THIRD VERSE.
Then dearest rise, and let thine eyes,
Where shine Love’s softest mightiest spells.
Reveal the bright refulgent light
Which in their lustrous beauty dwells.
Let blissful song our joy prolong
While gliding o’er the sparkling wave,
And be the theme affection’s dream
Which ends but in the grave.
* * * * *
REVIEW OF NEW BOOKS.
_In Memoriam. Boston: Ticknor, Reed & Fields. 1 vol. 16mo._
The author of this exquisite volume, the finest ever laid on the altar
of friendship, is Alfred Tennyson, the most subtle and imaginative of
living poets. It derives its title from the circumstance of being
written in memory of Arthur Hallam, son of the historian of the Middle
Ages, friend of the poet, and lover of his sister. In a hundred and
eight short poems, all in one peculiar measure, Tennyson expresses not
merely his grief for the loss of his friend, but touches on all those
topics of sorrow and consolation kindred to the subject, or which the
character of young Hallam suggests. It may be said by some that the
object of the volume is unnatural and unmanly; that grief does not
express itself in verses but in tears; that sorrow vents itself in
simple words not in poetic conceits; and that the surest sign of the
deficiency of feeling is a volume devoted to its celebration. But if we
study the structure of Tennyson’s mind, we shall find that, however much
these objections will apply to many mourners, they are inapplicable to
him. The great peculiarity of his genius is intellectual intensity. All
his feelings and impressions pass through his intellect, and are
steadily scanned and reflected upon. In none of his poems do we find any
outburst of feeling, scorning all mental control, or rapidly forcing the
intellect into its service of rage or love. He has never written any
thing in which emotion is not indissolubly blended with thought. There
can be no doubt that he loved the person whom he here celebrates, but he
loved him in his own deep and silent manner; his loss preyed upon his
mind as well as heart, and stung thought and imagination into subtle
activity. The volume is full of beauty, but of beauty in mourning
weeds—of philosophy, but of philosophy penetrated with sadness. To a
common mind, the loss of such a friend would have provoked a grief, at
first uncontrollable, but which years would altogether dispel; to a mind
like Tennyson’s years will but add to its sense of loss, however much
imagination may consecrate and soften it.
This volume, accordingly, contains some of the finest specimens of
intellectual pathos, of the mind in mourning, we have ever seen, and, in
English literature, it has no parallel. The author is aware, as well as
his critics, of the impossibility of fully conveying his grief in
verses, and has anticipated their objection in a short poem of uncommon
suggestiveness:
I sometimes hold it half a sin
To put in words the grief I feel,
For words, like nature, half reveal
And half conceal the soul within.
But for the unquiet heart and brain
A use in measured language lies;
The sad mechanic exercise,
Like dull narcotics, numbing pain.
In words, like weeds, I’ll wrap me o’er,
Like coarsest clothes against the cold;
But that large grief which these unfold,
Is given in outline and no more.
The following poem touches on the mind and character of young Hallam;
and, if a true picture, the world, as well as the poet, has reason for
regret at his early death:
Heart-affluence in discursive talk
From household fountains never dry;
The critic clearness of an eye,
That saw through all the Muses’ walk;
Seraphic intellect and force
To seize and throw the doubts of man;
Impassioned logic, which outran
The hearer in its fiery course;
High nature amorous of the good,
But touched with no ascetic gloom;
And passion pure in snowy bloom
Through all the years of April blood;
A love of freedom rarely felt,
Of freedom in her regal seat
Of England, not the school-boy heat,
The blind hysterics of the Celt;
And manhood fused with female grace
In such a sort, the child would twine
A trustful hand, unasked, in thine,
And find his comfort in thy face;
All these have been, and thee mine eyes
Have looked on: if they looked in vain
My shame is greater who remain,
Nor let thy wisdom make me wise.
In the poem which we now extract, we think our readers will recognize
the force which pathos receives by its connection with intense and
excursive thought:
One writes, that “Other friends remain,”
That “Loss is common to the race,”—
And common is the commonplace,
And vacant chaff well meant for grain.
That loss is common would not make
My own less bitter, rather more:
Too common! Never morning wore
To evening, but some heart did break.
O father, wheresoe’er thou be,
That pledgest now thy gallant son;
A shot, ere half thy draught be done,
Hath stilled the life that beat from thee.
O mother, praying God will save
Thy sailor, while thy head is bowed,
His heavy-shotted hammock-shroud
Drops in his vast and wandering grave.
Ye know no more than I who wrought
At that last hour to please him well;
Who mused on all I had to tell,
And something written, something thought.
Expecting still his advent home;
And ever met him on his way
With wishes, thinking, here to-day,
Or here to-morrow will he come.
O, somewhere, meek, unconscious dove,
That sittest ’ranging golden hair;
And glad to find thyself so fair,
Poor child, that waitest for thy love!
For now her father’s chimney glows
In expectation of a guest;
And thinking “this will please him best,”
She takes a ribbon or a rose;
For he will see them on to-night;
And with the thought her color burns;
And, having left the glass, she turns
Once more to set a ringlet right;
And, even when she turned, the curse
Had fallen, and her future lord
Was drowned in passing through the ford
Or killed in falling from his horse.
O, what to her shall be the end?
And what to me remains of good?
To her, perpetual maidenhood,
And unto me, no second friend.
The ringing of the Christmas bells prompts a grand poem, in which the
poet rises out of his dirges into a rapturous prophecy of the “good time
coming.” It is altogether the best of many good lyrics on the same
general theme:
Ring out wild bells to the wild sky,
The flying cloud, the frosty light:
The year is dying in the night;
Ring out, wild bells, and let him die.
Ring out the old, ring in the new,
Ring, happy bells, across the snow:
The year is going, let him go;
Ring out the false, ring in the true.
Ring out the grief that saps the mind,
For those that here we see no more;
Ring out the feud of rich and poor,
Ring in redress to all mankind.
Ring out a slowly dying cause,
And ancient forms of party strife;
Ring in the nobler modes of life,
With sweeter manners, purer laws.
Ring out the want, the care, the sin,
The faithless coldness of the times;
Ring out, ring out my mournful rhymes,
But ring the fuller minstrel in.
Ring out false pride in place and blood,
The civic slander and the spite;
Ring in the love of truth and right,
Ring in the common love of good.
Ring out old shapes of foul disease,
Ring out the narrowing lust of gold;
Ring out the thousand wars of old,
Ring in the thousand years of peace.
Ring in the valiant man and free,
The larger heart, the kindlier hand;
Ring out the darkness of the land,
Ring in the Christ that is to be.
After these extracts we hardly need to commend the volume to our readers
as worthy of the genius of Tennyson. It will not only give sober delight
on its first perusal, but it contains treasures of thought and fancy
which a frequent recurrence to its pages will alone reveal.
* * * * *
_Chronicles and Characters of the Stock Exchange. By John
Francis. Boston: Crosby & Nichols. 1 vol. 8vo._
This volume, invaluable to merchants and brokers, should be in the hands
of all who have reason to be interested in the secrets of stock-jobbing,
or who have a natural curiosity to understand the philosophy of the
whole system as now practiced in all civilized countries. It gives a
complete history of the National Debt of England, from the reign of
William the Third to the present day, with sketches of the most eminent
financiers of the Stock Exchange, and large details of the political
corruption attending the making of loans. To these are added stock
tables from 1732 to 1846; dividends of the Bank of England stock from
1694 to 1847; and descriptions of the various panics in the English
money market, with their causes and effects. The sketch of Rothschild is
a gem of biography, and while his avarice and cunning are deservedly
condemned, more than usual justice is done to the remarkable blending of
amplitude with acuteness in his powerful understanding. It is said that
on one loan he made £150,000. Though profane, knavish and ferocious,
with bad manners, and a face and person which defied the ability of
caricature to misrepresent, his all-powerful wealth and talents made him
courted and caressed, not only by statesmen and monarchs, but by
clergymen and fastidious aristocrats. It was his delight to outwit
others, but he himself was very rarely outwitted; and the few cases
given by Mr. Francis, of his being overreached by the cunning of other
brokers, are probably the only ones that the London Stock Exchange can
furnish. Though he lived in the most splendid style, gave expensive
entertainments, and occasionally subscribed to ostentatious charities,
he was essentially a miser; and his mind never was so busy in
calculations, in which millions of pounds were concerned, as to lose the
power of estimating within a sixpence, the salary which would enable a
clerk to exist.
Some curious anecdotes are given in this volume of the corruption of
members of Parliament. It is well known that during the reigns of
William the Third, Anne, George I. and George II., and a portion of the
reign of George III., a seat in the House of Commons was considered, by
many members, as a palpable property, from which a regular income was to
be derived by selling votes to the ministry in power. Sir Robert Walpole
and the Duke of Newcastle, were the greatest jobbers in this political
corruption; but Lord Bute, who entered office on the principle of
dispensing with the purchase of Parliamentary support, carried the
practice on one occasion to an extent never dreamed of by his
predecessors. He discovered that the peace of 1763 could not be carried
through the House without a large bribe. Mr. Francis quotes from Bute’s
private secretary, a statement of the sum distributed among one hundred
and twenty members. “I was myself,” says Mr. Ross Mackay, the secretary
in question, “the channel through which the money passed. With my own
hand I secured above one hundred and twenty votes. Eighty thousand
pounds were set apart for the purpose. Forty members of the House of
Commons received from me a thousand pounds each. To eighty others I paid
five hundred pounds a piece.” This system has been varied of late years.
The mode of purchase at present is by patronage. Offices and pensions
are now the price of votes.
It would be impossible in a short notice to convey an idea of the
variety of curious information which this book contains. To people who
have money to lose, it is a regular treatise on the art of preserving
wealth. Every private gentleman, smitten with a desire to speculate in
stocks, should carefully study this volume before he makes the fatal
investments.
* * * * *
_Evangeline; A Tale of Acadia. By Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.
Illustrated by forty-five engravings on Wood, from designs by
Jane E. Benham, Birket Foster, and John Gilbert. Boston:
Ticknor, Reed & Fields. 1 vol. 8vo._
This volume, in paper, binding, and illustrations, is the most beautiful
and unique we have seen from an American press. We hardly know, however,
if we are right in giving it an American origin, as its illustrations
are most assuredly English, and its typographical execution is exactly
similar to the English edition. No better evidence is needed of
Longfellow’s popularity abroad than the appearance of an edition of one
of his poems, embellished like the present, with engravings so beautiful
in themselves, and so true to the spirit of the scenes and characters
they illustrate. The book is a study to American artists, evincing, as
it does, the rare perfection to which their English brethren have
carried the art of wood engraving, and the superiority of the style
itself to copper-plate in many of the essential requisites of pictorial
representation. The poem thus illustrated, is more beautiful than ever,
its exquisite mental pictures of life and scenery being accurately
embodied to the eye. As a gift-book it will doubtless be very popular
among the best of the approaching season, as its mechanical execution is
in faultless taste, and as the poem itself is an American classic.
* * * * *
_The Rebels. Boston: Phillips, Sampson & Co. 1 vol. 12mo._
Many of our elderly readers will recollect the sensation which this
admirable novel created on its original appearance. It was the first
work which gave Mrs. Child, then Miss Frances, her reputation as a
writer and thinker. The scene is laid in Boston, just before the
revolution, and contains a fine picture both of the characters and
events of the time. Many scenes are represented with great dramatic
effect, and there are some passages of soaring eloquence which the
accomplished authoress has never excelled. We cordially hope that the
novel is destined for a new race of popularity.
* * * * *
_Heloise, or the Unrevealed Secret. A Tale. By Talvi. New York:
D. Appleton & Co. 1 vol. 12mo._
We presume that our readers know that “Talvi” is the assumed name of
Mrs. Robinson. The present novel is a story of German and Russian life,
written by one to whom the subject is familiar, and will well repay
perusal. We think, however, that the accomplished authoress appears to
more advantage in works of greater value and pretension—such as her
late history of the literature of the Slavic nations.
* * * * *
_Life of Jean Paul Frederic Richter. Compiled from Various
Sources. Together with his Autobiography. Translated by Eliza
Buckminster Lee. New York: D. Appleton & Co. 1 vol. 12mo._
This is a second edition of a charming biography, published in Boston a
number of years ago, and now very properly reissued. It not only
contains an accurate account of the life and works of one of the most
remarkable and peculiar of German writers, but its pages throng with
interesting allusions and anecdotes relating to his contemporaries. The
letters of Jean Paul, especially, are full of life and heartiness. In
the following passage, referring to his first introduction to Goethe, we
have a living picture painted in few words. “At last the god entered,
cold, one-syllabled, without accent. ‘The French are drawing toward
Paris,’ said Krebel. ‘Hem!’ said the god. His face is massive and
animated, his eye a ball of light. But, at last, the conversation led
from the campaign to art, publications, etc., and Goethe was himself.
His conversation is not so rich and flowing as Herder’s, but
sharp-toned, penetrating and calm. At last he read, that is, played for
us, an unpublished poem, in which his heart impelled the flame through
the outer crust of ice, so that he pressed the hand of the enthusiastic
Jean Paul. He did it again, when we took leave, and pressed me to call
again. By Heaven! we will love each other! He considers his poetic
course as closed. _His reading is like deep-toned thunder, blended with
soft, whispering rain-drops._ There is nothing like it.” Goethe’s
personal effect on his contemporaries, would lead us to suppose that he
was, to adopt Mirabeau’s system of nicknaming, a kind of
Webster-Wordsworth.
* * * * *
_Railway Economy; a Treatise on the New Art of Transport, With
an Exposition of the Practical Results of the Railways in
Operation in the United Kingdom, on the Continent, and in
America. By Dionysius Lardner, D. C. L. New York: Harper &
Brothers. 1 vol. 12mo._
This is a very interesting account of the whole system of railways,
written by a person who understands it in its facts and principles. The
author has collected a vast amount of information, which he conveys in a
condensed and comprehensible form. The motto of the work is one of
Bacon’s pregnant sentences: “There be three things make a nation great
and prosperous: a fertile soil, busy workshops, and easy conveyance of
men and things from one place to another.”
* * * * *
_Pictorial Field Book of the Revolution. By Benson J. Lossing._
The Harpers have just commenced the issue of this beautiful work, which
is to be completed in twenty numbers. The mechanical execution is very
neat, and the wood engravings, from sketches by the author, are
admirable. Mr. Lossing writes with ardor and elegance, his mind filled
with his themes, and boiling over at times into passages of descriptive
eloquence. The book, when completed, will contain an account of the
localities and action of all the battles of the Revolution, illustrated
by six hundred engravings. The enterprise deserves success.
* * * * *
_A Discourse on the Baconian Philosophy. By Samuel Tyler, of the
Maryland Bar. Second Edition Enlarged. New York: Baker &
Scribner. 1 vol. 12mo._
This work is very creditable to American literature as a careful and
learned Discourse on a large subject, demanding a knowledge not only of
Bacon but of Plato and Descartes. Mr. Tyler evinces a thorough
comprehension of the externals of the subject, and few can read his book
without an addition to their knowledge; but we think he misses Bacon’s
method in his application of it to metaphysics and theology. The
peculiar vitality of Bacon’s axioms he often overlooks in his admiration
of their formal expression, and occasionally astonishes the reader by
making Bacon commonplace, and then lauding the commonplace as the
highest wisdom.
* * * * *
_The Unity of the Human Races Proved to be the Doctrine of
Scripture, Reason, and Science. By the Rev. Thomas Smith, D. D.
New York: Geo. P. Putnam. 1 vol._
It is well known that Professor Agassiz, at the last meeting in
Charleston of the American Association for the Advancement of Science,
startled the audience with an expression of disbelief in the doctrine
that all mankind sprung from one original parent. The present book, in
some degree the result of his remark, takes strong ground in favor of
the common faith on the point. It is worthy of attentive consideration
from all readers, especially as it popularises the important subject of
Races—a subject generally monopolized by technical _savans_; in
unreadable books.
* * * * *
Arthur’s Gazette.—We take great pleasure in calling the attention of
our readers to the prospectus of Mr. Arthur’s newspaper, as set forth in
full upon the cover of Graham for this month.
Mr. Arthur’s name is a household word the Union over; his stories have
penetrated every village of the country, and are read with delight for
their high moral tone and eminently practical character. The title is
therefore very fitly chosen, and we shall be much mistaken if the _Home_
Gazette is not welcomed from the start at thousands of firesides, as a
chosen and familiar friend.
Capital—a very necessary article in starting a new enterprise—has, we
are assured by Mr. Arthur, been abundantly secured, and with the
editor’s industry and energy, there can be no such word as fail.
Mr. Arthur has discovered the true secret of success—to charge such a
price as will really enable him to make a good paper—to make it so in
all respects; and then to _advertise_ so as to let the public know that
he has a first-rate article for sale at a fair living price. If he
allows no temptation of _temporary_ success to seduce him from the just
business ground thus assumed, he is as certain of ultimate and permanent
prosperity, as he can be of any problem in mathematics. A simple
business secret that a great many publishers we know of, have yet to
learn.
* * * * *
[Illustration:
LE FOLLET Paris, boul^{t}. S^{t}. Martin, 69.
Chapeaux de M^{me}. Baudry, r. Richelieu, 81—Plumes et fleurs de Chagot
ainé, r. Richelieu, 73.
Robes et pardessus M^{me}. Verrier Richard, r. Richelieu, 77—Dentelles
Violard, r. Choiseul, 4.
The styles of Goods here represented can be had of Mess^{rs}. L.T. Levy &
C^{o}. Philadelphia,
and at Stewart’s , New York.
Graham’s Magazine, 134 Chestnut Street.]
* * * * *
Transcriber’s Notes:
Archaic spellings and hyphenation have been retained as well as some
spellings peculiar to Graham's. Punctuation has 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 used for preparation of the ebook.
page 140, speech of Lenox, ==> speech of Lennox,
page 140, was for Malcom and ==> was for Malcolm and
page 145, at it’s outbreak ==> at its outbreak
page 148, added [_To be continued._
page 149, saw in vision ==> saw in a vision
page 149, “to saw the kernels ==> “to sow the kernels
page 153, thread-lace cape ==> thread-lace caps
page 153, in in leaving her ==> in leaving her
page 154, had forsight to arm ==> had foresight to arm
page 154, everybody eat, not ==> everybody ate, not
page 154, hour passsed in ==> hour passed in
page 155, turned to Miss Houton ==> turned to Miss Hauton
page 155, “Its a shameful ==> “It’s a shameful
page 155, “a very powerful ==> “is a very powerful
page 155, get a new troup ==> get a new troupe
page 155, was evident spite ==> was evident in spite
page 155, she could excute ==> she could execute
page 157, sleeping roses heart ==> sleeping rose’s heart
page 157, Our bark floats ==> Our barque floats
page 166, conditon of the ==> condition of the
page 171, nutricious fluids ==> nutritious fluids
page 173, roly-boly globularity ==> roly-poly globularity
page 177, perfect nonchalence ==> perfect nonchalance
page 178, some choice boquet ==> some choice bouquet
page 178, of faded boquets ==> of faded bouquets
page 179, lige a winged ==> like a winged
page 180, herself ununworthy ==> herself unworthy
page 180, and fops,” concontinued ==> and fops,” continued
page 183, to her hapness ==> to her happiness
page 186, in the of midst ==> in the midst of
page 189, her moonlight bark ==> her moonlight barque
page 192, pannicle, and the ==> panicle, and the
page 193, no part slighted ==> no part is slighted
page 193, fact the canvasi ==> fact the canvas is
page 194, musical intepretation ==> musical interpretation
page 195, BY T. HOLLY CHIVRES, M. D. ==> BY T. HOLLEY CHIVERS, M. D.
page 196, our bark to wander ==> our barque to wander
page 199, Longfellow’s popularaity ==> Longfellow’s popularity