Harper's New Monthly Magazine, No. V, October, 1850, Volume I.
Harper's
New Monthly Magazine
No. V.—October, 1850.—Vol. I.
In a late article on Southey, we alluded to the solitary position of Wordsworth in that lake country where he once shone the brightest star in a large galaxy. Since then, the star of Jove, so beautiful and large, has gone out in darkness—the greatest laureate of England has expired—the intensest, most unique, and most pure-minded of our poets, with the single exceptions of Milton and Cowper, is departed. And it were lesemajesty against his mighty shade not to pay it our tribute while yet his memory, and the grass of his grave, are green.
To soften such grief, however, there comes in the reflection, that the task of this great poet had been nobly discharged. He had given the world assurance, full, and heaped, and running over, of what he meant, and of what was meant by him. While the premature departure of a Schiller, a Byron, or a Keats, gives us emotions similar to those wherewith we would behold the crescent moon, snatched away as by some “insatiate archer,” up into the Infinite, ere it grew into its full glory—Wordsworth, like Scott, Goethe, and Southey, was permitted to fill his full and broad sphere.
What Wordsworth's mission was, may be, perhaps, understood through some previous remarks upon his great mistress—Nature, as a poetical personage.
There are three methods of contemplating nature. These are the material, the shadowy, and the mediatorial. The materialist looks upon it as the great and only reality. It is a vast solid fact, for ever burning and rolling around, below and above him. The idealist, on the contrary, regards it as a shadow—a mode of mind—the infinite projection of his own thought. The man who stands between the two extremes, looks on nature as a great, but not ultimate or everlasting scheme of mediation, or compromise, between pure and absolute spirit and humanity—adumbrating God to man, and bringing man near to God. To the materialist, there is an altar, star-lighted heaven-high, but no God. To the idealist, there is a God, but no altar. He who holds the theory of mediation, has the Great Spirit as his God, and the universe as the altar on which he presents the gift of his poetical (we do not speak at present so much of his theological) adoration.
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Contents
Wordsworth—His Character And Genius.
Sidney Smith. By George Gilfillan.
Thomas Carlyle. By George Gilfillan.
The Gentleman Beggar. An Attorney's Story. (From Dickens's Household Words.)
Singular Proceedings Of The Sand Wasp. (From Howitt's Country Year-Book.)
What Horses Think Of Men. From The Raven In The Happy Family. (From Dickens's Household Words.)
The Quakers During The American War. (From Howitt's Country Year-Book.)
A Shilling's Worth Of Science. (From Dickens's Household Words.)
A Tuscan Vintage.
How To Make Home Unhealthy. By Harriet Martineau.
I. Hints To Hang Up In The Nursery.
II. The Londoner's Garden.
III. Spending A Very Pleasant Evening.
IV. The Light Nuisance.
V. Passing The Bottle.
VI. Art Against Appetite.
VII. The Water Party.
VIII. Filling The Grave.
IX. The Fire And The Dressing-Room.
X. Fresh Air.
XI. Exercise.
XII. A Bedroom Paper.
Sorrows And Joys. (From Dickens's Household Words.)
Maurice Tiernay, The Soldier Of Fortune. (From the Dublin University Magazine)
Chapter XII. “A Glance At Staff-Duty.”
Chapter XIII. A Farewell Letter.
Chapter XIV. A Surprise And An Escape.
Chapter XV. Scraps Of History.
The Enchanted Rock. (From Chambers's Edinburgh Journal.)
The Force Of Fear. (From Chambers's Edinburgh Journal.)
Lady Alice Daventry; Or, The Night Of Crime. (From the Dublin University Magazine.)
Mirabeau. An Anecdote Of His Private Life. (From Chambers's Edinburgh Journal.)
Terrestrial Magnetism. (From Chambers's Edinburgh Journal.)
Early History Of The Use Of Coal. (From Chambers's Edinburgh Journal.)
Jenny Lind. By Fredrika Bremer.
My Novel; Or, Varieties In English Life. By Pisistratus Caxton. (From Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine.)
Book I.—Initial Chapter: Showing How My Novel Came To Be Written.
Chapter II.
Chapter III.
Chapter IV.
Chapter V.
Chapter VI.
Chapter VII.
Chapter VIII.
Chapter IX.
The Two Guides Of The Child. (From Dickens's Household Words.)
The Laboratory In The Chest. (From Dickens's Household Words.)
The Steel Pen. An Illustration Of Cheapness. (From Dickens's Household Words.)
Snakes And Serpent Charmers. (From Bentley's Miscellany.)
The Magic Maze. (From Colburn's Monthly Magazine.)
The Sun. (From Chambers's Edinburgh Journal.)
The Household Jewels. (From Dickens's Household Words.)
The Tea-Plant. (From Hogg's Instructor.)
Anecdotes Of Dr. Chalmers.
The Pleasures Of Illness. (From the People's Journal.)
Obstructions To The Use Of The Telescope.
Monthly Record Of Current Events.
Literary Notices.
Autumn Fashions.
Footnotes