No human being can rest for any time in a state of equilibrium, where

the desire to live and that to depart just balance each other. If one

has a house, which he has lived and always means to live in, he pleases

himself with the thought of all the conveniences it offers him, and

thinks little of its wants and imperfections. But once having made up

his mind to move to a better, every incommodity starts out upon him

until the very ground-plan of it seems to have changed in his mind, and

his thoughts and affections, each one of them packing up its little

bundle of circumstances, have quitted their several chambers and nooks

and migrated to the new home, long before its apartments are ready to

receive their bodily tenant. It is so with the body. Most persons have

died before they expire,--died to all earthly longings, so that the

last breath is only, as it were, the locking of the door of the already

deserted mansion. The fact of the tranquillity with which the great

majority of dying persons await this locking of those gates of life

through which its airy angels have been going and coming, from the

moment of the first cry, is familiar to those who have been often

called upon to witness the last period of life. Almost always there is

a preparation made by Nature for unearthing a soul, just as on the

smaller scale there is for the removal of a milk-tooth. The roots which

hold human life to earth are absorbed before it is lifted from its

place. Some of the dying are weary and want rest, the idea of which is

almost inseparable in the universal mind from death. Some are in pain,

and want to be rid of it, even though the anodyne be dropped, as in the

legend, from the sword of the Death-Angel. Some are stupid, mercifully

narcotized that they may go to sleep without long tossing about. And

some are strong in faith and hope, so that, as they draw near the next

world, they would fain hurry toward it, as the caravan moves faster

over the sands when the foremost travellers send word along the file

that water is in sight Though each little party that follows in a

foot-track of its own will have it that the water to which others think

they are hastening is a mirage, not the less has it been true in all

ages and for human beings of every creed which recognized a future,

that those who have fallen worn out by their march through the Desert

have dreamed at least of a River of Life, and thought they heard its

murmurs as they lay dying.

The change from the clinging to the present to the welcoming of the

future comes very soon, for the most part, after all hope of life is

extinguished, provided this be left in good degree to Nature, and not

insolently and cruelly forced upon those who are attacked by illness,

on the strength of that odious fore-knowledge often imparted by

science, before the white fruit whose core is ashes, and which we call

_death_, has set beneath the pallid and drooping flower of sickness.

There is a singular sagacity very often shown in a patient's estimate

of his own vital force. His physician knows the state of his material

frame well enough, perhaps,--that this or that organ is more or less

impaired or disintegrated; but the patient has a sense that he can hold

out so much longer,--sometimes that he must and will live for a while,

though by the logic of disease he ought to die without any delay.

The Little Gentleman continued to fail, until it became plain that his

remaining days were few. I told the household what to expect. There was

a good deal of kind feeling expressed among the boarders, in various

modes, according to their characters and style of sympathy. The

landlady was urgent that he should try a certain nostrum which had

saved somebody's life in jest sech a case. The Poor Relation wanted me

to carry, as from her, a copy of "Allein's Alarm," etc. I objected to

the title, reminding her that it offended people of old, so that more

than twice as many of the book were sold when they changed the name to

"A Sure Guide to Heaven." The good old gentleman whom I have mentioned

before has come to the time of life when many old men cry easily, and

forget their tears as children do.--He was a worthy gentleman,--he

said,--a very worthy gentleman, but unfortunate,--very unfortunate.

Sadly deformed about the spine and the feet. Had an impression that the

late Lord Byron had some malformation of this kind. Had heerd there was

something the matter with the ankle-j'ints of that nobleman, but he was

a man of talents. This gentleman seemed to be a man of talents. Could

not always agree with his statements,--thought he was a little

over-partial to this city, and had some free opinions; but was sorry to

lose him,--and if--there was anything--he--could----. In the midst of

these kind expressions, the gentleman with the _diamond_, the

Koh-i-noor, as we called him, asked, in a very unpleasant sort of way,

bow the old boy was likely to cut up,--meaning what money our friend

was going to leave behind.

The young fellow John spoke up, to the effect that this was a diabolish

snobby question, when a man was dying and not dead.--To this the

Koh-i-noor replied, by asking if the other meant to insult

him.--Whereto the young man John rejoined that he had no particul'r

intentions one way or t'other.--The Koh-i-noor then suggested the young

man's stepping out into the yard, that he, the speaker, might "slap his

chops,"--Let 'em alone,--said young Maryland,--it'll soon be over, and

they won't hurt each other much.--So they went out.

The Koh-i-noor entertained the very common idea, that, when one

quarrels with another, the simple thing to do is to _knock the man

down_, and there is the end of it. Now those who have watched such

encounters are aware of two things: first, that it is not so easy to

knock a man down as it is to talk about it; secondly, that, if you do

happen to knock a man down, there is a very good chance that he will be

angry, and get up and give you a thrashing.

So the Koh-i-noor thought he would begin, as soon as they got into the

yard, by knocking his man down, and with this intention swung his arm

round after the fashion of rustics and those unskilled in the noble

art, expecting the young fellow John to drop when his fist, having

completed a quarter of a circle, should come in contact with the side

of that young man's head. Unfortunately for this theory, it happens

that a blow struck out straight is as much shorter, and therefore as

much quicker than the rustic's swinging blow, as the radius is shorter

than the quarter of a circle. The mathematical and mechanical corollary

was, that the Koh-i-noor felt something hard bring up suddenly against

his right eye, which something he could have sworn was a paving-stone,

judging by his sensations; and as this threw his person somewhat

backwards, and the young man, John jerked his own head back a little,

the swinging blow had nothing to stop it; and as the Jewel staggered

between the hit he got and the blow he missed, he tripped and "went to

grass," so far as the back-yard of our boarding-house was provided with

that vegetable. It was a signal illustration of that fatal mistake, so

frequent in young and ardent natures with inconspicuous calves and

negative pectorals, that they can settle most little quarrels on the

spot by "knocking the man down."

We are in the habit of handling our faces so carefully, that a heavy

blow, taking effect on that portion of the surface, produces a most

unpleasant surprise, which is accompanied with odd sensations, as of

seeing sparks, and a kind of electrical or ozone-like odor,

half-sulphurous in character, and which has given rise to a very vulgar

and profane threat sometimes heard from the lips of bullies. A person

not used to pugilistic gestures does not instantly recover from this

surprise. The Koh-i-noor, exasperated by his failure, and still a

little confused by the smart hit he had received, but furious, and

confident of victory over a young fellow a good deal lighter than

himself, made a desperate rush to bear down all before him and finish

the contest at once. That is the way all angry greenhorns and

incompetent persons attempt to settle matters. It doesn't do, if the

other fellow is only cool, moderately quick, and has a very little

science. It didn't do this time; for, as the assailant rushed in with

his arms flying everywhere, like the vans of a windmill, he ran a

prominent feature of his face against a fist which was travelling in

the other direction, and immediately after struck the knuckles of the

young man's other fist a severe blow with the part of his person known

as the _epigastrium_ to one branch of science and the _bread-basket_ to

another. This second round closed the battle. The Koh-i-noor had got

enough, which in such cases is more than as good as a feast. The young

fellow asked him if he was satisfied, and held out his hand. But the

other sulked, and muttered something about revenge.--Jest as y'

like,--said the young man John.--Clap a slice o' raw beefsteak on to

that mouse o' yours 'n' 't'll take down the swellin'. (_Mouse_ is a

technical term for a bluish, oblong, rounded elevation occasioned by

running one's forehead or eyebrow against another's knuckles.) The

young fellow was particularly pleased that he had had an opportunity of

trying his proficiency in the art of self-defence without the gloves.

The Koh-i-noor did not favor us with his company for a day or two,

being confined to his chamber, _it was said_, by a _slight feverish

attack_. He was chop-fallen always after this, and got negligent in his

person. The impression must have been a deep one; for it was observed,

that, when he came down again, his moustache and whiskers had turned

visibly white--_about the roots_. In short, it disgraced him, and

rendered still more conspicuous a tendency to drinking, of which he had

been for some time suspected. This, and the disgust which a young lady

naturally feels at hearing that her lover has been "licked by a fellah

not half his size," induced the landlady's daughter to take that

decided step which produced a change in the programme of her career I

may hereafter allude to.

I never thought he would come to good, when I heard him attempting to

sneer at an unoffending city so respectable as Boston. After a man

begins to attack the State-House, when he gets bitter about the

Frog-Pond, you may be sure there is not much left of him. Poor Edgar

Poe died in the hospital soon after he got into this way of talking;

and so sure as you find an unfortunate fellow reduced to this pass, you

had better begin praying for him, and stop lending him money, for he is

on his last legs. Remember poor Edgar! He is dead and gone; but the

State-House has its cupola fresh-gilded, and the Frog-Pond has got a

fountain that squirts up a hundred feet into the air and glorifies that

humble sheet with a fine display of provincial rainbows.

--I cannot fulfil my promise in this number. I expected to gratify your

curiosity, if you have become at all interested in these puzzles,

doubts, fancies, whims, or whatever you choose to call them, of mine.

Next month you shall hear all about it.

--It was evening, and I was going to the sick-chamber. As I paused at

the door before entering, I heard a sweet voice singing. It was not the

wild melody I had sometimes heard at midnight:--no, this was the voice

of Iris, and I could distinguish every word. I had seen the verses in

her book; the melody was new to me. Let me finish my page with them.

HYMN OF TRUST.

O Love Divine, that stooped to share

Our sharpest pang, our bitterest tear,

On Thee we cast each earthborn care,

We smile at pain while Thou art near!

Though long the weary way we tread,

And sorrow crown each lingering year,

No path we shun, no darkness dread,

Our hearts still whispering, Thou art near!

When drooping pleasure turns to grief,

And trembling faith is changed to fear,

The murmuring wind, the quivering leaf

Shall softly tell us, Thou art near!

On Thee we fling our burdening woe,

O Love Divine, forever dear,

Content to suffer, while we know,

Living and dying, Thou art near!

* * * * *

ART.

PICTURES AT SEVILLE AND MADRID.

_Seville, January, 1859_.

I do not know whether I ought not to take you to the Museo on so bright

a morning, although I should like better to stroll with you on the

Paseo by the pretty river across which I look to the faintly seen hills

of Ronda, with the rich palm-trees in the foreground, and a great stone

pine in the middle distance, which would recall to us the Campagna and

Italy. Many people have said to me, "You cannot judge of Murillo till

you see him at Seville,"--they, of course, having been at Seville. This

is so far true, that his best picture is undoubtedly in the Cathedral

here; but in all other ways, Murillo is perfectly to be seen in other

cities. _You_ know, therefore, just what the pictures and the Museo

have to say to you. They speak of a most clever artist, who evidently

consulted Nature conscientiously, and who perceived and understood very

often many phases of her grace and beauty. The most masterly of his

fifteen or twenty pictures in the gallery is the one of Saint Thomas of

Villanueva giving Alms to the Poor; and it is, certainly, charmingly

arranged, with great breadth of effect and clever drawing,--on a cool

scale of color throughout. The Saint is in a black robe, relieved

against a light background of gray wall. The beggar who is receiving

alms is capitally understood, and carries the light broadly through the

picture. A charming little boy leans against his mother in the

left-hand corner, in half shadow, and shows her the coin in his hand. A

few other heads fill up the right-hand of the picture behind the Saint.

A red drapery, of a dull color, and a touch of brown-red here and

there, warm the agreeable grayness of the rest of the canvas. I like

much, also, a "Conception," in many respects like the usual picture

which Murillo repeated so often; but the Virgin in this one is

represented as very young,--about twelve or fourteen years old,--and

the whole effect is most silvery and delicate.

But the Saint Antonio in the Cathedral is, I should say, his great

picture. It is very simple, and full of feeling. The Saint, half

kneeling, stretches forward to the vision of the Christ-Child, which

descends in a glory of cherubim toward him. The great mass of light

falls directly upon the kneeling figure and the upturned face, and

throws strong shadows on the ground. One is reminded, in some of the

angel-figures, of the brilliant light and shadow on the little flying

cherubs in the "Assumption," at Venice. Here all is silvery, where in

Titian all burns with the glory of a Venetian sunset. But this picture

of Murillo seems to me what one must call an eminently "happy" picture.

It gives one the idea that the painter enjoyed painting it, for the

expressive movement of the Saint is most admirably given, and the

extreme simplicity of every part of the picture is most agreeable; so

that we are ready to give great praise to Murillo for what he did, and

to say that he was earnest and tried to represent what he really felt.

And when we say that, we say a great deal; do we not? But we cannot,

for a moment, compare him to the great Venetians. He did not attempt

what they did, because he did not feel it at all; and, as a painter, he

is not comparable to them. One sees that he executed with rapidity and

a sort of dash, as it were. The Venetian concealed his execution, as

Nature does, and attempted to render the most subtile things which he

knew his art alone _could_ give, in their full force and beauty. As a

painter, therefore, he cannot be compared with men who wrought from so

different a principle. And when we think of the lovely elevation and

noble thought in the great Venetians, we must quietly rest grateful for

those great blessings,--grateful and happy that they exist, and that

we, in some measure at least, understand and appreciate their meaning.

Is it not delightful to think of them and know them in their precious

old corners and over their dear old altars?

_Madrid, March, 1859_.

You see that we have at last left Andalusia, and are here in what is

like a bit of Paris,--shops, dress, carriages, and now and then the

smell of asphalt pavement being renewed. Still, mantillas are the

coverings for the female head, and peasants in costumes drive mules and

donkeys through the crowds in the busy streets, and one is still in

Spain. We came, you know, for the gallery, and the first glimpse of it

showed us that we have enough to do to see that, during our proposed

stay of a month. I must tell you just a few things about the pictures,

and give you a peep at Madrid through my eyes, since you are not here

to use your own.

Murillo is here the same as everywhere else. I very much prefer his

pictures in Seville. Velasquez, however, is to be really seen nowhere

so well as here. I do not know how many pictures there are here by him,

but a great quantity, it seems to me: Philips without number, in

childhood, youth, and age; Dons with curled moustaches; Queens with

large hoops and disfigured heads; an actor, full of life and character,

one of his very best. But his greatest picture, and really a wonder, is

his portrait of himself painting the little Infanta, who is in the

foreground of the picture with two young girls, her court ladies, her

dwarf, and a diminutive page. It is quite like a photograph, in clear,

broad effect of light and dark. From the other side of the room, full

of truth and vigor,--as you approach it, you find it is dashed in with

a surety of touch and a breadth truly extraordinary,--no details, no

substance even; painted with one huge brush, it would almost seem, all

is vigorous, dashing, clever, the triumph of _chic_, as shown by a

master hand. The dog in the immediate foreground is capital, the page

pushing him playfully with his foot. The dwarf stands next, full of a

sort of quaint truth, with her big head and heavy chin. The mass of

light falls on the Infanta, who takes a cup of something, chocolate, I

suppose, from one of the kneeling girls, while the other makes a

reverence on the other side. Beyond are a nun and a _guarda-damas_, and

in the mirror at the other end of the room are most cleverly indicated

the portraits of Philip and his wife. Velasquez stands on the left of

the picture, behind the Infanta, painting, with his canvas turned back

toward us as we look into the room. The black figure of an attendant

has passed out of the apartment and is going up a stair against a clear

white wall. The skilful way in which you are led into the picture is

astonishing, and the whole thing is quite by itself as a piece of

painting. There is no attempt at anything subtile or even delicate in

the treatment, speaking from the point of view of a result achieved by

paint on canvas,--no texture, no difference of handling, no imitation;

all is _paint_, admirably put on, for the effect across the room. I

think we must set Velasquez quite by himself as a truthful and surely

most gifted portrait-master. With a peculiar gift,--genius, I think we

might say,--certainly he is like no one else, and nobody else is like

him. Then there is his equestrian portrait of Philip IV., of which you

may remember the sketch in the Pitti Gallery,--also one of the Duke of

Olivarez, fresh, dashing, and spirited. But I prefer the portrait of

--some actor, I am sure,--full of character, against a gray wall

background,--one of those faces one is sure one has seen somewhere in

Spain, and he is declaiming evidently with the most capital action.--So

much for Velasquez.

But I hardly dare attempt to tell you of the glory of the great Titian,

who seems almost newly revealed, in many _perfect_ works. Nothing can

equal the superb style of a portrait of Alfonso of Ferrara; it is like

nothing but Nature,--a splendid, dark, manly face and figure, standing

and looking thoughtfully at you, or rather, beyond you, caressing in an

absent way a little silky dog who puts his paw up to attract his

master's notice. The glowing flesh, the superbly painted dress of deep

blue with fine arabesques of gold,--the delicate hand lying on the

soft, silky hair of the dog, with its turquoise ring on the second

joint of one of the fingers,--you can imagine it, can you not? Next him

stands Philip II., pale, elegant, and repulsive, in gorgeous armor worn

over festal, glittering white satin. Charles V. is on the other side;

and I hardly know which of these portraits is the finest as a work of

Art, for all are _perfect_. Charles is standing, with a noble dog

leaning up against his hand; there is something _simpática_ in his gray

eyes, his worn face, and even in his protruding jaw, it is so admirably

rendered, and gives such a firm character to the face. His costume is

_elegantísimo_, white satin and gold,--with a tissue-of-gold doublet,

and a cassock of silver-damask, with great black fur collar and lining,

against which is relieved the under-dress; he wears his velvet cap and

plume, and a deep emerald satin curtain hangs on his right hand. These

portraits are just about as wonderful as any you may remember,--in his

best style and in capital condition. But I know you would say that the

great portrait of Charles on horseback is more grand. It is a sort of

heroic poem; he looks like Sir Galahad, or Chivalry itself, going forth

to conquer wrong and violence. His eager, worn face looks out from the

helmet so calmly and so steadily, the flash of his armor, which gleams

like real metal, the coal-black horse, which comes forward out of the

landscape shaking his head-piece of blood-red plumes against the golden

sunset sky and champing the golden bit, the grasp of the lance by the

noble rider: well, painting can do no more than that. It is history,

poetry, and the beauty of Nature recreated by the grand master. An

entirely different phase of his character is seen in his Ariadne Asleep

surrounded by the Bacchanals. This is full of antique Grecian feeling;

and such a subtile, delicious piece of painting! Ariadne is in the

foreground, full of warm, breathing life, her arm thrown over her

lovely head, and her golden hair falling over the vase of gold and onyx

on which she rests; a river of red wine runs through the emerald grass;

two beautiful girls have just put by their music and instruments, and

one turns her exquisite face toward us to speak to the other reclining

on the grass. The one who turns to us is the beauty of the Louvre, or

some one very like her, in full Venetian loveliness. In her bosom are

one or two violets and a paper with _Titianus_ written on it. The bit

of music on the grass has Greek letters. Dancing figures are in the

middle of the picture. The fauns stagger under the dark trees, carrying

great sumptuous vases of agate and gold. Silenus is asleep on a sunny

hill at a distance, and the white sails of the ship with Theseus gleam

on the deep-blue sea. There is another called an Offering to Fecundity.

It is a crowd of most lovely baby boys, wonderfully painted, frolicking

on the green among flowers and fruits. A figure full of action and

passion holds up a glass to the statue of the goddess in one corner.

The children are kissing each other and carrying about baskets of

fruit; these baskets are hung with rich pearls and rubies and gems of

all kinds. The green, fresh trees wave against a summer sky, and the

work is full of tender, sensitive elegance and love. It shows to me an

entirely new side of Titian in its extreme delicacy and sweetness.

Nobody can ever speak of a "want of refinement" in Titian, if they

thought so before, after seeing these pictures. Then there is the

Herodias, the same as the girl in Dresden who holds up the

casket,--wonderfully delicate and beautiful; and several other

portraits and pictures, which I cannot tell you of, even if you are not

already tired. I ought, however, to say that Paul Veronese has a very

fine Venus and Adonis here, full of sunlight and summer beauty, and

Christ Teaching the Doctors, nobly serious in character and admirable

in treatment; also two sketches of Cain and of Vice and Virtue, very

full of feeling for his subject. The Cain has his back toward you. His

wife and child look up at him entreatingly. There is a fine, solemn

horizon with a gleam of twilight. There are several Tintorets, but no

favorable specimens,--a portrait is the best. There is also a Giovanni

Bellini, which brings back the Venetian altar-pieces, quiet and lovely;

and a Giorgione, like the large one in the Louvre, in many ways; a

Madonna and Infant, with a fine female Saint and a noble Saint George.

These are some of the glorious treasures which the Spaniards own. If we

could only have some of these! or if, while we or our country are

committing the sin of coveting the Spanish possessions, we would only

covet something worth the having! I confess, I should delight to take

away one or two fine jewels of pictures that nobody here would miss.

I had almost forgotten to mention the great Raphael, the "Spasimo." It

is in his Roman style, with much that is, to me, forced in the action

and expression. The head of Christ, however, is beautiful, and

exquisitely drawn. Beside the Spasimo, there is a little picture of the

Virgin and Child, with Saint Joseph, in Raphael's early manner, very

lovely, and reminding one of the "Staffa" Madonna, at Perugia. It is

faint in color, and most charming in careful execution.

Then there are the finest Hemmlings I have ever seen,--finer than those

at Munich: lovely Madonnas, meek and saintly; superb adoring Kings, all

glowing with cloth-of-gold and velvets and splendid jewels; beautiful

quiet landscapes, seen through the arches of the stable; and angels,

with wings of dazzling green and crimson. The real love with which

these wonderful pictures are caressed by the careful, thoughtful artist

makes them most precious. Every little flower is delicately and

artistically done, and everything is invested with a sort of sacred

reverence by this earnest Pre-Raphaelite. One or two Van Eycks have the

same splendor and depth of feeling. These pictures look as if they were

painted yesterday, so clear and brilliant are their colors.

It is a pleasant circumstance, that some of the great Venetian pictures

in the gallery here were gained for Spain by the judgment and taste of

Velasquez. When he went to Italy with a commission from Philip IV.,

which it must have delighted him to execute, "to buy whatever pictures

were for sale that he thought worth purchasing," he spent some time in

Venice, and there bought, among other things, the Venus and Adonis of

Paul Veronese, and several of the works of Tintoretto. The Titians had

come to Spain before, and it was from the study of them, perhaps, that

Velasquez learned to paint so well. At any rate, we know what he

thought of Titian; for Mr. Sterling gives an extract from a poem by a

Venetian, Marco Boschini, which was published not long after

Velasquez's journey to Italy, in which part of a conversation is given

between him and Salvator Rosa, who asked him what he thought of

Raphael. You will like to see it, if you have not Sterling by you.

"Lu storse el cao cirimoniosamente,

E disse: 'Rafael (a dirve el vero,

Piasendome esser libero e sinciero)

Stago per dir che nol me piase niente.'

"'Tanto che,' replichè quela persona,

'Co' no ve piase questo gran Pitor,

In Italia nissun ve dà in l' umor,

Perche nu ghe donemo la corona.'

"Don Diego replichè con tal maniera:

'A Venetia se trova el bon e 'l belo;

Mi dago el primo luogo a quel penelo;

Tician xè quel che porta la bandiera.'"

Here is a translation:--

The master, with a ceremonious air,

Bowed, and then said, "Raphael, truth to tell,

For to be free and honest suits me well,

Pleases me not at all, I must declare."

"Since, then," replied the other, "you so frown

On this great painter, in Italy is none

By whom, indeed, your favor can be won;

For upon him we all bestow the crown."

Don Diego thereupon to him replies,

"At Venice may be found the good and fair;

I give the first place to the pencil there;

Titian is he who carries off the prize."

REVIEWS AND LITERARY NOTICES.

1. _Dictionary of Americanisms_. A Glossary of Words and Phrases

usually regarded as peculiar to the United States. By JOHN RUSSELL

BARTLETT. Second Edition, greatly improved and enlarged. Boston:

Little, Brown, & Company, 1859. pp. xxxii., 524.

2. _A Glossarial Index to the Printed English Literature of the

Thirteenth Century_. By HERBERT COLERIDGE. London: Trübner & Company.

1859. pp. iv., 104.

3. _Outlines of the History of the English Language_, for the Use of

the Junior Classes in Colleges and the Higher Classes in Schools. By

GEORGE L. CRAIK, Professor of History and of English Literature in

Queen's College, Belfast. Third Edition, revised and improved. London:

Chapman & Hall. 1859. pp. xii., 148.

4. _The Vulgar Tongue_. A Glossary of Slang, Cant, and Flash Phrases,

used in London from 1839 to 1859; Flash Songs, Essays on Flash, and a

Bibliography of Canting and Slang Literature. By DUCANGE ANGLICUS.

Second Edition, improved and much enlarged. London: Bernard Quaritch.

1859. pp. 80.

5. _A Dictionary of Modern Slang, Cant, and Vulgar Words_, etc., etc.

By a London Antiquary. London: John Camden Holten. 1859. pp. lxxxviii.,

160.

6. _On the English Language, Past and Present_. By RICHARD CHENEVIX

TRENCH, D.D. New Edition, revised and enlarged. New York: Blakeman &

Mason. 1859. pp. 238.

7. _A Select Glossary of English Words used formerly in Senses

different from their present_. By RICHARD CHENEVIX TRENCH, D.D. New

York: Redfield. 1859. pp. xi., 218.

8. _Rambles among Words; their Poetry, History, Wisdom_. By WILLIAM

SWINTON. New York. Scribner. 1859. pp. 302.

The first allusion we know of to an Americanism is that of Gill, in

1621,--"_Sed et ab Americanis nonnulla mutuamur, ut_ MAIZ _et_ KANOA."

Since then, English literature, not without many previous wry faces,

has adopted or taken back many words from this side of the water. The

more the matter is looked into, the more it appears that we have no

peculiar dialect of our own, and that men here, as elsewhere, have

modified language or invented phrases to suit their needs. When Dante

wrote his "De Vulgari Eloquio," he reckoned nearly a thousand distinct

dialects in the Italian peninsula, and, after more than five hundred

years, it is said that by far the greater part survive. In England,

eighty years ago, the county of every member of Parliament was to be

known by his speech; but in "both Englands," as they used to be called,

the tendency is toward uniformity.

In spite of the mingling of races and languages in the United States,

the speech of the people is more uniform than that of any European

nation. This would inevitably follow from our system of common-schools,

and the universal reading of newspapers. This has tended to make the

common language of talk more bookish, and has thus reacted unfavorably

on our literature, giving it sometimes the air of being composed in a

dead tongue rather than written from a living one. It gladdens us, we

confess, to see how goodly a volume of _Americanisms_ Mr. Bartlett has

been enabled to gather, for it shows that our language is alive. It is

only from the roots that a language can be refreshed; a dialect that is

taught grows more and more pedantic, and becomes at last as unfit a

vehicle for living thought as monkish Latin. This is the danger which

our literature has to guard against from the universal Schoolmaster,

who wars upon home-bred phrases, and enslaves the mind and memory of

his victims, as far as may be, to the best models of English

composition,--that is to say, to the writers whose style is faultlessly

correct, but has no blood in it. No language, after it has faded into

_diction_, none that cannot suck up feeding juices from the

mother-earth of a rich common-folk-talk, can bring forth a sound and

lusty book. True vigor of expression does not pass from page to page,

but from man to man, where the brain is kindled and the lips are

limbered by downright living interests and by passions in the very

throe. Language is the soil of thought; and our own especially is a

rich leaf-mould, the slow growth of ages, the shed foliage of feeling,

fancy, and imagination, which has suffered an earth-change, that the

vocal forest, as Howell called it, may clothe itself anew with living

green. There is death in the Dictionary; and where language is limited

by convention, the ground for expression to grow in is straitened also,

and we get a _potted_ literature, Chinese dwarfs instead of healthy

trees.

We are thankful to Mr. Bartlett for the onslaught he makes in his

Introduction upon the _highfaluting_ style so common among us. But we

are rather amused to find him falling so easily into that _Anglo-Saxon_

trap which is the common pitfall of those half-learned men among whom

we should be slow to rank him.[A] He says, "The _unfortunate tendency_

to _favor_ the Latin at the _expense_ of the Saxon _element_ of our

_language_, which _social_ and _educational causes_ have long _tended_

to foster in the mother _country_, has with us _received_ an

_additional_ _impulse_ from the great _admixture_ of _foreigners_ in

our _population_." (p. xxxii.) We have underscored the words of Latin

origin, and find that they include _all_ the nouns, all the adjectives

but two, and three out of five verbs,--one of these last (the auxiliary

_have_) being the same in both Latin and Saxon. Speaking of the

Bostonians, Mr. Bartlett says, "The great _extent_ to which the

_scholars_ of New England have carried the _study_ of the _German

language_ and _literature_ for some years back, _added_ to the _very

general neglect_ of the old _master-pieces_ of English _composition_,

have [has] had the _effect_ of giving to the writings of many of them

an _artificial, unidiomatic character_, which has an _inexpressibly

unpleasant effect_ to those who are not _habituated_ to it." (p. xxv.

We again underscore the un-Saxon words.) Now if there be any short cut

to the Anglo-Saxon, it is through the German; and how far the

Bostonians deserve the reproach of a neglect of old English

masterpieces we do not pretend to say, but the first modern reprint of

the best works of Latimer, More, Sidney, Fuller, Selden, Browne, and

Feltham was made in Boston, under the care of the late Dr. Alexander

Young. We have no wish to defend Boston; we mean only to call Mr.

Bartlett's attention to the folly of asking people to write in a

dialect which no longer exists. No man can write off-hand a page of

Saxon English; no man with pains can write one and hope to be commonly

understood. At least let Mr. Bartlett practise what he preaches. When a

deputation of wig-makers waited on George III. to protest against the

hair-powder-tax, the mob, seeing that one of them wore his own hair,

ducked him forthwith in Tower-Ditch,--a very Anglo-Saxon comment on his

inconsistency. We should not have noticed these passages in Mr.

Bartlett's Introduction, had he not, after eleven years' time to weigh

them in, let them remain as they stood in his former edition, of 1848.

In other respects the volume before us greatly betters its forerunner.

That contained many words which were rather vulgarisms than

provincialisms, and more properly English than American. Almost all

these Mr. Bartlett has left out in revising his book. Once or twice,

however, he has retained as Americanisms phrases which are proverbial,

such as "born in the woods to be scared of an owl," "to carry the foot

in the hand," and "hallooing before you're out of the woods." But it

will be easier to follow the alphabetical order in our short list of

_adversaria_ and comments.

ALEWIFE. We doubt if Mr. Bartlett is right in deriving this from a

supposed Indian word _aloof_. At least, Hakluyt speaks of a fish called

"old-wives"; and in some other old book of travels we have seen the

name derived from the likeness of the fish, with its good, round belly,

to the mistress of an alehouse.

BANK-BILL. Is not an Americanism. It is used by Swift, Pope, and

Fielding.

BOGUS. Mr. Bartlett quotes a derivation of this word from the name of a

certain _Borghese_, said to have been a notorious counterfeiter of

bank-notes. But is it not more probably a corruption of _bagasse_,

which, as applied to the pressed sugarcane, means simply something

worthless? The word originally meant a worthless woman, whence our

"baggage" in the same sense.

[Footnote A: This, perhaps, was to be expected; for he calls Dr.

Latham's _English Language_ "unquestionably the most valuable work on

English philology and grammar--which has yet appeared," (p. xxx.,

note,) and refers to the first edition of 1841. If Mr. Bartlett must

allude at all to Dr. Latham, (who is reckoned a great blunderer among

English philologers,) he should at least have referred to the second

edition of his work, in two volumes, 1855.]

CHAINED-LIGHTNING. More commonly chain-lightning, and certainly not a

Western phrase exclusively.

CHEBACCO-BOAT. Mr. Bartlett says, "This word is doubtless a corruption

of _Chedabucto_, the name of a bay in Nova Scotia, from which vessels

are fitted out for fishing." This is going a great way down East for

what could be found nearer. _Chebacco_ is (or was, a century since) the

name of a part of Ipswich, Massachusetts.

TO FALL a tree Mr. Bartlett considers a corruption of to _fell_. But,

as we have commonly heard the words used, to _fell_ means merely to cut

down, while to fall means to make it fall in a given direction.

TO GO UNDER. "To perish. An expression adopted from the figurative

language of the Indians by the Western trappers and residents of the

prairies." Not the first time that the Indians have had undue credit

for poetry. The phrase is undoubtedly a translation of the German

_untergehen_ (fig.), to perish.

HAT. "Our Northern women have almost discarded the word _bonnet_,

except in _sun-bonnet_, and use the term _hat_ instead. A like fate has

befallen the word _gown_, for which both they and their Southern

sisters commonly use _frock_ or _dress_." We do not know where Mr.

Bartlett draws his Northern line; but in Massachusetts we never heard

the word _hat_ or _frock_ used in this sense. They are so used in

England, and _hat_ is certainly, _frock_ probably, nearer Anglo-Saxon

than _bonnet_ and _gown_.

IMPROVE. Mr. Bartlett quotes Dr. Franklin as saying in 1789, "When I

left New England in the year 1723, this word had never been used among

us, as far as I know, but in the sense of _ameliorated_ or _made

better_, except once in a very old book of Dr. Mather's, entitled

_Remarkable Providences_." Dr. Increase Mather's _Providences_ was

published in 1684. In 1679 a synod assembled at Boston, and the result

of its labors was published in the same year by John Foster, under the

title, _Necessity of a Reformation_. On the sixth page we find,

"Taverns being for the entertainment of strangers, which, if they were

_improved_ to that end only," etc. Oddly enough, our copy of this tract

has Dr. Mather's autograph on the title-page. But Mr. Bartlett should

have referred to Richardson, who shows that the word had been in use

long before with the same meaning.

To INHEAVEN. "A word invented by the Boston transcendentalists." And

Mr. Bartlett quotes from Judd's _Margaret_. Mr. Judd was a good

scholar, and the word is legitimately compounded, like _ensphere_ and

_imparadise_; but he did not invent it. Dante uses the word:--

"Perfetta vita ed alto merto _inciela_

Donna piú su."

LADIES' TRESSES. "The popular name, in the Southern States, for an

herb," etc. In the Northern States also. Sometimes _Ladies' Traces_.

LIEFER. "A colloquialism, also used in England." Excellent Anglo-Saxon,

and used wherever English is spoken.

LOAFER. We think there can be no doubt that this word is German.

_Laufen_ in some parts of Germany is pronounced _lofen_, and we once

heard a German student say to his friend, _Ich lauf'_ (lofe) _hier bis

du wiederkehrst_: and he began accordingly to saunter up and down,--in

short, to _loaf_ about.

TO MULL. "To soften, to dispirit." Mr. Bartlett quotes

_Margaret_,--"There has been a pretty considerable _mullin_ going on

among the doctors." But _mullin_ here means stirring, bustling in an

underhand way, and is a metaphor derived from _mulling wine_. _Mull_,

in this sense, is probably a corruption of _mell_, from Old Fr.

_mesler_, to mix.

TO BE NOWHERE (in the sense of failure) is not an Americanism, but

_Turf_-Slang.

SALLY-LUN, a kind of cake, is English.

TO SAVE, meaning to kill game so as to get it, is not confined to the

Far West, but is common to hunters in all parts of the country.

SHEW, for _showed_. Mr. Bartlett calls this the "shibboleth of

Bostonians." However this may be, it is simply an archaism, not a

vulgarism. _Show_, like _blow, crow, grow,_ seems formerly to have had

what is called a strong preterite. _Shew_ is used by Lord Cromwell and

Hector Boece.

SLASHES. "Swampy or wet lands overgrown with bushes. Southern and

Western." Used also in New York.

SPAN of horses is Dutch (High or Low).

TO WALK SPANISH; to "walk" a boy out of any place by the waistband of

his trousers, or by any lower part easily prehensible. N.E. This is,

perhaps, as old as Philip and Mary.

TO SPREAD ONE'S SELF is defined by Mr. Bartlett "to exert one's self."

It means rather to exert one's self ostentatiously. It is a capital

metaphor, derived, we fancy, from the turkey-cock or peacock,--like the

Italian _pavoneggiarsi_. We find in the _Tatler_ "spreading her graces

in assemblies." This last, however, may be a Gallicism, from _étaler_.

STRAW BAIL. "Worthless bail, bail given by 'men of straw.'" This is

surely no Americanism, and we have seen its origin very differently

explained, namely, that men willing for a fee to become bail walked in

the neighborhood of the courts with straws stuck in their

shoes,--though Mr. Bartlett's explanation is ingenious.

SUNFISH. Mr. Bartlett thinks this a corruption; but the resemblance of

the fish, as seen in the water, to the ordinary portraits of the sun in

almanacs and on tavern-signs seems to us enough to account for the

name.

A few phrases occur to us that have escaped Mr. Bartlett.

A CARRY: portage. _Passim_.

CAT-NAP: a short doze. New England.

CHOWDER-HEAD: muddle-brain. New England.

COHEES (accent on the last syllable): term applied to the people of

certain settlements in Western Pennsylvania, from their use of the

archaic form, _Quo' he_.

TO COTTON TO.

DON' KNOW AS I KNOW: the nearest your true Yankee ever comes to

acknowledging ignorance.

GANDER-PARTY: a social gathering of men only. New England.

LAP-TEA: where the guests are too many to sit at table. Massachusetts.

LAST OF PEA-TIME: day after fair.

LOSE-LAID (loose-laid): weaver's term, and probably English; means

weak-willed. Massachusetts.

MOONGLADE: a beautiful word for the track of moonlight on the water.

Massachusetts.

OFF-OX: an unmanageable fellow. New England.

OLD DRIVER: } euphemistic for the

OLD SPLIT-FOOT: } Devil.

ONHITCH (unhitch): to pull trigger.

ROTE: sound of the surf before a storm. Used also in England. New

England.

SEEM: I can't _seem_ to see, for I can't see. She couldn't _seem_ to be

suited, for couldn't be suited.

STATE-HOUSE. This seems an Americanism. Did we invent it, or borrow it

from the _Stad-huys_ (town-hall) of New Amsterdam? As an instance of

the tendency to uniformity in American usage, we notice that in

Massachusetts what has always been the _State-House_ is beginning to be

called the _Capitol_. We are sorry for it.

STRIKE: } terms of the game of STRING: } nine-pins.

SWALE: a hollow. New England. English also; see Forby.

TORMENTED: euphemistic, as "not a _tormented_ cent." New England.

WELL-SWEEP.

We have gone through Mr. Bartlett's book with the attention which a

work so well done deserves, and are thoroughly impressed with the

amount of care and labor to which it bears witness. We have quarrelled

with it wherever we could, because it cannot fail to become the

standard authority in its department. Its value will increase from year

to year. For instance, the Spanish words, in which it is especially

rich, are doomed to undergo strange metamorphoses on Anglo-Saxon lips;

for it is the instinct of the unlearned to naturalize words as fast as

possible, and to compel them to homebred shapes and sounds. There is

often an unwitting humor in these perversions,[A] and they are always

interesting as showing that it is the nature of man to use words with

understanding, however appearances might lead us to an opposite

conclusion.

[Footnote A: We remember once hearing a man say of something, that it

was written in a "very grand delinquent [grandiloquent] style,"--a

phrase certainly not without modern application. We have heard also

Angola-Saxons and Angular-Saxons,--the latter, at least, not an unhappy

perversion.]

The least satisfactory part of Mr. Bartlett's book is the Appendix, in

which he has got together a few proverbs and similes, which, it seems

to us, do no kind of justice to the humor and invention of the people.

Most of them have no characteristic at all, except coarseness. We hope

there is nothing peculiarly American in such examples as these:--"Evil

actions, like crushed rotten eggs, stink in the nostrils of all"; and

"Vice is a skunk that smells awfully rank when stirred up by the pole

of misfortune." These have, beside, an artificial air, and are quite

too long-skirted for working proverbs, in which language always "takes

off its coat to it," if we may use a proverbial phrase, left out by Mr.

Bartlett. We confess, we looked for something racier and of a more

_puckery_ flavor. One hears such now and then, mostly from the

West,--like "Mean enough to steal acorns from a blind hog"; "I take my

tea _bar-foot_," the answer of a backwoodsman, when asked if he would

have cream and sugar. Some are unmistakably Eastern; as, "All deacons

are good,--but there's odds in deacons"; "He's a whole team and the dog

under the wagon"; "That's first-rate and a half"; "Handy as a pocket in

a shirt" (ironical). Almost every county has some good die sinker in

language, who mints phrases that pass into the currency of a whole

neighborhood. We picked up two such the other day, both of the same

coinage. The county-jail (the only stone building where all the

dwellings were of wood) was described as "the house whose underpinning

comes up to the eaves"; while the place unmentionable to ears polite

was "where they don't rake up the fires at night." A man, speaking to

us once of a very rocky clearing, said, "Stone's got a pretty heavy

mortgage on that farm"; and another, wishing to give us a notion of the

thievishness common in a certain village, capped his climax

thus:--"Dishonest! why, they have to take in their stone walls o'

nights." Any one who has driven over a mountain-stream by one of those

bridges made of _slabs_ will feel the force of a term we once heard

applied to a parson so shaky in character that no dependence could be

placed on him,--"A slab-bridged kind o' feller!" During some very cold

weather, a few years ago, we picked a notable saying or two. "The fire

don't seem to git no kind o' _purchase_ on the cold." "They say Cap'n

M'Clure's gone through the Northwest Passage." "Has? Think likely, and

left the door open, too!" Elder Knapp, the once noted itinerant

preacher, had a kind of unwashed poetry in him. We heard him say

once,--"Do you want to know when a Unitarian" (we think it was) "will

get into heaven? When hell's froze over, and he can skate in!" We quote

merely for illustration, and do not mean to compare the Elder with

Taylor or South.

The element of exaggeration has often been remarked on as typical of

American humor. In Dr. Petri's "Compact Handbook of Foreign Words,"[A]

(from which Mr. Bartlett will be surprised to learn that _Hoco-pocos_

is a nickname for the Whig party in the United States,) we are told that

the word _humbug_ "is commonly used for the exaggerations of the

North-Americans." One would think the dream of Columbus half-fulfilled,

and that Europe had found in the West the near way to Orientalism, at

least of diction. But it seems to us that a great deal of what is set

down as mere exaggeration is more fitly to be called intensity and

picturesqueness, symptoms of the imaginative faculty in full health and

strength, though producing, as yet, only the raw material.[B]

By-and-by, perhaps, the world will see it worked up into poem and

picture, and Europe, which will be hard-pushed for originality ere

long, may thank us for a new sensation. The French continue to find

Shakspeare exaggerated, because he treated English just as our folk do

when they speak of "a steep price," or say that they "freeze to" a

thing. The first postulate of an original literature is, that a people

use their language as if they owned it. Even Burns contrived to write

very poor English. Vulgarisms are often only poetry in the egg. The

late Horace Mann, in one of his Addresses, commented at some length on

the beauty of the French phrase _s'orienter_, and called on his young

hearers to practise it in life. There was not a Yankee in his audience

whose problem had not always been to find out what was "_about east_"

and shape his course accordingly. The Germans have a striking proverb;

_Was die Gans gedacht, das der Schwan vollbracht_; What the goose but

thought, that the swan fullbrought; or, to de-Saxonize it a little,

_pace_ Mr. Bartlett, What the goose conceived, that the swan

achieved;--and we cannot help thinking, that the life, invention, and

vigor shown in our popular speech, and the freedom with which it is

shaped to the need of those who wield it, are of the best omen for our

having a swan at last.

[Footnote A: _Gedrängtes Handbuch der Fremdwörter_, etc., etc.,

Leipzig, 1852.]

[Footnote B: Take, for instance, the "negro so black that charcoal made

a chalk-mark on him," or the "shingle painted to look so like stone

that it sank in water,"--itself overpersuaded by the skill of the

painter. We overheard the following dialogue last winter.

(Thermometer,--12°.) "Cold, this morning."--"That's _so_. Hear what

happened to Joe?"--"No, I didn't."--"Well, the doctors had ben givin'

him one thing another with merc'ry in't, and he walked out down to the

Post-Office and back, and when he come home he kind o' felt somethin'

hard in his boots. Come to pull 'em off, they found a lump o'

quicksilver in both on 'em."--"Sho!"--"Fact; it had shrunk clean down

through him with the cold." This rapid power of dramatizing a dry fact,

of putting it into flesh and blood, and the instantaneous conception of

Joe as a human thermometer, seem to us more like the poetical faculty

than anything else. It is, at any rate, humor, and not mere quickness

of wit,--the deeper, and not the shallower quality. Humor tends always

to overplus of expression; wit is mathematically precise. Captain Basil

Hall denied that our people had humor; but did he possess it himself?

for, if not, he would never find it. Did he always feel the point of

what was said to himself? We doubt, because we happen to know a chance

he once had given him in vain. The Captain was walking up and down the

_piazza_ of a country tavern while the couch changed horses. A

thunderstorm was going on, and, with that pleasant European air of

indirect self-compliment in condescending to American merit, which is

so conciliating, he said to a countryman lounging near, "Pretty heavy

thunder, you have here." The other, who had taken his measure at a

glance, drawled gravely, "Waal, we _du_, considerin' the number of

inhabitants."]

Even persons not otherwise interested in the study of provincialisms

will find Mr. Bartlett's book an entertaining one. The passages he

quotes in illustration are sometimes strangely comic. Here is one: "To

SAVE. To make sure, i.e., to kill game, or an enemy, whether man or

beast. _To get_ conveys the same meaning.... The notorious Judge W----

of Texas ... once said in a speech at a barbecue, (after his political

opponent had been apologizing for taking a man's life in a duel,)--

"'The gentleman need not make such a fuss about _getting_ such a

rascal; everybody knows that I have shot three, and two of them I

_saved_.'"

We have but one fault to find with Mr. Bartlett's Dictionary, and that

it shares with all other provincial glossaries. No accents are given.

No stranger could tell, for example, whether _hacmatack_ should be

pronounced hac'matack, hacma'tack, or hacmatack'. The value of Mr.

Wright's otherwise excellent dictionary is very much impaired by this

neglect. Ignorance of the pronunciation enhances tenfold the difficulty

of tracing analogies or detecting corruptions. The title of Mr.

Coleridge's volume (the second on our list) is enough to give scholars

a notion of its worth. It is the first instalment of the proposed

comprehensive English Dictionary of the Philological Society, a work

which, when finished, will be beyond measure precious to all students

of their mother-tongue. At the end of the volume will be found the Plan

of the Society, with minute directions for all those who wish to give

their help. Cooperation on this side the water will be gladly welcomed.

Of Dean Trench's two volumes, one is new, and the other a revised

edition. No one has done more than he to popularize the study of words,

which is only another name for the study of thought. His new book has

the same agreeable qualities which marked its forerunners, maintaining

an easy conversational level of scholarly gossip and reflection, the

middle ground between learning and information for the million. Without

great philological attainments, and without any pretence of such, he

gives the results of much good reading.

Mr. Craik's book is a compact and handy manual.

The SLANG Dictionaries are both as ill-done as possible, and the author

of the smaller one deserves to be put under the pump for taking the

name of the illustrious Ducange, one of those megatheria of erudition

and industry that we should look on as an extinct species, but for such

men as the brothers Grimm. The larger book has the merit of including a

bibliography of the subject, for which the author deserves our thanks,

though in other respects showing no least qualification for the task he

has undertaken. We trust there are not many "London Antiquaries" so

ignorant as he. One curious fact we glean from his volume, namely, the

currency among the London populace of certain Italian words, chiefly

for the smaller pieces of money. What a strident invasion of

organ-grinders does this seem to indicate! The author gives them thus:

"Oney saltec, a penny; Dooe saltee, twopence; Tray saltee, threepence,"

etc., and adds, "These numerals, as will be seen, are of mongrel

origin,--the French, perhaps, predominating."! He must be the gentleman

who, during the Exhibition of 1851, wrote on his door, "No French

spoken here." _Dooe saltee_ and _tray saltee_ differ little but in

spelling from their Italian originals, _due soldi_ and _tre soldi_. On

another page we find _molto cattivo_ transmogrified into "_multee

kertever_, very had." Very bad, indeed! For one more good thing beside

the Bibliography, we are indebted to the "London Antiquary." In his

Introduction he has reprinted the earliest list of _cant_ words in the

language, that made by Thomas Harman in Elizabeth's time. We wish we

could only feel sure of the accuracy of the reprint. In this list we

find already the adjective _rum_ meaning _good, fine_,--a word that has

crept into general use among the lower classes in London, without ever

gaining promotion. The fate of new words in this respect is curious.

Often, if they are convenient, or have knack of lodging easily in the

memory, they work slowly upward. The Scotch word _flunky_ is a case in

point. Our first knowledge of it in print is from Fergusson's Poems.

Burns advertised it more widely, and Carlyle seems fairly to have

transplanted it into the English of the day. As we believe its origin

is still obscure, we venture on a guess at it. French allies brought

some words into Scotland that have rooted themselves, like the

Edinburgh _gardyloo_. _Flunky_ is defined in Fergusson's glossary as "a

better kind of servant." This is an exact definition of the Scotch

_hench-man_, the most probable original of which is _haunch-man_ or

body-guard. Turn haunch-man into French and you get _flanquier_;

corrupt it back into Scotch and you have _flunky_. Whatever liberties

we take with French words, the Gauls have their revenge when they take

possession of an English one. We once saw an Avis of the police in

Paris, regulating _les chiens et les boule dogues_, dogs and bull-dogs.

Vocabularies of vulgarisms are of interest for the archaisms both of

language and pronunciation which we find in them. The dictionaries say

_coverlet_, as if the word were a diminutive; the rustic persists in

the termination _lid_, which points to the French _lit_, bed. On the

other hand, he still says _hankercher_, having been taught so by his

betters, though they have taken up the final _f_ again. Sewel, in the

Introduction to his Dutch Dictionary, 1691, gives _henketsjer_, and

Voltaire, forty years later, _hankercher_, as the received

pronunciation. Sewel tells us also that the significant _l_ was still

sounded in _would_ and _should_, as it still is by the peasantry in

many parts of England.

Mr. Swinton's book, the last on our list, is an entertaining one, and

gives proof of thought, though sometimes smothered in fine writing. It

is written altogether too loosely for a work on philology, one of the

exactest of sciences. But we have a graver fault to find with Mr.

Swinton, and that is for his neglect to give credit where he is

indebted. He seems even desirous to conceal his obligations. The

general acknowledgment of his Preface is by no means enough, where the

debt is so large. The great merit of Dr. Richardson's Dictionary being

the number of illustrative passages he has brought together, it is

hardly fair in Mr. Swinton so often to make a show of learning with

what he has got at second hand from the lexicographer. Dr. Trench could

also make large reclamations, and several others. There is beside an

unpleasant assumption of superiority in the book. An author who says

that _paganus_ means village, who makes _ocula_ the plural of _oculus_,

and who supposes that _in petto_ means _in little_, is not qualified to

settle Dr. Webster's claims as a philologer, much less to treat him

with contempt. The first two blunders we have cited may be slips of the

pen or the press, but this cannot be true of the many wrong etymologies

into which Mr. Swinton has fallen. We hope that in another edition he

will correct these faults, for he shows a power to appreciate ideas

which is worth more than mere scholarship, vastly more than the

reputation of it among the unscholarly.

_A History and Description of New England, General and Local._ By A. J.

COOLIDGE and J. B. MANSFIELD. Illustrated with Numerous Engravings. In

Two Volumes. Vol. I. Maine, New Hampshire, and Vermont. Boston: Austin

J. Coolidge, 1859. pp. xxv., 1023.

This is a book of great labor, being nothing less in plan than a

condensed town-history of New England. In spite of all efforts to the

contrary, one is forced to admit that there is very little poetry in

American history. It is a record of advances in material prosperity,

and scarce anything more. The only lumps of pure ore are the _Idea_

which the Pilgrims were possessed with and its gradual incarnation in

events and institutions. Beyond this all is barren. There is a fearful

destitution of the picturesque elements. It is true that our local

historians commonly avoid all romance as if it were of the Enemy; but

if we compare their labors with "The Beauties of England and Wales,"

for example, the work certainly of uninspired men, we shall be

convinced that the American Dryasdust suffers from poverty of material.

There is no need to remind us of Hawthorne; but he is such a genius as

is rare everywhere, and could conjure poetry out of a country

meeting-house.

In books of this kind we see evidence of what is called the

"enterprise" of our people on every page,--one almost hears the hum of

the factory-wheels, as he reads,--but that is all. It is not to be

wondered at that foreigners fail to find our country interesting, and

that the only good book of American travels is that of De Tocqueville,

who deals chiefly with abstract ideas. It is possible to conceive minds

so constituted that they may reach before long the end of their

interest in the number of shoes, yards of cotton, and the like, which

we produce in a year. The only immortal Greek shoemaker is he who had

the good luck to be snubbed by Apelles, and Penelope is the only

manufacturer in antiquity whose name has come down to us.

One thing in the narrative part of this volume is striking,--the

continual recurrence of massacre by the French and Indians. This is

something to be borne in mind always by those who would understand the

politics of our New England ancestors. We confess that we were

surprised, the other day, to see a journal so able and generally so

philosophical as the London "Saturday Review" joining in the outcry

about the treatment of the Acadians. If our forefathers were ever wise

and foreseeing, if they ever showed a capacity for large political

views, it is proved by their early perception that the first question

to be settled on this continent was, whether its destiny should be

shaped by English or Keltic, by Romish or Protestant ideas. By what

means they attempted to realize their thought is quite another

question. Great events are not settled by sentimentalists, nor history

written in milk-and-water. Uninteresting in many ways the Puritans

doubtless were, but not in the least _spoony_.

The volume before us contains a vast amount of matter and fulfils

honestly what it promises. It tells all that is to be told in the way

of fact and statistics. The first settlers, the clergymen, the

enterprising citizens, the men of mark,--all their names and dates are

to be found here. Of the literary execution of the book we cannot speak

highly. The style is of the worst. If a meeting-house is spoken of, it

is a "church edifice"; if the Indians set a house on fire, they "apply

the torch"; if a man takes to drink, he is seduced by "the intoxicating

cup"; even mountains are "located." On page 68, we read that "the

pent-up rage that had long heaved the savage bosom, and which had only

been _smouldering under the pacific policy of Shurt_, now knew no

bounds, and burst forth like the fiery torrent of the volcano"; on the

same page, "the impending doom which, like a storm-cloud in the

heavens, had overhung with its sable drapery the settlements along the

coast, _and Pemaquid in particular._" Of a certain tavern we are told

that the daughters of the landlord were "genteel, sprightly,

intelligent young ladies, ambitious of display and of setting a rich

and elegant table." This is no doubt true, but surely History should

sift her tacts with a coarser sieve.

In spite of these faults, the book is one which all New Englanders will

find interesting, and we hope that in their second volume the authors

will balance their commendable profusion of industry with a

corresponding economy of fine writing.

_An Oration, delivered before the Municipal Authorities of the City of

Boston, July_ 4, 1850. By GEORGE SUMNER, etc, etc, Boston. 1859. pp.

125.

The opposition in the Common Council to the order (usual on such

occasions in Boston) to print the oration of Mr. Sumner, and the series

of assaults it has encountered front the administration press, have

given it a considerable, though secondary, importance. Intrinsically a

performance of great merit, those on whom the weight of his arguments

and learning fell disclosed their sense of its power by the anger of

their debate and their efforts to repel it.

Its value, as containing a fresh and instructive contribution to the

knowledge of our Revolutionary history, derived from original sources

of inquiry, explored by Mr. Sumner in person, would alone have rescued

from neglect any ordinary Fourth-of-July oration.

The services and aids of Spain, material and moral, pecuniary and

diplomatic, to the American Revolutionary cause,--the introduction,

through the fortunes of Captain John Lee of Marblehead, of the American

question into the policy and polities of Spain,--the effect of the

arrival of our National Declaration of the 4th of July, 1776, on the

fate of that gallant New England cruiser, then detained as a pirate,

for his heroic exploits under our infant and unknown flag,--the

incidents of vast and varied labor and accomplishment in our behalf,

connected with the name and administration of the eminent Spanish

minister and statesman, Florida Blanca,--the weaving and spreading out

of that network of influences and circumstances, in the toils of which

France and Spain entangled Great Britain, until she found herself

confronted by much of the physical and all the moral power of the

Continent, and from which all extrication was made hopeless, until the

American Colonies should be free,--the origin of "the armed

neutrality," and the shock it gave to the naval power of England, in

the very crisis of the hopes of American liberty,--are presented in a

narrative, clear, condensed, and original.

From the aspect of peace and freedom in which our country so happily

reposes, going on prospering and increasing, "by confidence in

democratic principles, by faith in the people, and by the spirit of

mutual forbearance and charity," the orator turns to that Europe to

which our fathers there looked for succor, now "echoing to the clang of

arms, and hostile legions arrayed for combat."

A tribute to Italy, for the gifts, poured out from her treasures of

art, science, medical skill, and political knowledge, of literature and

philosophy, to all the uses and adornments of human life, introduces a

reference to the Italian Republics of the Middle Ages, which are shown

to have been based on these great principles:--That all authority over

the people emanates from the people,--should return to them at stated

intervals,--and that its holders should be accountable to the people

for its use. "To those Republics," it is added, "we also owe the

practical demonstration of the great truth, that no state can long

prosper or exist where intelligent labor is not held in honor, and that

labor cannot be honorable where it is not free."

Mr. Sumner's defence of democratic republican ideas,--of the fitness of

the European peoples for self-government,--his repulse of those

unbelieving theorists who would consign the French and the Italians to

the eternal doom of oppression,--are manly, powerful, and unanswerable.

His hearty love of genuine democratic principles, as taught by the old

republican school of statesmen and philosophers, and his zealous pride

of country, which always made him one of the most intensely American,

in thought, word, and deed, of all the Americans who have ever

sojourned in the Old World, shine forth from every page of the Oration.

And in the honest ardor of his defence of the natural and political

rights of man, as they were taught by Turgot, by Montesquieu, by

Jefferson, not content with declamation or rhetoric, he ploughs deep

into the reasoning by which they were demonstrated or defended, and

ranges wide over the fields of learning by which they were illustrated.

Careful for nothing but for the truth itself, he refutes the errors of

a French writer who had charged practical ingratitude on the part of

America towards de Beaumarchais, the agent of the first benefactions of

France to these Colonies, and arraigns and exposes the historical

mistakes of Lord Brougham and of President Fillmore, unfavorable to

Republican France and to Continental liberty.

The crimes of Austria are shown to have been made possible by the moral

support Austria has received from the government of England. The fruits

of the reverses suffered by Hungary, and by other nationalities

struggling for independence and popular liberty, are exhibited in the

sacrifices since endured by England in the war in the Crimea, and in

the embarrassments of the present hour.

Among our own duties and responsibilities to the great and world-wide

cause of liberty,--discussed thus far in its relations to Europe,--Mr.

Sumner proceeds to present the grand duty we owe, not less to ourselves

than to Europe, of giving to the struggling nations an example of

government true to the memories of our National Anniversary, and to the

fundamental ideas of civil freedom "implied in an independent, but

rigidly responsible judiciary, and a complete separation of the

legislative and judicial functions."

From Jefferson, Madison, Hamilton, Marshall, and Story,--to say nothing

of English and French jurists,--Mr. Sumner brings authority to define

and illustrate the true place of the judicial office in the political

system of a free government. And here, fidelity to those principles of

liberty he had explained and defended, fidelity to the "good old cause"

itself, at home and in the grand forum of the nations, demanded and

received the frank avowal, that "a recent scene in the Supreme Court of

the United States has shown that Jefferson was no false prophet, and

has furnished at the same time a serious warning to all who prefer a

government based upon law to either despotism or anarchy."

The clear and sharp, merciless and logical veracity with which he

discriminates between the solemn judgment of a tribunal and a stump

speech from the bench,--the startling narration of decisions and

statutes, practice and precedent, condensed into a few of the closing

pages of the Oration, with which the discussion read by Chief Justice

Taney in the famous case of Dred Scott is confronted and exposed,--are

among the greater merits of this elaborate and able discourse. It must

have required of one not in the arena of political strife, who for a

large part of his manhood has occupied himself abroad in the studies of

an intelligent scholar and a patriotic American, somewhat of

self-denial, to throw away the certainty of almost universal cheers for

his performance, by incurring the displeasure of some of his audience

and many of his countrymen.

It was not, however, in the interest of any opinion of African slavery

that the case of Scott was here referred to. It was in the interest of

republican liberty everywhere, endangered by all departures in the

model republic of the world from fundamental principles of good

government, and all the more perilled in proportion to the station,

quality, and character of the active offender.

And Mr. Sumner was right. The truth of history, the law of this land,

and of all lands where there is any law which marks a boundary

between legal right and despotic usurpation, unite to denounce,

and will forever condemn, the judicial magistrate whose great name is

tarnished and whose "great office" is degraded by this political

_pronunciamento_, uttered from the loftiest judicial place in America.

Stripped of verbiage and technicalities, the case is within the

humblest comprehension. The chief justice and a majority of his

associates held that Dred Scott, who sued his master for his freedom in

the Federal court, had been already legally declared to be the slave of

that same master by the highest court of the State of Missouri, in

which State Scott resided at the time. They held that this decision of

the Missouri court was binding on all other tribunals; and that the

Federal court had no authority to reverse it, even if wrong.

The _merits_ of the cause then before the court were thus conclusively

disposed of, whether the decision be regarded as bearing on the main

issue between the parties, or on the plea in abatement filed by the

defendant, avowing that Scott was not a _citizen_ of Missouri,--an

averment, if true, fatal to his standing in the Federal court,--since

its jurisdiction of the cause depended on the citizenship of the

litigants. In a word, if he was a _slave_, he was no _citizen_, If he

was the slave of Sanford, his doom was fixed, his dream of rights

dissolved. If the decision of the Missouri court was finally binding,

the functions of the Federal tribunal were at an end.

What, then, was the pertinency of going on to argue the effect of the

Ordinance of 1787 over Scott while a resident in Illinois, or of the

Missouri Compromise on him during his residence in Wisconsin, or the

effect of his color, race, or ancestral disabilities upon a cause

controlled finally and beyond appeal by the authority of a decision

already made and recorded?

Mr. Buchanan made hot haste to use this _pronunciamento_ of his chief

justice, issued only a few hours after his inauguration as President,

and withheld until after the election of 1856 had taken place. He

proclaimed--on its authority as a judicial exposition of a point of

constitutional law--the existence of slavery in the Territory of

Kansas. And he endeavored to make it efficient and powerful by

practical application in the administration of the government of the

Territory, and by interpolating these bastard dogmas, dropped from the

Federal bench, into the creed of the political party of which he was

the official chief.

These _dicta_ of Mr. Chief Justice Taney made Dred Scott neither more

nor less a _slave_, neither more nor less a _citizen_, than he had been

without their utterance. But they aided the purpose of subjugating

Kansas, of opening all American territory to slavery, of Africanizing

the continent by reopening the slave-trade, of breaking down barriers

which State legislation has interposed against the introduction of

slaves, and of putting the propagandists of slavery in full possession

of every power.

We gladly record our sense of the skill, learning, and intrepidity with

which Mr. Sumner fulfilled his task of presenting, defining, and

defending, within the brief limits of a single oration, the cause of

Liberty,--Liberty,--American, European, universal.

* * * * *

_Out of the Depths._ The Story of a Woman's Life. London: Macmillan &

Co. 8vo. pp. 381.

The author of this book is like an awkward angler, who fails to take a

trout himself, and spoils the water for the more skilful man who may

follow him. Its object is the illustration of that subject which has

been called "the greatest of our social evils," and which, in its

present aspect, is certainly one of the saddest that the statesman or

the moralist is called upon to contemplate, and yet one the duration of

which seems to be inevitably coexistent with every form of civilized

society yet known to the world. The author has sought his end by means

of a fictitious autobiography. This was of course. No unusual faculty

in the selection of methods was necessary to the choice; for only in

the autobiographical form could the inner life of a courtesan be so

revealed as to present a truthful and living picture of her soul's

experience. A fine novel of this kind would be a great book, and one

productive of much good; not, indeed, directly to the wretched class

that would furnish studies for it, but to society at large, and so

indirectly to the class in question, by providing a subject of this

kind which could be studied and talked about. Dumas _fils_' "Dame aux

Camelias" is a great melodramatic story; but it is so exceptional in

its incidents and episodical in its character, that its heroine is

quite worthless as a specimen for examination and analysis; and it is,

beside, so very French as to be almost valueless in this regard, for

that reason alone. What it would be well to have written is the story

of an abandoned woman, told simply and without any reserve, except that

of decency, and purely from a woman's point of view. But, except by a

woman, and at the cost of the experience to be recounted, this is

manifestly possible only to genius. The author of "Out of the Depths"

has not attained the _desideratum_; but has yet approached so near it,

that we fear the right man, or, possibly, woman, may be deterred from

the attempt to do better. If so, there is a good subject--good for the

making of a grand psychological, physiological, and dramatic

study--lost.

The subject of this professed autobiography, Mary Smith, is the

daughter of a gardener on a large English estate. Her family is much

noticed and favored by the ladies of the mansion, and she, who is

handsome and intellectual, soon acquires tastes and an education above

her position; and as she is vain and selfish and of a voluptuous

temperament, the consequence seems inevitable. Her first fault,

however, is committed with her betrothed husband, a young gentleman,

destined for the Church, by whose sudden death, at a time when his life

was more than ever essential to her happiness, she is left an outcast,

a creature to be spurned from the door of those upon whose tender care

Nature and themselves had given her unextinguishable claims. She finds

shelter and kind treatment with two girls who belong, though not

ostensibly, to the class into which she is about to fall, and soon she

appears as the mistress of a foolish young nobleman, for whom she has

not the least affection. At last he wearies of and parts with her, and

she finds a second companion and protector in an eminent barrister, who

takes pleasure in cultivating her literary tastes. Her unfaithfulness

to him results in a separation, and she passes into the hands of a

third keeper, who abandons her on occasion of his approaching marriage.

Infuriated at his desertion, she intrudes upon him at a social party at

his private chambers, and behaves so outrageously that she is handed

over to the police, and her name appears in public as that of an

infamous and disorderly woman. From this point she rapidly descends to

the lowest rank of her unfortunate class. On her way, a strong hand is

put out to save her. It is that of a gigantic young clergyman, who

allows her to think that she has decoyed him to her room, but who

really goes there to endeavor to turn her from her course of life. She

scorns his exhortations, and attempts to browbeat him; but she finds

him ready for a row upon the spot. He offers to fight her crowd of

bullies singlehanded, and when she locks the door upon him, twists the

lock off, hasp and all, with a turn of his wrist. Although they

part,--he none the worse, she none the better, for the interview,--it

is not without fruits; for he leaves her his address, and when, after

being reduced to the lowest depths of degradation and brought to the

last endurable pinch of suffering, she determines, at the death-bed of

a repentant companion, to reform at any cost, and does set her face

upward, and is beaten back and trodden under foot by the righteously

uncharitable of her own sex, she thinks of her big clergyman, seeks him

out, and by his instrumentality is taken into the country, and made the

mistress of a school in his parish. Here the friends of her youth find

her, forgive her, and cherish her; and she receives a proposal of

marriage from an estimable and wealthy farmer, who persists in his

suit, even after she has told him of her former life, and after the

small-pox, caught on a ministration of mercy, has harrowed all the

beauty from her face. But rapid consumption supervenes, and relieves

the author from the embarrassing position into which he had brought

himself.

This is all the story that Mary Smith has to tell; and it will be seen,

that, so far as the incidents are concerned, it is commonplace enough.

It is not distinguished by one novel incident, or one fresh character,

except, perhaps, the muscular divine. Even in the grouping and

narration of its old incidents it exhibits no dramatic power, and

little skill of characterization in the portraiture of its personages.

And not only does a matter-of-fact air pervade the narrative, but the

tale is told with such reticence of fact as well as of feeling, that it

reveals but little of the real life of a London courtesan, and leaves

the reader almost as ignorant as he was when he took up the book of

what it is that makes the horror of such existence; all of which might

have been imparted without any violation of the decorum proper to such

a book, and which, therefore, should not have been withheld. The book,

too, is much too goody-goody. There is too much preaching throughout

it, and in certain parts a suddenness in the kneeling down to pray that

is quite startling. This stupid sort of goodness helps much to defeat

the purpose of the work. Even the strong minister, although his is not

the old-fashioned way, seems to have more beef on his bones than brains

in his head, or he would not answer to a desperate exclamation of Mary

Smith,--"Don't say that. God only knows what is best for us all; even

you, and all like you, may begin to live for the good of society,

without being its bane." This is very true,--as true as Justice

Shallow's original observation, that "we must all die." But the idea of

attempting to impress a degraded woman of the town by telling her that

she, and all like her, might be brought to live _for the good of

society!_

But in spite of these faults, the book has one great merit, which is

not too common; it seems to be the truthful story of a real life. This

impression is partly the result of a peculiarity of style which is very

difficult to express otherwise than by saying that the use of language

seems to indicate that the writer is of the condition of life in which

Mary Smith professes to have been born, and has acquired a knowledge of

language and literature in the manner in which she relates that she

acquired hers. There is no vulgarity, but a certain air of constrained

propriety, and an absence of any elegance, or grace, or indications of

a slow and unconsciously acquired acquaintance with the phraseology of

cultivated society. If this be really assumed, the author has exhibited

a delicate refinement in the art of writing not surpassed in any work

of imagination known to us. Another ground for the seeming actuality of

the story, to those who have any knowledge of the class to which its

heroine belongs, is the cause to which she attributes her fall. This

was not seduction; for she confesses, what hardly one in a thousand of

her sisters in shame will fail to confess, if they speak the truth,

that she was not seduced;--and neither was it poverty; for her father

was well-to-do, and she the petted attendant, almost the friend, of a

young lady of wealth and station;--but it was her vanity and her

unrestrained passion. She is represented, in the first place, as

regarding a good match, a rich husband, as the great object of life;

and to such a woman chastity is not a sentiment, but a dictate of

prudence; just as to a man whose great purpose is the getting of money,

honesty is but the best policy. After she has met the man who brings

her fate with him, (it might as well have been any other of his class,)

she writes,--"The one great pleasing and wretched hope of my mind was

that I should see him again; for it is so pleasant to believe that any

man in a higher station should take an interest in me." And again she

speaks of "exultation at the prospect which opened before me of being

raised out of the station in life from which I sprang by birth"; and

again, of her "desire of being a lady." This vanity it is, this desire

to dress and live like the women above them, and have intercourse with

the men above them, which leads the greater number of our fallen women

to their ruin, or, rather, sends them to it with their eyes open; and

for the rest, when Mary Smith, living in her own fine house, the petted

mistress of the wealthy Mr. Plowden, was unfaithful to him, it was not

for love of fine clothes or fine society. It is not long since our

whole country was shocked by the dire results of a similar abandonment

to vanity and wantonness, about which the usual amount of commonplace

and cant was uttered. It is time that the very truth was told about

this matter, in sad earnestness and singleness of purpose. We hoped to

find the whole truth in "Out of the Depths"; but, finding only a part

of it, we can greet it only with a partial welcome.

_Reply to the "Statement of the Trustees" of the Dudley Observatory._

By BENJAMIN APTHORP GOULD, JR. Albany: Printed by Charles Van

Benthuysen. 1859. 8vo. pp. 366.

The question between Dr. Gould and the Trustees of the Albany

Observatory was not one of merely private or passing interest. It

concerned not only all men of science, but all men of honor. It

concerned all who like pluck, and who, in a quarrel, instinctively take

sides with one against many. It was of interest to men of science,

because the question was between show and reality, between newspaper

notoriety and the quiet advancement of real and enduring knowledge. It

concerned men of honor, because it was of some consequence to know

whether public sentiment in America would justify, nay, tolerate even,

the printing of confidential letters, and not only the printing, but

the garbling of them to suit the ends of personal spite. It concerned

lovers of fair-play, because it was to be settled whether it is right

to accuse a man of peculation whom you wish to convict of disagreeable

manners.

Dr. Gould's pamphlet is a thorough vindication of himself. It is so not

only as to graver charges, but incidentally, by its perfect quietness

of tone, it answers the accusation of bad temper. The hitting is none

the less severe that it is done with scientific precision, and the

astronomer shows his ability to make his antagonists "see stars" in a

less comfortable way than through a telescope. There is a grim humor,

too, as well as dignity, in the Cool way in which Dr. Gould

recapitulates all the charges made against him,--especially where he

condenses them in the Index. Better pamphlet-fighting has not been seen

since Bentley. The hardship of the matter is, that people are commonly

more ready to believe slander than to trouble themselves with reading a

refutation of it. It gave us particular satisfaction to see that the

American Association for the Advancement of Science had shown its sense

of the merits of the quarrel by electing Dr. Gould vice-president of

their body.

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