They did not diffuse a light of celestial joy over his countenance. On

the contrary, the Poor Relation's remark turned him pale, as I have

said; and when the terrible wrinkled and jaundiced looking-glass turned

him green in addition, and he saw himself in it, it seemed to him as

if it were all settled, and his book of life were to be shut not yet

half-read, and go back to the dust of the under-ground archives. He

coughed a mild short cough, as if to point the direction in which his

downward path was tending. It was an honest little cough enough, so far

as appearances went. But coughs are ungrateful things. You find one out

in the cold, take it up and nurse it and make everything of it, dress it

up warm, give it all sorts of balsams and other food it likes, and carry

it round in your bosom as if it were a miniature lapdog. And by-and-by

its little bark grows sharp and savage, and--confound the thing!--you

find it is a wolf's whelp that you have got there, and he is gnawing in

the breast where he has been nestling so long.--The Poor Relation said

that somebody's surrup was good for folks that were gettin' into a

bad way. The landlady had heard of desperate cases cured by

cherry-pictorial.

Whiskey's the fellah,--said the young man John.--Make it into punch,

cold at dinner-time 'n' hot at bed-time. I'll come up 'n' show you how

to mix it. Haven't any of you seen the wonderful fat man exhibitin' down

in Hanover Street?

Master Benjamin Franklin rushed into the dialogue with a breezy

exclamation, that he had seen a great picter outside of the place where

the fat man was exhibitin'. Tried to get in at half-price, but the man

at the door looked at his teeth and said he was more'n ten year old.

It isn't two years,--said the young man John,--since that fat fellah

was exhibitin' here as the Livin' Skeleton. Whiskey--that's what did

it,--real Burbon's the stuff. Hot water, sugar, 'n' jest a little

shavin' of lemon-skin in it,--_skin_, mind you, none o' your juice; take

it off thin,--shape of one of them flat curls the factory-girls wear on

the sides of their foreheads.

But I am a teetotaller,--said the divinity-student, in a subdued

tone;--not noticing the enormous length of the bow-string the young

fellow had just drawn.

He took up his hat and went out.

I think you have worried that young man more than you meant,--I said.--I

don't believe he will jump off of one of the bridges, for he has too

much principle; but I mean to follow him and see where he goes, for he

looks as if his mind were made up to something.

I followed him at a reasonable distance. He walked doggedly along,

looking neither to the right nor the left, turned into State Street, and

made for a well-known Life-Insurance Office. Luckily, the doctor was

there and overhauled him on the spot. There was nothing the matter with

him, he said, and he could have his life insured as a sound one. He came

out in good spirits, and told me this soon after.

This led me to make some remarks the next morning on the manners of

well-bred and ill-bred people.

I began,--The whole essence of true gentle-breeding (one does not

like to say gentility) lies in the wish and the art to be agreeable.

Good-breeding is _surface-Christianity_. Every look, movement, tone,

expression, subject of discourse, that may give pain to another is

habitually excluded from conversational intercourse. This is the reason

why rich people are apt to be so much more agreeable than others.

--I thought you were a great champion of equality,--said the discreet

and severe lady who had accompanied our young friend, the Latin Tutor's

daughter.

I go politically for _e_quality,--I said,--and socially for _the_

quality.

Who are the "quality,"--said the Model, etc.,--in a community like ours?

I confess I find this question a little difficult to answer,--I

said.--Nothing is better known than the distinction of social ranks

which exists in every community, and nothing is harder to define. The

great gentlemen and ladies of a place are its real lords and masters and

mistresses; they are the _quality_, whether in a monarchy or a republic;

mayors and governors and generals and senators and ex-presidents are

nothing to them. How well we know this, and how seldom it finds a

distinct expression! Now I tell you truly, I believe in man as man, and

I disbelieve in all distinctions except such as follow the natural lines

of cleavage in a society which has crystallized according to its own

true laws. But the essence of equality is to be able to say the truth;

and there is nothing more curious than these truths relating to the

stratification of society.

Of all the facts in this world that do not take hold of immortality,

there is not one so intensely real, permanent, and engrossing as this of

social position,--as you see by the circumstance that the core of all

the great social orders the world has seen has been, and is still, for

the most part, a privileged class of gentlemen and ladies arranged in a

regular scale of precedence among themselves, but superior as a body to

all else.

Nothing but an ideal Christian equality, which we have been getting

farther away from since the days of the Primitive Church, can

prevent this subdivision of society into classes from taking place

everywhere,--in the great centres of our republic as much as in

old European monarchies. Only there position is more absolutely

hereditary,--here it is more completely elective.

--Where is the election held? and what are the qualifications? and who

are the electors?--said the Model.

Nobody ever sees when the vote is taken; there never is a formal vote.

The women settle it mostly; and they know wonderfully well what is

presentable, and what can't stand the blaze of the chandeliers and the

critical eye and ear of people trained to know a staring shade in a

ribbon, a false light in a jewel, an ill-bred tone, an angular movement,

everything that betrays a coarse fibre and cheap training. As a general

thing, you do not get elegance short of two or three removes from the

soil, out of which our best blood doubtless comes,--quite as good, no

doubt, as if it came from those old prize-fighters with iron pots on

their heads, to whom some great people are so fond of tracing their

descent through a line of small artisans and petty shopkeepers whose

veins have held base fluid enough to fill the Cloaca Maxima!

Does not money go everywhere?--said the Model.

Almost. And with good reason. For though there are numerous exceptions,

rich people are, as I said, commonly altogether the most agreeable

companions. The influence of a fine house, graceful furniture, good

libraries, well-ordered tables, trim servants, and, above all, a

position so secure that one becomes unconscious of it, gives a harmony

and refinement to the character and manners which we feel, even if

we cannot explain their charm. Yet we can get at the reason of it by

thinking a little.

All these appliances are to shield the sensibility from disagreeable

contacts, and to soothe it by varied natural and artificial influences.

In this way the mind, the taste, the feelings, grow delicate, just as

the hands grow white and soft when saved from toil and incased in soft

gloves. The whole nature becomes subdued into suavity. I confess I like

the quality-ladies better than the common kind even of literary ones.

They haven't read the last book, perhaps, but they attend better to you

when you are talking to them. If they are never learned, they make up

for it in tact and elegance. Besides, I think, on the whole, there is

less self-assertion in diamonds than in dogmas. I don't know where

you will find a sweeter portrait of humility than in Esther, the poor

play-girl of King Ahasuerus; yet Esther put on her royal apparel when

she went before her lord. I have no doubt she was a more gracious and

agreeable person than Deborah, who judged the people and wrote the story

of Sisera. The wisest woman you talk with is ignorant of something that

you know, but an elegant woman never forgets her elegance.

Dowdyism is clearly an expression of imperfect vitality. The highest

fashion is intensely alive,--not alive necessarily to the truest and

best things, but with its blood tingling, as it were, in all its

extremities and to the farthest point of its surface, so that the

feather in its bonnet is as fresh as the crest of a fighting-cock, and

the rosette on its slipper as clean-cut and _pimpant_ (pronounce it

English fashion,--it is a good word) as a dahlia. As a general rule,

that society where flattery is acted is much more agreeable than that

where it is spoken. Don't you see why? Attention and deference don't

require you to make fine speeches expressing your sense of unworthiness

(lies) and returning all the compliments paid you. This is one reason.

--A woman of sense ought to be above flattering any man,--said the

Model.

[_My reflection._ Oh! oh! no wonder you didn't get married. Served you

right.] _My remark._ Surely, Madam,--if you mean by flattery telling

people boldly to their faces that they are this or that, which they are

not. But a woman who does not carry a halo of good feeling and desire

to make everybody contented about with her wherever she goes,--an

atmosphere of grace, mercy, and peace, of at least six feet radius,

which wraps every human being upon whom she voluntarily bestows her

presence, and so flatters him with the comfortable thought that she

is rather glad he is alive than otherwise, isn't worth the trouble of

talking to, _as a woman_; she may do well enough to hold discussions

with.

--I don't think the Model exactly liked this. She said,--a little

spitefully, I thought,--that a sensible man might stand a little praise,

but would of course soon get sick of it, if he were in the habit of

getting much.

Oh, yes,--I replied,--just as men get sick of tobacco. It is notorious

how apt they are to get tired of that vegetable.

--That's so!--said the young fellow John.--I've got tired of my cigars

and burnt 'em all up.

I am heartily glad to hear it,--said the Model.--I wish they were all

disposed of in the same way.

So do I,--said the young fellow John.

Can't you get your friends to unite with you in committing those odious

instruments of debauchery to the flames in which you have consumed your

own?

I wish I could,--said the young fellow John.

It would be a noble sacrifice,--said the Model,--and every American

woman would be grateful to you. Let us burn them all in a heap out in

the yard.

That a'n't my way,--said the young fellow John;--I burn 'em one 't'

time,--little end in my mouth and big end outside.

--I watched for the effect of this sudden change of programme, when it

should reach the calm stillness of the Model's interior apprehension,

as a boy watches for the splash of a stone which he has dropped into a

well. But before it had fairly reached the water, poor Iris, who had

followed the conversation with a certain interest until it turned this

sharp corner, (for she seems rather to fancy the young fellow John,)

laughed out such a clear, loud laugh, that it started us all off, as the

locust-cry of some full-throated soprano drags a multitudinous chorus

after it. It was plain that some dam or other had broken in the soul of

this young girl, and she was squaring up old scores of laughter, out of

which she had been cheated, with a grand flood of merriment that

swept all before it. So we had a great laugh all round, in which the

Model--who, if she had as many virtues as there are spokes to a wheel,

all compacted with a personality as round and complete as its tire, yet

wanted that one little addition of grace, which seems so small, and

is as important as the linchpin in trundling over the rough ways of

life--had not the tact to join. She seemed to be "stuffy" about it, as

the young fellow John said. In fact, I was afraid the joke would have

cost us both our new lady-boarders. It had no effect, however, except,

perhaps, to hasten the departure of the elder of the two, who could, on

the whole, be spared.

--I had meant to make this note of our conversation a text for a few

axioms on the matter of breeding. But it so happened, that, exactly at

this point of my record, a very distinguished philosopher, whom several

of our boarders and myself go to hear, and whom no doubt many of my

readers follow habitually, treated this matter of _manners_. Up to this

point, if I have been so fortunate as to coincide with him in opinion,

and so unfortunate as to try to express what he has more felicitously

said, nobody is to blame; for what has been given thus far was all

written before the lecture was delivered. But what shall I do now? He

told us it was childish to lay down rules for deportment,--but he could

not help laying down a few.

Thus,--_Nothing so vulgar as to be in a hurry._--True, but hard of

application. People with short legs step quickly, because legs are

pendulums, and swing more times in a minute the shorter they are.

Generally a natural rhythm runs through the whole organization: quick

pulse, fast breathing, hasty speech, rapid trains of thought, excitable

temper. _Stillness_ of person and steadiness of features are signal

marks of good-breeding. Vulgar persons can't sit still, or, at least,

they must work their limbs--or features.

_Talking of one's own ails and grievances._--Bad enough, but not so bad

as insulting the person you talk with by remarking on his ill-looks, or

appearing to notice any of his personal peculiarities.

_Apologizing._--A very desperate habit,--one that is rarely cured.

Apology is only egotism wrong side out. Nine times out of ten, the first

thing a man's companion knows of his shortcoming is from his apology. It

is mighty presumptuous on your part to suppose your small failures of so

much consequence that you must make a talk about them.

Good dressing, quiet ways, low tones of voice, lips that can wait, and

eyes that do not wander,--shyness of personalities, except in certain

intimate communions,--to be _light in hand_ in conversation, to have

ideas, but to be able to make talk, if necessary, without them,--to

belong to the company you are in, and not to yourself,--to have nothing

in your dress or furniture so fine that you cannot afford to spoil it

and get another like it, yet to preserve the harmonies throughout your

person and dwelling: I should say that this was a fair capital of

manners to begin with.

Under bad manners, as under graver faults, lies very commonly an

overestimate of our special individuality, as distinguished from our

generic humanity. It is just here that the very highest society asserts

its superior breeding. Among truly elegant people of the highest _ton_,

you will find more real equality in social intercourse than in a country

village. As nuns drop their birth-names and become Sister Margaret and

Sister Mary, so high-bred people drop their personal distinctions

and become brothers and sisters of conversational charity. Nor are

fashionable people without their heroism. I believe there are men that

have shown as much self-devotion in carrying a lone wall-flower down to

the supper-table as ever saint or martyr in the act that has canonized

his name. There are Florence Nightingales of the ballroom, whom nothing

can hold back from their errands of mercy. They find out the red-handed,

gloveless undergraduate of bucolic antecedents, as he squirms in his

corner, and distil their soft words upon him like dew upon the green

herb. They reach even the poor relation, whose dreary apparition saddens

the perfumed atmosphere of the sumptuous drawing-room. I have known one

of these angels ask, _of her own accord_, that a desolate middle-aged

man, whom nobody seemed to know, should be presented to her by the

hostess. He wore no shirt-collar,--he had on black gloves,--and was

flourishing a red bandanna handkerchief! Match me this, ye proud

children of poverty, who boast of your paltry sacrifices for each other!

Virtue in humble life! What is that to the glorious self-renunciation

of a martyr in pearls and diamonds? As I saw this noble woman bending

gracefully before the social mendicant,--the white billows of her beauty

heaving under the foam of the traitorous laces that half revealed

them,--I should have wept with sympathetic emotion, but that tears,

except as a private demonstration, are an ill-disguised expression of

self-consciousness and vanity, which is inadmissible in good society.

I have sometimes thought, with a pang, of the position in which

political chance or contrivance might hereafter place some one of

our fellow-citizens. It has happened hitherto, so far as my limited

knowledge goes, that the President of the United States has always been

what might be called in general terms a gentleman. But what if at some

future time the choice of the people should fall upon one on whom that

lofty title could not, by any stretch of charity, be bestowed? This may

happen,--how soon the future only knows. Think of this miserable man

of coming political possibilities,--an unpresentable boor, sucked into

office by one of those eddies in the flow of popular sentiment which

carry straws and chips into the public harbor, while the prostrate

trunks of the monarchs of the forest hurry down on the senseless stream

to the gulf of political oblivion! Think of him, I say, and of the

concentrated gaze of good society through its thousand eyes, all

confluent, as it were, in one great burning-glass of ice that shrivels

its wretched object in fiery torture, itself cold as the glacier of an

unsunned cavern! No,--there will be angels of good-breeding then as now,

to shield the victim of free institutions from himself and from his

torturers. I can fancy a lovely woman playfully withdrawing the knife

which he would abuse by making it an instrument for the conveyance

of food,--or, failing in this kind artifice, sacrificing herself by

imitating his use of that implement; how much harder than to plunge it

into her bosom, like Lucretia! I can see her studying his provincial

dialect until she becomes the Champollion of New England or Western or

Southern barbarisms. She has learned that _häow_ means _what_; that

_thinkin'_ is the same thing as _thinking_; or she has found out the

meaning of that extraordinary monosyllable, which no single-tongued

phonographer can make legible, prevailing on the banks of the Hudson and

at its embouchure, and elsewhere,--what they say when they think they

say _first_, (_fe-eest,--fe_ as in the French _le_),--or that _cheer_

means _chair_,--or that _urritation_ means _irritation_,--and so of

other enormities. Nothing surprises her. The highest breeding, you know,

comes round to the Indian standard,--to take everything coolly,--_nil

admirari_,--if you happen to be learned and like the Roman phrase for

the same thing.

If you like the company of people that stare at you from head to foot to

see if there is a hole in your coat, or if you have not grown a little

older, or if your eyes are not yellow with jaundice, or if your

complexion is not a little faded, and so on, and then convey the fact

to you, in the style in which the Poor Relation addressed the

divinity-student,--go with them as much as you like. I hate the sight

of the wretches. Don't for mercy's sake think I hate _them_; the

distinction is one my friend or I drew long ago. No matter where you

find such people; they are clowns. The rich woman who looks and talks in

this way is not half so much a lady as her Irish servant, whose pretty

"saving your presence," when she has to say something which offends

her natural sense of good manners, has a hint in it of the breeding of

courts, and the blood of old Milesian kings, which very likely runs in

her veins,--thinned by two hundred years of potato, which, being an

underground fruit, tends to drag down the generations that are made

of it to the earth from which it came, and, filling their veins with

starch, turn them into a kind of human vegetable.

I say, if you like such people, go with them. But I am going to make a

practical application of the example at the beginning of this particular

record, which some young people who are going to choose professional

advisers by-and-by may remember and thank me for. If you are making

choice of a physician, be sure you get one, if possible, with a cheerful

and serene countenance. A physician is not--at least, ought not to

be--an executioner; and a sentence of death on his face is as bad as a

warrant for execution signed by the Governor. As a general rule, no man

has a right to tell another by word or look that he is going to die. It

may be necessary in some extreme cases; but as a rule, it is the last

extreme of impertinence which one human being can offer to another. "You

have killed me," said a patient once to a physician who had rashly told

him he was incurable. He ought to have lived six months, but he was dead

in six weeks. If we will only let Nature and the God of Nature alone,

persons will commonly learn their condition as early as they ought to

know it, and not be cheated out of their natural birthright of hope of

recovery, which is intended to accompany sick people as long as life is

comfortable, and is graciously replaced by the hope of heaven, or at

least of rest, when life has become a burden which the bearer is ready

to let fall.

Underbred people tease their sick and dying friends to death. The chance

of a gentleman or lady with a given mortal ailment to live a certain

time is as good again as that of the common sort of coarse people. As

you go down the social scale, you reach a point at length where the

common talk in sick rooms is of churchyards and sepulchres, and a kind

of perpetual vivisection is forever carried on, upon the person of the

miserable sufferer.

And so, in choosing your clergyman, other things being equal, prefer the

one of a wholesome and cheerful habit of mind and body. If you can get

along with people who carry a certificate in their faces that their

goodness is so great as to make them very miserable, your children

cannot. And whatever offends one of these little ones cannot be right in

the eyes of Him who loved them so well.

After all, as _you_ are a gentleman or a lady, you will probably select

gentlemen for your bodily and spiritual advisers, and then all will be

right.

This repetition of the above words,--_gentleman and lady_,--which could

not be conveniently avoided, reminds me how much use is made of them by

those who ought to know what they mean. Thus, at a marriage ceremony,

once, of two very excellent persons who had been at service, instead

of, Do you take this man, etc.? and, Do you take this woman? how do you

think the officiating clergyman put the questions? It was, Do you, MISS

So and So, take this GENTLEMAN? and, Do you, MR. This or That, take

this LADY?! What would any English duchess, ay, or the Queen of England

herself, have thought, if the Archbishop of Canterbury had called her

and her bridegroom anything but plain woman and man at such a time?

I don't doubt the Poor Relation thought it was all very fine, if she

happened to have been in the church; but if the worthy man who uttered

these monstrous words--monstrous in such a connection--had known the

ludicrous surprise, the convulsion of inward disgust and contempt, that

seized upon many of the persons who were present,--had guessed what a

sudden flash of light it threw on the Dutch gilding, the pinchbeck,

the shabby, perking pretension belonging to certain social layers,--so

inherent in their whole mode of being, that the holiest offices of

religion cannot exclude its impertinences,--the good man would have

given his marriage-fee twice over to recall that superb and full-blown

vulgarism. Any persons whom it could please have no better notion of

what the words referred to signify than of the meaning of _apsides_ and

_asymptotes_.

MAN! Sir! WOMAN! Sir! Gentility is a fine thing, not to be undervalued,

as I have been trying to explain; but humanity comes before that.

"When Adam delved and Eve span,

Where was then the gentleman?"

The beauty of that plainness of speech and manners which comes from the

finest training is not to be understood by those whose _habitat_ is

below a certain level. Just as the exquisite sea-anemones and all the

graceful ocean-flowers die out at some fathoms below the surface, the

elegances and suavities of life die out one by one as we sink through

the social scale. Fortunately, the virtues are more tenacious of life,

and last pretty well until we get down to the mud of absolute pauperism,

where they do not flourish greatly.

--I had almost forgotten about our boarders. As the Model of all the

Virtues is about to leave us, I find myself wondering what is the reason

we are not all very sorry. Surely we all like good persons. She is a

good person. Therefore we like her.--Only we don't.

This brief syllogism, and its briefer negative, involving the principle

which some English conveyancer borrowed from a French wit and embodied

in the lines by which _Dr. Fell_ is made unamiably immortal,--this

syllogism, I say, is one that most persons have had occasion to

construct and demolish, respecting somebody or other, as I have done for

the Model. "Pious and painefull." Why has that excellent old phrase gone

out of use? Simply because these good _painefull_ or painstaking persons

proved to be such nuisances in the long run, that the word "painefull"

came, before people thought of it, to mean _paingiving_ instead of

_painstaking_.

--So, the old fellah's off to-morrah,--said the young man John.

Old fellow?--said I,--whom do you mean?

Why, the chap that came with our little beauty,--the old boy in

petticoats.

--Now that means something,--said I to myself.--These rough young

rascals very often hit the nail on the head, if they do strike with

their eyes shut. A real woman does a great many things without knowing

why she does them; but these pattern machines mix up their intellects

with everything they do, just like men. They can't help it, no doubt;

but we can't help getting sick of them, either. Intellect is to a

woman's nature what her watch-spring skirt is to her dress; it ought

to underlie her silks and embroideries, but not to show itself too

staringly on the outside.--You don't know, perhaps, but I will tell

you;--the brain is the palest of all the internal organs, and the heart

the reddest. Whatever comes from the brain carries the hue of the place

it came from, and whatever comes from the heart carries the heat and

color of its birthplace.

The young man John did not hear my _soliloque_, of course, but sent

up one more bubble from our sinking conversation, in the form of a

statement, that she was at liberty to go to a personage who receives no

visits, as is commonly supposed, from virtuous people.

Why, I ask again, (of my reader,) should a person who never did anybody

any wrong, but, on the contrary, is an estimable and intelligent, nay,

a particularly enlightened and exemplary member of society, fail to

inspire interest, love, and devotion? Because of the _reversed current_

in the flow of thought and emotion. The red heart sends all its

instincts up to the white brain to be analyzed, chilled, blanched, and

so become pure reason, which is just exactly what we do not want of

woman as woman. The current should run the other way. The nice, calm,

cold thought, which in women shapes itself so rapidly that they hardly

know it as thought, should always travel to the lips _viâ_ the heart. It

does so in those women whom all love and admire. It travels the wrong

way in the Model. That is the reason why the Little Gentleman said, "I

hate her, I hate her." That is the reason why the young man John called

her the "old fellah," and banished her to the company of the great

Unpresentable. That is the reason why I, the Professor, am picking her

to pieces with scalpel and forceps. That is the reason why the young

girl whom she has befriended repays her kindness with gratitude and

respect, rather than with the devotion and passionate fondness which lie

sleeping beneath the calmness of her amber eyes. I can see her, as she

sits between this estimable and most correct of personages and the

misshapen, crotchety, often violent and explosive little man on the

other side of her, leaning and swaying towards him as she speaks, and

looking into his sad eyes as if she found some fountain in them at which

her soul could quiet its thirst.

Women like the Model are a natural product of a chilly climate and high

culture. It is not

"The frolic wind that breathes the spring,

Zephyr with Aurora playing,"

when the two meet

----"on beds of violets blue,

And fresh-blown roses washed in dew,"

that claim such women as their offspring. It is rather the east wind, as

it blows out of the fogs of Newfoundland, and clasps a clear-eyed wintry

noon on the chill bridal couch of a New England ice-quarry.--Don't throw

up your cap now, and hurrah as if this were giving up everything, and

turning against the best growth of our latitudes,--the daughters of the

soil. The brain-women never interest us like the heart-women; white

roses please less than red. But our Northern seasons have a narrow green

streak of spring, as well as a broad white zone of winter,--they have

a glowing band of summer and a golden stripe of autumn in their

many-colored wardrobe; and women are born to us that wear all these hues

of earth and heaven in their souls. Our ice-eyed brain-women are really

admirable, if we only ask of them just what they can give, and no more.

Only compare them, talking or writing, with one of those babbling,

chattering dolls, of warmer latitudes, who do not know enough even to

keep out of print, and who are interesting to us only as specimens of

_arrest of development_ for our psychological cabinets.

Good-bye, Model of all the Virtues! We can spare you now. A little clear

perfection, undiluted with human weakness, goes a great way. Go! be

useful, be honorable and honored, be just, be charitable, talk pure

reason, and help to disenchant the world by the light of an achromatic

understanding. Good-bye! Where is my Béranger? I must read "Frétillon."

Fair play for all. But don't claim incompatible qualities for anybody.

Justice is a very rare virtue in our community. Everything that public

sentiment cares about is put into a Papin's digester, and boiled under

high pressure till all is turned into one homogeneous pulp, and the very

bones give up their jelly. What are all the strongest epithets of our

dictionary to us now? The critics and politicians, and especially

the philanthropists, have chewed them, till they are mere wads of

syllable-fibre, without a suggestion of their old pungency and power.

Justice! A good man respects the rights even of brute matter and

arbitrary symbols. If he writes the same word twice in succession, by

accident, he always erases the one that stands _second_; has not the

first-comer the prior right? This act of abstract justice, which I trust

many of my readers, like myself, have often performed, is a curious

anti-illustration, by the way, of the absolute wickedness of human

dispositions. Why doesn't a man always strike out the _first_ of the two

words, to gratify his diabolical love of _in_justice?

So, I say, we owe a genuine, substantial tribute of respect to these

filtered intellects which have left their womanhood on the strainer.

They are so clear that it is a pleasure at times to look at the world of

thought through them. But the rose and purple tints of richer natures

they cannot give us, and it is not just to them to ask it.

Fashionable society gets at these rich natures very often in a way one

would hardly at first think of. It loves vitality above all things,

sometimes disguised by affected languor, always well kept under by the

laws of good-breeding,--but still it loves abundant life, opulent and

showy organizations,--the spherical rather than the plane trigonometry

of female architecture,--plenty of red blood, flashing eyes, tropical

voices, and forms that bear the splendors of dress without growing pale

beneath their lustre. Among these you will find the most delicious women

you will ever meet,--women whom dress and flattery and the round of city

gayeties cannot spoil,--talking with whom, you forget their diamonds

and laces,--and around whom all the nice details of elegance, which

the cold-blooded beauty next them is scanning so nicely, blend in one

harmonious whole, too perfect to be disturbed by the petulant sparkle of

a jewel, or the yellow glare of a bangle, or the gay toss of a feather.

There are many things that I, personally, love better than fashion or

wealth. Not to speak of those highest objects of our love and loyalty,

I think I love ease and independence better than the golden slavery of

perpetual _matinées_ and _soirées_, or the pleasures of accumulation.

But fashion and wealth are two very solemn realities, which the

frivolous class of moralists have talked a great deal of silly stuff

about. Fashion is only the attempt to realize Art in living forms and

social intercourse. What business has a man who knows nothing about the

beautiful, and cannot pronounce the word _view_, to talk about fashion

to a set of people who, if one of the quality left a card at their

doors, would contrive to keep it on the very top of their heap of the

names of their two-story acquaintances, till it was as yellow as the

Codex Vaticanus?

Wealth, too,--what an endless repetition of the same foolish

trivialities about it! Take the single fact of its alleged uncertain

tenure and transitory character. In old times, when men were all the

time fighting and robbing each other,--in those tropical countries where

the Sabeans and the Chaldeans stole all a man's cattle and camels, and

there were frightful tornadoes and rains of fire from heaven, it was

true enough that riches took wings to themselves not unfrequently in a

very unexpected way. But, with common prudence in investments, it is not

so now. In fact, there is nothing earthly that lasts so well, on the

whole, as money. A man's learning dies with him; even his virtues fade

out of remembrance; but the dividends on the stocks he bequeathes to his

children live and keep his memory green.

I do not think there is much courage or originality in giving utterance

to truths that everybody knows, but which get overlaid by conventional

trumpery. The only distinction which it is necessary to point out to

feeble-minded folk is this: that, in asserting the breadth and depth of

that significance which gives to fashion and fortune their tremendous

power, we do not indorse the extravagances which often disgrace the one,

nor the meanness which often degrades the other.

A remark which seems to contradict a universally current opinion is not

generally to be taken "neat," but watered with the ideas of common-sense

and commonplace people. So, if any of my young friends should be tempted

to waste their substance on white kids and "all-rounds," or to insist

on becoming millionnaires at once, by anything I have said, I will give

them references to some of the class referred to, well known to the

public as literary diluents, who will weaken any truth so that there is

not an old woman in the land who cannot take it with perfect impunity.

I am afraid some of the blessed saints in diamonds will think I mean to

flatter them. I hope not;--if I do, set it down as a weakness. But there

is so much foolish talk about wealth and fashion, (which, of course,

draw a good many heartless and essentially vulgar people into the glare

of their candelabra, but which have a real respectability and meaning,

if we will only look at them stereoscopically, with both eyes instead of

one,) that I thought it a duty to speak a few words for them. Why can't

somebody give us a list of things that everybody thinks and nobody says,

and another list of things that everybody says and nobody thinks?

Lest my parish should suppose we have forgotten graver matters in these

lesser topics, I beg them to drop these trifles and read the following

lesson for the day.

THE TWO STREAMS.

Behold the rocky wall

That down its sloping sides

Pours the swift rain-drops, blending, as they fall,

In rushing river-tides!

Yon stream, whose sources run

Turned by a pebble's edge,

Is Athabasca, rolling toward the sun

Through the cleft mountain-ledge.

The slender rill had strayed,

But for the slanting stone,

To evening's ocean, with the tangled braid

Of foam-flecked Oregon.

So from the heights of Will

Life's parting stream descends,

And, as a moment turns its slender rill,

Each widening torrent bends,--

From the same cradle's side,

From the same mother's knee,--

One to long darkness and the frozen tide,

One to the Peaceful Sea!

* * * * *

REVIEWS AND LITERARY NOTICES.

_Sixty Years' Gleanings from Life's Harvest._ A Genuine Autobiography.

By JOHN BROWN, Proprietor of the University Billiard-Rooms, Cambridge.

New York: Appleton & Company. 1859.

We are all familiar with that John Brown whom the minstrel has

immortalized as being the possessor of a diminutive youth of the

aboriginal American race, who, in the course of the ditty, is multiplied

from "one little Injun" into "ten little Injuns," and who, in a

succeeding stanza, by an ingenious amphisbaenic process, is again

reduced to the singular number. As far as we are aware, the author of

this "genuine autobiography" claims no relationship with the famous

owner of tender redskins. The multiplicity of adventures of which he

has been the hero demands for him, however, the same notice that a

multiplicity of "Injuns" has insured to his illustrious namesake.

We have always had a pet theory, that a plain and minute narrative

of any ordinary man's life, stated with simplicity and without any

reference to dramatic effect or the elegances of composition, would

possess an immediate interest for the public. We cannot know too much

about men. No man's life is so uneventful as to be incapable of amusing

and instructing. The same event is never the same to more than one

person; no two see it from the same point of view. And as we want to

know more of men than of incidents, every one's record of trifles

is useful. A book written by a Cornish miner, whose life passes in

subterranean monotony, sparing none of the petty and ever-recurring

details that make up his routined existence, would, if set down in the

baldest language, be a valuable contribution to literature. But we

rarely, if ever, find a man sufficiently free from vanity and the demon

of composition to tell us plainly what has happened to him. The moment

the working-man gets a pen into his hand, he is, as it were, possessed.

He is no longer himself. He has not the courage to come out naked

and show himself in all his grime and strength. The instant that he

conceives the idea of putting himself on paper he borrows somebody

else's clothes, and, instead of a free, manly figure, we have a wretched

scarecrow in a coat too small or too large for him,--generally the

latter. For it is a curious fact, that the more uneducated a man

is,--in which condition his ordinary language must of necessity be

proportionately idiomatic,--the greater pains he takes, when he has

formed the resolution of composing, to be splendid and expansive in his

style. He racks his brains until he rummages out imperfect memories of

the turgid paragraphs of cheap newspapers and novels which he has

some time or other read, and forthwith struts off with all the finest

feathers in the dictionary rustling about him.

Mr. John Brown, the hero of the Autobiography before us, is no exception

to this unhappy rule. The son of a butcher, he became in boyhood a

sheep-driver, was then apprenticed to a shoemaker, got into trouble and

a prison, enlisted as a soldier, deserted, turned strolling player,

shipped on board a man-of-war, tried again to desert, was flogged at the

gratings, beheld Napoleon on board the Bellerophon, was discharged from

the navy, consorted with thieves and prize-fighters, appeared on the

London stage with success, married and starved, became the pet of the

Cambridge students, whom he assisted in amateur theatricals, started a

stage-coach line to London and failed, set up a billiard-room, got into

innumerable street-fights and always came off conqueror, was elected

town-councillor of Cambridge and made a fortune, which it is to be hoped

he is now enjoying.

Here was material for a book. From the glimpses of his _personnel_ which

we occasionally catch through all Mr. Brown's splendid writing, we

should say that he was a man of a strong, hearty nature, full of

indomitable energy, and possessed with a truly Saxon predilection for

the use of his fists. The number of physical contests in which he was

chief actor renders his volume almost epical in character. Invulnerable

as Achilles and quarrelsome as Hector, he strides over the bodies of

innumerable foes. If some of his friends, the Seniors, at Cambridge,

would only put his adventures into Greek verse, he might descend to

posterity in sounding hexameters with the sons of Telamon and Thetis.

The plain narrative portions of Mr. Brown's volume possess much real

interest. His adventures with the strolling players, the insight he

gives us into the life of a journeyman shoemaker, and his reminiscences

of his friends, the Jew old-clothes-men, the pick-pockets, and the

prize-fighters, are so many steaks cut warm from the living world, and

are good, substantial food for thought. But he seldom forgets himself

long, and is natural only by fits and starts. After he has been striding

along for a short time with a free, manly gait, he suddenly bethinks

himself that he is writing a book. The malign influences of Cambridge

University begin to work upon him. The loose stride is contracted; the

swing of the vigorous shoulders is restrained, and, instead of an honest

fellow tramping sturdily after his own fashion through the paths of

literature, we are treated to an imitation of Dr. Johnson, done by an

illiterate butcher's son. We are afraid that the Cantabs have been at

the bottom of John Brown's fine writing. How valuable, for instance, are

the following philosophical reflections upon Napoleon, which John Brown

makes when he beholds the dethroned Emperor standing sadly upon the poop

of the Bellerophon!

"Here, then," remarks John, "had ended his dream of universal conquest;

here he lay prostrate at the foot of the altar," (we are informed a few

lines before this that he had taken his stand on the poop,) "on which he

sacrificed, not hecatombs, but pyramids, of human victims." (Beautiful

antithesis!) "As his ambition was boundless, posterity will not weep at

his fall. But that he insinuated himself into the hearts of a generous

people is too true; they worshipped him as a demi-god, until," etc.

Farther on, we learn the startling intelligence, that "for a time his

adopted country was enriched by the spoils and plunder of other lands."

(Did Alison know this?) "He formed the bulk of the population into an

organized banditti, and led them forth in martial pomp to do the unholy

work of bloodshed and robbery.... All the independent states of Europe

leagued together to put down this infamous system of national plunder."

(Russia among the rest of the independent states, we suppose.)... "Had

he been desirous of establishing just principles on earth, and crushing

despotism, the sympathies of the entire human race would have been

enlisted on his side." Certainly, John. Two and two make four, and

things that are equal to the same are equal to each other.

After having in a street-fight pommelled an unhappy Cambridge student

into jelly, and reduced him to a state which he picturesquely describes

as resembling that of "a dog in a coal-box," he picks him up and

philosophically informs him that "all the different styles of fence were

invented and established for man's protection, not for his destruction.

Besides," he adds, with much profundity, "the laws thereto appertaining

are based on certain strict principles of honor, which you have

unquestionably violated in this case. Now, take my advice, never again

engage in fight without having some just cause of quarrel. Thus, at

least, you will always come off with credit, if not with victory." And

having delivered himself of this stupendous moral lesson, Dr. Samuel

Johnson Mendoza John Brown puts on his hat (he surely ought to have

had a full-bottomed wig under it) and walks off, leaving his opponent

doubtless more like a dog in a coal-box than ever. He sees Dr.

Abernethy, and rises into this inspired strain: "To me, who have ever

held genius and talent in veneration, as being

"'Olympus-high above all earthly things,'

the sight of this plain, unostentatious man afforded more pleasurable

feelings than could all the gilded pomp beneath the sun." One can fancy,

if John had communicated this reflection to the Doctor, what would have

been the reply of that suave practitioner. He goes to low dance-houses,

and the interesting result of his reflections on what he beheld there

is, "that vice, however gilded over, is still a hideous monster; in

which conviction, I resigned myself to that power that 'must delight in

virtue.'" When he speaks of his billiard-pupils, he loftily denominates

them "hundreds of the best gentlemen-players scattered over the earth's

surface," from which we draw the pleasing inference that none of John

Brown's scholars are addicted to subterranean billiards.

In spite of these rags of old college-gowns, in which John so funnily

arrays himself on occasions, his book is worth reading. If it has not

the muscular, unaffected morality of his namesake's unsurpassable

"School-Days at Rugby," it is at least the production of an honest,

hearty Englishman, and teaches an excellent lesson on the value of pluck

and perseverance.

_Colton's Illustrated Cabinet Atlas and Descriptive Geography._ Maps by

G.W. COLTON. Text by R.S. FISHER. New YORK: J.H. Colton & Co. 4to. pp.

400.

This work meets an acknowledged want; it combines in one convenient

volume most of the desirable features of the larger atlases, being full

enough in detail for all ordinary purposes, without being cumbersome and

costly. It is prefaced by a clear and well-digested statement of the

laws of Physical Geography, "based," as the publishers say, "upon the

excellent treatise on the same subject found in the Atlas of Milner and

Petermann, recently published in London." The maps are one hundred and

sixteen in number, admirably engraved, and, what especially enhances

their value, they are draughted on easily-convertible scales,--one inch

always representing ten, twenty-five, fifty, one hundred, or other

number of miles readily comparable. They include the results of the

latest explorations of travellers, and the newest settlements made by

the English and Americans.

The descriptions are full and accurate, and the statistics of

population, trade, public and private institutions, etc., are convenient

for reference. This department is illustrated by over six hundred

wood-cuts.

This Atlas may, therefore, fairly claim rank as a Cyclopaedia of

Geography, and for the household and school it is one of the most useful

publications of our time. The attention now everywhere excited by

proposed or impending changes in the boundary-lines of European States,

by the inroads of Western civilization in the East, by the settlement of

the Pacific Islands, and by the growth of empire on the western coast of

our own country, renders the publication of a compendious work like this

very timely.

_Poems._ By OWEN MEREDITH. The Wanderer and Clytemnestra. Boston:

Ticknor & Fields. 18mo.

The author of these poems is Robert Bulwer Lytton, the son of the

eminent novelist. Though still very young, he has reached the honor of

being arrayed in Ticknor and Fields's "blue and gold," the paradisiacal

condition of contemporary poets; and his works occupy, in words, though

not in matter, as much space as Tennyson's. The volume includes all the

poems which Lytton has published up to the present time. The general

characteristics of his Muse are fluency, fancy, melody, and sensibility.

The diligent reader will detect, throughout the volume, the traces of

the author's sympathy with other poets, especially Tennyson, and,

amid all the opulence of expression and intensity of feeling, will be

sensible of the lack of decided original genius and character. There is

evidence of intellect and imagination, but they are at present tossed

somewhat wildly about in a tumult of sensations and passions, and have

not yet mastered their instruments. But the poems, as they are the

product of a young man, so they possess all the attractions which allure

young readers. It would not be surprising, if they obtained a popularity

equal to those of Alexander Smith; for they give even more musical

utterance to the loves, hopes, exultations, regrets, and despairs of

youth, and indicate the same hot blood. They are also characterized by

similar vagueness of thought and vividness of fancy, in those passages

where sensibility turns theorist and philosophizes on its gratified or

battled sensations,--while they generally evince wider culture, larger

superficial experience of life, a more controlling sense of the

beautiful, and an equal facility of self-abandonment to the passion of

the moment.

Leaving out those poems which are repetitions or imitations, a thin

volume might be made containing some striking examples of original

perception and original experience. Among these the charming little

piece entitled "Madame La Marquise" would hold a prominent place. After

making, however, all deductions from the pretensions of the volume, it

may be said, that the father, at the same age, did not indicate so much

talent as the son.

_Symbols of the Capital; or Civilization in New York._ By A.D. MAYO.

12mo.

This is a clear and forcibly written exposition of the tendencies of

American society, as surveyed from the point of view of an earnest,

practical, and dispassionate reformer. The essays on Town and Country

Life, those on Education, Art, and Religion, the Forces of Free Labor,

and the Gold Dollar, exhibit equal independence of thought and extent

of information. In the essay on the Position of Woman in America, a

difficult theme is discussed with candor and sagacity. We have rarely

seen a volume to which the conscientious adversaries of the reforms of

the day could go for a more lucid statement of the opinions they oppose;

and it is admirably calculated to effect the purpose the author had in

view, namely, "to aid the young men and women of our land in their

attempt to realize a character that shall justify our professions of

republicanism, and to establish a civilization which, in becoming

national, shall illustrate every principle of a pure Christianity."

_The Avenger, a Narrative; and other Papers._ By THOMAS DE QUINCEY,

Author of "Confessions of an Opium-Eater," etc. Boston: Ticknor &

Fields. 16mo.

This is the twenty-first volume of De Quincey's miscellaneous writings,

collected by the indefatigable American editor, Mr. James T. Fields.

It contains "The Avenger," a powerful story of wrong and revenge;

"Additions to the Confessions of an Opium-Eater"; "Supplementary Note

on the Essenes," in which the theory of the original paper is supported

against objections by some new arguments; a long paper on "China,"

published in 1857, and full of information in regard to that empire; and

"Traditions of the Rabbins," one of the most exquisite papers in the

list of the author's writings.

_The Life of George Herbert. _By GEORGE L. DUYCKINCK. New York: 1858.

pp. 197.

We have too long neglected to do our share in bringing this delightful

little book to the notice of the lovers of holy George Herbert,

among whom we may safely reckon a large number of the readers of the

"Atlantic." It is based on the life by Izaak Walton, but contains much

new matter, either out of Walton's reach or beyond the range of his

sympathy. Notices are given of Nicholas Ferrar and other friends

of Herbert. There is a very agreeable sketch of Bemerton and its

neighborhood, as it now is, and the neat illustrations are of the kind

that really illustrate. The Brothers Duyckinck are well known for their

unpretentious and valuable labors in the cause of good letters and

American literary history, and this is precisely such a book as we

should expect from the taste, scholarship, and purity of mind which

distinguish both of them. It is much the best account of Herbert with

which we are acquainted.

_Lectures on Metaphysics._ By SIR WILLIAM HAMILTON, BART., Professor of

Logic and Metaphysics in the University of Edinburgh. Edited by the

Rev. Henry Longueville Mansel, B.D., Oxford, and John Veitch, M.A.,

Edinburgh. Boston: Gould & Lincoln. 8vo.

Few persons, with any pretensions to a knowledge of the metaphysicians

of the century, are unacquainted with Sir William Hamilton. His articles

in the "Edinburgh Review" on Cousin and Dr. Brown, and his Dissertations

on Reid, are the most important contributions to philosophy made in

Great Britain for many years. The present volume contains his Course

of Lectures, forty-six in number, which he delivered as Professor

of Metaphysics; and being intended for young students, they are, as

compared with his other works, more comprehensible without being less

comprehensive. The most conclusive proof of the excellence of these

Lectures is to be found in their influence on the successive classes of

students before whom they were pronounced. The universal testimony of

the young men who were fortunate enough to listen to Hamilton has been,

that his teaching not only inspired them with an enthusiasm for the

science, and gave them clear ideas and accurate information, but

directly aided them in the discipline of their minds. Some of his

students became, later in life, champions of his system; others became

its opponents; but opponents as well as champions warmly professed their

obligations to their instructor, and dated their interest in philosophy

from the period when they were brought by these Lectures within the

contagious sphere of his powerful intellect. So numerous were these

testimonials, that they gradually roused public curiosity to see

and read what was so effective as spoken. That curiosity has now an

opportunity of being gratified, and we do not doubt that these Lectures

will have a greater popularity than usually attends philosophical

publications. The American publishers deserve thanks for the cheap,

compact, and elegant form of their reprint.

We have no space to present here an exposition of Hamilton's system, or

to discuss any of its leading principles. We can merely allude to some

characteristics of his mode of thinking and writing which make his

Lectures of especial value to those who propose to begin the study of

metaphysics, or whose knowledge of the science is superficial. Hamilton

has the immense advantage of being a scholar in that large sense which

implies the exercise, not merely of attention and memory, but of every

faculty of the mind, in the acquisition and arrangement of knowledge.

His erudition is great, but it is also critical and interpretative. He

knows intimately every philosophical writer from the dawn of speculation

to the last German thinker, including the somewhat neglected Schoolmen

of the Middle Ages; and in this volume, every important question that

arises is historically as well as analytically treated, and the names

are given of the thinkers on both sides. In the course of one or two

sentences, he often places the reader in a position to view a principle,

not only in itself, but in relation to the controversies which have

raged round it for two thousand years. Hamilton's erudition is

also displayed in the quotations with which his pages are

sprinkled,--fragrant sentences, which came originally from the

imagination or character of the writers he quotes, and which relieve his

own abstract propositions and reasonings with concrete beauty or truth.

Most of these quotations will be novel even to advanced students.

Hamilton is also admirable in statement. Confusion, vacillation,

obscurity, uncertainty, are as foreign to his style as to his mind. He

is almost rigid in his precision. Every word has its meaning, and

every idea its stern, sure, decisive statement. His masterly powers

of analysis, of reasoning, of generalization, are always adequately

exhibited by a corresponding mastery of expression. The study of such a

volume as the present is itself an education in statement and logic; and

that it will be studied by thousands, in the colleges and out of the

colleges of the country, we cannot but hope.

_Allibone's Dictionary of Authors._ Philadelphia: Childs & Peterson,

1858. Vol. I. pp. 1005.

Leigh Hunt, in one of his Essays, speaks of the wishful thrill with

which, in looking over an index, he wondered if ever his name would

appear under the letter H in the reversed order (Hunt, Leigh) peculiar

to that useful and too much neglected field of literary achievement. In

Mr. Allibone's Dictionary he would see his wish more than satisfied; for

if he turn up "Hunt, Leigh," he will find a reference to "Hunt, James

Henry Leigh," and under that head a list of his works, more complete,

perhaps, than he himself could easily have drawn up.

In glancing along the leaves of a collection like this, one's heart is

touched with something of the same vague pathos that dims the eye in a

graveyard. What a necrology of notability! How many a controversialist

who made a great stir in his day, how many a once rising genius, how

many a withering satirist, lies here shrunk all away to the tombstone

immortality of a name and date! Think of the aspirations, the dreams,

the hopes, the toil, the confidence (of himself and wife) in an

impartial and generous posterity;--and then read "Smith J.(ohn?)

1713-1784(?). The Vision of Immortality, an Epic Poem in Twelve Books,

1740, 4to. _See Lowndes._" The time of his own death less certain than

that of his poem, which we may fix pretty safely in 1740,--and the only

posterity that took any interest in him the indefatigable Lowndes! Well,

even a bibliographic indemnity for contemporary neglect, to have so

much as your title-page read after it is a century old, and to enjoy a

posthumous public of one, is better than nothing.

A volume like Mr. Allibone's--so largely a hospital for incurable

forgottenhoods--is better than any course of philosophy to the young

author. Let him reckon how many of the ten thousand or so names here

recorded he has ever heard of before, let him make this myriad the

denominator of a fraction to which the dozen perennial fames shall

be the numerator, and he will find that his dividend of a chance at

escaping speedy extinction is not worth making himself unhappy about.

Should some statistician make such a book the basis for constructing the

tables of a fame-insurance company, the rates at which alone policies

could be safely issued would put them beyond the reach of all except

those who did not need them. After all, perhaps, the next best thing to

being famous or infamous is to be utterly forgotten; for that, at least,

is to accomplish a decisive result by living. To hang on the perilous

edge of immortality by the nails, liable at any moment to drop into the

waters of Oblivion, is at best a questionable beatitude.

But if a dictionary of this kind give rise to some melancholy

reflections, it is not without suggestions of a more soothing character.

We are reminded by it of the tender-heartedness of Chaucer, who, in the

"House of Fame," after speaking of Orpheus and Arion, (Mr. Tyrwhitt

calls him Orion,) and Cheiron and Glasgerion, has a kind word for the

lesser minstrels that play on pipes made of straw,--

"Such as have the little herd-groomes

That keepen beastes in the broomes."

This is the true Valhalla of Mediocrity, the _libra d'oro_ of the

_onymi-anonymi_, of the never-named authors who exist only in

name,--Parson Adams would be here, had he found a printer for his

sermons, Mr. Primrose for his tracts on Monogamy,--and not merely

such _nominum umbroe_ of the past, but that still stranger class of

ancient-moderns, preterite-presents, dead (and something more) as

authors, but still to be met with in the flesh as solid men and

brethren,--privileged, alas, to outstay cockcrow when they drop in of an

evening to give you their views on the aims and tendencies of periodical

literature. Will it be nothing, if we should be untimely snatched

away from our present sphere of usefulness, to those shadowy [Greek:

pleiones] who lived too soon to enjoy their monthly dip in the

ATLANTIC,--will it be nothing, we say, that our orphaned Papyrorcetes,

junior, will be able to read the name of his lamented parent on the

nine-hundredth page of Allibone,--occupying, at least, an entire line,

and therefore (as we gather from a hasty calculation) sure forever of

1/360,000th of the attention of whoever reads the book through? This

is a handy and inexpensive substitute for the _imagines_ of the Roman

nobles; for those were inconvenient to pack on a change of lodgings,

liable to melt in warm weather,--even the elder Brutus himself might

soften in August,--and not readily salable, unless to a _novus homo_ who

wished to buy a set of ancestors ready-made, as some of our enthusiastic

genealogists are said to order a family-tree from the heraldic

nursery-man skilled to graft a slip of Scroggins on a stock of De Vere

or Montmorenci. Contemporary glory is comparatively dear; it is sold by

the column,--for columns have got over their Horatian antipathies; but

the bibliographer will thank you for the name of any man that has ever

printed a book, nay, his gratitude will glow in exact proportion to the

obscurity of the author, and one may thus confer perpetuity at

least (which is a kind of Tithonus-immortality) upon some respected

progenitor, or assure it to himself, with little trouble and at the cost

of a postage-stamp.

The benignity of Providence is nowhere more strongly marked than in its

compensations; and what can be more beautiful than the arrangement by

which the same harmless disinterestedness of matter and style that once

made an author the favorite of trunk-makers and grocers should, by

thus leading to the quiet absorption of his works, make them sure of

commemoration by Brunet or Lowndes and of commanding famine-prices under

the hammer? Fame, like electricity, is thus positive and negative; and

if a writer must be Somebody to make himself of permanent interest to

the world at large, he must not less be Nobody--like Junius--to have his

namelessness embalmed by Mons. Guérard. Take comfort, therefore, all ye

who either make paper invaluable or worthless by the addition of your

autograph! for your dice (as the Abbé Galiani said of Nature's) are

always loaded, and you may make your book the heir of Memory in two

ways,--by contriving to get the fire of genius into it, or to get it

into the fire by the hands of the hangman. Milton's "Areopagitica" is an

example of one method, and the "Philostratus" of Blount (who pillaged

the "Areopagitica") of the other. And yet, again, how perverse is human

nature! how more perverse is literary taste! There is a large class

of men madly desirous to read cuneiform and runic inscriptions simply

because of their unreadableness, adding to our compulsory stock of

knowledge about the royal Smiths and Joneses of to-day much conjectural

and conflicting information concerning their royal prototypes of an

antiquity unknown, and, as we fondly hoped, unknowable. Were there only

a compensatory arrangement for this also in another class who should be

driven by a like irresistible instinct to unreadable books, the heart

of the political economist would be gladdened at seeing the substantial

rewards of authorship so much more equally distributed by means of a

demand adapted to the always abundant supply.

We should like Mr. Allibone's book better, if it were more exclusively a

dictionary of names, facts, editions, and dates, and allowed less

space (or none at all) to opinions. The contemporaneous judgments of

individual critics upon writers of original power are commonly of little

value, and are absolutely worthless when an author's fame has struck its

roots down into the kindly soil of national or European appreciation,

when his work has won that "perfect witness of all-judging Jove" which

cannot be begged or bought. When the criticism is anonymous, (as are

many of those cited by Mr. Allibone,) it has not even the reflected

interest, as a measure of the critic himself, which we find sometimes

in the incapacity of a strong nature to appreciate a great one, as in

Johnson's opinion of Milton, for instance,--or of a delicate mind to

comprehend an imaginative one, as in Addison's of Bunyan. In the article

"Carlyle," for example, (by the way, John A. Carlyle is omitted,) we

should have been better content, if Mr. Allibone (instead of letting us

know what "Blackwood's Magazine" thinks of a writer who, whatever his

faults of style, has probably influenced the thought of his generation

more than any other man) had given us the date of the first publication

of "Cromwell's Letters and Speeches," and had mentioned that the

original collection of the "Miscellanies" was made in America. (This

last we have since found alluded to under "De Quincey.") Sometimes the

editor himself intrudes remarks which are quite out of keeping with the

character of such a work. We will give an instance which caught our

eye in turning over the leaves. After giving the title of "The Rare

Trauailes" of Job Hortop, Mr. Allibone adds, "We trust that in the

home-relation of his 'Rare Trauails among wilde and sauage people' the

_raconteur_ did not yield to the temptation of 'pulling the long bow,'

for the purpose of increasing the amazement of his wondering auditors."

Now if Mr. Allibone knew nothing about Hortop, he should have said

nothing. If the edition of 1591 was inaccessible to him, he could have

found out what kind of a story-teller our ancient mariner was in the

third volume of Hakluyt. We resent this slur upon Job the more because

he happens to be a favorite of ours, and saw no more wonders than

travellers of that day had the happy gift of seeing. We remember he got

sight of a very fine merman in the neighborhood of the Bermudas; but

then stout Sir John Hawkins was as lucky.

The two criticisms we have made touch, one of them the plan of the work,

and the other its manner. We have one more to make, which, perhaps,

should properly have come under the former of these two heads;--it

is that Mr. Allibone allows a disproportionate space to the smaller

celebrities of the day in comparison with those of the past. In such

an undertaking, the amount of interest which the general public may be

supposed to take in comparatively local notabilities should, it seems to

us, be measured on a scale whose degrees are generations.

Mr. Allibone's good-nature has misled him in some cases to the allowance

of manifest disproportions. Twice as much room, for instance, is allowed

to Mr. Dallas as to Emerson. Mr. Dallas has been Vice-President of the

United States; Emerson is one of the few masters of the English tongue,

and both by teaching and practical example has done more to make the

life of the scholar beautiful, and the career of the man of letters a

reproof to all low aims and an inspiration to all high ones, than any

other man in America.

What we have said has been predicated upon the general impression left

on our minds after dipping into the book here and there almost at

random. But on opening it again, we find so much that is interesting,

even in those articles which are most expansive and gossiping, that we

are almost inclined to draw our pen through what we have written in the

way of objection, and merely express our gratitude to Mr. Allibone for

what he has done. We have been led to speak of what we consider the

defects, or rather the redundancies, of the "Dictionary," because we

believe, that, if less bulky, it would be more certain of the

wide distribution it so highly deserves. It is a shrewd saying of

Vauvenargues, that it is "_un grand signe de médiocrité de louer

toujours modérément_," and we have no desire to expose the "Atlantic" to

a charge so fatal by showing ourselves cold to the uncommon merits of

Mr. Allibone's achievement. The book is rather entitled to be called an

Encyclopaedia than a Dictionary. As the work of a single man, it is one

of the wonders of literary industry. The amount of labor implied in it

is enormous, and its general accuracy, considering the immense number

and variety of particulars, remarkable. A kindly and impartial spirit

makes itself felt everywhere,--by no means an easy or inconsiderable

merit. We have already had occasion several times to test its practical

value by use, and can recommend it from actual experiment. Every man

who ever owned an English book, or ever means to own one, will find

something here to his purpose.

That a volume so comprehensive in its scope and so multitudinous in its

details should be wholly without errors and omissions is impossible; and

we trust that any of our readers who detect such will discharge a part

of the obligation they are under to Mr. Allibone by communicating them

to him for the benefit of a second edition.

1. _Trübner's Bibliographical Guide to American Literature._ London:

TRÜBNER & CO. 1859. pp. cxlix., 554. 8vo.

2. _Index to the Catalogue of a Portion of the Public Library of the

City of Boston._ 1858. pp. 204.

Next to knowledge itself, perhaps the best thing is to know where to

find it. To make an index that shall combine completeness, succinctness,

and clearness,--how much intelligence this demands is proved by the

number of failures. Mr. Trübner's volume contains, 1st, some valuable

bibliographical prolegomena by the editor himself; 2d, an historical

sketch of American literature, which is not very well done by Mr. Moran,

and would have been admirably done by Mr. Duyckinck; 3d, a full and very

interesting account of American libraries by Mr. Edwards; and 4th, a

classed list of books written and published in the United States during

the last forty years, arranged in thirty-one appropriate departments,

with a supplementary thirty-second of _Addenda_. In some instances,--as

in giving tables of the proceedings of learned societies,--the period

embraced is nearly a century. A general alphabetical index completes

the volume. The several heads are, Bibliography, Collections, Theology,

Jurisprudence, Medicine and Surgery, Natural History (in five

subdivisions), Chemistry and Pharmacy, Natural Philosophy, Mathematics

and Astronomy, Philosophy, Education (in three subdivisions), Modern

Languages, Philology, American Antiquities, Indians and Languages,

History (in three subdivisions), Geography, Useful Arts, Military

Science, Naval Science, Rural and Domestic Economy, Politics, Commerce,

Belles Lettres, Fine Arts, Music, Freemasonry, Mormonism, Spiritualism,

Guide Books, Maps and Atlases, Periodicals. This list is enough to show

the great value of the "Guide" to students and collectors. The volume

will serve to give both Americans and Europeans a juster notion of the

range and tendency, as well as amount, of literary activity in the

United States. As the work of a cultivated and intelligent foreigner, it

has all the more claim to our acknowledgment, and also to our indulgence

where we discover omissions or inaccuracies.

The second volume whose title stands at the head of our article would

demand no special notice from us, were it not for the admirable manner

in which it is executed and the judgment evinced in the selection of the

books which it catalogues. The Boston Library may well be congratulated

on having at its head a gentleman so experienced and competent as

Professor Jewett. He has hitherto distinguished himself in a department

of literature in which little notoriety is to be won, his labors

in which, however, are appreciated by the few whose quiet suffrage

outvalues the noisy applause of the moment. His little work on the

"Construction of Library Catalogues" is a truly valuable contribution to

letters, rendering, as it does, the work of classification more easy,

and increasing the chances of our getting good general directories to

the books already in our libraries, without which the number of volumes

we gather is only an increase of incumbrance. It is a great detriment to

sound and exhaustive scholarship, that the books for students to read

should be left to chance; and we owe a great deal more than we are apt

to acknowledge to men who, like Mr. Jewett, enable us to find out the

books that will really help us. Dr. Johnson, to be sure, commends the

habit of "browsing" in libraries; and this will do very well for those

whose memory clinches, like the tentacula of zoöphytes, around every

particle of nourishment that comes within its reach. But the habit tends

rather to make ready talkers than thorough scholars; and he who is left

to his chances in a collection of books grasps like a child in the

"grab-bag" at a fair, and gets, in nine cases out of ten, precisely what

he does not want.

We think that a great mistake is made in the multiplying of libraries

in the same neighborhood, unless for some specialty, such as Natural

History or the like. It is sad to think of the money thus wasted in

duplicates and triplicates. Rivalry in such cases is detrimental rather

than advantageous to the interests of scholarship. Instead of one good

library, we get three poor ones; and so, instead of twenty men of real

learning, we are vexed with a score of sciolists, who are so through

no fault of their own. We hope that the movement now on foot, to give

something like adequacy to the University Library at Cambridge, will

receive the aid it deserves, not only from graduates of the College, but

from all persons interested in the literary advancement of the country.

So there be one really good library in the United States, it matters

little where it is, for students will find it,--and they should at least

be spared the necessity of going abroad in order to master any branch of

learning.

A great library is of incalculable benefit to any community. It saves

infinite waste of time to the thinker by enabling him to know what has

already been thought. It is of greater advantage (and that advantage is

of a higher kind) than any seminary of learning, for it supplies the

climate and atmosphere, without which good seed is sown in vain. It is

not merely that books are the "precious life-blood of master-spirits,"

and to be prized for what they contain, but they are still more useful

for what they prevent. The more a man knows, the less will he be apt to

think he knows, the less rash will he be in conclusion, and the less

hasty in utterance. It is of great consequence to the minds of most

men how they _begin_ to think, and many an intellect has been lamed

irretrievably for steady and lofty flight by toppling out into the

helpless void of opinion with wings yet callow. The gross and carnal

hallucinations of what is called "Spiritualism"--the weakest-kneed of

all whimsies that have come upon the parish from the days of the augurs

down to our own--would be disenchanted at once in a neighborhood

familiar with Del Rio, Wierus, Bodin, Scot, Glanvil, Webster, Casaubon,

and the Mathers. Good books are the enemies of delusion, the most

effectual extinguishers of self-conceit. Impersonal, dispassionate,

self-possessed, they reason without temper, and remain forever of the

same mind without obstinacy. The man who has the freedom of a great

library lengthens his own life without the weariness of living; he may

include all past generations in his experience without risk of senility;

not yet fifty, he may have made himself the contemporary of "the

world's gray fathers"; and with no advantages of birth or person, he may

have been admitted to the selectest society of all times and lands.

We live in the hope of seeing, if not a great library somewhere on this

continent, at least the foundations of such a one, laid broad enough and

deep enough to change hope into a not too remote certainty. Hitherto

America has erected but one statue in commemoration of a scholar, and we

cannot help wishing that the money that has been wasted in setting up

in effigy one or two departed celebrities we could mention had been

appropriated to a means of culture which, perhaps more than any other,

would be likely to give us men worthy of bronze or marble, but above the

necessity of them for memory.

* * * * *

RECENT AMERICAN PUBLICATIONS.

The Poetical Works of William Motherwell; with a Memoir of his Life.

Fourth Edition, greatly Enlarged. Boston. Ticknor & Fields. 32mo. pp.

308. 75 cts.

The Avenger, a Narrative; and other Papers. By Thomas De Quincey.

Boston. Ticknor & Fields. 16mo. pp. 327. 75 cts.

Life of William Pitt. By Lord Macaulay. Preceded by the Life of the Earl

of Chatham. New York. Delisser & Proctor. 32mo. pp. 227. 50 cts.

Shakspeare's Legal Acquirements Considered. By John Lord Campbell,

LL.D., F.R.S.E. In a Letter to J. Payne Collier, Esq., F.S.A. New York.

D. Appleton & Co. 12mo. pp. 146. 75 cts.

The Pillar of Fire; or, Israel in Bondage. By Rev. J.H. Ingraham, Author

of "The Prince of the House of David." New York. Pudney & Russell. 12mo.

pp. 600. $1.25.

The Life of North American Insects. By B. Jaeger, Assisted by H.E.

Preston, M.D. With Numerous Illustrations from Specimens in the Cabinet

of the Author. New York. Harper & Brothers. 12mo. pp. 319. $1.25.

Life of Frederick the Great. By Macaulay. New York. Delisser & Proctor.

32mo. pp. 277. 50 cts.

Lectures on Metaphysics and Logic. By Sir William Hamilton, Bart. Edited

by the Rev. Henry Longueville Mansel, B.D., Oxford, and John Veitch,

M.A., Edinburgh. 2 vols. Vol. I. Metaphysics. Boston. Gould & Lincoln.

8vo. pp. 718. $3.00.

India and the Indian Mutiny. Comprising the Complete History of

Hindostan, from the Earliest Times to the Present Day; with Full

Particulars of the Recent Mutiny in India. By Henry Frederick Malcolm.

Illustrated with Numerous Engravings. Philadelphia. J.W. Bradley. 12mo.

pp. 426. $1.25.

Frank Elliott; or, Walks in the Desert. By James Challen. Philadelphia.

J. Challen & Son. 12mo. pp. 349. $1.00.

Border War. A Tale of Disunion. By J.B. Jones, Author of "Wild Western

Scenes." New York. Rudd & Carleton. 12mo. pp. 502. $1.25.

Mothers and Infants, Nurses and Nursing. A Translation from the French

of a Treatise on Nursing, Weaning, and the General Treatment of Young

Children. By Dr. A.L. Donné. Boston. Phillips, Sampson, & Co. 12mo. pp.

303. $1.00.

Poems and Ballads of Goethe. Translated by W. Edmonstoune Aytoun,

D.C.L., and Theodore Martin. New York. Delisser & Proctor. 12mo. pp.

240. 75 cts.

On the Probable Fall of the Value of Gold; the Commercial and Social

Consequences which may Ensue, and the Measures which it Invites. By

Michel Chevalier. Translated from the French, with a Preface by Richard

Cobden, Esq. New York. D. Appleton & Co. 12mo. pp. 217. $1.25.

A Treatise on Theism and on the Modern Skeptical Theories. By Francis

Wheaton. Philadelphia. J.B. Lippincott & Co. 12mo. pp. 395. $1.25.

The Precious Stones of the Heavenly Foundation; with Illustrations

Selected in Prose and Verse. By Augusta Browne Garrett. New York.

Sheldon & Co. 12mo. pp. 328. $1.00.

The Convalescent. By N. Parker Willis. New York. Charles Scribner. 12mo.

pp. 456. $1.25.

Plan of the Creation; or, Other Worlds, and who Inhabit them. By Rev.

C.L. Hequembourg. Boston. Phillips, Sampson, & Co. 12mo. pp. 391. $1.25.

Five Essays. By John Kearsley Mitchell, M.D. Edited by S. Weir Mitchell,

M.D. Philadelphia. J.B. Lippincott & Co. 12mo. pp. 371. $1.25.

Hope Marshall; or, Government and its Offices. By William N.O. Lasselle.

Washington. H. Lasselle. 12mo. pp. 326. $1.00.

Sermons Preached and Revised by the Rev. C.H. Spurgeon. Fifth Series.

New York. Sheldon & Co. 12mo. pp. 454. $1.00.

Hours with my Pupils; or, Educational Addresses, etc. The Young Lady's

Guide and Parents' and Teachers' Assistant. By Mrs. Lincoln Phelps. New

York. C. Scribner. 12mo. $1.25.

"Love me Little, Love me Long." By Charles Reade. New York. Harper &

Brothers. 12mo. pp. 435. 75 cts.

The Christian Law of Amusement. By James Leonard Corning, Pastor of the

Westminster Presbyterian Church. Buffalo, N.Y. Phinney & Co. 16mo. pp.

162. 50 cts.

Scenes and Adventures in the Army; or, Romance of Military Life. By P.

St. G. Cooke, Colonel Second Dragoons, U.S.A. Philadelphia. Lindsay &

Blakiston. 12mo. pp. 432. $1.00.

Infant Salvation In its Relation to Infant Depravity, Infant

Regeneration, and Infant Baptism. By J.H. Bomberger. Philadelphia.

Lindsay & Blakiston. 16mo. pp. 192. 50 cts.

Popular Geology. A Series of Lectures read before the Philosophical

Institution of Edinburgh; with Descriptive Sketches from a Geologist's

Portfolio. By Hugh Miller. With an Introductory _Résumé_, of the

Progress of Geological Science within the last Two Years, by Mrs.

Miller. Boston. Gould & Lincoln. 12mo. pp. 423. $1.25.

Poems of Owen Meredith. The Wanderer and Clytemnestra. Boston. Ticknor &

Fields. 32mo. pp. 514. 75 cts.

Memoir of Theophilus Parsons, Chief Justice of the Supreme Judicial

Court of Massachusetts; with Notices of Some of his Contemporaries. By

his Son, Theophilus Parsons. Boston. Ticknor & Fields. 12mo. pp. 476.

$1.50.

The Life of James Watt; with Selections from his Correspondence. By

James Patrick Muirhead, M.A. Illustrated with Wood-Cuts. New York. D.

Appleton & Co. 12mo. pp. 424. $1.25.

The Spy. A Tale of the Neutral Ground. By J. Fenimore Cooper.

Illustrated from Drawings by F.O.C. Barley. New York. W.A. Townsend &

Co. crown 8vo. pp. 463. $1.50.

Internal Relations of the Cities, Towns, Villages, Counties, and States

of the Union; or, the Municipalist. A highly Useful Book for Voters,

Tax-Payers, Statesmen, Politicians, and Families. Second Edition. New

York. Ross & Tousey, etc., and Wm. Radde. 12mo. pp. 302. $1.00.

Farm Drainage. The Principles, Processes, and Effects of Draining Land,

etc., etc. Including Tables of Rain-Fall, etc., and more than One

Hundred Illustrations. By Henry F. French. New York. A.O. Moore & Co.

12mo. pp. 381. $1.00.

The Jealous Husband. A Story of the Heart. By Annette Marie Maillard.

Philadelphia. T.B. Peterson & Brothers. 12mo. pp. 375. $1.25.

A Practical Treatise on the Hive and Honey-Bee. By L.L. Langstroth. With

an Introduction by Rev. Robert Baird, D.D. Third Edition. Revised, with

Illustrations. New York. A.O. Moore & Co. 12mo. pp. 405. $1.25.

From Wall Street to Cashmere. A Journal of Five Years in Asia, Africa,

and Europe; comprising Visits, during 1851-2-3-4-5-6, to the Danemona

Iron-Mines, etc., etc. By John B. Ireland. With nearly One Hundred

Illustrations from Sketches made on the Spot, by the Author. New York.

S.A. Rollo. 8vo. pp. 526. $3.50.