THE DOOM OF THE DART.
The day had been close and sultry, but, as sunset drew on, a light breeze sprung up, which diffused a delicious coolness throughout the ship, imparting new vigor to the panting and almost exhausted men. Invigorated by the welcome wind, a group of us gathered on the weather quarter to behold the sun go down; and those who have never seen such a spectacle at sea can have no idea of the vastness with which it fills the mind. Slowly the broad disc wheeled down toward the west, seeming to dilate as it approached the horizon, and, as its lower edge touched the distant seaboard, trailing a long line of golden light across the undulating surface of the deep. At this instant the scene was magnificent. Pile on pile of clouds, assuming every fantastic shape, and varying from red to purple and from purple to gold, lay heaped around the setting god. For a few moments the billows could be seen rising and falling against the broad disc of the descending luminary: while, with a slow and scarcely perceptible motion, he gradually slid beneath the horizon. Insensibly the brilliant hues of the clouds died away, changing from gorgeous crimson, through almost every gradation of color, until at length a faint apple-green invested the whole western sky, slowly fading into a deep azure, as it approached the zenith.
“Beautiful!” exclaimed the skipper, “one might almost become poetical in gazing on such a scene.”
The sun had now been hid for some minutes, and the apple-green of the sky was rapidly becoming colder and more indistinct, though the edge of a solitary dark cloud, hanging a few degrees above the horizon, was yet tipped with a faint crimson. Meantime the stars began to appear in the opposite firmament, one after another twinkling into sight, as if by magic, until the whole eastern heaven was gemmed with them. I looked around the horizon. Never before had its immensity so forcibly impressed me. The vast concave swelling high up above me and gradually rounding away toward the distant seaboard, seemed almost of illimitable extent; and when, over all the mighty space of ocean included within its circuit, my eye rested on not a solitary sail, I experienced a sensation of loneliness such as no pen can describe. And when the breeze again died away, leaving the sails idly flapping to and fro as the schooner rocked on the swell, my imagination suggested that perhaps it might be our doom, as it had been that of others, to lie for days, nay weeks and months, powerless in the midst of that desert latitude, shut out from the world, enclosed within the blue walls of that gigantic prison: and I shuddered, as well I might, at the very idea of such a fate.
It was now a dead calm. No perceptible agitation could be discovered on the surface of the deep, except the long undulating swell which never subsides, and which can be compared to nothing but the heavy breathing of some gigantic monster when lulled to repose. Now and then, however, a tiny ripple, occasioned by the gambols of some equally tiny inhabitant of the deep, would twinkle sharp in the starlight; while, close under the shadow of our hull, a keen eye might detect hundreds of the fairy fire-flies of the ocean, their phosphoric lanterns glittering gaily as they shot to and fro. Absorbed in the contemplation of the spectacle, I suffered more than half an hour to pass unheeded; and it was not until the sea began to be sensibly agitated, and the wind to freshen, that I looked up. The change which had come over the firmament astonished me, and requires a passing description.
When I had last looked at the heavens, the whole eastern sky was thick sown with stars, though no moon had as yet appeared. Along the western seaboard still stretched the long line of pale apple-green which the setting sun had painted in that quarter. The firmament overhead was without a cloud, its dark azure surface spangled with stars. Between the zenith and the eastern horizon hung the dark cloud which I have already mentioned, a black opaque mass of vapor apparently not larger than a capstan head. But every thing now presented a different aspect. The first thing that met my eye was the upper portion of the disc of the moon, peeping above the eastern seaboard, the dark fiery red of its face betraying the existence of a thin mist in that direction. Fascinated by the sight, I remained gazing for more than a minute on the rising luminary, as she emerged gracefully and majestically from her watery bed. At length, and apparently with an accelerated motion, she slid suddenly above the line of the horizon, pouring a line of silver light along the crests of the undulating swell, while instantaneously, as if putting on all her glory, she emerged from the mist that had surrounded her, and rolled on in pearly brightness, calm and undimmed, the stars fading before her approach. One planet alone remained visible—it was the evening star, walking in almost equal beauty, a little to the right of her sister luminary. Never before had those fine lines of Milton, in which he pictures her as leading on the choral hosts of heaven, rose so vividly before my imagination.
When I turned my gaze westward, how different the spectacle that met my eye! The little cloud which I have described, had grown to a gigantic size, and now obscured the whole larboard firmament, extending its dark and jagged front a third of the way around the horizon, and piling its gloomy masses high up toward the zenith. Here and there, where a thinner edge than usual was disclosed to the light, it caught the rays of the rising luminary which it reflected back, so that the cloud seemed lined with silver. The sea, immediately under this gloomy bank of vapor, was of the color of ink, and reminded me of the fabled waters of Acheron. The whole spectacle was calculated to fill the mind with dark and ominous forebodings; and, I confess, my own feelings partook of this uneasy character.
The wind was rapidly freshening; but, instead of setting in steadily from any quarter, it blew in fitful gusts, chopping all round the horizon. Yet it brought a delicious coolness with it, which was peculiarly refreshing after the heat of the day. The sea now began to rise, and as the dark billows heaved up in the spectral light, they wore an aspect so ghastly that I almost shuddered to look on them—an aspect, however, that was partially relieved when the unquiet puffs of air crisped their edges into silver, or rolled a sheet of crackling light along their surface. With the freshening of the wind the schooner began slowly to move ahead, but, ever and anon, as the breeze died away, or struck her from a new quarter, she would settle like a log on the water, moaning as if in pain. At such times the dying cadence of the wind, wailing through the rigging, smote on the ear with strange, weird power.
“A threatening prospect,” said the skipper, approaching me, and breaking the profound silence which had reigned for several minutes, “we shall have a tempest before long, and I fear it will be no child’s play.”
“I never saw such ominous signs before. The very air seems oppressed and sick, as if it trembled at approaching ruin. Mark the faces even of our oldest veterans—they betray a vague sentiment of fear, such as I never saw on their countenances before.”
“Aye!” replied the skipper, abstractedly, for he was gazing anxiously astern, “the cloud comes up like a race-horse. How it whirls over and over, rolling its dark masses along; it reminds me of the mountains which the old Titans, we read of in school, heaved against Jove. But here am I thinking of classic fables when I ought to be taking in sail. Ho!” he exclaimed, lifting his voice, as a sharp gust, premonitory of the coming hurricane, whistled across the hamper, “in sail—every rag!”
No time was to be lost. During the short space we had been conversing, the dark clouds astern had increased their velocity threefold, and, even as the skipper spoke, the most advanced of them had over-shadowed us with its sepulchral pall. As the momentary puff of air accompanying it died away, a few large heavy rain-drops pattered on the deck, and then all was still again. The men sprung to their stations, at the voice of their superior, and incited to double activity by these signs of approaching danger, soon reduced our canvass until the schooner lay, with bare poles, rocking on the swell. Scarcely had this task been completed, when the gale burst on us in all its fury, roaring, hissing, and howling through the rigging, and drenching us with the clouds of spray that it tore from the bosom of the deep and bore onward in its fierce embraces. For a few minutes we could scarcely stand before the blast. The schooner groaned, and starting forward at the first touch of the hurricane, like a steed when he feels the spur, went careering along, her tall masts curving over in the gale, and her hull shrouded in the flying spray which drove onward with even greater velocity than ourselves. In this desperate encounter with the elements, every rope and stick strained and cracked almost to breaking. All at once this hurricane died out, and then an awful stillness fell on the scene. Not a voice spoke, not a footfall was heard, scarcely a breath broke the appalling silence. The schooner rose and fell ominously on the agitated swell. Suddenly a flash of lightning played far off on the dark edges of the cloud behind us, and then followed a low hoarse growl of distant thunder. Scarcely a minute elapsed before a large rain-drop fell on my face, and instantaneously, as if the heavens were opened before us, a deluge of rain rushed downwards, hissing and seething along the decks, and almost pinning us to our places; while the wind, bursting out afresh, swept wildly across the sea, and driving the spray and rain madly before it, produced a scene of confusion and tumult almost indescribable. For some minutes I could see nothing in the thick darkness which now surrounded us—could hear nothing but the roar of the hurricane and the splash of the waters. But suddenly a blinding flash shot from a cloud almost directly overhead, lighting up the deck, spars, and guns, for an instant, with a supernatural glare, and striking the ocean a few fathoms distant, ploughed up the waters, which it flung in volumes of spray in every direction. Before a clock could tick, the report followed, stunning us with its deafening roar, and rattling and crackling fearfully as it echoed down the sky. Never shall I forget the ghastly looks of the men, as I beheld them in that unearthly glare. And minutes after darkness had resumed its sway, and the roar of the thunder had died in the distance, my eyes still ached with that intense light, and the crackling of the bolt rung in my ears.
Meantime the rain descended in torrents, not, however, falling vertically, but flying whistling before the hurricane. The uproar of the elements now became terrific. The thunder rattled incessantly—the wind shrieked through the hamper—every timber and spar groaned in the strife, and the deep boom of the angry surges, pursuing in our wake, sounded like the howlings of beasts of prey. The darkness was intense, only relieved by the glare of the lightning which streamed incessantly over the scene. Whither we were going it was impossible to tell, for all control of the schooner had been given up, and we were scudding before the tempest with breathless velocity. A quarter of an hour had thus passed, when I found myself standing by the skipper, who was watching the course of the ship.
“East, by east-sou’-east,” he said, “and driving like death. God of heaven, what a storm!”
The words had scarcely left his mouth before another peal of thunder, even more awful than the preceding one I have described, burst overhead, and, stunning us for an instant with its terrific explosion, rattled down the sky, crackling and re-crackling in its retreat, as if the firmament were crashing to its centre: it was accompanied rather than preceded by a flash, such as I had never seen before, blinding me instantaneously with its glare, and making every object swim dizzily before the brain. On the moment I felt a stunning shock, and was prostrated on the deck, while a strong smell of sulphur pervaded the atmosphere. The deluge of rain revived me, and I looked up in alarm. Good God! the foremast was in flames. We had been struck with lightning!
Quick as thought the whole horrors of our situation rose before me. We were on a pathless sea amid a raging storm. That there was little hope of extinguishing the flames was evident, for, even while these thoughts flashed through my mind, a volume of smoke puffed up through the forecastle, and a cry ran through the decks that the whole forward part of the schooner was on fire. There was no time, however, to be lost, if we would make any effort to save ourselves; and, faint as was the hope of success, it was determined to attempt to smother the flames, by fastening down the hatches and excluding the air. But the fierce heat that filled the decks told us that the endeavor would be in vain; nor was it long before the forehatch was blown up with a loud explosion, while a stream of fire shot high up into the air; and, the next minute, the forked tongues had caught hold of the rigging, wrapping shrouds, ropes and yards in a sheet of lurid flame. The rapidity with which all this occurred was incredible. It seemed as if but a minute had elapsed since that terrific bolt had burst above us, and now the whole forward part of the schooner was a mass of fire, that streamed out before the tempest like a blood-red banner; showers of sparks, and even burning fragments of the wreck, flying far away ahead on the gale. There are periods, however, even of long duration, which appear to be but momentary, and so it was now. So wholly had every energy been devoted to the preservation of the ship, that the time had passed almost unnoticed, though a full half hour had elapsed since we had been struck with lightning. The storm, however, still raged as furiously as ever; for, though the rain was less violent, the wind blew a hurricane, threatening to settle down into a long sustained gale. Had the torrents of water, which first drenched us, continued falling, there might have been some hope of extinguishing the flames; but the subsidence of the rain, and the unaltered violence of the wind, rendered the situation of the schooner hopeless.
“We can do nothing more, I fear,” at length said the skipper, drawing me aside, “the fire is on the increase, and even the elements have turned against us. We must leave the little Dart to her fate, unless you can think of something else to do?” and he looked inquiringly at me.
“Alas!” I replied, with a mournful shake of my head, “we have done every thing that mortal man can do; but in vain. We must now think of saving ourselves. Had we not better order out the boats?”
The skipper did not, for a moment, reply to my question, but stood, with his arms folded on his breast, and a face of the deepest dejection, gazing on the burning forecastle. At length he spoke.
“Many a long day have we sailed together, in many a bold fray have we fought for each other, and now to leave you, my gallant craft, ah! little did I think this would be your doom. But God’s will be done. We must all perish sooner or later, and better go down here than rot, a forgotten hulk, on some muddy shore—better consume to ashes than fall a prey to some huge cormorant of an enemy. And yet,” he continued, his eye lighting up, “and yet I should have wished to die with you under the guns of one of those gigantic monsters—aye! die battling for the possession of your deck inch by inch.” At this instant one of the forward guns, which had become heated almost to redness in the conflagration, exploded. The sound seemed to recall him to himself. He started as if roused from a reverie, and, noticing me beside him, recollected my question. Immediately resuming his usual energy, he proceeded to order out the boats, and provide provisions and a few hasty instruments, with a calmness which was in striking contrast to the raging sea around, and the lurid fire raging on our bows.
The high discipline of the men enabled us to complete our preparations in a space of time less than one half that which would have been consumed by an ordinary crew under like circumstances; and, indeed, in many cases, all subordination would have been lost, and perhaps the ruin of the whole been the consequence. The alacrity of the men and the forecast of the officers were indeed needed; for our preparations had scarcely been completed when the heat on the deck became intolerable. The fire had now reached the after hatch, and, notwithstanding the violence of the gale, was extending aft with great rapidity, and had already enveloped the mainmast in its embraces. For some time before we left the schooner the heat, even at the tafferel, almost scorched the skin from our faces; nor did we descend into the boats a minute too soon. This was a feat also by no means easily accomplished, so great was the agitation of the sea. As I looked on the frail boats which were to receive us, and thought of the perils which environed us, of our distance from land, and the slight quantity of provisions we had been enabled to save, I felt that, in all human probability, we should never again set foot on shore, even if we survived until morning. To my own fate I was comparatively indifferent, for life had now lost all charms to me; but when I reflected on the brave men who were to be consigned to the same destiny, and of the ties by which many of them were bound to earth—of the wives who would become widows, of aged parents who would be left childless, of children for whom the orphan’s lot was preparing—the big tears gushed into my eyes, and coursed down my cheek, though unobserved.
“All ready,” said the skipper, who was the last to leave the deck, and pausing to cast a mournful look at his little craft, he sprung into the boat and we pushed off from the quarter. For some minutes, however, it seemed doubtful whether our frail barges could live in the tumultuous sea that now raged. One minute we were hurried to the sky on the bosom of a wave, and then we plunged headlong into the dark trough below, the walls of water on either hand momently threatening to overwhelm us. But though small, our boats were buoyant, and rode gallantly onward. Every exertion was made, meanwhile, to increase our distance from the schooner, for our departure had been hurried by the fear that the fire would soon reach the magazine, and our proximity to the burning ship still continued to threaten us with destruction in case of an explosion. The men, conscious of the peril, strained every sinew to effect our object, and thus battling against wind and wave we struggled on our way.
With every fathom we gained, the sight of the burning ship increased in magnificence. The flames had now seized the whole after part of the schooner as far back as the companion way, so that hull, spars and rigging were a sheet of fire, which, caught in the fierce embraces of the hurricane, now whirled around, now streamed straight out, and now broke into a thousand forked tongues, licking up the masts and around the spars like so many fiery serpents. Millions of sparks poured down to leeward, while ever and anon huge patches of flame would be torn from the main body of the conflagration and blown far away ahead. Volumes of dark, pitchy smoke, curling up from the decks of the schooner, often partially concealed a portion of the flames, but they reappeared a moment afterwards with even greater vividness. In some places so intense was the conflagration that the fire was at a white heat. The whole horizon was illuminated with the light, except just over and ahead of the schooner, where a black smoky cloud had gathered, looking like the wing of some gigantic monster of another world; and no description can adequately picture the spectral aspect of the gloomy waves that rolled up their ghastly crests beneath this canopy.
“She cannot last much longer,” said the doctor, who was in my boat, “the flames will soon reach the magazine.”
“Aye! aye! and look there—”
As I spoke, a vivid, blinding jet of fire streamed high up into the air, while the masts of the schooner could be seen, amid the flame, shooting arrow-like to the sky. Instantaneously a roar as of ten thousand batteries smote the ear; and then came the pattering of fragments of the hull and spars as they fell on the water. Even while these sounds continued, a darkness that brought to my mind that of the day of doom enveloped us, though that intense light still swam in our eyes, producing a thousand fantastic images on the retina. No word was spoken, but each one held his breath in awe; and then came a long, deep drawn sigh, that seemed to proceed simultaneously from each one in the boat. The Dart was no more. We were alone in the boundless deep, alone with a storm still raging around us, alone without any hope of rescue, and a thousand miles from land. God only knew whether it would be our lot to perish by starvation, or sink at an earlier hour a prey to the overwhelming deep! As I contemplated our situation I shuddered, and breathed an involuntary prayer that the latter might be our doom.
TO ALMEDA IN NEW ENGLAND.
———
BY JAMES T. FIELDS.
———
Tell me not of greener mountains,
Far away in other lands,
Nor of “Afric’s sunny fountains”
Rolling over “golden sands”—
These few flowers to me recall
Fairer visions than they all!
Strange that things which soonest perish,
Dying oft with close of day,
Memory will most fondly cherish,
When their bloom has passed away—
Storms cannot efface forever
Bounding barks from youth’s bright river!
Then, lady, take this idle sonnet,
Fragile though the lines may be;
I’m thinking of a Quaker bonnet,
I wonder if you’ll think of me
Next season, when you fold with care
This crumpled leaf to curl your hair!
THE PLAYFUL PETS.
Sure never yet were pets so sleek,
So full of sportive play;
With them the gentle Marian
Will while the hours away.
Ah! childhood has a happiness
To other years unknown,
A joy it finds in slightest things,
A word, a look, a tone!
To it of brighter worlds above
Dim glimpses oft are given—
Alas! that age, which wisdom gains,
Should draw us down from Heaven.
C.
PAINTED BY W. DRUMMOND ENGRAVED BY J. SARTAIN
THE POETRY OF RUFUS DAWES.
A RETROSPECTIVE CRITICISM.
———
BY EDGAR A. POE.
———
“As a poet,” says Mr. Griswold, in his late “Poets and Poetry of America,” “the standing of Mr. Dawes is as yet unsettled; there being a wide difference of opinion respecting his writings.” The width of this difference is apparent; and, while to many it is matter for wonder, to those who have the interest of our Literature at heart, it is, more properly, a source of mortification and regret. That the author in question has long enjoyed what we term “a high poetical reputation,” cannot be denied; and in no manner is this point more strikingly evinced than in the choice of his works, some two years since, by one of our most enterprising publishers, as the initial volume of a series, the avowed object of which was the setting forth, in the best array of paper, type and pictorial embellishment, the élite of the American poets. As a writer of occasional stanzas he has been long before the public; always eliciting, from a great variety of sources, unqualified commendation. With the exception of a solitary remark, adventured by ourselves in “A Chapter on Autography,” there has been no written dissent from the universal opinion in his favor—the universal apparent opinion. Mr. Griswold’s observation must be understood, we presume, as referring to the conversational opinion upon this topic; or it is not impossible that he holds in view the difference between the criticism of the newspaper paragraphs and the private comment of the educated and intelligent. Be this as it may, the rapidly growing “reputation” of our poet was much enhanced by the publication of his first compositions “of length,” and attained its climax, we believe, upon the public recitation, by himself, of a tragic drama, in five acts, entitled “Athenia of Damascus,” to a large assembly of admiring and applauding friends, gathered together for the occasion in one of the halls of the University of New York.
This popular decision, so frequent and so public, in regard to the poetical ability of Mr. Dawes, might be received as evidence of his actual merit (and by thousands it is so received) were it not too scandalously at variance with a species of criticism which will not be resisted—with the perfectly simple precepts of the very commonest common sense. The peculiarity of Mr. Griswold’s observation has induced us to make inquiry into the true character of the volume to which we have before alluded, and which embraces, we believe, the chief portion of the published verse-compositions of its author.[[5]] This inquiry has but resulted in the confirmation of our previous opinion; and we now hesitate not to say, that no man in America has been more shamefully over-estimated than the one who forms the subject of this article. We say shamefully; for, though a better day is now dawning upon our literary interests, and a laudation so indiscriminate will never be sanctioned again—the laudation in this instance, as it stands upon record, must be regarded as a laughable although bitter satire upon the general zeal, accuracy and independence of that critical spirit which, but a few years ago, pervaded and degraded the land.
| [5] | “Geraldine,” “Athenia of Damascus,” and Miscellaneous Poems. By Rufus Dawes. Published by Samuel Colman, New York. |
In what we shall say we have no intention of being profound. Here is a case in which any thing like analysis would be utterly thrown away. Our purpose (which is truth) will be more fully answered by an unvarnished exposition of fact. It appears to us, indeed, that in excessive generalization lies one of the leading errors of a criticism employed upon a poetical literature so immature as our own. We rhapsodize rather than discriminate; delighting more in the dictation or discussion of a principle, than in its particular and methodical application. The wildest and most erratic effusion of the Muse, not utterly worthless, will be found more or less indebted to method for whatever of value it embodies; and we shall discover, conversely, that, in any analysis of even this wildest effusion, we labor without method only to labor without end. There is little reason for that vagueness of comment which, of late, we so pertinaciously affect, and which has been brought into fashion, no doubt, through the proverbial facility and security of merely general remark. In regard to the leading principles of true poesy, these, we think, stand not at all in need of the elucidation hourly wasted upon them. Founded in the unerring instincts of our nature, they are enduring and immutable. In a rigid scrutiny of any number of directly conflicting opinions upon a poetical topic, we will not fail to perceive that principles identical in every important point have been, in each opinion, either asserted, or intimated, or unwittingly allowed an influence. The differences of decision arose simply from those of application; and from such variety in the applied, rather than in the conceived idea, sprang, undoubtedly, the absurd distinctions of the “schools.”
“Geraldine” is the title of the first and longest poem in the volume before us. It embraces some three hundred and fifty stanzas—the whole being a most servile imitation of the “Don Juan” of Lord Byron. The outrageous absurdity of the systematic digression in the British original, was so managed as to form not a little portion of its infinite interest and humor; and the fine discrimination of the writer pointed out to him a limit beyond which he never ventured with this tantalizing species of drollery. “Geraldine” may be regarded, however, as a simple embodiment of the whole soul of digression. It is a mere mass of irrelevancy, amid the mad farrago of which we detect with difficulty even the faintest vestige of a narrative, and where the continuous lapse from impertinence to impertinence is seldom justified by any shadow of appositeness or even of the commonest relation.
To afford the reader any proper conception of the story is of course a matter of difficulty; we must content ourselves with a mere outline of the general conduct. This we shall endeavor to give without indulgence in those feelings of risibility stirred up in us by the primitive perusal. We shall rigorously avoid every species of exaggeration, and confine ourselves, with perfect honesty, to the conveyance of a distinct image.
“Geraldine,” then, opens with some four or five stanzas descriptive of a sylvan scene in America. We could, perhaps, render Mr. Dawes’ poetical reputation no greater service than by the quotation of these simple verses in full.
I know a spot where poets fain would dwell,
To gather flowers and food for after thought,
As bees draw honey from the rose’s cell,
To hive among the treasures they have wrought;
And there a cottage from a sylvan screen
Sent up a curling smoke amidst the green.
Around that hermit home of quietude
The elm trees whispered with the summer air,
And nothing ever ventured to intrude
But happy birds that caroled wildly there,
Or honey-laden harvesters that flew
Humming away to drink the morning dew.
Around the door the honey-suckle climbed
And Multa-flora spread her countless roses,
And never poet sang nor minstrel rhymed
Romantic scene where happiness reposes,
Sweeter to sense than that enchanting dell
Where home-sick memory fondly loves to dwell.
Beneath a mountain’s brow the cottage stood,
Hard by a shelving lake whose pebbled bed
Was skirted by the drapery of a wood
That hung its festoon foliage over head,
Where wild deer came at eve unharmed, to drink,
While moonlight threw their shadows from the brink.
The green earth heaved her giant waves around,
Where, through the mountain vista, one vast height
Towered heavenward without peer, his forehead bound
With gorgeous clouds, at times of changeful light,
While, far below, the lake in bridal rest
Slept with his glorious picture on her breast.
Here is an air of quietude in good keeping with the theme; the “giant waves” in the last stanza redeem it from much exception otherwise; and perhaps we need say nothing at all of the suspicious-looking compound “multa-flora.” Had Mr. Dawes always written even nearly so well, we should have been spared to-day the painful task imposed upon us by a stern sense of our critical duty. These passages are followed immediately by an address or invocation to “Peerless America,” including apostrophes to Allston and Claude Lorraine.
We now learn the name of the tenant of the cottage, which is Wilton, and ascertain that he has an only daughter. A single stanza quoted at this juncture will aid the reader’s conception of the queer tone of philosophical rhapsody with which the poem teems, and some specimen of which is invariably made to follow each little modicum of incident.
How like the heart is to an instrument
A touch can wake to gladness or to wo!
How like the circumambient element
The spirit with its undulating flow!
The heart—the soul—Oh, Mother Nature, why
This universal bond of sympathy.
After two pages much in this manner, we are told that Geraldine is the name of the maiden, and are informed, with comparatively little circumlocution, of her character. She is beautiful, and kind-hearted, and somewhat romantic, and “some thought her reason touched”—for which we have little disposition to blame them. There is now much about Kant and Fichte; about Schelling, Hegel and Cousin; (which latter is made to rhyme with gang;) about Milton, Byron, Homer, Spinoza, David Hume and Mirabeau; and a good deal, too, about the scribendi cacoïthes, in which an evident misunderstanding of the quantity of cacoïthes brings, again, into very disagreeable suspicion the writer’s cognizance of the Latin tongue. At this point we may refer, also, to such absurdities as
Truth with her thousand-folded robe of error
Close shut in her sarcophagi of terror—
And
Where candelabri silver the white halls.
Now, no one is presupposed to be cognizant of any language beyond his own; to be ignorant of Latin is no crime; to pretend a knowledge is beneath contempt; and the pretender will attempt in vain to utter or to write two consecutive phrases of a foreign idiom, without betraying his deficiency to those who are conversant.
At page 39, there is some prospect of a progress in the story. Here we are introduced to a Mr. Acus and his fair daughter, Miss Alice.
Acus had been a dashing Bond street tailor
Some few short years before, who took his measures
So carefully he always cut the jailor
And filled his coffers with exhaustless treasures;
Then with his wife, a son, and three fair daughters,
He sunk the goose and straightway crossed the waters.
His residence is in the immediate vicinity of Wilton. The daughter, Miss Alice, who is said to be quite a belle, is enamored of one Waldron, a foreigner, a lion, and a gentleman of questionable reputation. His character (which for our life and soul we cannot comprehend) is given within the space of some forty or fifty stanzas, made to include, at the same time, an essay on motives, deduced from the text “whatever is must be,” and illuminated by a long note at the end of the poem, wherein the systime (quere systéme?) de la Nature is sturdily attacked. Let us speak the truth; this note (and the whole of them, for there are many,) may be regarded as a glorious specimen of the concentrated essence of rigmarole, and, to say nothing of their utter absurdity per se, are so ludicrously uncalled-for, and grotesquely out of place, that we found it impossible to refrain, during their perusal, from a most unbecoming and uproarious guffaw. We will be pardoned for giving a specimen—selecting it for its brevity.
Reason, he deemed, could measure every thing,
And reason told him that there was a law
Of mental action which must ever fling
A death-bolt at all faith, and this he saw
Was Transference. (14)
Turning to Note 14, we read thus—
“If any one has a curiosity to look into this subject, (does Mr. Dawes really think any one so great a fool?) and wishes to see how far the force of reasoning and analysis may carry him, independently of revelation, I would suggest (thank you, sir,) such inquiries as the following:
“Whether the first Philosophy, considered in relation to Physics, was first in time?
“How far our moral perceptions have been influenced by natural phenomena?
“How far our metaphysical notions of cause and effect are attributable to the transference of notions connected with logical language?”
And all this in a poem about Acus, a tailor!
Waldron prefers, unhappily, Geraldine to Alice, and Geraldine returns his love, exciting thus the deep indignation of the neglected fair one,
whom love and jealousy bear up
To mingle poison in her rival’s cup.
Miss A. has among her adorers one of the genus loafer, whose appellation, not improperly, is Bore. B. is acquainted with a milliner—the milliner of the disconsolate lady.
She made this milliner her friend, who swore,
To work her full revenge through Mr. Bore.
And now says the poet—
I leave your sympathetic fancies,
To fill the outline of this pencil sketch.
This filling has been, with us at least, a matter of no little difficulty. We believe, however, that the affair is intended to run thus:—Waldron is enticed to some vile sins by Bore, and the knowledge of these, on the part of Alice, places the former gentleman in her power.
We are now introduced to a fête champêtre at the residence of Acus, who, by the way, has a son, Clifford, a suitor to Geraldine with the approbation of her father—that good old gentleman, for whom our sympathies were excited in the beginning of things, being influenced by the consideration that this scion of the house of the tailor will inherit a plum. The worst of the whole is, however, that the romantic Geraldine, who should have known better, and who loves Waldron, loves also the young knight of the shears. The consequence is a rencontre of the rival suitors at the fête champêtre; Waldron knocking his antagonist on the head, and throwing him into the lake. The murderer, as well as we can make out the narrative, now joins a piratical band, among whom he alternately cuts throats and sings songs of his own composition. In the mean time the deserted Geraldine mourns alone, till, upon a certain day,
A shape stood by her like a thing of air—
She started—Waldron’s haggard face was there.
. . . . . . . . .
He laid her gently down, of sense bereft,
And sunk his picture on her bosom’s snow,
And close beside these lines in blood he left:
“Farewell forever, Geraldine, I go
Another woman’s victim—dare I tell?
’Tis Alice!—curse us, Geraldine!—farewell!”
There is no possibility of denying the fact: this is a droll piece of business. The lover brings forth a miniature, (Mr. Dawes has a passion for miniatures,) sinks it in the bosom of the lady, cuts his finger, and writes with the blood an epistle, (where is not specified, but we presume he indites it upon the bosom as it is “close beside” the picture,) in which epistle he announces that he is “another woman’s victim,” giving us to understand that he himself is a woman after all, and concluding with the delicious bit of Billingsgate
dare I tell?
’Tis Alice!—curse us, Geraldine!—farewell!
We suppose, however, that “curse us” is a misprint; for why should Geraldine curse both herself and her lover?—it should have been “curse it!” no doubt. The whole passage, perhaps, would have read better thus—
oh, my eye!
’Tis Alice!—d—n it, Geraldine!—good bye!
The remainder of the narrative may be briefly summed up. Waldron returns to his professional engagements with the pirates, while Geraldine, attended by her father, goes to sea for the benefit of her health. The consequence is inevitable. The vessels of the separated lovers meet and engage in the most diabolical of conflicts. Both are blown all to pieces. In a boat from one vessel, Waldron escapes—in a boat from the other, the lady Geraldine. Now, as a second natural consequence, the parties meet again—Destiny is every thing in such cases. Well, the parties meet again. The lady Geraldine has “that miniature” about her neck, and the circumstance proves too much for the excited state of mind of Mr. Waldron. He just seizes her ladyship, therefore, by the small of the waist and incontinently leaps with her into the sea.
However intolerably absurd this skeleton of the story may appear, a thorough perusal will convince the reader that the entire fabric is even more so. It is impossible to convey, in any such digest as we have given, a full idea of the niaiseries with which the narrative abounds. An utter want of keeping is especially manifest throughout. In the most solemnly serious passages we have, for example, incidents of the world of 1839, jumbled up with the distorted mythology of the Greeks. Our conclusion of the drama, as we just gave it, was perhaps ludicrous enough; but how much more preposterous does it appear in the grave language of the poet himself!
And round her neck the miniature was hung
Of him who gazed with Hell’s unmingled wo;
He saw her, kissed her cheek, and wildly flung
His arms around her with a mad’ning throw—
Then plunged within the cold unfathomed deep
While sirens sang their victim to his sleep!
Only think of a group of sirens singing to sleep a modern “miniatured” flirt, kicking about in the water with a New York dandy in tight pantaloons!
But not even these stupidities would suffice to justify a total condemnation of the poetry of Mr. Dawes. We have known follies very similar committed by men of real ability, and have been induced to disregard them in earnest admiration of the brilliancy of the minor beauty of style. Simplicity, perspicuity and vigor, or a well-disciplined ornateness, of language, have done wonders for the reputation of many a writer really deficient in the higher and more essential qualities of the Muse. But upon these minor points of manner our poet has not even the shadow of a shadow to sustain him. His works, in this respect, may be regarded as a theatrical world of mere verbiage, somewhat speciously bedizzened with a tinselly meaning well adapted to the eyes of the rabble. There is not a page of any thing that he has written which will bear, for an instant, the scrutiny of a critical eye. Exceedingly fond of the glitter of metaphor, he has not the capacity to manage it, and, in the awkward attempt, jumbles together the most incongruous of ornament. Let us take any passage of “Geraldine” by way of exemplification.
——Thy rivers swell the sea—
In one eternal diapason pour
Thy cataracts the hymn of liberty,
Teaching the clouds to thunder.
Here we have cataracts teaching clouds to thunder—and how? By means of a hymn.
Why should chromatic discord charm the ear
And smiles and tears stream o’er with troubled joy?
Tears may stream over, but not smiles.
Then comes the breathing time of young Romance,
The June of life, when summer’s earliest ray
Warms the red arteries, that bound and dance
With soft voluptuous impulses at play,
While the full heart sends forth as from a hive
A thousand winged messengers alive.
Let us reduce this to a simple statement, and we have—what? The earliest ray of summer warming red arteries, which are bounding and dancing, and playing with a parcel of urchins, called voluptuous impulses, while the bee-hive of a heart attached to these dancing arteries is at the same time sending forth a swarm of its innocent little inhabitants.
The eyes were like the sapphire of deep air,
The garb that distance robes elysium in,
But oh, so much of heaven lingered there
The wayward heart forgot its blissful sin
And worshiped all Religion well forbids
Beneath the silken fringes of their lids.
That distance is not the cause of the sapphire of the sky, is not to our present purpose. We wish merely to call attention to the verbiage of the stanza. It is impossible to put the latter portion of it into any thing like intelligible prose. So much of heaven lingered in the lady’s eyes that the wayward heart forgot its blissful sin, and worshiped every thing which religion forbids, beneath the silken fringes of the lady’s eyelids. This we cannot be compelled to understand, and shall therefore say nothing further about it.
She loved to lend Imagination wing
And link her heart with Juliet’s in a dream,
And feel the music of a sister string
That thrilled the current of her vital stream.
How delightful a picture we have here! A lady is lending one of her wings to the spirit, or genius, called Imagination, who, of course, has lost one of his own. While thus employed with one hand, with the other she is chaining her heart to the heart of the fair Juliet. At the same time she is feeling the music of a sister string, and this string is thrilling the current of the lady’s vital stream. If this is downright nonsense we cannot be held responsible for its perpetration; it is but the downright nonsense of Mr. Dawes.
Again—
Without the Palinurus of self-science
Byron embarked upon the stormy sea,
To adverse breezes hurling his defiance
And dashing up the rainbows on his lee,
And chasing those he made in wildest mirth,
Or sending back their images to earth.
This stanza we have more than once seen quoted as a fine specimen of the poetical powers of our author. His lordship, no doubt, is herein made to cut a very remarkable figure. Let us imagine him, for one moment, embarked upon a stormy sea, hurling his defiance (literally throwing his gauntlet or glove) to the adverse breezes, dashing up rainbows on his lee, laughing at them, and chasing them at the same time, and, in conclusion, “sending back their images to earth.” But we have already wearied the reader with this abominable rigmarole. We shall be pardoned (after the many specimens thus given at random) for not carrying out the design we originally intended: that of commenting upon two or three successive pages of “Geraldine,” with a view of showing (in a spirit apparently more fair than that of particular selection) the entireness with which the whole poem is pervaded by unintelligibility. To every thinking mind, however, this would seem a work of supererogation. In such matters, by such understandings, the brick of the skolastikos will be received implicitly as a sample of the house. The writer capable, to any extent, of such absurdity as we have pointed out, cannot, by any possibility, produce a long article worth reading. We say this in the very teeth of the magnificent assembly which listened to the recital of Mr. Dawes, in the great hall of the University of New York. We shall leave “Athenia of Damascus,” without comment, to the decision of those who may find time and temper for its perusal, and conclude our extracts by a quotation, from among the minor poems, of the following very respectable
ANACREONTIC.
Fill again the mantling bowl
Nor fear to meet the morning breaking!
None but slaves should bend the soul
Beneath the chains of mortal making:
Fill your beakers to the brim,
Bacchus soon shall lull your sorrow;
Let delight
But crown the night,
And care may bring her clouds to-morrow.
Mark this cup of rosy wine
With virgin pureness deeply blushing;
Beauty pressed it from the vine
While Love stood by to charm its gushing;
He who dares to drain it now
Shall drink such bliss as seldom gladdens;
The Moslem’s dream
Would joyless seem
To him whose brain its rapture maddens.
Pleasure sparkles on the brim—
Lethe lies far deeper in it—
Both, enticing, wait for him
Whose heart is warm enough to win it;
Hearts like ours, if e’er they chill
Soon with love again must lighten.
Skies may wear
A darksome air
Where sunshine most is known to brighten.
Then fill, fill high the mantling bowl!
Nor fear to meet the morning breaking;
Care shall never cloud the soul
While Beauty’s beaming eyes are waking.
Fill your beakers to the brim,
Bacchus soon shall lull your sorrow;
Let delight
But crown the night,
And care may bring her clouds to-morrow.
Whatever shall be, hereafter, the position of Mr. Dawes in the poetical world, he will be indebted for it altogether to his shorter compositions, some of which have the merit of tenderness; others of melody and force. What seems to be the popular opinion in respect to his more voluminous effusions, has been brought about, in some measure, by a certain general tact, nearly amounting to taste, and more nearly the converse of talent. This tact has been especially displayed in the choice of not inelegant titles and other externals; in a peculiar imitative speciousness of manner, pervading the surface of his writings; and (here we have the anomaly of a positive benefit deduced from a radical defect) in an absolute deficiency in basis, in stamen, in matter, or pungency, which, if even slightly evinced, might have invited the reader to an intimate and understanding perusal, whose result would have been disgust. His poems have not been condemned, only because they have never been read. The glitter upon the surface has sufficed, with the newspaper critic, to justify his hyperboles of praise. Very few persons, we feel assured, have had sufficient nerve to wade through the entire volume now in question, except, as in our own case, with the single object of criticism in view. Mr. Dawes has, also, been aided to a poetical reputation by the amiability of his character as a man. How efficient such causes have before been in producing such effects, is a point but too thoroughly understood.
We have already spoken of the numerous friends of the poet; and we shall not here insist upon the fact, that we bear him no personal ill will. With those who know us, such a declaration would appear supererogatory; and by those who know us not, it would, doubtless, be received with incredulity. What we have said, however, is not in opposition to Mr. Dawes, nor even so much in opposition to the poems of Mr. Dawes, as in defence of the many true souls which, in Mr. Dawes’ apotheosis, are aggrieved. The laudation of the unworthy is to the worthy the most bitter of all wrong. But it is unbecoming in him who merely demonstrates a truth, to offer reason or apology for the demonstration.
AN AUTUMN REVERIE.
———
BY WILLIAM FALCONER.
———
Hail! ye lone woods, in Nature’s mourning clad;
Hail! ye sere leaves, low melting in the breeze;
Meet is thy reign, pale Autumn, for the sad,
And soft thy solace for the mind’s disease;
Again I hail thee, sabbath of the year!
Upon us kindly smile, for Winter winds are near!
In this cathedral vast, by tall elms reared,
While through yon leafy oriel streams the sun
On those old boughs, by many an Autumn seared
I’d dream of friends who life’s rude race have run—
Whose memory, like rare odor, fills my heart,
Nor fades, but richer grows, and is of it a part.
Where are the gay plumed warblers of the Spring?
Those winged souls, at whose melodious songs
The green leaves danced with joy? On tireless wing
To brighter bowers have flown the golden throngs;
But they, when winds are weary of their wrath,
Shall fill our groves once more, and glad the woodland path.
But what new Spring shall breathe upon thy tomb
Or summon back friends wintry Death has banished?
They grow enamored of those bowers of bloom
To which they soared when from our side they vanished,
And ne’er return, or, haply so, unseen—
Dwelling in Memory’s dreams, pure, changeless, and serene.
Perchance we err, for, though no mortal eye
May look on Immortality, yet they
May clothe them in the azure of the sky,
Or shroud their light wings in the moon’s pale ray;
Or, in the likeness of some mutual star,
Smile on repentant tears and soothe our mental war.
And art thou present in this solitude,
Thou early, only loved, sweet beam of youth?
Thou fairest of all Memory’s sisterhood,
Bright as a poet’s dream, and pure as Truth!
Fair guardian spirit, thou art with me now—
It is, it is thy sigh, which stirs the rustling bough!
Thee may I meet beneath some kindlier sky,
In seraph beauty decked, yet sad—more bright
To me, than when upon my mortal eye
Thy fair form glanced, and filled me with delight,
When thee I placed within my spirit’s shrine
And turned on thee each thought, and loved thee as divine.
MALINA GRAY.
———
BY ANN S. STEPHENS.
———
“How is the warm and loving heart requited
In this harsh world, where it awhile must dwell;
Its best affections wronged, betrayed and slighted—
Such is the doom of those who love too well.
Better the weary dove should close its pinion,
Fold up its golden wings, and be at peace,
And early enter that serene dominion
Where earthly cares and earthly sorrows cease”
—L. E. L.
Now if I did but possess the magic pencil of my friend Doughty—his glorious power of dashing off a landscape, with all the truthfulness of nature in the outline—fresh and verdant, with shadows rendered almost transparent from the light with which they are so beautifully blended—mellow with that soft hazy atmosphere which hangs forever about his waterfalls, and slumbers along the green slopes where they lie in the sunshine till the gazer becomes almost drowsy as he admires.—If I had but his pencil and his power, instead of this golden pen and the one drop of ink which stains its point, never was there a more lovely picture than I would paint for your especial gratification. I would throw upon the canvass my own birth-place, a quiet old-fashioned village of Connecticut, one of the greenest and most picturesque spots that human eye ever dwelt upon, or that human ingenuity ever contrived to destroy. But alas! Doughty’s genius can alone inspire his pencil, and a rude pen sketch from memory is all the idea that I can give you of “our village.”
Imagine for a moment that we are standing on a picturesque old bridge down in a valley, through which a river of some considerable magnitude is wending its way to a juncture with the Housatonic.
We are looking to the north—your hand rests on the mouldering beams which form a side railing to the bridge, and as your eye is lifted from the deep waters at our feet, where they circle and whirl around the dark and sodden supporters, it is caught by one of the most beautiful waterfalls that ever cooled the summer air with its spray. A little up the stream, it foams and flashes over a solid ledge of rocks like an army of laughing children romping together and running races in the sunshine. Now and then you catch a flash of prismatic color just beginning to weave itself amid the water-drops that are forever flashing up as if to provoke the sunshine into forming a rainbow, and then your attention is drawn away by the wreaths of snowy foam and the thousand dimpling whirlpools that form beneath the fall and melt idly upon the more quiet waters long before they reach the dark shadow flung downward from the bridge.
Is not that a magnificent bank stretching along the river’s brink far above the fall?—here, looming up in a broken mass of rocks—there, falling with a gentle slope to the water’s brink, sometimes cut into defiles and hollows by the rivulets that feed the brook, and everywhere covered with the quivering green of spring, the feathery red maple—wild-cherry trees, white with spring blossoms, and whole thickets of starry dog-wood flowers all tangled and luxuriating between sun and water. With what majesty the bank sweeps back at the fall, giving breadth to the valley below and hedging in, with its green rampart, this beautiful little plain with its fine grove which lies on our left, nestled almost entirely within its shadow! Now look down the stream. Follow the bank as it curves inward again, encompassing the rich surface of level ground in a semicircular sweep, till it terminates down the stream yonder, in a pile of rocks and foliage, half hill half mountain. There the river joins it again—winds around the precipice which forms its base, and is lost to sight, as if it terminated amid the dense shadows which lie sleeping there. Did you ever see anything more superb than that lofty pile of rocks and verdure, standing out over the very river, like a glorious old garrison guarding the passage? Its topmost trees are lost in a pile of fleecy clouds—the steep surface is burdened with foliage, and beautifully broken up with lights and shadows. See the sunshine flickering over those massive rocks and kindling with its silvery light the grape-vines that creep among the young trees, rooted in the clefts. A picturesque feature, in our sketch, is that old Castle-rock, and many a holiday have I spent, with a troop of school-mates, amid its clefts, piling up the rich mosses we found there, gathering honey-suckle apples, and sometimes doing terrible execution on the poor garter-snakes that crept harmlessly from their nests to sleep in the sunshine.
Turn once more, and mark how, like a serpent creeping through the thrifty herbage, the road leads, from the bridge where we stand, across the level ground and up the bank! See where it begins to curve back from the fall, till it is lost amid the trees and shrubbery which but half conceal that cluster of white houses standing against the sky so far above us, and looking so quiet and rural among the fresh trees. Can any thing appear more religious than that white church in their midst, rising from its bed of vegetation and throwing the shadow of its taper steeple aslant the graves that are gathered to the very brink of the hill? How distinct are the white gravestones and the long grass shivering among them! My mother’s grave is there beneath the old oak standing alone in that solitary graveyard. My playmates never went with me there, but often have I lingered beneath that old tree, listening to the music of its restless leaves, and the rushing waters below me, till aspirations awoke in my young heart, holy and deep as ever the pride of my womanhood has known. At nightfall I have wandered amid those graves—a little child, and yet fearless—till the stars have stationed themselves in the blue heavens above me, and the fireflies have flashed their tiny brilliants among the grass, like gentle spirits sent to light up the places of the dead; and thoughts, for which I had no name, would fill my heart with pleasant sadness till I went away, reluctantly, amid feelings that haunted me at night as I listened to the acorns rattling from the oak trees over the roof of our house, and colored my dreams long after the dash of the waterfall had lulled me to sleep.
I have wearied you, with my reminiscences, so you have turned away from the houses on Fall’s-hill, to those on the opposite bank, which we have scarcely noticed yet. The hill which forms this side of the valley, is neither so lofty nor picturesque as the other. You will observe that the road branches off at that end of the bridge—that the turnpike which lends to the old Presbyterian meeting-house, and the dwellings which surround it, is cut through the bank some thirty feet down, but forms a steep ascent to the most thickly settled portion of our village. The roof of our old meeting-house—the belfry of our new academy, with the third story window blinds, all fresh and verdant with green paint—half the front of a dry goods store, with the gable end of a red farm-house, are all the signs of life which we can obtain from our station on the bridge—yet the most thrifty and industrious portion of our village is located on School-hill. The Episcopal church, and the white cottages opposite, can boast more of rural beauty, perhaps; but that old meeting-house has stood on School-hill almost a century, and many of the farmers who surround it have grown rich upon lands which they inherited from men who worshiped beneath its roof almost before the rafters were shingled.
Now permit me to draw your attention to the little plain at our left, in the river vale, between the two portions of our village, lying green, and fresh, like a garden run wild, and, but for one cottage house, left to its own leafy solitude. A magnificent grove of white pines stoops and murmurs to the wind as it draws down the valley, the tufted boughs give out a healthy odor, and in their shadows are a thousand grassy nooks and hollows filled with wild blossoms that give a richer fragrance to the air. I have said there was but one house in the river vale. A little back from the river’s brink, and just beyond the clump of chesnuts at the end of the bridge, are two large oak trees, sheltering, and almost hiding a low cottage house. A flower garden is in front, and a sweep of rich sward rolls from the back parlor windows down to the water’s edge. It is a quiet rural dwelling, and the home of my childhood. Does it not look sequestered and deliciously cool? That waterfall, which sounds a perpetual anthem night and day, can be seen from the windows. The fine grove forever spreads its sea of green in front, and here are the old bridge, the village cut into fragments, and the rough hills giving a dash of the sublime to what is in itself so beautiful!
There is yet another object which cannot be seen from the bridge, but from our cottage door we may trace the road which branches off from the turnpike at the opposite end where it winds along the river’s margin till it reaches a spot just opposite Castle-rock. There the high bank crowds close down to the water, thus forcing the projectors of the road to lead it up the brow of the hill, where a growth of underwood and some few trees that have been left standing partially conceal its course, and the exact spot where a cross road from School-hill intersects it. But just at that point and directly opposite the highest peak of Castle-rock, stood a handsome white dwelling-house, with green blinds and a portico of lattice work, covered half the year with crimson trumpet flowers and cinnamon roses. In the winter, when the trees were leafless, we had a full view of this house from our cottage, and could almost distinguish its inmates as they passed in and out through the portico. Even in the summer, its white walls might here and there be seen gleaming through the green foliage, and very frequently the figures of two young girls appeared at night-fall wandering through the garden which sloped down the hill, where the flower beds and thickets were at the twilight hour rendered golden by the sun as he plunged over Castle-rock, deluging it with a glory which kindled up the whole landscape.
This house was occupied by a widow, and the two girls were her daughters. The homestead was their joint property, with a small farm which lay further up the hill. They might have had other means of support, but I was too young at the time to be informed on the subject; certain it is that possession, or some other claim to standing which I could not appreciate, gave a distinction to the family which made the widow a sort of village aristocrat, a female leader in the church, and one of those sanctimonious domestic tyrants who profess to do every thing from principle, and to consider those impulses and generous feelings of the heart which are its brightest waters, things to struggle with and pray against. Her husband had been dead many years, and must have been a man of some consequence in the village. Her daughters were pleasant girls, one of them decidedly handsome, but totally unlike both in person and character. Phebe, the eldest, had always been a gentle and quiet child, one of those retiring and sensitive creatures whose whole being seems imbrued with religion, naturally as flowers are with color and perfume. When a mere child she became a member of the old Presbyterian church on School-hill, and this circumstance served to make her a favorite with the mother, and to strengthen that most deceitful of all passions, spiritual pride, in her heart. In the church Mrs. Gray was feared and looked up to, for she was a strong minded, intelligent woman, bland in tone and smooth in manner, but in reality selfish in heart and stubborn of purpose. With these qualities she retained an influence among the brethren which strength of intellect, without goodness of heart, will often acquire over weaker minds, however pure they be, even to a dangerous extent. If the mother was feared and reverenced, little Phebe was loved and petted like a flower among the members—old and young, high and low—all looked with affection on the lamb of their flock, and so she grew up among them, perhaps the purest and sweetest creature that ever bloomed in the bosom of a Christian church. But Malina, the bright, romping, mischievous Malina, with her sunny brown eyes, her rosy cheeks and dimples that played about them like sunshine trembling in the heart of a rose, there was little hope of Malina—poor thing! The good old deacon shook his head gravely when she was mentioned, and more than once, when she had been observed in the widow’s cushioned pew, peeping with a roguish smile from under her gipsy hat, at some schoolmate in the gallery, or smoothing the folds of her muslin dress, and tying her pink sash into all sorts of love knots during service, the clergyman had reproved her with a look from the pulpit, a proceeding which only frightened the dimples from her face and deluged it with crimson for a moment, which impulse of shame was soon followed by a saucy pout of the red lips, a toss of the gipsy bonnet which made the roses on its crown tremble, and perhaps a desperate jerk at the sash which destroyed all the love knots and left the ends crumpled in her lap, while her mother sat frowning majestically all the time, and poor Phebe was doing her best to hide the tears and blushes which her sister’s disgrace had occasioned. Still, though Malina was a romp and a sad reprobate in the estimation of a sect which had made old Connecticut celebrated among the states by the strictness and sobriety of their lives, there was something about the girl which stole even upon their austere habits—a warmth of heart and generosity of feeling that no faults could check or conceal. She had a winning, soft and exceedingly arch manner peculiarly her own, which few could resist; a ready wit, and a laugh that rang through the heart like the tones of a silver bell, and which made the old deacon smile, even while he was lecturing her. Before Malina was eighteen she had good cause to congratulate herself that she was not a “church member,” for most assuredly would she have been ignominiously expelled had this been the case. At that season a sectarian feud had arisen between the Episcopal church and our old meeting-house, a difference of opinion which went well nigh to destroy all social intercourse in our village. The Episcopalians had offered a practical reproof to the upright manner in which the Presbyterians were in the habit of addressing the throne of grace, by erecting kneeling boards in the pews of their church, a course which led our minister into open denunciation of such heresy from the pulpit, where he eloquently defended his own manner of worship by a sermon containing manifold heads, and a prayer which was responded to by a congregation more resolutely upright both in body and mind than ever. This sermon of course was answered from the white church, with some spirit, and, in the midst of the controversy which arose, Malina Gray took it into her pretty head to exhibit a fashionable bonnet which she had purchased in New Haven, and a smart silk dress, in the Episcopal church, not only without asking her mother’s consent, but directly against her known wishes. It was even rumored that she did not rise, but absolutely bent forward and covered her pretty face with her pocket handkerchief, during the whole time of prayer, and that, on leaving the church, three persons had heard her say that she was delighted with the sermon, and particularly with the chant, it was so droll. It was in vain that Malina defended her conduct, in vain she insisted that she had bent forward, and used her handkerchief only to conceal the motion of her lips as she ate half a dozen peppermint drops, and a head of green fennel which a companion had given her. She could not disprove her presence at the church, and that alone was considered as rank rebellion against her mother, and an insult to the congregation with which she had been taught to worship. Dark were the looks, and manifold the lectures which poor Malina was compelled to endure after this. When she entered the old meeting-house on the following sabbath every one looked coldly upon her. The minister even hinted at her delinquency in his prayers, and, during the sermon, two or three passages were applied directly to herself, by the steady and reproving glance which he fixed upon her from the pulpit. Now Malina was not of a temperament to bear all this patiently. She believed it intended to annoy and humble her. So, instead of receiving the chastisement with becoming humility, she arose from her seat, opened the pew door, in spite of her mother’s detaining hand, and hurried down the aisle, her eyes sparkling with tears, and her cheeks crimsoned with a degree of excitement which ill became the house of God.
To be perfectly aware of the enormity of Malina’s conduct, our reader must bring to mind the discipline of the times, and the rigid decorum exacted by the people in their places of worship, where nothing short of a fainting fit or a dispensation of apoplexy could excuse the interruption of a sermon. Never was a body of people so overwhelmed with astonishment and dismay. The widow arose from her seat pale with resentment, for it was by her private request that the minister had pointed out the spirited girl as a transgressor before the congregation—she half opened the pew door, paused a moment and sat down again, with her lips firmly compressed, and a spirit burning in her dark eyes, which in another might have been thought as much to be condemned as that of her child. Phebe, the mild and gentle Phebe, blushed crimson with a feeling of sympathy for her sister, which could not, with all her meekness of disposition, be entirely suppressed. When the glow died away from her cheeks she was in tears and wept silently till the service closed.
When Mrs. Gray reached home that afternoon, sternly ruminating on the best means of conquering the refractory spirit of her child, she found the house locked, and the rooms empty as she had left them. Malina was no where to be found. It was in vain that Phebe searched for the culprit. She went to their mutual sleeping-chamber, hoping to find her there, but all was silent. She lifted the muslin drapery that fell over the bed like a summer cloud, put her hand through the open sash and parting the thick green leaves of a cinnamon rose tree that half darkened it, looked anxiously up and down the road, and along the footpath which threaded the river’s brink. But the waters gliding quietly by, and a fish-hawk soaring up from the shore just below the bridge, with an unfortunate perch in his claws, alone rewarded her gaze. Still she leaned from the window, apprehensive on her sister’s account, but afraid to extend her search beyond the house, for never in the whole course of her life had Mrs. Gray permitted her children to walk even in the garden on a sabbath day; a walk to and from the old meeting-house morning and evening was all the exercise that she had allowed them. Phebe felt as if almost transgressing a domestic rule even while she lingered with her head out of the window, and when the chamber door opened she started back like a guilty thing, and with a violence that sent a shower of pink leaves half over the room, from the full blown roses which fell rustling together from her hands.
Mrs. Gray entered the chamber quietly, but a little paler than usual, and with her lips still slightly compressed. She evidently expected to find the culprit there, but when she saw only her elder daughter standing by the window, in tears and with a look of trouble on her sweet face, her own composure seemed a little shaken, still she did not speak, but going up to the toilet took a pocket bible from its snowy cover, and dusting away the rose leaves that had fallen there with her handkerchief, was about to leave the room again. As she passed through the door, Phebe found courage to follow her.
“Oh, mother,” she said, “what can have become of her? Where can she be? Let me go and look.”
“It is the sabbath,” said Mrs. Gray, in her usual slow, mild voice.
“I know it is, mother,” replied the weeping girl, “but when a lamb strays from the flock can there be wrong in bringing it home again, even on the sabbath?”
“You may search for your sister in the garden,” was the reply, “and when she is found bring her to the parlor. Our minister will be there, and if she does not beg his pardon for her flagrant conduct, even on her knees if he desires it, she is henceforth no child of mine!”
“Oh, mother, do not urge her to-night. You know how high spirited and resolute she is—and, indeed, indeed, I must think they have been too hard with her—it was cruel to expose her fault before the whole village, her schoolmates and all, and she so proud and sensitive. I wonder it didn’t kill her.”
“Have you also become rebellious?” said Mrs. Gray, turning her eyes with steady disapproval on the agitated girl, and marveling within herself at the burst of feeling which she evinced.
“You will never, I trust, find me rebellious,” replied Phebe meekly, but weeping all the time. “I know that Malina has faults; who has not? but they are such as harsh treatment will perpetuate, not conquer. She is so kind, so warm-hearted, that you can persuade her to any thing.”
“I do not choose to persuade my children,” said the mother, moving forward. “Go seek Malina in the garden, and bring her to me as I desired.”
“But I fear that she is not in the garden,” said Phebe, doubtingly.
“Then seek her elsewhere, but return soon,” was Mrs. Gray’s reply, and she went down stairs just as Phebe heard the minister knocking at the front door.
Phebe tied on her cottage bonnet, and flinging a scarf over her white dress went into the garden. She traversed the flower-beds, searched among the rose thickets, and the lilac trees, calling Malina by name, but all without effect. More than once, when a rustling among the bushes, created by a tame rabbit, reached her ear, she started and listened with an expectation that her call would be answered. After searching through the garden and around the rock spring—a fountain of water that leaped through a hollow at the foot of the hill into a natural basin of solid granite—we saw her come out into the road and look anxiously toward the pine grove on our side of the river, with her hand shading her eyes and her scarf fluttering in the breeze.
As our cottage stood on neutral ground, between the two sections of the village, so our family was perhaps the only one within three miles which did not take part in the religious controversy going on. It was our usual custom to worship in the old meeting-house in the morning, and in the afternoon attend service in the Episcopal church. This habit left us ignorant of what had been passing on School-hill, and when we saw Phebe Gray out in the open street that sabbath evening, we felt that something unusual must have occurred. She remained, as I have described, with a hand shading her eyes for more than a minute, and then hurried down the road toward the bridge at a quicker pace than we had ever seen her walk before. After crossing the bridge, she paused a moment on seeing our family sitting at the door—some of us on the steps and others reading on the greensward in which they were bedded—as if prompted to come toward us, but changing her mind she followed the road a few steps and then turned into the pine grove, through a footpath which led along that portion which skirted the river. After a little time she came in sight again, retracing her steps with another person whom we recognized as Malina. Their progress was very slow, Phebe’s arm was around her sister’s waist, and she seemed to be talking with great earnestness. When they came opposite our house we could see Malina’s face, though after the first glance toward us she turned it away, as if ashamed of the tears which stained her cheeks. Her dress was disordered and a little soiled by the moss on which she had evidently flung herself; her gipsy hat was blown on one side, exposing a profusion of brown ringlets slightly disheveled, and out of curl enough to make them fall more profusely than usual over her neck and shoulders. She walked with an impatient step, and seemed a little restless under the restraint of her sister’s arm, but when they got within the shadow of the chesnuts, and as they supposed beyond our observation, we saw her pause all of a sudden, fling her arms round Phebe’s neck and kiss her more than once with a degree of affection which spoke volumes in her favor. After this she arranged the hat on her head with considerable care and allowed the folds of her disordered dress to be smoothed. Then with another kiss the two girls crossed the bridge, each with her arm circling the other, and in this position they walked up the hill and disappeared in the portico of their own dwelling.
The two girls entered the family parlor; Malina with her cheek flushed once more and a step tremulous but haughty. Poor Phebe clung to her side, looking frightened and much more like a culprit than her sister. Mrs. Gray was seated at a table looking cold, precise and courteous as if nothing had happened; her black silk dress was arranged with that scrupulous care which she always bestowed on her raiment. Her false curls were carefully fastened beneath the slate-colored ribands and the fine lace border of her cap, while a muslin neckerchief was folded on her bosom, beneath the dress, sufficiently low to reveal a neck that had not yet lost all its whiteness, and a string of large gold beads which encircled it. The family bible lay open before her, but she was not reading, for in an easy chair close by sat the minister. He had been pastor at School-hill for more than twenty years, was naturally a kind man, but believed the well-being of his congregation to be identified with certain doctrinal points, which to dispute was rank heresy. He looked very grave when the girls entered, and rather restless, as if the duty which brought him there was one which his naturally kind heart would have avoided.
“Phebe, you may go to your chamber,” said Mrs. Gray to her eldest daughter, who had followed Malina to a chintz sofa and was about to sit down by her side.
Phebe hesitated and looked toward her mother, as if anxious to remain; but as she parted her lips to speak, a more decided command sent her weeping from the room.
[To be continued.
TO THE EARTH.
———
BY JAMES ALDRICH.
———
How are thy charms, O maskéd Earth! displayed,
In hill and valley, rock and waterfall,
Flower-studded field, deep glen, and open glade,
With the blue sky in beauty bent o’er all.
Seekest with outward shows to win the heart?
Only their glare our grosser vision dulls;
The inward eye beholds thee, as thou art,
Great hearse of man, vast catacomb of skulls!
Thy moving forces, which we call the living,
Bustling and battling through their little day,
Are nought to thy great prostrate army, giving
Their flesh to worms, their bones to slow decay.
And what is that which life thy children call?
A little round of idle hopes and fears,
A dream prefig’ring being, this is all,
Made up of hope and smiles, despair and tears.
The countless millions all around us lying
With ghastly upturned faces, free from strife,
The unreturning dead, yet the undying,
How laugh they at the nothing we call life!
Enough! enough! if after our brief fretting,
Freed from thy fetters, we may rise in bliss
To some bright world where Life’s sun knows no setting
Where we may meet the lost and loved of this.
REJOICE.
The world is full of Joy. The sweet rose flings
Her fragrance out to invite the zephyr’s kiss:
The morning lark in wantonness of bliss
To meet the sun, with song of welcome, springs:
The little brook to her own motion sings:
The storm laughs wild—down comes the dancing rain,
The mountain stream leaps shouting to the plain
And with high glee the echoing valley rings.
The strong wind whistles in his desert caves;
The thick clouds ride triumphant down the sky;
The old green wood his trusty branches waves;
Huge ocean shakes his foamy crest on high;
Earth springs exulting in her fadeless prime;
And the glad sun rolls on his course sublime!
S. S.
THE CLAM-BAKE.
JEREMY SHORT AMONG THE RHODE ISLANDERS.
Well, sirs, Robin is a gallant poney, but riding over these confounded hills has almost shaken me to pieces, and, at every stride, for the last ten minutes, I’ve heard my bones rattling like pennies in a beggar’s alms-box. My mouth’s as parched as if dried up by lightning—but be sociable, lads, and give us a drinking cup, if it’s no better than a clam shell. Ah! that’s divine, better than ambrosia, real Cogniac I declare. How are you, captain? doctor? general?—bless my soul! if yonder isn’t Providence. Egad! this is a delightful place—beats Rowseville all hollow—it only wants a few trees here, and a clump of woodland there, to make it as cool and shady as a Mussulman’s paradise. The bay is alive with craft, and yonder—just look at them—are two jaunty rascals racing. How the little fellow eats to windward—they are throwing ballast overboard from the larger craft—whizz, whizz, one can almost hear the water bubbling along the wash-board as she bends to the blast—and now, side by side, they go, the foam crackling over the bow, and drenching the crew all the way aft. Huzza! the little fellow has won, and dances into the wind as Taglioni when she springs on the stage, more like a spirit than a human being.
They’re opening the bake—are they? Then I’ll take a seat by the heap here, with your leave, sir, and go to work. Heaven bless the Indians for having taught us how to cook clams! Yes, there’s all the difference in the world between eating your clam at a table, and eating it hot and smoking from the heap. I’d as lief think of turning Grahamite, and going through a purgatory of bran bread and water, as give up a seat at the bake. It’s there you get a clam in all its glory; in its spirituality, I may say—egad! it’s as sweet as a kiss from a blushing angel of sixteen. The heap, sir! why it’s an earthly paradise—the το χχλον of existence—the all in all of the epicure. Ah! the perfume of that steam is delicious—just see how poetically the vapor curls away into the air, for all the world like the morning mists rolling upward in the Catskill valley—you’ve been at the mountain house, no doubt. And then the clams themselves! Clams! egad, they are food for immortals! Isn’t this a superb fellow?—how snowy his shell—how perfect his form—how savory his juice—how rich his color—how luscious his taste:—by the gods! if Apicius were here, he’d dance a saraband, or snap his fingers through a cachuca, in sheer ecstasy at having found a dish that would have made jubilee on Olympus. Hip, hip, hurrah! haven’t I caught a jewel of a fellow? None of your rascally quohogs, but the real Narragansett clam for me. The poor, deluded wretches on the Jersey shore, who think their round-shells are clams, and chew for half an hour at what isn’t better than sole leather, have no more idea of what a real clam is, than a Hottentot of Heaven, or—what is the same thing—a crusty old bachelor of matrimony. The man who never ate a Narragansett clam can’t expect to live long, or die happy; he may dwindle out a miserable existence, but—take my word for it—he is a poor devil after all, no better than the horse in the mill, going the same eternal round, and living on salt hay and stagnant water. Heaven have mercy on the souls of such wretches! Ah! that’s a good fellow, stir up the heap; and here’s as juicy a villain as ever roasted, tall and slender, “in linked sweetness long drawn out.” Another and another—I shall faint with ecstasy, and must really take a little to calm my transports. Chowder may be fine, turtle soup glorious, tautog a dish for kings, but clams! clams!! sirs, would almost raise the dead.
“Wi’ tippenny, we fear nae evil,
Wi’ usquebae we’ll face the devil.”
Thank you for drinking my health, gentlemen—you ask me whether we have any such thing as a clam-bake in Philadelphia—bless my soul! if we had, it wouldn’t be such a place for riots, broken banks, and all sorts of other eccentricities. Starvation was the cause of the French Revolution—to the fogs of England can be traced the suicides there—and it’s my candid belief that the absence of clam-bakes whereat to recreate is the prime origin of the present difficulties. Don’t ask me to demonstrate my position, for I hate logic as I hate olives and old maids. Assertion, sirs, is everything—a neat, portable affair that unrolls in a moment, and can’t be turned into a dozen aspects like shot silk. No, no, if a man ain’t convinced by a round assertion call him a fool, and if he resents it knock him down. There’s more evil come upon the world from the habit of reasoning than a thousand penitents, walking around the globe with pebbles in their shoes, could redeem. If two friends disagree, what is the cause? Argument. If a man quarrels with his wife, it’s because he stopped to reason with her. Bow deprecatingly, though with suavity, in the first case: kiss your wife and call her angel in the second case—and you keep your friend and helpmate; but get into an argument, and you are booked for a maelstrom from which St. Peter couldn’t save you. The Transcendentalists understand this matter: they never argue. They lay down something which they themselves can’t understand, and then call on the gaping disciple to give credence to it: if they are believed, it is well; if not, they jabber a jargon of shibboleth, call him a world-deluded gull, and turn away talking of the light within, and the glories of Pantheism. And so with the ladies, dear creatures, whom Nature intends for peace-makers, and, therefore, never allows them to give any better reason for what they do than “because”—thereby saving them a world of trouble about major and minor premises, and other things “in concatenation accordingly.” Glory be to the man who first invented assertion!—may the author of logic go to thunder, whence he came.
The young folks, further south, have, it is true, a sort of penance they call a pic-nic; but a pic-nic is no more like a clam-bake than vinegar is like champaigne. Imagine a dozen couple packed into an omnibus, after having got up before day—a thing no sane man was ever known to do—jolting over dusty roads for an hour or two, and then sitting down on the damp grass, on a greenish rock, or on a decaying trunk, to breakfast on cold ham and insipid water. Call you that fun? And, by and bye, the sentimental ones will wander off into the woods to read Tom Moore in company or alone—while those who affect field sports, Heaven save the mark! will go bobbing for eels with a skewer, or fish for trout in still waters and with a float. Others may rig out a rickety, leaky scow, shaded by an awning not bigger than a sun-screen, and take a sail—the gentlemen shoving the ark along with poles, and the ladies, all dressed in white, sitting with their feet in the water and singing “The Gondolier’s Song,” or “Shall we go a sailing!” Then, at noon, when the sun is hot enough to broil a steak, and the sweet dears’ faces look as flushed as a cook’s, they will huddle around a table cloth spread on the dusty grass, and try to keep each other in countenance by eating the remnants of their breakfast, washing the whole down with the interminable water, or lemonade so sour that a cupful would carry off a regiment with the cholera. Toward night they will start for home, regarding it as “a crowning mercy,” as old Noll would say, if a thunder storm doesn’t come up, and drench them through. Egad! it would make the tears run down your cheeks with laughter, if you could only see a pic-nic party after a shower—all draggled and dirty, dripping like drowned rats, or, to be more complimentary, like mermaids, hungry, tired, out of humor, and looking as unlike the dear angels we love as a radish looks unlike a claret bottle.
I never see a young man going on a pic-nic, but I ask if insanity doesn’t run in his family. But a clam-bake, sirs, is a different affair. On the hard, smooth, white sand of the bay shore you pitch your tent, for music having the low voice of the ripples as they break on the beach, the fresh breeze the while crisping the waves into silver, and fanning you with a delicious coolness that reminds you of the airs of that Eden you used to dream of when a child. It is not long before you have mustered a gay fishing party, and pushing from the shore, you row out by the well known stake, throw overboard the keelog, and idly rocking on the low, long swell, spend an hour, or it may be two, in the most delicious of pastimes. And when you tire of the sport, you lean lazily over the gunwale, and gaze far down into the transparent wave, where the fish float to and fro, the long grass waves with the tide, or the snowy bottom sparkles fitfully in the sun. Long ere noon has come your craft is laden with the spoil, and then it is “up keelog and away!” A few rapid, rollicking strokes bring you to the shore—your boat grates musically on the hard sand—and a joyous shout welcomes you back, while all hurry to inspect your cargo and wonder at your skill. By this time the table, spread by fair hands, is ready—and now the bake begins! A half hour, and lo! dinner is ready to be served—just at the very nick of time, too, for the sun is now at meridian, and the bay glitters like molten silver, while far and near the atmosphere boils in the sultry beams. Retreating to the shade of the tent—made more cool by a copious sprinkling of water—you are soon deep in the mysteries of clams, and sweet corn and, what would make a god’s mouth water, tautog baked in the heap. Pop—pop go the corks of the champaigne flasks, and here, cool as the peaks of Mont Blanc, comes the foaming liquid, sparkling and bright as the wit of a Sheridan, egad! And thus ends the dinner; but think not it stops here. All day long you see bright faces and hear gay laughter; and when evening steals on, and the moon rises in the azure sky, trailing a fairy line of light across the waters, and flooding the snowy beach with her effulgence—when the night wind murmurs among the trees, or sighs over the sleeping bay—when the jocund music strikes up and you dance merrily on the hard white sand, while bright eyes sparkle and fair cheeks flush with love—then you have a foretaste of heaven, and wish to lie down and sleep, and, sleeping, dream of such delicious pastime. And, by and bye, when returning home, the air is vocal with songs, warbled by the seraphic voices of those you love—and, as you dash through the trees, the moon, all the while shimmering between the leaves, you almost shout aloud in the exhilaration of the moment. Gradually, however, you sink into a more pensive mood, and silence falls on you and the white-armed one beside you, so that, at length, you may hear nothing but a gentle (yet oh! how eloquent) sigh, and the low beating of her heart, audible in the stillness. Aye! and if you look into her eyes you will see there a music more soul-subduing than the softest strains. At length your hands will meet, and with a strange, delicious thrill through your whole frame, she will sink yielding on your bosom, and then—and then, God bless me! I’ve been thinking of the way I used to make love, and forgot all about the clam-bake.
As the heap’s empty and the bottle drained I’ll stop, but since you all beg for it, I’ll give you, some of these days, my notions on making love, egad! And now here’s Robin—hip, ho, we’re off.
THE SUMMER NIGHT.
ARRANGED FROM A GERMAN AIR FOR THE PIANO FORTE.
Presented to Graham’s Magazine, by J. G. Osbourn.
The moon’s brightly beaming, love,
Still waters gleaming;
Wake from thy dreaming, love,
List to my lay.
Long, long, at twilight hour,
From yon lone distant bow’r,
Sadly I watch thy tow’r,
Fading away.
Long, long, at twilight hour,
From yon lone distant bow’r,
Sadly, I watch thy tow’r,
Fading away.
Low winds are sighing, love,
Day flowers dying,
Sweet moments flying, love,
Swiftly away.
Come e’er the morning dew,
Gemming the heather blue,
Green turf and mountain yew,
Our fond flight betray.
Young years are fleeting, love,
Warm bosoms heating,
Watch them retreating, love,
Sadly away.
Haste, o’er the summer tide,
Sweetly our bark will glide,
Thou my fond trust and guide,
On the blue way.
REVIEW OF NEW BOOKS.
The Critical and Miscellaneous Writings of Thomas Noon Talfourd, author of “Ion,” etc. In one volume. Philadelphia, Carey & Hart, 1842.
It is doubted by many intelligent critics whether the present age has in very deed given birth to any work of genius which will withstand the restless beatings of the waves of time and carry down to remotest generations the embodied evidence of the power and greatness of the Nineteenth Century. There is certainly room for an honest difference of opinion on this point, for it cannot be denied that on looking around the eye meets not at every corner nor does the ear hear, acting or uttering their Life Poem from every house-top, Homers, Shakspeares, Luthers, or Miltons. But that our cotemporaries are eminently skilled in examining into and discovering the worth of what has been done aforetime cannot be denied. Criticism has been made an art; and there is an evident tendency to exalt the man, with his telescope, to the star he looks at. We do not at present intend to find fault with this disposition, nor should we have mentioned it, but for the purpose of saying that it has produced some not distasteful fruits, among the best of which we rank these critical essays of Mr. Sergeant Talfourd. We are glad they have been thus collected together, for the periodicals in which they first appeared reach but few of those who would fain read them. Macauley and Carlyle write mainly for one or two works, so that with comparatively little difficulty the general reader may find all their productions; but Mr. Talfourd writes for quarterlies, monthlies and weeklies, and a collective re-publication of his contributions was therefore greatly to be desired. He makes admirable speeches, too, on copyright, and in defence of the professors of high Art when they are assailed by the spirit of the world, or when, in their vagaries, not always the most orderly, they run athwart some of the good and unbending rules established for the general welfare. These, we are sorry to say, we do not find in the present volume. Still, we are too thankful for what we have, to complain of the absence of the defence of Shelley and the argument on the rights of authors.
The peculiar characteristics of Mr. Talfourd’s criticism are its catholic liberality, its accurate and clear sighted discrimination, its insight, which is really of the scientific kind, and its classical purity, both in thought and style. He never writes hastily or without elaboration, and yet his criticism is not cold and unsympathizing. He enters deeply into the spirit of the work he examines, is peculiarly sensitive to its beauties and excellencies, and speaks of them eloquently and with boldness. His language is strong, but polished, and there is always in his thought a cheerful confidence and a keen-eyed discernment, which instruct and strengthen. The essay on Wordsworth is among the best in the volume, written in the spirit of the poetry it dissects, and evincing skill in developing beauty, and a sharp sense which will detect it wherever it exists. The review of Wallace’s Prospects of Mankind, and the paper on Modern Improvements, are valuable and instructive. The essays on the profession of the law, and on pulpit oratory, are also excellent. Indeed, the contents of this volume are so uniformly good and so alike in all their prominent characteristics, that it would be difficult, as it is certainly unnecessary, to point out any as pre-eminently deserving of applause.
Critical and Miscellaneous Writings of Sir Walter Scott.[[6]] Collected by Himself. Now for the first time Published in America. Three volumes, 12mo. Philadelphia, Carey & Hart.
The Wizard of the North, as it was the custom a few years ago to call Walter Scott, may be regarded in four aspects—as a novelist, a poet, a critic, and a historian. In the first character he was unequaled, in the second and third among the first of his age and country, and in the last, alone, utterly contemptible; and that not for lack of ability or painstaking, certainly, but on account of his perfect recklessness of all principle, truth or decency that did not tend to fill his pockets with money or advance the interests of his party. In the volumes before us we have his criticisms and miscellaneous essays, and though we had aforetime been accustomed to regard them as possessing comparatively slight merit, a reperusal of the greater number has left on our mind an impression in the highest degree favorable to them, as compared with the best productions of their kind. Macauley is our favorite reviewer; Wilson, Sidney Smith, Talfourd and Scott we rank next. With all his apparent rapidity and ease, Macauley is the most laborious of the fraternity. He spends his month in reading—cramming is the technical phrase—everything relating to his subject; sits for a week or two at his desk, writing, recurring to documents, and rewriting, until every fact or idea he deems worthy of retention is embodied in his article, which is then carefully retouched and copied for the “Edinburgh.” Talfourd meditates his subject, too, and polishes with no less care or skill. But Scott glanced upon the surface of things, skimmed over the abstracts and summaries relating to his theme, and wrote off, in his smooth, vivacious, pleasant way, his paper—read the MS—marked in a few commas and colons—and sent it to the printer.
With too little time and space for an elaborate review of these volumes, yet anxious, as in all our notices of books, to give the reader a definite idea of their character, we place in the margin a list of their contents, and shall notice more particularly but a small number of the forty-eight articles of which they are composed. The essays on Chatterton and Burns, in the first volume, are sympathizing, liberal and judicious, though less distinguished for nicety of discrimination than some others on the same subjects. In the second volume is his review of his own “Tales of My Landlord,” from the Quarterly, for January, 1817, educed by a series of essays from the pen of Doctor McCrie, in which the views given of the Scottish covenanters in the Waverly novels were bitterly impugned. The authorship of these novels, it will be remembered, was then a secret. The modesty of Scott’s estimate of himself may be inferred from the following passage, from page 144:
“The volume which this author has studied is the great book of nature. He has gone abroad into the world in quest of what the world will certainly and abundantly supply, but what a man of great discrimination alone will find, and a man of the very highest genius will alone depict after he has discovered it. The characters of Shakspeare are not more exclusively human, not more perfectly men and women as they live and move, than those of this mysterious author.”
Yet, this is modest, compared with numerous other puffs of himself from his own pen, written in his long and successful career, and justified on the ground that they were “fair business transactions.” Washington Irving has done the same thing, in writing laudatory notices of his own works for the reviews, and, like Scott, received pay for whitewashing himself. We do not imagine that in either case there was any great injustice in the self-praise, but certainly Mr. Murray should not have been solicited to pay the “guinea a page.” The articles in the third volume on Kemble, Kelly’s Reminiscences, and Davy’s “Salmonia,” are all excellent, and equally so. We have understood, too, that the Letters from Malachi Malagrowther, Esquire, on the currency, are readable, but we never look into articles on such subjects.
| [6] | Vol. I.—Articles on Ellis’s Specimens of the Early English Poets; Ellis’s and Ritson’s Specimens of the Early English Metrical Romances; Godwin’s Life of Chaucer; Todd’s Edition of Spencer; Herbert’s Poems; Evans’s Old Ballads; Moliere; Chatterton; Reliques of Burns; Campbell’s Gertrude of Wyoming; The Battles of Tallavera (a poem); Southey’s Curse of Kehama; The Fourth Canto of Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage; Amadis of Gaul; Southey’s Chronicle of the Cid; Southey’s Life of John Bunyan; Godwin’s “Fleetwood;” Cumberland’s John of Lancaster; Maturin’s “Fatal Revenge;” Maturin’s “Women, or Pour et Contre;” Miss Austin’s Novels; and Remarks on Frankenstein. Vol. II.—Novels of Ernest Theodore Hoffman; The Omen; Hajji Baba in England; Tales of My Landlord; Thornton’s Sporting Tour; Two Cookery Books; Jones’s Translation of Froissart; Miseries of Human Life; Carr’s Caledonian Sketches; Lady Suffolk’s Correspondence; Kirkton’s Church History; Life and Works of John Home; The Culloden Papers; and Pepys’s Memoirs. Vol. III.—Life of Kemble; Kelly’s Reminiscences; Davy’s Salmonia; Ancient History of Scotland; On Planting Waste Lands—Monteith’s Forresters’ Guide; On Landscape Gardening—Sir H. Steuart’s Planters’ Guide; Tyler’s History of Scotland; Pitcairn’s Criminal Trials; and The Letters of Malachi Malagrowther, Esquire, on the Currency. |
The History of the Reformation of the Church of England, by Gilbert Burnet, D. D., late Lord Bishop of Salisbury, with the Collection of Records and a copious Index, revised and corrected, with additional Notes and a Preface, by the Rev. E. Nares, D. D., late Professor of Modern History in the University of Oxford. Illustrated with a Frontispiece and twenty-three engraved Portraits. Four volumes, 8vo. New York: D. Appleton & Co.
Bishop Burnet’s celebrated History of the Reformation in England is one of those standard works which a gentleman is ashamed not to have read. Respecting the important period to which it relates, there are few productions so frequently consulted by more modern writers, and its intrinsic excellence must ever make it desirable, not only to scholars and persons familiar with the advancement of civil and ecclesiastical affairs, but to young students in history and general readers. Of the ability of Doctor Nares, we confess we have not a very high opinion—having, it may be, imbibed some prejudices against him from Macauley—but, as the English critics all concur, so far as we have seen, in the opinion that his edition of this work is the best extant, we are bound to believe that he has, in one instance, done his duty well. If the work has any defects they are such as we are unable to detect.
Burnet’s History of the Reformation, though frequently republished in England, has never before been printed in America, and the high price of the English impressions here kept it from the libraries of many who will now obtain it. The copy before us is creditable to the publishers, in all but the portraits, which, with deference to the taste of Messrs. Appleton, we think add very little to its value or beauty.
Cottage Residences; or a Series of Designs for Rural Cottages and Cottage Villas and their Gardens and Grounds, adapted to North America. By A. J. Downing. Illustrated by numerous Engravings. One volume, 8vo. New York: Wiley & Putnam.
Mr. Downing’s previous publication, on Landscape Gardening, has made or should have made his name familiar to all for whom rural life has charms. This new book, on a cognate subject, the application of moderate means to country residences, is, like that, eminently calculated to advance among us elegance, comfort, in a word, civilization; and we hope, therefore, that it will be universally studied. Mr. Downing’s object is to inspire the minds of his readers with a vivid perception of the beautiful in every thing that relates to our houses and grounds—to awaken a quicker sense of the grace or picturesqueness of fine forms that may be produced in these by rural architecture and ornamental gardening—a sense which will not only refine and elevate the mind, but pour into it new and infinite resources of delight. In his preface he remarks that he wishes to imbue all persons with a love of beautiful forms and a desire to assemble them around their daily walks of life; to appreciate how superior is the charm of that home where we discover the tasteful cottage or villa, and the well designed and neatly kept garden or grounds, full of beauty and harmony—not the less beautiful and harmonious because simple and limited—and to become aware that these superior forms, and the higher and more refined enjoyment derived from them, may be had at the same cost and the same labor as a clumsy dwelling, and its uncouth and ill-designed accessories. “More than all,” he continues, “I desire to see these sentiments cherished for their pure and moral tendency. ‘All beauty is an outward expression of inward good,’ and so closely are the Beautiful and True allied, that we shall find, if we become sincere lovers of the grace, the harmony, and the loveliness, with which rural homes and rural life are capable of being invested, that we are silently opening our hearts to an influence which is higher and deeper than the mere symbol; and that if we have worshiped in the true spirit, we shall have caught a nearer glimpse of the Great Master whose words, in all his material universe, are written in lines of Beauty.”
The whole volume, throughout, bears witness of the cultivated intellect from which it sprung, and of the author’s fine taste and enthusiastic appreciation of the attractions of a country life. It is printed and embellished as such a work should be. We heartily commend it to the attention of country gentlemen.
Johnsoniana; or a Supplement to Boswell; being Anecdotes and Sayings of Doctor Johnson, Collected from Mrs. Piozzi, George Steevens, W. Pepys, Doctor Beattie, John Northcote, John Hoole, Sir John Hawkins, Sir Josh. Reynolds, Cowper, Dugald Stewart, Edmund Malone, Sir James Mackintosh, Doctor Moor, Doctor Parr, Bishop Horne, etc. Edited by John Wilson Croker. One vol. 12mo., pp. 530. Philadelphia, Carey & Hart, 1842.
This is a very entertaining volume, and an indispensable companion to Boswell—embodying, as it does, every anecdote of the literary dictator which that model biographer omitted in his life of him, gathered from nearly a hundred different publications. It might, however, have been made better, had its publication been deferred until the appearance of Madame D’Arblay’s Memoirs. It is embellished with finely engraved portraits of Johnson, Boswell, Beauclerk, Mrs. Piozzi and Mr. Thrale.
The History of Fiction: Being a Critical Account of the most Celebrated Prose Works of Fiction, from the Earliest Greek Romances to the Novels of the Present Day. By John Dunlap. Two volumes, 12mo. Philadelphia, Carey & Hart.
During the recent summer there has been republished in this country no book for the library more interesting or valuable than this History of Fiction. It was first printed at Edinburgh in 1814, and two years after a second and much improved edition appeared in the same city, of which this by Messrs. Carey & Hart is a reproduction. The History of Fiction is intimately connected with the history of the advancement of society, and is therefore interesting to the philosopher as well as the man of letters. Mr. Dunlap traces separately the progress of the romances of chivalry, the Italian tales, the spiritual romance, the pastoral stories, the French novels, the modern English novels and romances, etc., and gives analysis—so far as our very limited acquaintance with them enables us to judge, correct and sufficiently full to convey a just idea of their character and merit—of the early and rare productions which form the landmarks of his subject. Our own impressions do not on all points correspond with those of Mr. Dunlap; and we think he erred in confining his History to prose fictions only, as the creations of the poets, though earlier and in all ways superior, resemble them too nearly in their chief characteristics to be regarded separately.
Random Shots and Southern Breezes: Containing Critical Remarks on the Southern States and Southern Institutions, with semi-serious Observations on Men and Manners. By Louis Fitzgerald Tasistro, Author of “The Revolution of July,” etc. Two vols. 12mo. New York, Harper & Brothers.
This is a lively and entertaining journal of a professional tour through the southern and western parts of the Union, in the autumn and winter of 1840. Blended with his narrative and comments on society, Mr. Tasistro has given opinions and critical essays on a great variety of subjects connected with literature and art, which with men of taste will be regarded as the most attractive parts of the work.
A Select Collection of Original Scottish Airs, for the Voice. Philadelphia, J. Dobson.
The lovers of Scottish music will be gratified to learn that this celebrated work—originally published in five volumes at Edinburgh by G. Thompson—is being republished in this country. It has introductory and concluding symphonies and accompaniments to each air, for the piano-forte, violin, flute, etc. composed by Pleyel, Haydn, Weber, Beethoven and others, with the most admired ancient and modern Scottish and English songs, inclusive of the one hundred or more written for it by Burns. We know of no musical work that will be more prized by the professed artist or the amateur.
George Saint George Julian, the Prince. By Henry Cockton. With Illustrations. One volume, octavo. Philadelphia, Carey & Hart.
A novel of great popularity and little merit. The admirers of “Valentine Vox,” by the same author, will doubtless be pleased with it.
Gems from the American Female Poets: With Brief Biographical Notices. By Rufus W. Griswold. Second Edition. One volume, 12mo. pp. 192. Philadelphia, Herman Hooker.
In this elegant little volume the editor has given what he deems the best compositions of some forty American ladies who have written in metre. The second edition is enlarged and otherwise improved. We understand the volume has been introduced into many of the young ladies’ seminaries as a reading book, for which purpose it seems to be well adapted.
The Gift, a Christmas and New Year’s Present, for MDCCCXLIII. One volume octavo. With Engravings from Malbone, Huntington, Inman, Chapman, Sully, etc., by Cheney, Dodson, Pease, etc. Philadelphia, Carey & Hart.
The new volume of the Gift surpasses in the style of its typography and the merit of its pictorial embellishments any annual ever published in this country; and its literary contents will not suffer by comparison with those of any work, American or foreign, of the same description. To prove the correctness of this opinion we have only to remark that all the writers—save one or two of an indifferent stamp of whom we never heard before—are contributors to this magazine. The picture from Huntington—miscalled “Mercy’s Dream"—is one of the most exquisite productions in its way with which we are acquainted; “The News-Boy,” from Inman, represents the class which it is designed to portray to the life; and the head from Malbone shows that the high reputation of that artist was not undeserved. The picture from Chapman we cannot praise—a head of eight on a body of eighteen is in bad taste, to say the least of it. The best prose papers in the volume are those by Mrs. “Mary Clavers,” Mr. Smith, Mr. Herbert and Mr. Simms; and the best poem is the one commencing on the first page, by Mrs. Seba Smith.
The Hand Book of Needlework: With Numerous Engravings. By Miss Lambert. One vol. 8vo. New York, Wiley & Putnam.
One of the most beautiful books of the season. It embraces ample instructions for drawing patterns, framing and properly finishing needlework, and a curious history of its progress from the days of Moses to the accession of Queen Victoria! The American edition is superior in its execution to that published in London. It will doubtless be among the most popular gift works of the approaching holiday season.
Hope Leslie: or Early Times in the Massachusetts. By the Author of “The Linwoods,” “The Poor Rich Man,” “Redwood,” “Live and Let Live,” “Letters from Abroad,” etc. Two vols. New York, Harper & Brothers.
We are pleased to see a new edition of this popular novel—the first, and in some respects the best, of Miss Sedgwick’s productions.
The Rose of Sharon: a Religious Souvenir; for 1843. Boston, Abel Tompkins.
A very elegant volume, in which the sentiments of the Universalist denomination are inculcated.