FRANCE.
The political intelligence from France is of decided interest and importance. The Assembly has met—the President has demanded the restoration of
universal suffrage, and the Assembly has refused to grant it. The appeal, of course, is to the people in the Presidential election of next May. What will be the result is, of course, matter of conjecture; but whatever it may be, it will exert a prodigious influence upon the politics of Europe.
The Assembly met on the 4th of November, six hundred and thirty-three members being present. On the next day the message of the President was sent in and read. It opens by proclaiming the continued preservation of peace, but utters warnings against being deceived by this apparent tranquillity. A vast demagogical conspiracy, the President says, has been organized in France and in Europe; secret societies have been formed extending their ramifications to the smallest communes; and all the most insensate and turbulent spirits, without being agreed on men or on things, have given themselves rendezvous for 1852. He relies on the patriotism of the Assembly to save France from these perils. The best means of doing this is by satisfying legitimate wants, and in putting down, on their first appearance, all attacks on religion, morality, and society.—The Message then proceeds, under different heads, to give a statement of the condition of the country. With the exception of the departments of Ardice, Cher, Nievre, and Lyons, the ordinary measures have been sufficient to preserve order. The receipts of taxes have been quite satisfactory. The progress of exportations continues unabated. Public roads and public buildings have received the attention of the government. Special care has also been given to the encouragement of agriculture. The superiority of French manufactures has been abundantly shown at the Great Exhibition in London. The number of common schools is 34,939; of girls’ schools 10,542.—The number of the land forces on the 1st of October was 387,519 men and 84,306 horses. If circumstances permit, this will be reduced to 377,130 men and 83,435 horses. Out of 1145 tribes in Algeria, 1100 have recognized the rule of France. Various important naval works have been constructed. The relations of France to foreign powers are eminently satisfactory. Her situation at Rome continues unchanged, and the Pope still shows constant solicitude for the happiness of France and the welfare of her soldiers. Important measures are in progress at Rome, and active exertions are making for the formation of an army, which will render possible the withdrawal of the troops from the States of the Church. A proof has been given of the friendly disposition of France toward Spain, by offering her the aid of the French naval forces to oppose the audacious attempt against the island of Cuba.—In spite of all these satisfactory results, the President says a general feeling of uneasiness is daily increasing. “Every where employment is falling off, wretchedness is increasing, and anti-social hopes gain courage in proportion as the public powers, now weakened, are approaching their termination.” The Government, in such a state of things, ought to seek out proper means of conjuring away the peril, and of assuring the best chances of safety. Resolutions must be adopted, which emanate from a decisive act of sovereign authority. “Well, then,” proceeds the President, “I have asked myself whether, in presence of the madness of passions, the confusion of doctrines, the division of parties, when every thing is leaguing together to deprive justice, morality, and authority of their last prestige—whether, I say, we ought to allow the only principle to be shaken which, in the midst of the general chaos, Providence has left upstanding as our rallying point? When universal suffrage has again upraised the social edifice, when it has substituted a right for a revolutionary act, ought its base to be any longer narrowed? When new powers shall come to preside over the destinies of the country, is it not to compromise their stability in advance to leave a pretext for discussing their origin or doubting their legitimacy? No doubt on the subject can be entertained; and without for a moment departing from the policy of order which I have always pursued, I have seen myself, to my deep regret, obliged to separate myself from a Ministry which possessed my full confidence and esteem, to choose another, composed also of honorable men, known for their conservative opinions, but who are willing to admit the necessity of re-establishing universal suffrage on the largest possible base. In consequence, there will be presented to you a bill to restore that principle in all its plenitude, in preserving such parts of the law of May 31 as free universal suffrage from its impure elements, and render its application more moral and more regular.” The law of May 31, he says, was originally passed as a measure of public safety, and of course now that the necessity for it has passed away, the law itself should be repealed. Its operation, moreover, has gone further than could have been foreseen. It has disfranchised three millions of electors, two-thirds of whom are peaceable inhabitants of the country. This immense exclusion has been made the basis and pretext of the anarchical party, which covers its detestable designs with the appearance of right torn from it, and requiring to be reconquered. The law also presents grave inconveniences, especially in its application to the election of a President. The constitution requires that two millions of votes should be given for the candidate before he is declared elected, and if no one receives that number then the Assembly shall elect. The law changes the proportion of votes from that originally established by the Constitution. The restoration of universal suffrage is urged, finally, on the ground that it will give an additional chance of securing the revision of the Constitution.—The President says he is aware that this proposition is inspired by his own personal interests, but he says his conduct for the last three years ought to be sufficient to put aside such an allegation. The good of his country will always be the motive of his conduct. He concludes by saying, that, “to restore universal suffrage is to deprive civil war of its flag, and the opposition of their last argument; it is to afford to France an opportunity of giving herself institutions which will insure her repose; it will be to bestow on the powers to come that moral repose which exists only when resting on a consecrated principle and an incontestable authority.” Immediately after the reading of the Message, the Minister read the project of a law proposing the abrogation of the law of May 31, 1850, and re-establishing the electoral law of March 15, 1849, by which all citizens 21 years old, and having resided six months in the commune, are declared electors. The Minister, on presenting this law, demanded urgency for its consideration. A warm debate followed, and the urgency was rejected by a large majority. The bill was then referred to a committee, which reported on Tuesday of the succeeding week. The report was very explicit against universal suffrage, and closed by advising that the bill be rejected at once, without passing even to second reading. The matter was then postponed until the following Thursday. On that day, after an animated debate, in which, by agreement, the Republicans were represented by M. Michel de Bourges, the motion was carried by a vote
of 355 to 348—a majority of seven against the government. During the debate M. de Bourges asked, “is it not probable that the disfranchised electors will present themselves at the hustings in May, 1852, and with the Message of the President in their hands, declare their determination to vote?” This has been regarded as a hint to the electors to go forward and claim their right to vote.—Another question of very great interest and importance, grew out of a demand of the Quæstors that the troops of the city should be put under their orders for the protection of the Assembly; the question whether the project should be brought under consideration or not, came up on the 10th of November. The project as presented by the Quæstors, M. Baze, Gen. Leflo, and one other, defined the right in such a manner as to make the power of the Assembly over the troops direct—without the intervention of the War Office or of the Executive. The question was discussed with great warmth, and for part of the time amidst the greatest confusion and clamor. The vote was finally taken, and the proposition of the Quæstors was rejected, 408 to 300.—A large number of officers of the army recently presented themselves at the Elyssée and were received by the President in a speech that created great excitement. He said he was sure he could depend upon their support, because he should demand nothing that did not accord with his right, recognized by the Constitution, with military honor, and with the interest of the country; because he had placed at their head officers who had his confidence, and who merited theirs; and because he should not do as other governments had done, ask them to march on and he would follow; but he would say, “I march, follow me.” The speech created great commotion throughout all political parties.—General uneasiness is felt as to the result of the political struggle in France. The votes upon the propositions mentioned above were not party votes, but seemed to be the result of ever changing alliances and combinations. The hostility which burst out against the President upon the first publication of his Message, had in some degree subsided, or rather it had been directed against M. Thiers. It is universally felt that, whether peacefully solved or not, the election in May can not fail to have a most important influence upon European politics.
On the 25th of November, the President made a brief but significant speech, on distributing to the manufacturers the prizes they had won by the articles exhibited at the World’s Exhibition. After expressing his satisfaction at the proofs of French genius and skill which had been afforded at the Exhibition, he proceeded to speak of the check upon industry which the continued machinations of evil men in France could not fail to create. On the one hand France was disturbed by demagogical ideas, and on the other by monarchist hallucinations. The former disseminate every where error and falsehood. “Disquietude goes before them, and deception follows them, while the resources employed in repressing them are so much loss to the most pressing ameliorations and to the relief of misery. The schemes of monarchists impede all progress, all serious labor, for in place of an advance the country is forced to have recourse to a struggle. The efforts of both, however, will be in vain.” And the President exhorted the manufacturers to continue their labors. “Undertake them without fear, for they will prevent the want of occupation during the winter. Do not dread the future; tranquillity will be maintained, come what may. A Government which relies for support on the entire mass of the nation, which has no other motive of action than the public good, and which is animated by that ardent faith which is a sure guide even through a space in which there is no path traced, that Government, I say, will know how to fulfill its mission, for it has in it that right which comes from the people, and that force which comes from God.” This speech created a profound sensation, and elicited general discussion.—The Constitutionnel created a universal excitement by an article proclaiming the existence of a Monarchical conspiracy, and menacing that section of the Assembly with instant seizure and imprisonment upon the first movement toward the accomplishment of their plans. The editor, A. Granier de Cassagnac, was denounced in very violent terms by M. Creton, an Orleanist deputy, who was challenged therefor. He refused, however, to take any notice of it, when he was posted as a coward by Cassagnac.
Ernest, King of Hanover, died at his palace in Herrenhausen, on the 18th of November, at the age of 80, and after a reign of thirteen years. He was the fifth and last surviving son of George III., and was born at Kew, England, on the 5th of June, 1771. In 1790 he entered the army, and served in the European wars which followed. In 1799 he was created Duke of Cumberland, Earl of Armagh, and Duke of Teviotdale, with a Parliamentary grant of £12,000 per annum. He continued to live in England until the death of William IV., when he became King of Hanover. His reign has not been marked by any great events. He was always an ultra champion of privileged classes, and made himself very prominent in England as the enemy of Catholic emancipation, and reform measures of all sorts.
In Switzerland, the recent election has resulted in the return of nearly all the members of the present Federal Assembly, especially in the German Cantons. The radicals have a decided majority—contrary to the expectations that had been very generally entertained. The new Assembly was to meet on the 1st of December in order to elect the federal government.
The character of the justice administered in Austria is strongly illustrated by a notification in a Venice gazette. Count Agostino Guerrieri, of Verona, lately of the Austrian Hussars, was convicted of having received an anonymous letter from revolutionary parties, and of not giving it up to the authorities; the verdict against him was that he was guilty of high treason, and for this he was sentenced to ten years’ imprisonment in a fortress. Baron Lutti was convicted of having advised him to burn the letter, and for that offense he was sentenced to imprisonment for two years.
From Southern and Eastern Europe there is no news of special interest. In Austria financial necessities are creating general anxiety. The credit of the country does not prove sufficient to effect needed loans. General dissatisfaction, moreover, still prevails in Hungary, and many of the Hungarian regiments evince a disposition to take sides with their country rather than their employers.—In Italy the country is apparently quiet, but a very thorough and effective organization has been effected for a new revolutionary movement, whenever a proper opportunity shall be presented.—The peace of Europe is generally supposed to depend upon the French election in May next; but it is not easy to see by what result general peace can be preserved.
EDITOR'S TABLE.
The year comes round with such perfect uniformity that we find it hard to realize how there could ever have been any great difficulty in settling either its true boundaries or its internal divisions. Any body, it seems to us, could make an almanac, as far as the calendar is concerned. Such might be the first thought, even of persons who could not justly be charged with a lack of general intelligence. But let them think again, and they will rather find cause to wonder at the immense amount of observation involved in the process of gathering, age after age, the elements of a computation apparently so simple.
Had the seasons been so strikingly marked that the transition from one to the other had been instantaneous, or had the lesser sections of time been so contrived, in the Divine wisdom, as to be exact divisors of the greater, there would have been no difficulty whatever in the problem. But the Author of nature has not made it so easy for us. Twelve moons fall short of the year; thirteen exceed it. Any monthly division, therefore, founded on the revolutions of the satellite, must require, after the lapse of a few years, an addition, or a subtraction, of a certain period, to make the seasons come round again in harmony.
The first men, unquestionably, soon learned to note the general revolution by the return of the same seasons. The earliest agricultural operations would necessitate similar estimates, and thus a general notion of the year would be arrived at without an exact knowledge of the precise number of days contained. Hence, in all languages, some such idea has entered into the name. The year is that which comes, and comes again. In Greek (if our readers will pardon a little display of learning which we have picked up for the occasion) it is (ἔτι ἜΤΟΣ ἕτερος) another and yet another. In the Hebrew it is repetition. In our own, and the northern tongues generally, the word in all its forms (year, gear, jahr, jaar, &c.) ever denotes a course (currus) or circle.
Another mode was by rude astronomical observations, which must have been resorted to in the very earliest periods. For a good portion of the year, the sun was seen to come regularly north. Then he remained apparently stationary; and then, slowly turning, made his retreat again to the southern limit, there to perform the same movement—and so on without interruption or variation. Hence the word tropic, signifying the turning, and of which St. James makes so sublime and beautiful a use when he tells us (James i. 17) that the Unchangeable Spiritual Sun, or “Father of Lights,” has no parallax[6] and no “shadow of turning,” or tropical shadow, as it should be rendered, referring to the mode of determining the period of turning by the shortest shadow cast by a perpendicular object. Still all this was merely an approximation to the length of the year, but with errors which only repeated observations could correct. By taking, however, a large number of these self-repeating repeating phenomena for a divisor, and the whole number of carefully ascertained days for a dividend, the error in each case would be diminished in an inverse ratio; so that we should not wonder that the number of three hundred and sixty-five days was fixed upon at quite an early period.
[6] The word parallax, or “parallage,” here must refer to the sun’s declination north and south of the equator. We have no reason for supposing that the ideas connected with the term in modern astronomical science were at all known to the Apostle. It may, however, be taken generally, for any deviation from one unchangeable position, and, in such a sense, preserve all the beauty and sublimity of the metaphor.
Such estimates, too, were aided by collateral observations of the stars. Let any one look out upon the heavens some clear night at the commencement of the year, and he can not help being struck with the position as well as the brilliancy of certain constellations. Over head are the Pleiades, the lone Aldebaran, Perseus, and Capella. Coming up the eastern sky are Orion, Gemini, Sirius, the Lesser Dog. Descending in the western are Andromeda, Pegasus, Capricornus, the Southern Fish. While low down toward the setting horizon are the Harp, the Eagle, and the Swan. Two weeks later, at the same time in the evening, he will find them all farther westward. In a month the change will be still more marked. After three months, those that before were just rising are on the meridian, and those that were then on the meridian are now setting. In six months, an entirely new host of stars will adorn the firmament, and at the end of a year, all the same phenomena will be found to have come round again. Our minuteness of detail may seem like trifling in an age so scientific as this; but it is astonishing how much our science is the science of books, and how little, after all, especially in astronomy, there is of personal acquaintance with the objects whose laws we know so well in theory. How many understand thoroughly the doctrine of transits and parallaxes, and even the more difficult laws of celestial influences, as laid down in scientific treatises, and yet, to save their lives, could not tell us what stars are now overhead, or what planets are now visible in our nightly heavens. They have read of Jupiter, they know the dimensions of Jupiter, and have even calculated the movements of Jupiter, it may be, but Jupiter himself they never saw. They would be surprised, perhaps, to discover, by actual sight, how much, in respect to position and appearance, our wintry constellations differ from those that are visible in summer; although night after night, for years and years, the brilliant phenomena have been passing over their heads, and silently, yet most eloquently, inviting their observation. This should not be so. The names and locations of the stars should ever be a part of astronomical instruction. We should learn them, if only for their classical reminiscences—for the sublime pleasure of having such a theme for contemplation in our evening walks. How easy, in this way, to fill the heavens with life, when we are led to regard them no longer as an unmeaning collection of glittering points, or what is scarcely better, a mere diagram for the illustration of scientific abstractions, but stored with remembrances of the older days of our world—the old religion, the old mythology, the old philosophy pictured on the sky—the old heroes, and heroines, and heroic events, transferred to the stars, and still shining in immortal splendor above us.
But to return from our digression—any one may see how such an observation of the stars furnished a second mode of ascertaining the length of the year. The men of the olden time were driven to this earnest watching of the heavens by an interest, of which, in these days of almanacs, and clocks, and compasses
we can form but an inadequate conception. The period of the year was named after the principal star that rose just before, or set just after the sun. For example, when Sirius rose and set with or near the time of the sun, it was called the “dog days”—the only one of these old sidereal measures of time that has come down to us. Another season was under the sway of Orion. It was called the “stormy constellation,” and at its heliacal rising, or when, as Hesiod expresses it,
The gentle Pleiads, shunning his fierce pursuit,
Sank late in the Ocean wave—
then was the ship to be drawn up into the well-secured harbor, and the sailor for a season to shun the dangerous deep. In the same way the periods of different agricultural operations were assigned to different constellations—some to Arcturus, others to the humid Hyades, and others, again, to the Bull, who “opened the year with his golden horns.” From the observed fact of simultaneousness arose, also, the notion of some secret causative influence between the concurrent events. Hence those views of astrology, so early and so widely held among mankind, and which assigned to each event its celestial concomitants, and to each individual man his natal star. Exploded it may have been by the modern progress, but there was nevertheless at bottom an idea of more value than any science, however accurate, that does not give it the first and highest place. It was the thought of the absolute unity of nature, and of the unbroken relation of every part of the universe to every other part—in other words, the sublime idea which the oldest philosophy strove to express by that grand word, Kosmos.
The length of the year, as a whole number, was early known. It was some time, however, before the disturbance created by the fraction began to be distinctly perceived, and still longer before it was reduced to any thing like satisfactory measurement. In the division of the 365 days into monthly periods, lay at first the greatest difficulty. The lunar number was in general employed, not only as the nearest marked divisor, but because the new and full moons were so generally connected with religious festivals whether this arose from convenience of arrangement, or from the idea of some deep religious meaning symbolized by the ever dying and reviving phases of this mysterious planet. We can not, however, help being struck with the superior accuracy of the Jewish, when compared with the confusion and change that prevailed in the Greek and Roman calendar.
No reader of the Bible can avoid remarking its extreme particularity of date. The oldest and, on this account, the most striking instance is in the narration of the flood: “In the 600th year of Noah, in the second month, and on the seventeenth day of the month, the same day were the fountains of the great deep broken up, and the windows of heaven were opened.” And so also in respect to its close. There is the same particularity, too, in the date of the Passover, of the Exodus, of the arrival at Sinai, of various events in the wilderness, of the wars and settlement of Canaan, of the building and dedication of the temple, and of the messages of the later prophets. The first would seem to present the most unanswerable proof that the Jewish computation had been derived from an antediluvian science that must have been of a higher kind than we are generally disposed to acknowledge. With all their mathematics, and with some attainments in astronomy to which the Jew could make no pretension, the calendar of the Greeks presents the appearance of far more confusion. Herodotus, after saying that the Egyptians first found out the year, and divided it into twelve parts by means of the stars, praises their arrangement (which was probably the same with, or derived from, that of the Patriarchical times) as being much more easy and correct than the division of the Greeks. “The Egyptians,” he says, “divide the year into twelve months of thirty days each; and then, by adding five days to each year, they have a uniform revolution of time; whereas the Greeks, for the sake of adjusting the seasons accurately, add every third year an intercalary month” (Herod. ii. 4). By this, however, they seem only to have made “confusion worse confounded.” The great difficulty of the Greeks arose from the attempt to do what the wiser Egyptians and Hebrews seem to have abandoned—namely, to divide the year solely by lunar months. By arbitrary intercalations, it is true, they could bring the solar and lunar years to a tolerable agreement, but then, their effect was continually to change the places of the months relatively to the seasons. The periods of intercalation were at first every two years, then three, and lastly four, and eight. In the two latter they seem to have been governed by some respect to the quadrennial return of the great Olympic games, and the Olympiads corresponding thereto. The computation of the year was afterward brought to a still greater degree of accuracy by what was called the cycle of Melon, which, by embracing a period of nineteen years brought the times of the new and full moon to fall again, very nearly, on the same days of each month.
With the Romans it was still worse. Nothing shows how much better they understood fighting than astronomy, than the way they managed their year. Under Romulus it was said to have consisted of only ten months. It is not easy to see how this could be adjusted on any mode of computation, and yet the numerical names, some of which have come down to our own calendar, would seem to present some proof of it. The last month in the year is yet called December, or the Tenth. In the days of Numa it consisted of twelve lunar months, with a system of intercalation something like that of the Greeks. The two added months were January and February, which, in numerical order would have been Undecember, and Duodecember, or the Eleventh and Twelfth. The year, however, by the clumsiness of these methods, and by the whole matter being left in the hands of the Pontifices who seem to have had little science, and still less honesty, became turned so completely topsy-turvy, that instead of being put at the end, these two new months were finally arranged at the beginning. The first was called January from the great (some say the greatest) Latin deity, Janus, whose original name was Djanus or Di-annus, The God of the Year (similar to the Greek Kronos or Time), and who was most expressively represented with two faces, one ever looking back upon the past, and the other forward to the coming period.
In the hands of the Pontifices the Roman year had again been getting more and more out of order, until, in the days of Julius Cæsar, the first of January had retrograded nearly to the autumnal equinox. This very useful despot determined to take the matter in his own hands, and make a thorough reform; but, as a preliminary, was obliged to have an extraordinary year of 445 days, which was called the year of confusion. Before this, there had been, too, a continual neglect of the fraction of a day, although its existence seems to have been known at a much earlier period. Cæsar arranged the months as they now stand, and made provision for the fraction by ordering a day to be added to February every fourth year. This seemed to answer every purpose, until, after the lapse of more than fourteen centuries, it was found that the seasons
began to disagree with the almanac, and the religious festivals to fall somewhat out of place. The error was estimated to amount to eleven days; the correction of which was assumed by the Roman Pontifex, but with the aid of a science far more accurate than had been possessed by the Pontifices of the older time. The modes now adopted, for preserving accuracy in future, are known to most well-informed readers, so that we shall not dwell upon them farther than to say, that they consist generally in such omissions of the leap year, from time to time, as will correct the very small excess by which a quarter of a day exceeds the actual fraction of the tropical year.
“And God said—Let there be lights in the firmament of Heaven, and let them be for days, and for years, and for times, and for seasons.” It requires some thought before we can fully realize how much we are indebted, morally and mentally, as well as physically, to these time-measuring arrangements. We must place ourselves in the condition of the savage before we can know how much of our civilization comes from the almanac, or, in other words, our exact divisions of time aiding the idea and the memory—thus shaping our knowledge, or thinking, and even our emotions, so as to make them very different from what they might have been, had we not possessed these regulators of our inner as well as our outer man. How unlike, in all this, must be the life of the untaught children of the forest! Let us endeavor to fancy men living from age to age without any known length or divisions of the year—no lesser or greater periods to serve as landmarks, or, rather, sky-marks, in their history—and, therefore, without any possibility of really having any history. Summer and winter come and go, but to the savage all the future is a chaos, and all the past is
With the years beyond the flood,
unmarked by any intervals which may give it a hold upon the thoughts or the memory. The heavenly bodies make their monthly, and annual, and cyclical revolutions, but their eternal order finds no correspondence in his chaotic experience. The stars roll nightly over his head, but only to direct his steps in the wilderness, without shedding a ray of light upon the denser wilderness of his dark and sensual mind. The old man knows not how many years he has lived. He knows not the ages of his children. He has heard, indeed, of the acts of his fathers; but all are equally remote. They belong to the past, and the past is all alike—a dark back-ground of tradition, without any of that chronological perspective through which former ages look down upon us with an aspect as life-like and as truthful as the present. The phenomena of the physical world have been ever flitting like shadows before his sense, but the understanding has never connected them with their causes, never followed them to their sources, never seen in them any ground of coherence or relation, simply because time, the great connective medium of all inductive comparison, has been to him an undivided, unarranged, and, therefore, unremembered vacancy. Hence it is, he never truly learns to think, and, on this account, never makes progress—never rises of himself from that low animal state to which he may once have fallen, in his ever downward course from the primitive light and truth. Æschylus, in the Prometheus, makes such to have been the first condition of mankind. But, however false his theory in this respect—opposed as it is to the sure teachings of revelation—nothing can be truer to the life than the fancy picture he has given us—
No sure foreknowing sign had they of winter,
Nor of flowery spring, or summer with its fruits.
Unmarked the years rolled ever on; and hence
Seeing, they saw not; hearing, they heard in vain.
Like one wild dream their waste unmeasured life,
Until I taught them how to note the year
By signal stars, and gave them Memory,
The active mother of all human science.
The Pulpit and the Press—the past and the present, the rising and the waning power, would be to some minds the first idea suggested by such a collocation of terms. But we trust the time has not yet come for the actual verification of any such contrast. Far be it from us to underrate the value of the very instrument through which we seek to instruct and reform the public mind; but woe to the land and to the age in which such an antagonism shall ever be realized. The Press is man’s boasted means for enlightening the world. The Pulpit is Heaven’s ordinance; and sad will it be for the Church, and sadder still for the State, when any other power on earth challenges a superiority, either in rank or influence. The clergy can safely occupy no inferior place; and such is their position, unless they are ever in advance of the age, not in the common cant of a superficial doctrine of progress, but as champions of the eternal and immovable truths, while they are, at the same time, contending in all the fields, whether of theology, or science, or literature, or philosophy, in which there may be an enemy to be subdued, or a victory won for Christ. Such rank, we believe, may still be claimed for the Church. In former centuries she had neither antagonist nor rival. Now has she hosts of both. Yet are her servants still in the “fore-front of the hottest battle.” Philosophy and science are swelling loud and long the note of triumph, and yet it is still true, even in a period the most thoroughly secular the world has ever known since the days of the Apostles, that the highest efforts of mind are connected, as ever, with the domain of theology. Science, literature, and even politics, find their most profound interest for the human soul when the questions they raise lie nearest to her sacred confines, and connect themselves with that “faith which is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things unseen.” What true worth in any problem in philosophy, in any discovery in science, the moment it is once conclusively settled, beyond a peradventure, that man has no hereafter? What becomes of art, and poetry? What meaning in “progress,” and “ideas,” and the “rights of man?” But it is this dread though all-conservative idea of a hereafter, which it is the office of the Pulpit ever to keep before the human soul, not as a lifeless dogma for the understanding, but in all those stern relations to a higher positive law, which shall ever prevent its coalescing with a frivolous creed in theology, or any boasting philosophy of mere secular reform. In doing this, there is needed for the Pulpit, first of all, and above all, the most intense seriousness of spirit, secondly the most thorough knowledge of the Scriptures, and thirdly, learning, science, and philosophy, fully equal to any thing that may be brought to cope with it in its unyielding strife for the dominion of the world.
In urging this, however, we should never forget, that while the power of the periodical Press is often unduly enhanced by a falsely coloring medium of estimation, the glory and influence of the Pulpit are diminished by a similar cause. Apparent variety of topic, an apparent freshness in the mode of treatment, a skillful adaptation to the ever varying excitements of the hour, all aided by the ceaseless craving in the human soul for mere intellectual novelty, give to the one an appearance of superiority it does not really possess, while, in respect to the other, the necessary
repetition of the same great truths, from age to age, has produced just the contrary effect.
There is no way, therefore, in which we can better employ the imagination than in helping us to get away from such a false and blinding influence. How would the mightiest minds of the ancient world now estimate the two prime powers of which we are speaking. Let us imagine Cicero, or Aristotle, to be permitted to revisit the earth, and study its new modes of thought as they would strike them from their old and, therefore, unbiased point of observation. Lay before them all the wonders of the modern newspaper press. They would doubtless be startled with many things it would reveal to them in the discoveries of modern physical science. But take them in those wide fields of thought in which mere physical discovery avails not to give superiority, and we may well doubt whether they would yield to us that triumph we so loudly claim. There is nothing in any modern declamation on the rights of men, or rights of women, that would make Aristotle ashamed of his Politica. Cicero might hear discussed our closest questions of social casuistry, yet think as proudly of his Offices, and his Republic, as he ever did while a resident upon earth. No modern political correspondence would make him blush for his Letters to Brutus and to Atticus. The ablest leader in any of our daily journals, would not strike them as very superior, either in thought or style, to what might have been expected from a Pericles, a Cleon, an Isocrates, or a Sallust. Our profoundest arguments for and against foreign intervention might, perhaps, only remind him of the times when democratic Athens was so disinterestedly striving to extend her “liberal institutions,” and aristocratic Sparta, with just about equal honesty, was gathering the other Hellenic cities to a crusade in favor of a sound conservatism. Modern Europe, with its politics, would be only Greece on a larger scale; and our own boasts of universal annexation might only call up some sad reminiscences of the olden time, when “the masses” did their thinking through the sophist and the rhetorician, instead of the lecturer and the press.
But now let fancy change the scene from the reading room to the ministrations of the Christian temple. To present the contrast in its strongest light, let it be the humblest church, with the humblest worshipers, and the humblest preacher of our great city—some obscure corner which the literary and editorial lights of the age might regard as the last place in which there could be expected any thing original or profound. Yes—the poorest sermon of the poorest preacher in New York could hardly fail to strike the great Roman, and the greater Greek, with an awe which nothing of any other kind in the modern world could ever inspire. What wondrous truths are these, and whence came they! Whence this doctrine of eternal life, so far beyond what we ever dared to think—this preaching of “righteousness, temperance, and a judgment to come,” so far transcending all the ancient moralists had ever taught! Whence these new and startling words, these superhuman ideas of grace, of prayer, of redemption, of a new and heavenly birth! And then again, the sublimity of that invocation—the heavenly thought, and heavenly harmony, of that song of praise and love! All is redolent of a philosophy to which our most rapt contemplations never ventured to ascend. Even the despised hymn-book may be soberly supposed to fill their souls with an admiration that Dryden and Shakspeare might fail to inspire. How transcendent the conceptions on every page! How far beyond all ancient or modern poetry that is alien to its spirit, or claims no kindred with its celestial origin. Here, indeed is progress. But we must close our sketch. Is the picture overdrawn? Or have we truthfully presented the highest although, in spirit, the least acknowledged aspect of the real superiority of the modern mind—even the humblest modern mind—over the proudest intellects of the ancient world?
EDITOR'S EASY CHAIR.
Between Congress, Kossuth, and Christmas—an alliterative trio of topic—we hardly know where to find the handle of a single other moving hammer of gossip. The hunt for chit-chat is after all a very philosophical employ; and we do not know another colaborateur, in the whole editorial fraternity, who has smacked the turbulence of congressional debaters, the enthusiasm of the Hungarian Patrick Henry, and the cadeaux of our Noel, with more equanimity and composure than ourselves.
Our chair, as we have hinted, is an easy one; and throwing ourselves back into its luxurious embrace, we have raced through the swift paragraphs of morning journalism, or lingered, as is our wont, upon the piquancy of occasional romance, with all the gravity of a stoic, and all the glow of Epicurus. We are writing now, while the street and the salon are lighted up with the full flush of the Hungarian enthusiasm. It amounts to a frenzy; and may well give to the quiet observer a text on which to preach of our national characteristics.
And firstly, we are prone to enthusiastic outbursts, we love to admire with an ecstasy; and when we do admire, we have a pride to eclipse all rivals in our admiration. We doubt if ever at Pesth, in the best days that are gone, or that are to come, of Hungarian nationality, the chief of the nation could receive more hearty and zealous plaudits than have welcomed him upon our sunny Bay of New York. A fine person, an honest eye, and an eloquent tongue—pleading for liberty and against oppression—stir our street-folk—and we hope in Heaven may always stir them—to such enthusiasm as no Paris mob can match.
But, secondly—since we are speaking sermonwise—our enthusiasm is only too apt to fall away into reaction. We do not so much grow into a steady and healthful consciousness of what we count worthy, as we leap to the embrace of what wears the air of worthiness; and the very excess of our emotion is only too often followed by a lethargy, which is not so much the result of a changed opinion, as of a fatigue of sentiment. Whether this counter-action is to follow upon the enthusiasm that greets the great Guest, we dare not say. We hope—for the sake of Hungary, for the sake of Liberty, and for the sake of all that ennobles manhood—that it may not!
Thirdly, and finally, as sermonizers are wont to say, we are, at bottom, with all our exciting moments, and all our fevers of admiration, a very matter-of-fact people. We could honor Mr. Dickens with such adulation, and such attention as he never found at home; but when it came to the point of any definite action for the protection of his rights as an author, we said to Mr. Dickens, with our heart in his books, but with our hands away from our pockets, “we are our own law-makers, and must pay you only in—honor!”
How will our matter-of-fact tendencies answer to the calls of Kossuth? We are not advocates or partisans—least of all—in our Easy Chair: we only seek to chisel out of the rough block of every day
talk, that image of thought which gives it soul and intent.
That the enlarged ideas of Kossuth—independent of their eloquent exposition from his lips—will meet with the largest and profoundest sympathy from the whole American people, we can not have a doubt. Nor can we doubt that that sympathy will lend such material aid, as was never before lent to any cause, not our own. But the question arises, how far such sympathy and individual aid will help forward a poor, down-trodden, and distant nation, toward the vigor of health and power. Sympathies and favoring opinion may do much toward alleviating the pains of wounded hearts and pride; they may, by urgency of expression, spread, and new leaven the whole thought of the world; but he is a fast thinker who does not know that this must be the action of time.
We can not but believe that the strongest sympathy, and the most generous proffers of individual aid will, after all, help very little toward practical issues, in any new endeavor of Hungary to be itself again. Poor Poland is a mournful monument of the truth of what we say. How then is our great Guest to derive really tangible aid in the furtherance of what lies so near his heart?
We pose the question, not for political discussion, but as the question which is giving a slant to all the talk of the town. To break peace with Austria and with Russia, and openly to take ground, as a government, with the subdued Hungarians, is what very few presume to hint—much less to think soberly of. The great Hungarian, himself, would hardly seem to have entertained such a possibility. We suppose his efforts rather to be directed toward the enkindling of such a large love of liberty, and such international sympathy among all people who are really free, as shall make a giant league of opinion, whose thunders shall mutter their anathemas against oppression, in every parliament and every congress; and by congruity of action, as well as congruity of impulse, fix the bounds to oppression, and fright every tyrant from advance—if not from security.
In all this we only sketch the color of the Hungarian talk.
Winter gayeties, meantime, have taken up their march toward the fatigues of spring. Furs, and velvet mantillas float along the streets, as so many pleasant decoys to graver thought. The opera, they say, has held its old predominance, with a stronger lift than ever, in the fashion of the town. Poor Lola Montes, shadowed under the folds of the Hungarian banner, has hardly pointed the talk of an hour. We can not learn that any triumphal arch graced the entry of the Spanish Aspasia, or that her coming is celebrated in any more signal way, than by the uncorking of a few extra bottles of Bavarian beer. That many will see her if she dances, there can hardly be a doubt; but that many will boast the seeing her, is far more doubtful. We can wink at occasional lewdness at home, but when Europe sends us the queen of its lewdness to worship, we forswear the issue, and like Agamemnon at the sacrifice of Iphigenia—hide our faces in our mantles.
We observe that our usually staid friend M. Gaillardet, of the Courrier, records in one of his later letters, an interview with the witching Lola; and it would seem that he had been wrought upon to speak for her an apologetic word. With all respect, however, for the French Republican, we think it will need far more than his casual encouragement, to lift the Bavarian countess into the range of American esteem.
Speaking of the French Republic, we can not forbear putting in record a little episode of its nice care for itself. M. Dumas, the favorite dramatist, publishes a letter in one of the Paris journals, in way of consolation for the imprisoned editor of the Avenement.
“My dear Vacquerie,” he says, “while I am on the lookout for sundry notices of what may touch the honorable institution of our Press censorship, I send you this fact, which is worthy to stand beside the official condemnation of the verses of Victor Hugo. M. Guizard, the director in such matters, has refused me, personally, the request to reproduce my Chevalier de la Maison Rouge; and the reason is, that my poor play has contributed to the accession of the Republic!”
Ever yours,
“A. Dumas.”
We are only surprised at the audacity of M. Dumas, in giving publicity to such a note.
As a curious and not unnatural issue, growing out of the free appropriation of Italian treasure, by the French Republicans of the last century, we notice the fact, that a certain Signor Braschi, whose father, or grandfather, was a near connection of Pope Pius VI., has recently laid claim to some of the most valuable pictures in the Louvre. It appears from his representations—supported by voluminous documentary evidence—that these objects pertained to a certain villa near Rome, occupied at the time of the French invasion by the Braschi family.
Signor Braschi, in quality of heir, now claims the spoils, including some of the most brilliant works of the Paris gallery. He avows his willingness, however, to waive his rights, in consideration of a few millions of francs, to be paid within the year. We have a fear that the only reparation the Republic will bestow, will be the offer of an airy apartment in the Maison des Fous.
Keeping to Paris gossip, for want of any thing special in that way belonging to our own capital, we find this little half-incident chronicled in the French papers.
Ladies, it is known (or if not known may hence forth be known) traffic in the funds at the Paris Exchange, in a way that would utterly amaze our princesses of the salon. You do not indeed see them upon the marble floor of the stately Bourse itself, but at the hour of “the board,” you are very sure to see a great many luxurious-looking little carriages drawn up in the neighborhood, and a great many ladies, at that special hour, are particularly zealous in their admiration of the old paintings which the dealers behind the Exchange, offer “at a bargain.” Very quick-running footmen are also stirring, and report sales and offers to their mistresses with most commendable activity.
Among these outsiders, some Paris romancist has remarked lately a very elegantly-dressed lady, who, three times a week, drew up her phaeton opposite the doors of the Vaudeville Theatre (which all habitués will remember, is just opposite the Bourse). Chance passers imagined her to be some actress of the boards, and gazed at her accordingly. But it was observed that an “agent de change” made repeated visits to her little phaeton, and at the closing of the board our lady disappeared down the Rue Vivienne.
Upon a certain day—no matter when—the bystanders were startled by piercing shrieks issuing from the phaeton of “my lady,” and all ran, to prevent as they supposed, some terrible crime. Sympathy proved vain; and to the inquiries of the police
the “man of business” only made phlegmatic reply, that the funds had fallen some ten per cent., and “my lady” was ruined.
Three days after, and the phaeton was a voiture de remise in the Rue Lepelletier. The coachman had negotiated the sale, but all tidings of “my lady” were lost.
Guinot, to whom we have been indebted again and again, has twisted out of his brain (we can not doubt it) this little happening of Paris life, which, if not true, is yet as characteristic of France as a revolution.
Two funerals, he says, on a certain day wended their course toward the cemetery of Père la Chaise. One bier bore the body of a man; the other, the body of a woman. The day was a sour November day—with the half-mist and half-frostiness that sometimes ushers in the Paris winter. The mourners were few—as mourners at Paris are generally few. Arrived within the gates, one cortège took the path leading to the right; the other turned to the left. The ceremonies being over, a single mourner only remained at each tomb.
At the grave of the lady lingered a man, apparently overcome with grief; at the grave of the man—a lady, who seemed equally overcome. Their adieus were lengthened at the graves until all the attendants had disappeared. By chance, the grief of the two parties seemed to show the same amount of persistent sorrow, and of lingering regard: thus it happened that in retracing their slow and saddened steps toward the main entrance, they met in the grand alley face to face. They exchanged a look of sorrow, and an exclamation of surprise.
“You, madame?”
“Vous, monsieur?”
“But this is very strange,” continued the gentleman, “is it not? We have met so rarely, since we broke our marriage contract ten years ago!”
“The chance which has led me here is a very sad one, monsieur,” and madame says it in very dolorous tones.
“It is as much for me; I have followed to the grave a person very dear to me.”
“Ah,” returns madame, “she is dead! I, too, have lost my dearest friend,” and she sobs.
“I beg you would accept, madame, my sincerest sympathy.”
“And you too, sir; believe me, my heart bleeds for you.”
Upon thus much of mournful interchange of grief, supervenes a silence—only broken by the low steps of the parties, and by occasional sobs of lament.
Guinot opens their conversation again thus:
Gentleman.—“Alas, existence seems to me very worthless—all is dark!”
Lady.—“Ah, what must it be for me, then?”
Gentleman.—“How can I ever replace her fondness?”
Lady.—“To whom can I confide my griefs?”
Gentleman.—“What home will now receive me?”
Lady.—“Upon whose arm can I lean?”
In such humor our racy feuilletonist traces their walk and conversation along the parterres of that Paris garden of death; at the gate he dismisses one of the two carriages which attend them; he crowns their mutual offices of consolation with a happy reunion—never to be broken—till one shall be again a mourner, and the other a tenant of the tomb.
Thus, says he, grief moralizes; and wise resolutions ride at an easy gallop, into broken hearts!
And thus, we say, French ingenuity makes every hearse the carrier of a romance; and seasons the deepest woe with the piquancy of an intrigue!
Yet another story is swimming in our ink-stand; and with a gracious lift of the pen we shall stretch it upon our sheet.
At Viterbo, which, as every one ought to know, lies within the Italian confines, lived once a poor peasant, with a poor, but pretty daughter, whose name was Marianne. She had not the silks of our ladies, or the refinements, so called, of fashion. She wore a rough peasant robe, and watched her father’s kids as they wandered upon the olive-shaded slopes of Viterbo.
At Viterbo lived a youth whose name was Carlo. Carlo was prone to ramble; and albeit of higher family than the peasant’s daughter, he saw and loved, and wooed and won the pretty Marianne. They were betrothed in the hearing only of the drowsy tinkle of the bells that hung upon the necks of the kids, over which Marianne was shepherdess. To marry they were afraid. He feared the anger of his father; and she feared to desert the cottage of her mother.
Carlo, swearing devotion, went away to Rome and became an advocate. The revolution stirred the stolid Romans, and Carlo enlisted under Garibaldi. After a series of fights and of escapes, Carlo found himself in five years from his parting with the pretty peasantess of Viterbo, a refugee, in the Café de France, which stands behind the Palais Royal at Paris. Lamenting over his broken fortunes, and mourning for his poor Italy, he sauntered, upon a certain day, into the Garden of Plants, upon the further side of the Seine. It is a place where the neighboring world go to breathe the air of woods, and to relieve the stifling atmosphere of the city, with the openness and freedom of Nature. (In parenthesis, let us ask, when shall New York civilization reach such a kind provision for life?)
Carlo wandered, dejected, sad, musing of bitterness, when his eye fell upon a face that seemed familiar. It was the face of a lady—in Parisian costume, with a Parisian air—but very like to the pretty peasantess of Viterbo. He followed her—met her—accosted her; there was no mistaking her frighted look of recognition. She was distant and cool—for the fates had bound her fortunes to those of a Parisian bourgeois, and she was the wife of the very respectable Monsieur Bovin. Carlo was neither cool nor distant: for grief had cast him down, and now first, hope blessed him with a shadow of the joys that were gone. Madame Bovin’s distance wore off under the impassioned addresses of the poor refugee, and again and again Carlo found his way to the Jardin des Plantes.
Finally (alas for Paris virtue!) the household of the respectable Monsieur Bovin, was, upon a certain morning, deserted; only a little note of poor French told the disconsolate husband, that the pretty Marianne could no longer subdue her new kindled love for her Italian home, and had gone back to the hills of Viterbo.
The sorrowing husband, though he could not purchase content, could yet purchase the services of the police. Through them, he tracked the runaway lovers to the borders of France. Thereafter the search was vain.
But, alas, for poor Carlo, he was recognized by the myrmidons of the powers that be, thrown into a dungeon, and report tells a story of his death.
As for the pretty peasant, Marianne, she wandered forlorn to her father’s home; but the father’s home was gone; and now, for menial hire—in her peasant dress (in place of the Paris robes) and with a saddened heart—she watches the kids, upon the olive-shaded slopes of Viterbo!
EDITOR'S DRAWER.
We are at the beginning of another year; a season in which all pause, and “take note of time”—time, the vehicle that carries every thing into nothing. “We talk,” says a quaint English author, “of spending our time, as if it were so much interest of a perpetual annuity; whereas, we are all living upon our capital; and he who wastes a single day, throws away that which can never be recalled or recovered:
‘Our moments fly apace,
Nor will our minutes stay;
Just like a flood our hasty days
Are sweeping us away!’”
It is well to think of these things, standing upon the verge of a new year. But let us not trouble the reader with a prolonged homily.
Every body will remember the missionary at one of the Cannibal Islands, who asked one of the natives if he had ever known a certain predecessor of his upon the island, who had labored in the moral vineyard there? “Yes, we know him well—we ate a part of him.” Now, the “piece of a cold missionary on the sideboard for a morning lunch,” of which the witty Sydney Smith made mention, is scarcely a less objectionable dish, on the score of the material, than the chief feature of a repast, held, according to a French journal, not a thousand miles from the Ascot race-course, in England:
“At the recent races at Ascot the famous horse Tiberius broke his leg, by bounding against one of the posts of the barrier, while preparing for the race. His owner, the Lord Millbank, lost ten thousand pounds in betting upon his noble steed, besides his value, and others also lost very heavily: the law, of course, being that all bets should be paid whether the failure to win came from the less speed or from accident.
“Three days afterward, Lord Millbank gave a very sumptuous dinner. The most distinguished of the English peerage were present, and the conviviality ran exceedingly high. Toward the close, the noble host rose in his place, and proposed an oblation to the health of the departed Tiberius.
“The toast was clamorously received, but the speaker remained standing with his glass in his hand.
“‘We drink to Tiberius,’ said Milord Millbank, when the shouts had subsided; ‘to Tiberius the most beautiful, the most admirable, the most spirited courser whose hoofs ever trod upon our glorious British turf!’
“Shouts again resounded to the roof in vehement peals.
“‘You know,’ continued his lordship, ‘the achievements of this horse. His deeds belong to history. Fame has taken charge of his glory. But it belongs to me, and to you, my lords and gentlemen, to do honor to his mortal remains! I wished that this lofty courser should have a burial worthy of his great, his immortal deservings. He has had it, my lords and gentlemen, he has had it! My cook has fitly prepared him, and you have feasted upon him to-day! Yes, my lords and gentlemen, this repast which you have relished so keenly—these dishes which awakened the so frequent inquiry, ‘What animal could be so delicious?’—that animal, my lords and gentlemen, was Tiberius! It is that noble courser whose mortal remains now repose in your stomachs! May your digestions be light!’
“At these words the enthusiasm concentrated for a moment—possibly with some vague thought of an immediate resurrection—but with a sudden outburst of ‘Hurrahs!’ the sentiment took the turn of sublimity, and another glowing bumper was sent to join the departed courser in his metempsychosis.”
The English papers sometimes get off telling jokes against their neighbors across the Channel, but seldom any thing better than this. Besides, how thoroughly French it is, both in the conception and execution! Its origin could never be mistaken.
We put on record, in these holiday-times of imbibition, these warning stanzas, to guard the reader alike against cause and effect:
“My head with ceaseless pain is torn,
Fast flow the tear-drops from my eye
I curse the day I e’er was born,
And wish to lay me down and die;
Bursts from my heart the frequent sigh,
It checks the utterance of my tongue;
But why complain of silence?—why,
When all I speak is rash and wrong?
“The untasted cup before me lies—
What care I for its sparkle now?
Before me other objects rise,
I know not why—I know not how.
My weary limbs beneath me bow.
All useless is my unstrung hand:
Why does this weight o’ershade my brow?
Why doth my every vein expand?
“What rends my head with racking pain?
Why through my heart do sorrows pass?
Why flow my tears like scalding rain?
Why look my eyes like molten brass?
And why from yonder brimming glass
Of wine untasted have I shrunk?
’Cause I can’t lift it—for, alas!
I’m so pre-pos-ter-ous-ly drunk!”
The vagaries of the insane are sometimes amusing to witness; and not unfrequently there is a “method in their madness” that would not be amiss in those who are on the outside of lunatic asylums. Many years ago in Philadelphia, a patient in the insane asylum of that city fancied himself to be the Redeemer of the world; and his talk and actions were always in keeping with the character, save that he exacted a rigid deference to his person and his divinely-derived power. But one day another patient arrived, whose idiosyncrasy it was, that he was the Supreme Being. A little while after his entrance into the institution, he met in one of the halls, as he was passing, the imagined representative of the Son; who, not liking his bearing, reminded him who he was: “Yes, you are the Son, but know from this time henceforth, that you have seen the Father, and must obey him!” “And strange enough,” said the keeper of the institution to the friend who gives us the particulars, “from that day forward, all power was given unto the latter; and at length the fancied Son’s ‘air-drawn’ vision melted away, and he left the establishment a perfectly sane man.”
Some twelve or fifteen years ago there was in the lunatic asylum at Worcester, Massachusetts, a kind of crazy David Crockett, who fancied that he could do any thing that could be done, and a little more. One day a good many visitors were walking slowly through the halls, examining them, and occasionally saying a word or two to the patients. After a very courteous reception of a gentleman, who mentioned that he had come from South Carolina, the crazy man interrupted him abruptly with:
“Have you felt any of my earthquakes down there lately?”
One of the visitors replied: “No, we’ve had nothing of the kind, where I live.”
“I thought so! I knew it!” returned the patient, frowning. “I have an enemy. Ice! Ice! Why, I ordered one of my very best earthquakes for your part of the country! It was to have ripped up the earth, and sent the Mississippi into the Gulf of Mexico. Look here!” he continued, pointing to a crack in the plastering, “that’s one of my earthquakes! What do you think of that? I’ve got more orders for earthquakes than I can attend to in a year. I’ve got four coming off, up north this afternoon—two in Vermont!”
That was a good story that was told of an occurrence which took place in a stage-coach one morning many years ago in the western part of this State. A young, conceited fellow, who had been monopolizing almost all the conversation of the company, consisting of some sixteen passengers, had been narrating the wonderful exploits he had performed, the prodigies of valor of which he had been the hero, and the wonderful escapes of which he had been the subject. At least he related one adventure in which he was the principal actor, which was so perfectly astounding, that a low whistle of incredulity was a simultaneous demonstration on the part of the passengers. An old gentleman, with a solemn visage, and an ivory-headed cane, sitting in the back corner of the stage, here observed:
“That last adventure of yours, my young friend, is a very extraordinary one—very extraordinary. One could hardly believe it without having seen it. I didn’t see it; but I can relate a circumstance which happened in my family, and in which I was for a time deeply interested, which is almost as remarkable, and I believe quite as true. Will you hear it?”
“Certainly,” said our braggadocio; “I should be very glad to hear it.”
“Give it to us! give it to us!” echoed the whole company, getting an inkling, from the solemn phiz of the old gentleman, that something rich was in the wind.
“Well, sir,” continued the narrator, “the circumstance to which I alluded is this: My father had three children. He had an only brother, who had also three children. My grandfather had left to my father and my uncle a large estate, in the executorship of which a quarrel broke out, which grew more and more bitter, until at length the aid of the law was invoked, and many years of violent litigation ensued, during all which time the costs of the proceedings were gradually eating up the estate. My father and uncle saw this, and though bitter enemies, they had too much sense to bite each his own nose off. They were chivalrous and brave men, almost as much, probably, as yourself, sir (addressing the daring young gentleman aforesaid), and they determined to ‘fight it out among themselves,’ as the saying is, and thus keep the money in the family. Well, sir, my father made this proposition to my uncle; to wit: that the three sons of each, in the order of their age, should settle the disputed question on the field of honor; the majority of the survivors to decide the affirmative. It was readily acceded to. My eldest brother went out, on the appointed day, and at the first fire he fell dead upon the turf. My next eldest brother took his station at once, and at the second fire, shot my next eldest cousin through the lungs, and he never drew a whole breath afterward.”
Here the old gentleman’s emotion was so great that he paused a moment, as if to collect himself. Presently he proceeded:
“It now became my turn to take the stand; and upon me rested the hopes of my family. I can truly say, that it was not so much fear that made my hand tremble and my pistol to waver: it was the deep sense of responsibility that rested upon me. We took our places—a simultaneous discharge was a moment after heard—and, and——”
Here the narrator put his handkerchief to his face, and seemed to shake with irrepressible agitation.
“Well, sir,” exclaimed our young Munchausen who had listened to the narrative with almost breathless attention, “well, sir—well?—what was the result? How did it end?”
“I was shot dead the first fire!” replied the old gentleman; “the property passed into the hands of my uncle and his family; and my surviving brother has been poor as a rat ever since!”
An uproarious laugh, that fairly shook the coach, told “Braggadocio” that he had been slightly “taken in and done for” after a manner entirely his own.
This anecdote will not be lost upon bored listeners to those who shoot with the long bow, or in other words, stretch a fact until they have made it as long as they want it. We have somewhere heard of a man at a dinner-party who was determined not to be outdone in this but too common species of archery. Some one present had been engaged in attracting the attention of the company to an account of a pike that he had caught the day before that weighed nineteen pounds! “Pooh!” exclaimed a gentleman sitting near him, “that is nothing to the one I caught last week, which weighed twenty-six pounds.” “Confound it!” whispered the first fisherman to his neighbor, “I wish I could catch my pike again; I’d add ten pounds to him directly!”
There is something more than mere good measures in the following lines. There is a satire upon Love and Mammon, when the deep affections of the heart reach a greater depth in the pocket:
“Dear friend, I’m glad to meet you here,
But scarce know what to say,
For such an angel I have seen
At your mamma’s to-day!
Of fairer form than Venus, when
She trod the Grecian shore;
And then such splendid hair and eyes
I never saw before.
“Her air and manners were divine,
Above all petty arts;
Oh, surely she was formed to reign
The peerless Queen of Hearts.
Dear Bob, we have been college friends,
And friendship’s still the same;
Now only tell me who she is—
Oblige me with her name.
“‘Fine hair and eyes!’—‘the Queen of Hearts!’
Who can she be?—oh, yes!
I know her now—why, Frederick, that’s
My sister’s governess!’
Your sister’s governess!!—Indeed
I thought it might be so;
She looks genteel—but still there is
About her something low!”
It is not a little amusing, or it would be if it were not rather a serious matter oftentimes, to hear a surgeon who loves his profession talk with another of the “splendid fungus” which he had recently removed, or the “beautiful case of amputation of both arms at the shoulder,” which he had just witnessed. A fair travesty of this is afforded in the letter purporting to come from an apothecary in the country to a friend in London, wherein, among other things, he wrote: “My patients are rather select than numerous,
but I think the red lamp and brass plate may attract a few. I had a glorious case of dislocation of the shoulder last week, and nearly pulled the fellow in half with the assistance of two or three bricklayers who were building next door. The other doctor tried first, and couldn’t reduce it, because he had no bricklayers at hand. This has got my name up, rather. They are terrible Goths down here though. You can scarcely conceive the extent of their ignorance. Not one in twenty can read or write; and so all my dispensing-labels which I tie on the bottles are quite thrown away. A small female toddled into the surgery the other day, and horrified me by drawling out:
“‘If you please, sir, mother’s took the lotion, and rubbed her leg with the mixture!’
“This might have been serious, for the lotion contained a trifle of poison; but Jack and I started off directly; and as it happened very luckily to be washing-day, we drenched the stupefied woman with soap-suds and pearl-ash, until every thing was thrown off from the stomach, including, I suspect, a quantity of the lining membrane. This taught me the lesson, that a medical man should always have his instruments in order; for if Jack had not borrowed my stomach-pump to squirt at the cats with, a good deal of bother might have been avoided. But he is a clever fellow at heart, and would do any thing for me. He quite lived on the ice during the frost, tripping every body up he came near; and whether he injured them seriously or not, I know the will was good, and was therefore much obliged to him!”
It would be a curious thing, if they could be traced out, to ascertain the origin of half the quaint old sayings and maxims that have come down to the present time from unknown generations. Who, for example, was “Dick,” who had the odd-looking “hat-band,” and who has so long been the synonym or representative of oddly-acting people? Who knows any thing authentic of the leanness of “Job’s turkey,” who has so many followers in the ranks of humanity? Scores of other sayings there are, concerning which the same, or similar questions might be asked. Who ever knew, until comparatively late years, what was the origin of the cautionary saying, “Mind your P’s and Q’s?” A modern antiquarian, however, has put the world right in relation to that saying: In ale-houses, in the olden time, when chalk “scores” were marked upon the wall, or behind the door of the tap-room, it was customary to put the initials “P” and “Q” at the head of every man’s account, to show the number of “pints” and “quarts” for which he was in arrears; and we may presume many a friendly rustic to have tapped his neighbor on the shoulder, when he was indulging too freely in his potations, and to have exclaimed, as he pointed to the chalk-score, “Mind your P’s and Q’s, man! mind your P’s and Q’s!” The same writer, from whom we glean this information, mentions an amusing anecdote in connection with it, which had its origin in London, at the time a “Learned Pig” was attracting the attention of half the town. A theatrical wag, who attended the porcine performances, maliciously set before the four-legged actor some peas—a temptation which the animal could not resist, and which immediately occasioned him to lose the “cue” given him by the showman. The pig-exhibitor remonstrated with the author of the mischief, on the unfairness of what he had done; to which he replied: “I only wanted to ascertain whether the pig knew his ‘peas’ from his ‘cues!’”
Sympathy, we find described on a slip in our “Drawer” to be “A sensibility of which its objects are oftentimes insensible.” It may be considered wrong to discourage a feeling of which there is no great superabundance is this selfish and hard-hearted world; but even of the little that exists, a portion is frequently thrown away; a fact sufficiently illustrated by two amusing instances, cited by the writer in question:
“A city damsel, whose ideas had been Arcadianized by the perusal of pastorals, having once made an excursion to a distance of twenty miles from London, wandered into the fields, in the hope of discovering a bonâ-fide live ‘shepherd.’ To her great delight, she at length encountered one, under a green hedge, with his dog by his side, his ‘crook’ in his hand, and his sheep round about him, just as if he were sitting to be modeled in China for a chimney-ornament. To be sure, he did not exhibit the blue jacket, jessamine vest, pink inexpressibles, and peach-colored stockings of those faithful portraitures. This was mortifying: still more so was it, that he was neither particularly young nor cleanly; but most of all, that he wanted the indispensable accompaniment of a pastoral reed, in order that he might beguile his solitude with the charms of music. Touched with pity at this privation, and lapsing unconsciously into poetical language, the damsel exclaimed:
“‘Ah, gentle shepherd! tell me, where’s your pipe?’
“‘I left it at home, miss,’ replied the clown, scratching his head, ‘cause I haint got no ‘baccy!’”
The “sentiment” was satisfied at once in this case, as it was in the other, which is thus presented:
“A benevolent committee-man of the Society for superseding the necessity of climbing chimney-sweep boys, seeing a sooty urchin weeping bitterly at the corner of a street, asked him the cause of his distress; to which the boy replied:
“‘Master has been using me shamefully: he has been letting Jim Hudson go up the chimney at Number Nine, when it was my turn. He said it was too high and too dangerous for me; but I’ll go up a chimney with Jim Hudson any day in the year; that’s what I will; and he knows it, and master knows it too!’”
Sympathy was rather thrown away in this case, that’s quite certain.
Winter is upon us; the biting winds rattle our window-shutters and howl down our chimneys. “Poor naked wretches” tremble in the fierce cold; and homeless, houseless women and children huddle in the alleys and hiding-places of the city. God help the poor! Now is the time to remember them. Let the rich recall “poor old Lear,” when deprived of his kingdom, and reduced to want, the cold rains beat pitilessly upon his white head, he was forced to exclaim, remembering what he might have done when he had the power, “We have ta’en too little care of this!” Let no disappointment, such as is most forcibly expressed in these lines, add an additional drop to the cup of bitterness which is commended to the lips of the poor of our city:
Rejoice! hope dawns upon the poor;
The rich man’s heard our prayer;
He’ll open wide the garner door,
And bid us come and share.
He feels the bread-seed was not given
Alone to swell his pride;
But that God sent it down from heaven,
For all the world beside.
Wail! wail! the rich man’s word has proved
A syren sound alone!
He looked upon the wealth he loved;
And then his heart was stone!
Oh, would the dull, insensate clod
Give forth its yearly store,
If our great Father and our God
Had thought not of the poor?
A story has been for many years current, that an eccentric gentleman, of some scientific aspirations, residing on Long Island, not a thousand miles from New York, once induced a thick-set and very green Hibernian to ascend a very remarkably high and spreading tree, near his residence, accompanied by a curious nondescript flying-machine, by the aid of which he was to soar off, and float very softly down upon the bosom of mother Earth! All being ready, the aeronaut started from a platform which had been built in the topmost branches. He “slode” over the branches, and then “toppled down headlong” to the ground, covered with the wrecks of his scientific master’s flying-machine, and making another wreck of himself. He “heard something drop,” and it was a foolish Irishman! When taken up, it was found that he had broken both his arms, a leg, dislocated a shoulder, and otherwise seriously injured himself. Being long ill, at his employer’s cost and charges, the “flying-machine,” so signally destroyed, was considered a “permanent investment.” This incident, which is really true, reminds us of the story of “The Flying Cobbler,” an old Irish story, of which we find a record preserved in “The Drawer:”
“When Felix showed himself on the top battlement of the tower from which he was to jump, opening and shutting a great pair of black wings that were fastened to his shoulders, every face in the great crowd was turned up to gaze at him. I thought myself that the tower never looked such a murdering height from the ground as when I looked at the poor devil standing on the tip-top stone, as unconcerned as an old cormorant on a rock, flapping his wings for a flight. At length, by his motions we saw that he was preparing to be off in earnest. The men held their breath hard, and the women began to tremble and cry; and then, all of a sudden, he made a jump off the battlement, and sailed away ‘most illigant.’ A wild shout of delight arose from the people, but before it had ceased the glory of poor Felix was ‘done up.’ After two or three flutters, his wings fell flat to his sides, his heels went up, and down he came tumbling like a wild-goose with a shot through his gizzard, plump to the ground! Every body thought that it was all over with him; but when we ran to pick him up, we found him lying on his back, not dead, but groaning most pitifully. We took him up as tenderly as we could, and carried him home, and laid him on his bed. When the doctor came he found that both his legs were smashed. Not a word nor a groan escaped him. After he came to his senses, he lay with his eyes open near an hour; and then, when the doctor was setting one of the broken bones, he tried to raise himself up in the bed, and with the fire dancing in his eyes, he said:
“‘Doctor, dear, how long will it be before I’m cured again?’
“‘Really,’ says the doctor, ‘I can’t possibly take upon me to say, precisely. ’Tis a bad case, and I don’t apprehend that you can be perfectly recovered under three months.’
“‘Three months! Oh the devil! what am I to do? Three months!—when I had just found it out!’
“‘Found what out, jewel?’ said his mother, who was sitting by his bedside.
“‘The cause of my failing to-day, mother. The wings were right, but I forgot one thing.’
“‘And what was that, Felix?’”
“‘The tail, mother! If I’d not forgot me tail, I could have flew to Ameriky and back again!’”
Now that what is called, or miscalled the “Code of Honor,” is falling into desuetude in regions of the country where it was once considered binding, the following laughable burlesque upon the manner in which modern duels are sometimes brought about, and conducted, will doubtless, as the newspapers say, be “read with interest:”
“William Singsmall, Esquire, thought proper to say something very severe about somebody abroad, when the expression was taken up by Mr. Flea, a friend of the insulted party, who happened to be within reach of William Singsmall, Esquire. Mr. Flea waited on Mr. Singsmall, who refused to retract. Ulterior measures were hinted at, and the following series of hostile notes and messages ensued:
I.
“Sir: Understanding you have imputed cowardice to my friend William Singsmall, Esquire, I call on you either to retract, or refer me to a friend. As the matter presses, I beg, on the part of William Singsmall, Esquire, that you will answer this when I return from Paris, where I am going for three weeks.
“Yours obediently, Peter Skullthick.”
“To James Flea, Esquire.”
II.
“Sir: I received your note, and went immediately into the country; but on my return to town you shall hear from me with the least possible delay.
“Yours obediently, James Flea.”
III.
“Sir: I have got your note, and will see about it.
“Yours obediently, Peter Skullthick.”
IV.
“Sir: I have waited every day at the club, from ten in the morning until twelve at night, for the last month, hoping to hear from you.
“Yours obediently, James Flea.”
V.
“Sir: My object in writing to you was not on my own account, but on behalf of William Singsmall, Esquire, to whom you have most offensively imputed cowardice, and alleged that you threatened to cane him, while he was hidden in the larder of the club-house.”
“You will see that as a man of honor he must take some notice of this. I am going out of town for a few weeks, and as soon as convenient after my return shall be glad to hear from you.”
“Yours obediently, Peter Skullthick.”
VI.
“Sir: I did go to the club-house with a cane under my coat, for the purpose of pitching into Singsmall. I had the solemn assurance of the porter that Singsmall had entered the club and had not left it; but on searching the house he was not to be found. I can only presume that your friend was under the sink or in the larder, and I therefore can not consider him entitled to any thing better than the severe drubbing I mean to inflict upon him whenever I shall be so fortunate as meet him.”
“Yours obediently, James Flea.”
VII.
”Sir: I expected you would have referred me to a friend, and shall wait at the club until I hear from you again—unless I am called away by other engagements.”
“Yours obediently, Peter Skullthick.”
After this correspondence, Flea sent a friend to Skullthick, who declared he had no quarrel with any one, but only wished his friend Singsmall to have the opportunity of being shot through the body by Flea, whose friend insisted that he (Flea) should fight no one but him (Skullthick). Skullthick, on the contrary, had no quarrel with Flea; but although a married man, was ready to fight Flea’s friend, who threw himself into the hands of somebody else, who would have nothing to do with any of them. And there the matter ended!
LITERARY NOTICES.
Wesley and Methodism, by Isaac Taylor (published by Harper and Brothers), is one of the most characteristic productions of the author, and on account of its deep reflective spirit, its comprehensive breadth of view, its subtle analysis of psychological manifestations, its acute and independent criticisms of great popular movements, its unmistakable earnestness of tone, and its catholic freedom from sectarian limitations, may be regarded as possessing a greater significance than most of the theological publications of the day. Mr. Taylor’s favorite theme of discussion is the philosophical import of the historical developments of religion. Deeply imbued with the spirit of contemplation, he is not a dogmatist, nor a partisan. His own religious convictions are too prominent to allow any hesitation as to their character; but he has divested his mind, to a singular degree, of the influence of personal tendencies, in pronouncing judgment on the object of his investigations. He evidently intends to be impartial—and this is no slight praise—to obtain an uncolored view of the facts which he is considering, to do justice to every trait of excellence, wherever discovered, and to abstain from all indulgence of needless censure, even when compelled to express an unfavorable opinion.
In the present work Mr. Taylor discusses the origin, the progress, the actual condition, and the future application of Wesleyan Methodism, as an instrument, under Providence, for the spiritual elevation of mankind. Regarding Methodism as a divinely-appointed development of the Gospel, acknowledging the hand of God in its rise and progress, holding the character and labors of its early founders in affectionate veneration, and deeming it fraught with momentous ulterior consequences, although temporary in its import, he presents a series of consecutive sketches of its history, depicting the wonderful events which attended its energetic progress, analyzing the causes which impeded its universal triumph, and tracing the conditions of its wide success to the elementary principles in the religious nature of man.
The first, and by far the most interesting portion of the volume, is occupied with a description of the founders of Methodism, including the two Wesleys, John and Charles, Whitefield, Fletcher, Coke, and Lady Huntingdon. Without entering into the minute details of biography, which have been anticipated by Watson, Southey, and other writers, Mr. Taylor gives a discriminating critical estimate of the devoted apostles, to whose zeal and intrepidity England was indebted for the revival of the religious life, at a time when she had far lapsed from the warmth and vitality of spiritual Christianity. John Wesley, in the opinion of the author, has never been surpassed by any general, statesman, or churchman, in administrative skill—in the faculty of adapting himself to the circumstances of the moment, without compromise of his authority or personal dignity. For more than half a century he passed through the most difficult conjunctures with admirable success. His simplicity and integrity of purpose were in perfect harmony with the simplicity of his institution, enabling him to manage with ability what had been devised by skill.
Nor was his personal character less worthy of affection and homage. If he had moved in a private sphere, that of a parish priest for example, his flock would not have been able to find a single fault in their minister. The love and admiration of his intimate friends would only have been a more emphatic expression of the feeling of the little world whose happiness it was to live within sight and hearing of him. His personal virtue was not merely unblemished; it was luminously bright. His countenance shone with goodness, truth, purity, benevolence; a sanctity belonged to him, which was felt by every one in his presence, as if it were a power with which the atmosphere was fraught. It was Wesley’s virtue and piety that gave form and tone to his teaching, and his teaching has embodied itself in the Christian-like behavior of tens of thousands of his people on both sides the Atlantic.
Of Whitefield, Mr. Taylor remarks, that the secret of his power over the vast multitudes that he moulded like wax, was a vivid perception of the reality of spiritual things, and the concentrated force with which he brought them to bear on the conscience and imagination of his hearers. His singular gifts as a speaker rested on the conceptive faculty as related to those objects that are purely spiritual, both abstract and concrete; and with him this faculty had a compass, a depth, and an intensity of sensitiveness, never, perhaps, equaled. While he spoke the visible world seemed to melt away into thin mist, and the real, the eternal world to come out from among shadows, and stand forth in awful demonstration. This faculty was by no means that of the poet or the painter, which is sensuous in its material. If it had been of this sort, he would have left us monuments of his genius, like a Divina Commedia, or a Paradise Lost, or a series of Michael Angelo cartoons. The history of Whitefield’s ministry is simply this: The Gospel he proclaimed drew around him dense masses of men as soon as he commenced his course; it was the power of religious truth, not the preacher’s harmonious voice, not his graceful action, not his fire as an orator, that gained him power over congregations to the last.
In the remainder of the volume, Mr. Taylor considers the primary elements of Methodism, its relations to society, and its position in the future. These topics are discussed with sagacity, and with perfect candor, although not in a manner to command universal assent. Whatever opinion may be formed as to his conclusions, no one can doubt the suggestiveness of his comments, nor the earnestness of his inquiries. The style of this work, which we do not admire, betrays the same intellectual habits as the former treatises of the author. He writes like a man more addicted to reflection than to utterance. He simply records his own musings as they succeed each other in the solitude of the closet, without aiming, at the force, point, and effective brevity of expression, which is necessary to obtain a mastery over the minds of others. He seems to regard language as an aid to his own meditations, rather than a medium of intercourse with his fellow-men. His writings are far more like a monologue than an address. He aims to clear up his own convictions, to reduce them to order, and to give them an outward embodiment, by their visible expression, rather than to enforce them on the attention of his readers. Hence, he is often diffuse, even to languor; and nothing but the vigor of his thought could prevent a wearisome monotony.
No one, however, can call in question the originality and genuine earnestness of his speculations; and accordingly, it is impossible to follow their track, without a profound interest, in spite of the defects of his style.
Charles Scribner has published a new edition of Young’s Night Thoughts, edited by James Robert Boyd, with critical and explanatory notes, a memoir of the author, and an estimate of his writings. The editor has performed his task with evident industry and love of his author. His notes are generally brief, and well-adapted to their purpose. In some instances, they dwell on minute and comparatively unimportant points, which might safely be left to the sagacity of the reader. The edition, however, is designed as a text-book in schools, for the study of grammatical analysis and rhetorical criticism, and, in this respect, justifies an attention to trifling verbal difficulties, which would be out of place in a work prepared merely for the library of the adult. As a poet, Young can never become a general favorite. His day, we believe, is past. The prevailing taste demands a more genial, human, healthy expression of feeling—certainly, not of less religious fervor—but one breathing the spirit of serene trust, rather than of morbid gloom. Still, the lovers of his sombre meditations will find this edition convenient and ample.
Florence, by Eliza Buckminster Lee, is a story of singular sweetness and grace, recounting the history of a Parish Orphan, and filled with charming pictures of domestic life in the interior of New England. “A sketch of the Village in the last Century,” is added to the volume, presenting a succession of rural descriptions in a series of familiar letters. Mrs. Lee is distinguished as a writer, for her exquisite taste, her power of graphic portraiture, her love of home-scenes and incidents, and her deep vein of cordial, kindly feeling. These qualities run through the present little work with a mild, silvery brightness, which gives it an irresistible charm. (Published by Ticknor, Reed, and Fields.)
Under the title of Words in Earnest, a collection of valuable essays from the pens of several eminent clergymen, has been issued by E. H. Fletcher. The work includes two able discourses on “The Moral Influence of Cities,” and an essay on “The Theatre,” by Rev. W. W. Everts; an admirable appeal to the young men of cities on the importance of “Mental Improvement,” by Rev. J. W. Alexander; a sound and instructive article on “The Duties of Employers to the Employed,” by Rev. William Hague; an argumentative essay, maintaining the retributive character of “Punishment,” by Prof. Anderson; and an eloquent plea for “Children,” and for “The Sabbath,” by Rev. Geo. B. Cheever. The work abounds in salutary counsels, expressed with pungency and force.
The Captains of the Old World, by Henry William Herbert (published by Charles Scribner), is an original and erudite description of several of the chief battles recorded in ancient history, with an estimate of the character and position of the most celebrated commanders. Mr. Herbert is a decided adherent of the modern critical school of history, the principles of which have been applied to Roman antiquities with such admirable effect by the German Niebuhr and the English Arnold. He is no slavish copyist, however, of those authorities, nor of any others, however eminent. His work is the fruit of independent personal research and reflection. A classical scholar of rare attainments, familiar with the language and style of the ancient masters, fortified with learning which embraces a much wider sphere than the subject of the present inquiries, and endowed with an instinctive sagacity of no common order, Mr. Herbert is singularly qualified for the task he has attempted, and has performed it in a manner highly creditable to the soundness of his judgment and the depth of his researches. His comparison of the ancient strategy with the modern science of warfare is so clearly illustrated, and so forcibly reasoned, as to possess a profound interest not only for professional military men, but for all readers who delight in the removal of learned dust from the records of antiquity. He describes the battles which come under his consideration, not rhetorically, but with the paramount desire of accurate statement, though without the sacrifice of picturesque effect. In many cases, where the facts are covered with obscurity, and none but the most cautious inquirer can hope for the attainment of truth, Mr. Herbert displays a nice critical judgment in the sifting of evidence, never seduced into the love of paradox, and if compelled to have recourse to theories, always sustaining them by arguments that are no less powerful than ingenious.
His conclusions in regard to the character of several ancient heroes, differ from the prevailing opinions. His discussions on this point are among the most interesting portions of his volume. He thus summarily disposes of the hero of Marathon: “Much obloquy has been heaped on Athens on his account; much ink has been spilt, and much fine writing wasted thereanent, concerning the ingratitude of that state in particular, and of democracies in general.... But all the outcry in this cause is futile, unjust, and absurd. Miltiades was a successful and victorious soldier: he was rewarded according to the laws of his state to the utmost—he was the first man in Athens. He was a bad citizen, almost a traitor, and all the severity and disgrace of his punishment was remitted in memory of his great deeds past.... As a man, it must be said, he was flawed. Wholly unfitted to be a citizen of a free state, he might command others. But he could not command himself.”
Nor does the Great Alexander fare better at the hands of our merciless iconoclast: “If we consider calmly the atrocities committed by his orders and under his authority at Thebes, at Tyre, at Gaza, and the barbarous torments inflicted in cold-blooded policy, alike on the good and gallant Britis and on the brutal and blood-thirsty Bressos—if we remember the unrelenting, if not undeserved slaughter of the high-spirited and brave Parmenion, the ruthless slaughter of the hardy Klutos, who had saved his own life in the desperate melée of Issos—if we recount the woes inflicted on the brave population of a loyal country, fighting in defense of their own liberties, the fearful waste of blood in his reckless and fruitless battles, we shall have no reason to doubt the correctness of the verdict which condemns him as the rashest of conquerors, and the cruelest of all who have laid claim to the much-misapplied title of hero.”
We recommend this volume as an admirable specimen of the method of investigating history with the lights of modern criticism. If we can not accept all the author’s conclusions, we never cease to admire his frankness, candor, and manliness as a writer. His style is in perfect keeping with his subject, though occasionally careless, and now and then sliding into unauthorized expressions, which can not be excused on the ground of defective culture or taste.
Harper and Brothers have issued an edition of A Lady’s Voyage round the World, by the renowned female traveler, Ida Pfeiffer. The translation from the German by Mrs. Percy Sinnett is executed with spirit and with apparent fidelity. Ida
Pfeiffer was born with an innate passion for travel. From earliest childhood, her great longing was to see the world. The sight of a traveling carriage brought tears to her eyes. When a mere girl of ten or twelve, she devoured every book of travels on which she could lay her hands. Subsequently, she made numerous tours with her parents, and at a later period with her husband. Nothing could detain her at home, but the care of her children. When their education was completed, her youthful dreams and visions began to haunt her imagination. Distant lands and strange customs seemed to open upon her a new heaven and a new earth. Her age made it not inconvenient to travel alone. Defying danger and privation, she resumed her travels, and has since left scarce a spot of peculiar interest on the globe unvisited. In the volume now published, she describes a voyage to Brazil, with excursions into the interior, a voyage to Canton by way of Tahiti, a residence in China, Hindostan, Persia, Turkey, and other countries of most importance to the intelligent traveler. She possesses a happy talent of portraying incidents and facts in an agreeable manner. Her work is replete with valuable information, while its perpetual good humor, sagacious observation, and sound common sense, sustain an unflagging interest in its perusal.
Charles Scribner has published a beautiful edition of Ik. Marvel’s Reveries of a Bachelor, with several admirable illustrations by Darley. Welcome to our quaint, genial, “bachelor,” in his holiday costume, destined to shed a new gladness over the new year by his delicious whimsicalities, and his quaint, sparkling, mosaic of fun, frolic, and melting pathos! Welcome with his most fantastic dreams, so cheery and bright, in the midst of the bustling, heartless utilities of the day! We can recommend Ik. Marvel’s lifesome, soul-ful pages to all whose spirits are chafed with the wear and tear of this working-day world.
Aims and Obstacles, by G.P.R. James. Another production of the most indefatigable of English novelists, whose powers seem to have received a new impulse from his recent change of residence. The scene of this work is laid in England, and like all its predecessors, abounds in lively sketches of character, and charming descriptions of nature. For boldness of invention, variety of incident, and freshness of feeling, it is not surpassed by any recent production of its eminent author.
Norman Maurice, by W. Gilmore Simms, is the title of a new drama, which can not fail to add to the high literary reputation of its distinguished author. The materials are derived from American professional and political life; not a very promising source, one would suppose, for a work of art; but in the plastic hands of the present writer, they are wrought into a dramatic composition of admirable skill and thrilling interest. The plot is one of great simplicity. A noble-minded and brilliantly-gifted person becomes the object of jealousy and hatred to a crafty, unscrupulous villain. The drama consists in the development of his infernal machinations for the ruin of his enemy, and the ultimate triumph of the latter over his foul and cunning conspiracies. The denouement is effected by an heroic instance of self-devotion on the part of a woman, whose character exhibits a rare combination of feminine loveliness and strength. Mr. Simms has succeeded in portraying some of the darker passions of humanity with uncommon power. His language is terse and vigorous—intense, but not extravagant, and often marked by an idiomatic simplicity that reminds one of the golden age of dramatic writing. We rejoice to notice such an instance of decided success in a branch of literary creation where triumphs are so much less frequent than defeats. (Richmond. Published by John R. Thompson.)
The Claims of Science, by William C. Richards, is an Anniversary Discourse before the Literary Societies of Erskine College, South Carolina. It sets forth the value and importance of the physical sciences, both as the means of a generous intellectual culture, and the condition of great practical discoveries. The argument of the speaker is sustained with great vigor of statement, and a rich profusion of illustration. Familiar with the varied field of nature, he expatiates on her majesty and loveliness with the enthusiasm of a favored votary. The style of the discourse is chaste and polished throughout, and often rises into earnest and impressive eloquence.
A second series of Greenwood Leaves, being a collection of letters and sketches by Grace Greenwood, has just been published by Ticknor, Reed, and Fields. A sincere, genial, thoroughly individualistic production—overflowing with exuberant gayety—though dashed with frequent touches of bitter sadness—often wildly impulsive, but always kindly, human, and hopeful—with occasional specimens of sharp-shooting, though the polished, nimble arrows are never dipped in poison. It will be widely read for its spicy humor, its fine, frolicsome naïveté, its gushing good-nature, and its genuine nobleness of tone, even by those who may now and then wish that she would leave political and social questions to the sterner sex. The same publishers have issued another work by Grace Greenwood, entitled Recollections of my Childhood, intended for juvenile readers, and abounding in beautiful appeals to the best feelings of the young heart, illustrated by the reminiscences of personal experience.
M. W. Dodd has published a translation from the German of Hildebrandt, of Winter in Spitzbergen, by E. Goodrich Smith, depicting the frozen horrors of that savage clime. It is a narrative of great interest, and will be read eagerly by young people, for whom it is intended. It is equally rich in attractiveness and in information.
A collection of stories by Caroline Chesebro’, entitled Dream-Land by Daylight, has been issued by Redfield in a style of uncommon typographical neatness. The writings of this lady are not unknown to the public, in the isolated form in which many of them have already made their appearance. We are glad that she has been induced to embody them in this pleasant volume, which, we think, will occupy no inferior place in American fictitious literature. We find in it the unmistakable evidences of originality of mind, an almost superfluous depth of reflection for the department of composition to which it is devoted, a rare facility in seizing the multiform aspects of nature, and a still rarer power of giving them the form and hue of imagination, without destroying their identity. The writer has not yet attained the mastery of expression, corresponding to the liveliness of her fancy and the intensity of her thought. Her style suffers from the want of proportion, of harmony, of artistic modulation, and though frequently showing an almost masculine energy, is destitute of the sweet and graceful fluency which would finely attemper her bold and striking conceptions. We do not allude to this in any spirit of carping censure; but to account for the want of popular effect which, we apprehend, will not be so decided in this volume as in future productions of the author. She has not yet exhausted the golden placers of her genius; but the products will obtain a more active currency when they come refined and
brilliant from the mint, with a familiar legible stamp, which can be read by all without an effort.—The fantastic, alliterative title of this volume does no justice to the genuine value of its contents, and we hope Miss Chesebro’ will hereafter avoid such poverty-struck devices of ambitious second-rate writers.
Memoir of Mary Lyon, compiled by Edward Hitchcock, President of Amherst College, has passed to a third edition from the press of Hopkins, Bridgman, and Co., Northampton. It is a record of a life devoted to a great work of Christian benevolence. Inspired by a lofty sense of duty, possessing an energy of purpose and a power of execution seldom equaled in any walk of life, and endowed with intellectual gifts of a robust, practical character, Miss Lyon was a highly successful agent in the cause of popular and religious education. The narrative of her labors is no less interesting than it is useful and instructive. Her name is held in grateful remembrance in New England by numerous pupils to whose character she gave a powerful impulse for good. The present volume is prepared with the ability of which the name attached to it is a promise. It is an excellent piece of biography, in all respects, and will long hold an honored place in New England households.
Sixteen Months at the Gold Diggings, by Daniel B. Woods. (Published by Harper and Brothers.) The peculiar value of this work consists in its being an authentic record of the experience of an intelligent and trustworthy writer. In this respect, we have seen no publication on California that is its equal. Mr. Woods is a man of high character and learned education, who was led by ill health to exchange the duties of professional life for the rude toils of the gold-digger. He engaged in his new business with unflinching energy. Becoming a miner among the miners, he had the most ample opportunities to learn their condition, their prospects, their sufferings, and their rewards. He describes plainly what he saw. He borrows no colors from the fancy. His book is a record of hard facts. It introduces us behind the scenes. Eminently free from exaggeration, it shows the hardships by which the gold of California was procured on the first discovery of the placers. Its tendency is to discourage emigration. He would advise those who are tolerably well off at home to be content. At the same time, the California adventurer, who is tempted by the hope of a golden harvest to leave the blessings of Atlantic civilization, will find a guide and counselor in this volume, which can hardly fail to be of essential service. We recommend all prospective gold-diggers to take it with them across the Isthmus or around the Cape.
D. Appleton and Co. have issued an elegant volume of Oriental travels, entitled The Land of Bondage, by the Rev. J. M. Wainwright. It contains the journal of a tour in Egypt, with a description of its ancient monuments and present condition, illustrated by a variety of well-executed appropriate engravings. The work is intended to present an accurate record of the observations made by the intelligent author, without aiming at the brilliant vivacity which has been so much affected by recent travelers in the East. It is a simple, faithful narrative, and makes no pretensions to being a romance or prose-poem. The scenes visited by Dr. Wainwright, comprising the valley of the Nile from Cairo to Thebes, are full of interest. He describes them minutely, and with excellent taste. Uniting a fresh susceptibility to the romantic impressions of the “morning land,” with a style of polished classic elegance, Dr. Wainwright has produced a standard book of travels, which merits a cordial reception by the public, both for the extent and accuracy of its information, and the beauty and good taste of its execution.
The Evening Book, by Mrs. Kirkland (published by Charles Scribner), is a collection of popular essays on morals and manners, with sketches of Western Life, including many of the most agreeable productions of the favorite authoress. Several of them have a sober, didactic aim, but all are marked with Mrs. Kirkland’s habitual brilliancy and point. Her discussions of various topics of social ethics are admirable. She exhibits the acute tact of a woman in her perceptions of character, while she presents the fruits of tranquil reflection in a tone of masculine vigor. The spirit of these essays is one of mild, contemplative wisdom, gracefully blended with a love of the humorous, and a spice of perfectly good-natured satire.—A number of beautiful illustrations greatly enhances the interest of the volume.
The Tutor’s Ward, (published by Harper and Brothers), is the title of one of the most powerful English novels of the season. It is intended to illustrate the great moral truth that the soul’s repose is not found in human love; that the immortal spirit can live in love alone; but that human love is only the type of that which can never die. The story turns on two female characters—one a brilliant, gifted, fascinating, bewildering creature, whose heart has been wholly steeped in selfishness, but whose artful nature has called forth the most impassioned love—the other, a being of rare and beautiful endowments, with an intense, loving, devoted soul, in whom passion takes the form of a sublime, almost inconceivable disinterestedness, presenting the most striking contrast to her rival and evil genius. The plot is a heart-rending tragedy; the scenes are skillfully shaded off till they present the sullen blackness of midnight; the whole winding up with terrible retributions and despair. While we do not think the developments of this story are true to nature, we can not deny its strange, irresistible fascinations. It paints an ideal of heartless egotism on the one side, and of generous self-sacrifice on the other, which is psychologically impossible; but this ideal is set forth with so much subtlety of invention, such tragic pathos, and such artistic word-painting, that we forgive the defects of the plot, in our admiration of the skill with which it is conducted.
M. W. Dodd has issued a little volume by Rev. Joseph P. Thompson, entitled Hints to Employers. The substance of it was originally delivered in lectures at the Broadway Tabernacle, but the importance of its suggestions eminently deserves a more permanent form. Mr. Thompson handles the subject without gloves, and shows himself as well acquainted with the customs of trade as with the usages of the Church. His strictures on the prevailing methods of business are forcibly put, and have the merit of being directed against systems rather than against individuals. It is far better, for instance, to point out the evils of employing “drummers” to gain custom, than to inveigh against those who can not deviate from established habits without great sacrifice. Abolish an evil system, and the whole community is benefited; while abstaining from it in single cases is only an individual advantage. Mr. Thompson discusses the whole subject with decision and earnestness, but does not deal in wholesale denunciation.
The Collected Edition of Douglas Jerrold’s Writings, is carrying on in weekly numbers and monthly parts. Jerrold’s writing is very unequal, the story
and the style sometimes limping tiresomely; but even then detached thoughts and expressions keep up interest, and few pages pass without presenting a good idea or a good joke.
In announcing a new novel by Bulwer, the London Critic remarks: “Certainly, whatever the faults of ‘our own wayward Bulwer’ (as Miss Martineau fondly calls him), a want of industry can not be laid to his charge. What with novels, dramas, epics, Byronics, editorships, pamphlets, parliamenteering, electioneering, and even agitating, when the interests of the drama and literature seem to require it, BULWER is as hard-working a man as any pale or ruddy-bustling compiler in the reading-room of the British Museum. Close beside him in the advertisement columns (though not in life) is Lady Bulwer, who also announces a new novel, “Molière’s Tragedy: his Life and Times,” another of those “literary novels” which Mr. Grave lately predicted would soon be rife. Lady Bulwer has taken the idea directly from George Sand, who recently produced, with considerable success on the Paris stage, a drama of “Molière,” in which the poet was made the dupe of a heartless coquette. Our English authoress’s title is rather lachrymose for the subject; since Moliere’s life was by no means a tragic, but, on the whole, a pleasant and successful one.”
We find a curious anecdote of Chevalier Bunsen in connection with the recently-published Life of Niebuhr, issued in London, under the superintendence of the Chevalier: The portly and hearty representative of Prussia at the Court of St. James, Niebuhr, the Roman historian—every body has heard and knows something of him. But every body does not know the special claim that his memory has on Bunsen; for the latter, though he has risen to be the Minister of Public Instruction and Foreign Representative of a great kingdom, was once (how strangely it sounds in English ears)—not even a calico-printer or a cotton-spinner—but a poor student, Niebuhr’s humble amanuensis! A prodigy of learning, as unknown then as Mr. Thomas Watts of the British Museum Library, in comparison with his deserts, is unknown now. Bunsen, the story runs, was in attendance on his employer, at that time Prussian Minister at Rome, when the King of Prussia, then Crown Prince, paid Niebuhr a visit. The conversation turned upon literary matters, and the Crown Prince made a statement which the humble amanuensis, bursting into the talk, took upon him flatly to contradict. Most Crown Princes (and some British commoners) would have flown into a passion. Not so our Frederick William the Fourth of Prussia. He inquired into the character and history of the plain-spoken youth; found that he knew every language and literature under heaven, from Chinese and Coptic to Welsh and Icelandic; kept his eye on him, and gradually promoted him to be what he is. Niebuhr’s letters have been published, and some years ago a biography of him, founded on them, was attempted in Tait’s Magazine, and broke down; but Bunsen’s will be the life. Niebuhr was foolish enough to die of the Three Days of July, 1830, being a staunch conservative. As the French would say: Tant pis pour lui!
The Winter Session of the New College, Edinburgh, has been opened, with an introductory address, by the Rev. Dr. Cunningham, successor of Dr. Chalmers, as Principal of the College. The institution is chiefly intended as a Theological School, connected with the Free Church of Scotland, but has other Chairs attached, one of which, on Natural History, is held by Dr. Fleming, the zoologist. On November 11th the Philosophical Institution of the same city was opened for the session by Sir David Brewster, who gave an able address. Among the lecturers announced for the season are some distinguished names, and the institution seems to be conducted in a higher tone than is usual in similar places of popular instruction and amusement. Hugh Miller, the geologist, and Isaac Taylor, author of the “Natural History of Enthusiasm,” are to deliver courses of lectures. In the University of Edinburgh, Principal Lee is reading a course of Moral Philosophy Lectures, in room of Professor Wilson, whose illness precludes him from any public duty.
Madame Pfeiffer’s account of her voyage round the world, says a London journal, a translation of which has just been published by Messrs Longman, is exceedingly interesting, and as full of adventure as the production of the awful Cumming Gordon, of rhinoceros-riding notoriety. When in Brazil, she undertook a long and hazardous journey into the interior, to visit the Puri Indians. She states that many of these singular people have been baptized, and, indeed, “they are at all times willing, for the consideration of a little brandy, to go through the ceremony again, and only regret that they have not more frequent opportunities, especially as it does not last long.” Their language is extremely poor, and they have no method of expressing number but by repeating one, two—one, two, as many times as may be required. For yesterday, to-day, and to-morrow, they have only one word, and they express the variety of meaning by “pointing backward for yesterday, forward for to-morrow, and over the head for the passing day.” We have noticed Harper’s edition of this work in another place.
The late work of Sir John Richardson on The Arctic Searching Expedition, now in press by Harper and Brothers, is spoken of with unqualified praise by the London press. We quote a notice from The Literary Gazette: “This work affords a glorious instance of genuine, hearty philanthropy. With a self-devotion seldom equaled, and certainly never surpassed, the author of these volumes, at a time of life when most men think seriously of exchanging the cares and anxieties of an arduous profession, or of an official occupation, for repose, adventured forth to the terrible regions of Arctic America, to seek, and, if possible, to rescue a cherished friend. And this was done with no other incentive than friendship, hallowed by former companionship in the same regions, and the social intercourse of many years. With becoming modesty, Sir John Richardson is entirely silent respecting his official and domestic position at the time of his departure on his humane mission; but it is due to him to say, that he left a valuable government appointment, and sacrificed pecuniary advantages, when, taking leave of an affectionate wife and family, he left England in search of his old traveling companion; and though he has been happily restored to his country in unimpaired health and vigor, it must not be forgotten that the journey which he proposed taking, was not only arduous but hazardous, and might have been accompanied by a repetition of the frightful sufferings which befell him during his adventurous and memorable expedition with Franklin in the same country he was about to visit.”
A new play by Mr. Jerrold, and one by Mr.
Marston, are in the hands of Mr. Kean, for early representation.
Sir James Stephen’s Lectures on the History of France, republished by Harper and Brothers, are thus characterized by a recent journal: “The distinguishing characteristics of these lectures are an independent criticism, uninfluenced by previous authority, a religious philosophy which traces the effect of moral causes, the knowledge of a man of affairs rather than of a statesman, and a pellucid pleasantry of manner.”
Hildreth’s History of the United States is now attracting the attention of London readers, and has given occasion to some able criticisms. His imperturbable coolness in the narration of events, excites no little surprise, and most of his judges would prefer a more impassioned tone. Nor, in the opinion of the London Athenæum, has he done justice to the character of Jefferson. The merits of the work as an authentic collection of facts, appear to be highly appreciated. The journal just alluded to, says: “On this point, we have to object that Jefferson—a man of remarkable powers, and whose spirit has more intimately transferred itself into the heart and hereditary sentiment of the American people than that of perhaps any other American, not perhaps excepting even Washington—does not seem to have received a full enough measure of that appreciation which even Mr. Hildreth might have been able to give him. Jefferson we regard as the type and father of much that is now most characteristic in the American mind; and in any history of the United States he ought to figure largely. We have to repeat that Mr. Hildreth’s work is, in its kind, a most conscientious and laborious undertaking—as an accumulation of particulars and a register of debates unrivaled—and therefore extremely valuable to all who wish to prosecute minute researches into the history of the Union, or of the several States composing it.”
Herman Melville’s last work, Moby Dick, or The Whale, has excited a general interest among the critical journals of London. The bold and impulsive style of some portions of the book, seems to shock John Bull’s fastidious sense of propriety. One of the most discriminating reviewals we have seen is from the London Atlas: “In some respects we hold it to be his (Mr. Melville’s) greatest effort. In none of his previous works are finer or more highly-soaring imaginative powers put forth. In none of them are so many profound and fertile and thoroughly original veins of philosophic speculation, or rather, perhaps, philosophic fancy struck.... Upon the whale, its mysteries, and its terrors, he revels as if the subject had enchantment for him. He pours into multitudinous chapters a mass of knowledge touching the whale—its habits and its history—the minutest details of its feeding or sporting, or swimming, strangely mixed with ingenious and daring speculations on the mysterious habits and peculiarities of the great brute—the whole written in a tone of exaltation and poetic sentiment, which has a strange effect upon the reader’s mind, in refining and elevating the subject of discourse, and, at last, making him look upon the whale as a sort of awful and unsoluble mystery—the most strange and the most terrible of the wonders of the deep. That Herman Melville knows more about whales than any man from Jonah down, we do really believe.”
Douglas Jerrold has written a letter, containing the suggestion, that a penny subscription shall be commenced to present Kossuth with a copy of Shakspeare’s Works, in a suitable casket. Mr. Jerrold remarks: “It is written in the brief history made known to us of Kossuth, that in an Austrian prison he was taught English by the words of the teacher Shakspeare. An Englishman’s blood glows with the thought that, from the quiver of the immortal Saxon, Kossuth has furnished himself with those arrowy words that kindle as they fly—words that are weapons, as Austria will know. There are hundreds of thousands of Englishmen who would rejoice thus to endeavor to manifest their gratitude to Kossuth for the glorious words he has uttered among us, words that have been as pulses to the nation.” To this excellent proposal a response has already been made in many quarters. An incident, not mentioned in the daily papers, is worth recording: that among other deputations to the Hungarian President in London, one was to present him with a copy of the Sacred Scriptures, for which many had subscribed. In his reply, Kossuth said how much he had owed, both of counsel and comfort, to the Bible, and that this present he would treasure as the choicest memorial of England. He took occasion at the same time to thank an honorable working-man, unknown to him, who, on his entering Winchester, had come up to his carriage and presented a Bible to Madame Kossuth.
An address to the Hungarian ex-president, from the citizens of Bath, was headed by the signature of Walter Savage Landor. His letter, in reply to Kossuth’s acknowledgment, is worth recording, as a memorial of one so well known in the world of letters: “Sir—The chief glory of my life is, that I was the first in subscribing for the assistance of the Hungarians at the commencement of their struggle; the next is, that I have received the approbation of their illustrious chief. I, who have held the hand of Kosciusko, now kiss with veneration the signature of Kossuth. No other man alive could confer an honor I would accept.”
In a notice of Springer’s Forest Life and Forest Trees (published by Harper and Brothers), the London Spectator suggests a singular comparison between the population of England and the United States, as afforded by the social position of the respective countries: “The volume will be found interesting from its pictures of hardship, exertion, skill, and adventure, in a country little known to the English reader even from books. It has also an interest of a deeper kind. It is impossible to look at the willing labors of these men, and to consider them as only a portion of the rural population of the United States, without seeing what a raw material they possess for war or enterprise. It is the tendency of a dense population and a high civilization to dwarf the physical powers and energies of men in two ways—by congregating large numbers of men in cities, and engaging them in pursuits which if not absolutely injurious to health, are destructive to hardihood; and by removing from the face of a country those natural obstacles which call forth energy and readiness of resource. In England, the working agriculturist is the most helpless of men out of his routine, from his having nothing to contend with: the ‘navvies,’ miners, and mariners, are almost the only classes trained to endurance and great physical exertion in their regular business, except the navy and perhaps the army, as special vocations.”
The London Examiner pronounces Layard’s abridged edition of Nineveh (just re-published by
Harper and Brothers), “A charming volume, to which we may safely promise a circulation without limit, and as unbounded popularity. The great feature of the Abridgement is, the introduction of the principal biblical and historical illustrations (forming a separate section of the original work) into the narrative, which, without sacrificing any matter of importance, makes the story more compact, useful, and, indeed, complete in its abridged, than it was in its original form.”
Sheriff Alison, the historian, has been re-elected Lord Rector of Glasgow University.
In a recent synodical letter of the Bishop of Luçon, among the books denounced as immoral and dangerous, are Anquetil’s “History of France,” Thiers’s “History of the French Revolution,” Lemaistre de Sacy’s “Translation of the New Testament,” “Le Bonhomme Richard,” and, lastly, “Robinson Crusoe!” Facts like these require no comment.
The French papers state that Lord Brougham, in his retreat at Cannes, is preparing for publication a work entitled, “France and England before Europe in 1851.”
The extraordinary popularity of Walter Scott in France, is illustrated by the announcement of the publication of another volume of the twentieth edition of Defauconpret’s translation of his novels, and the announcement of the publication of an entirely new translation of the said novels. If Defauconpret had been the only translator, twenty editions would have been an immense success; but there are besides, at the very least, twenty different translations of the complete works (many of which have had two, three, or four editions) and innumerable translations of particular novels, especially of “Quentin Durward.” In fact, in France as in England, Scott dazzles every imagination and touches every heart—whatever be his reader’s degree of education, or whatever his social position. His popularity amongst the lower orders, in particular, is so extraordinarily great, that it forms one of the most striking literary events of the present century.
The Leader announces a new work from Guizot, with the promising title of Méditations et Etudes morales; a novel by the Countess D’Orsay, called L’Ombre du Bonheur; and an important work by Gioberti, Di rinovamento civile d’Italia, the first part being devoted to the Errors and Schemes of the day: the second to Remedies and Hopes. To those who love pure literature, we know not what more agreeable volume to recommend than the one just issued of Saint Beuve’s Causeries du Lundi. It contains some of the best portraits he has ever drawn; and a charming gallery they make. We pass from Rabelais to Vauvenargues, from the Duc de Saint Simon to Frederick the Great, from Diderot to the Duchesse de Maine, from Camille Desmoulins to Madame Emilie de Girardin. The necessity of limiting his articles to the exigencies of a newspaper, has forced Saint-Beuve into a concision both of style and exposition, which greatly improves his sketches; and we know not which to admire most, the variety of his attainments or the skill of his pencil.
In History and Biography, European Continental literature has not been doing very much lately. There is a new or newer volume, the eleventh, of Thiers’s Consulate and Empire, and a Paris journalist of high repute, M. de la Guerronniere commences a promised series of Portraits Politiques Contemporains (“Portraits of Political Contemporaries”), with a monograph of that “nephew of his uncle,” the Prince-President of the French Republic. A. M. Leonard Gallois publishes in four volumes, with illustrations, a Histoire de la Révolution de 1848 (“History of the Revolution of 1848”), written from a republican-of-the-morrow point of view. Saint-Beuve contributes to The Constitutionnel graceful sketches of the lately-deceased Duchess of Angouleme, and of Rivarol, the Royalist pamphleteer and man-of-all-work in the first revolution, famed for the plaintive epigram, “Mirabeau is paid, not sold; I am sold but not paid,” one of the saddest predicaments that poor humanity can find itself in. A. M. Coindet has compressed Warburton’s Prince Rupert and the Cavaliers into a handy Histoire de Prince Rupert (“History of Prince Rupert”). The Germans send us the Leben and Reden Sir Robert Peel’s (“Life and Speeches of Sir Robert Peel”), tolerably compiled by one Kunzel, and Italy has produced a new Life of Paganini. Worthy of more extensive notice is Edouard Fleury’s Saint-Just et la Terreur (“Saint Just and the Reign of Terror”), a biography of the “great Saint of the Mountain,” the fellow-triumvir of Robespierre, and partaker of his fate, though not five-and-twenty; the fanatic young man who, scarcely beginning life, declared, “for revolutionists there is no rest but in the tomb!” Fleury is a clever and active young journalist in the department of the Aisne, Saint-Just’s birth-country—the same who lately brought out the very interesting “Memoir of Camille Desmoulins,” and an equally interesting historical study, “Babæuf and Socialism in 1796.“ Fleury has gone about his biographical task in the proper way; roamed up and down the country side, sketching the scenery in which his subject spent “a sulky adolescence,” and collecting anecdotes and reminiscences. One of these is worth retailing. An old woman who knew Saint-Just well when a boy, pointed out “an alley of old trees” where he used to stalk and spout: when he came into the house, after one of these soliloquies, quoth the old woman, “he would say terrible things to us!”
First in the list of recent French novels is the far-famed Jules Janin’s Gaieties Champêtres (“Rural Gaieties”), which all Paris is eagerly devouring. The scene is laid in the era of Louis XV., and the story (alas!) is worthy of the period, and must not be recited here. More innocent are Les Derniers Paysans (“The Last Peasants”), by Emile Souvestre, a cycle of graphic, and, for the most part, gloomy stories, meant to embalm the superstitions, which still linger among the peasantry of Brittany, soon to be dispelled by the march of civilization. Armand Barthet’s Henriette, though a touching tale, is not to be recommended. Alphonse Karr, a writer scarcely so well known out of France as he deserves to be, promises Recits sur la Plage (“Stories from the Sea Shore”). Karr is the only living French novelist who reminds one at all of Thackeray, of whom he has some of the caustic bitterness, but none of the light playfulness. He first became known by his Guêpes (“Wasps”), a periodical consisting of little, sharp, sarcastic, and isolated sentences, aimed at the quacks and quackeries of the day. With all this, he has a true feeling for nature, which is sometimes, however, carried to an absurd length.
A recent number of the official Moniteur contains a long report to the Minister of Public Instruction, by M. Vattemare, on the “literary exchanges” which have recently been effected between France and the United States. It is not, perhaps, generally known that the governments, universities, colleges, scientific societies, literary establishments, medical and legal bodies, borough municipalities, and commercial associations of the two countries, have for years past been in the habit of making exchanges of books. They have thus got rid of duplicate copies which were rotting on their shelves, and have received in return works which it would have cost vast sums to purchase. A more useful arrangement could not possibly be conceived; and at the same time it has the advantage of spreading knowledge, and of increasing the friendly relations between the two peoples.
M. Ch. Pieters has published the “Annales de l’Imprimerie Elzevirienne,” giving copious details on the life and exertions of the famous printers, the Elzevirs. This book is the result of very extensive researches on this subject, as there were fourteen members of that family who were printers and publishers during a period of 120 years. M. Pieters’s book contains quite new data obtained from authentic sources; to which he has added a list of all the works issued from the Elzevir presses, followed by one of those which have been erroneously attributed to them, and another of such as are the continuation of works published at that celebrated establishment.
The Paris papers state that the Free Society of Fine Arts in that capital are subscribing for a monument to the Late M. Daguerre—who was a member of their body—to be erected at Petit-Brie, where the distinguished artist lies buried.
Henry Heine, the German poet, whom his countrymen insist on comparing with Lord Byron, has published a collection of the poems of his later years, under the title of “Romances.” The book, which all the German papers concur in eulogizing, and a large edition of which was sold within a few days after its publication, is divided into three parts, Histories, Lamentations, and Hebrew Melodies. A brief prose notice prefixed announces that the skeptic has become a believer, and hurls defiance at the Hegelians refusing (to use his own words) “to herd swine with them any longer.” This celebrated poet, and perhaps the only man who has succeeded in uniting German solidity and grandeur to French elegance and wit, is now languishing on his death-bed. Recovery is impossible, and his state is such that death would be almost a blessing, though in him the world would lose one of the most remarkable geniuses of modern times. In the intervals between the paroxysms of his malady he composes verses, and (being deprived of the use of his limbs and of his eyesight) dictates them to his friends. He also occupies himself at times in inditing memoirs of his life, and as he has seen a good deal of French society, and was a shrewd and intelligent observer, he has much to say. One consequence of his long and lamentable sickness has been to effect a complete change in his religious views—the mocking Voltairian skeptic has become a devout believer.
We see it stated that in the short space of time between the Easter fair and the 30th of September there were published in Germany no less than 3860 new works, and there were on the latter date 1130 new works in the press. Nearly five thousand new works in one country of Europe in one half year! Of the 3860 works already published, more than half treat of various matters connected with science and its concerns. That is to say—descending to particulars—106 works treat of Protestant theology; 62 of Catholic theology; 36 of philosophy; 205 of history and biography; 102 of languages; 194 of natural sciences; 168 of military tactics; 108 of medicine; 169 of jurisprudence; 101 of politics; 184 of political economy; 83 of industry and commerce; 87 of agriculture and forest administration; 69 of public instruction; 92 of classical philology; 80 of living languages; 64 of the theory of music and the arts of design; 168 of the fine arts in general; 48 of popular writings; 28 of mixed sciences; and 18 of bibliography. It is satisfactory to see, after their recent comparative neglect, that science and the arts begin to resume their old sway over the German mind.
The Frankfort journals state that, in consequence of the rigor displayed by the Saxon Government with respect to the press, the booksellers of Leipzig seriously intend to remove the general book fair to Berlin or Brunswick.
In Germany, Austria excluded, appear 746 newspapers; of which 646 are printed in German, 5 in French, 1 in English, 15 in Polish, 3 in Wendish (the Wenden are a Slavonic people in the midst of Germany), 7 in the Lutheran language. In all Europe, according to official statements, 1356 news papers are published, of which 169 are issued at Paris, 97 at London, 79 at Berlin, 68 at Leipzig, 36 at St. Petersburg, 24 at Vienna.
Dr. Augustus Pfizmaier, of Vienna, has published the first part, in ninety-two pages folio, of a Dictionary of the Japanese language.
Baron Alexander von Humboldt has announced the discovery at Athens of the edifice in which the Council of Four Hundred was in the habit of assembling in ancient times. Few particulars of the alleged discovery are given; but it is added, that more than a hundred inscriptions have been found by the excavators—and that a number of columns, statues, and other relics have been already dug up.
Dr. Hefele’s German work on Cardinal Ximenes and the Ecclesiastical Affairs of Spain in the 15th and 16th century, has just reached a second edition.
One of the principal literary men of Spain, Don Juan Hartzenbusch, assisted by the publisher, Senor Rivadencyra, has commenced a reprint of the works of her most distinguished authors, from the earliest ages to the present time. This reprint is entitled “Biblioteca de Autores Espanoles,” and it is a more difficult undertaking than things of the kind in western and northern Europe. For as very many of the works of the principal authors never having been printed at all, the compiler has to hunt after them in libraries, in convents, and in out-of-the-way places; while others, having been negligently printed, or “improved” by friends, or disfigured by enemies, have to be revised line by line. Some idea of the importance of this gentleman’s labors maybe formed from the fact, that he has brought to light not fewer than fourteen comedies of Calderon de la Barca, which previous editors were unable to discover. The total number of Calderon’s pieces the world now
possesses is therefore 122; and there is every reason to believe that they are all he wrote, with the exception of two or three, which there is not the slightest hope of recovering. In addition to this, M. Hartzenbusch has carefully corrected the text from the original manuscripts in the Theatre del Principe, or authentic copies deposited elsewhere; and he has added notes, which throw great light on the most obscure passages. Moreover, he has given a chronological table of the order in which Calderon produced his plays. But what, perhaps, is the most curious thing of all is, that he demonstrates that “le grand Corneille” of France actually borrowed, not plots alone, but whole passages from Calderon. His play of Heraclius, for instance, has evidently been taken from Calderon’s comedy called En esta vida todo es verdad y todo mentira. Some of the passages are literal translations.
Daily, about noon, writes the Weser Zeitung, the loungers “Under the Linden” at Berlin, are startled by the extraordinary appearance of a tall, lanky woman, whose thin limbs are wrapped up in a long black robe or coarse cloth. An old crumpled bonnet covers her head, which, continually moving, turns restlessly in all directions. Her hollow cheeks are flushed with a morbid coppery glow; one of her eyes is immovable, for it is of glass, but her other eye shines with a feverish brilliancy, and a strange and almost awful smile hovers constantly about her thin lips. This woman moves with an unsteady, quick step, and whenever her black mantilla is flung back by the violence of her movements, a small rope of hair, with a crucifix at the end, is plainly seen to bind her waist. This black, ungainly woman is the quondam authoress, Countess Ida Hahn-Hahn, who has turned a Catholic, and is now preparing for a pilgrimage to Rome, to crave the Pope’s absolution for her literary trespasses.
Professor Nuylz, whose work on canon law has but recently been condemned by the Holy See, resumed his lectures at Turin, on the 6th. The lecture-room was crowded, and the learned professor was received with loud applause. In the course of his lecture he adverted to the hostility of the clergy, and to the Papal censures of his work, which censures he declared to be in direct opposition to the rights of the civil power. He expressed his thanks to the ministry for having refused to deprive him of his chair.
We hear from Rome that the library of the Vatican is to receive the valuable collection of Oriental manuscripts made by the late Monsignor Molsa—Laureani’s successor.
Two curious instances of the favor that Literature and Art are to receive from the Ultra-montane party on the continent of Europe, have recently occurred. From Paris we learn that a relative of Mr. Gladstone has been excluded from a cercle, or club, in that city by the priestly party, because his uncle, the member for Oxford, had the courage to denounce the senseless tyranny of the Neapolitan government! The other instance amounts to the grotesque. It is the case of a young Roman artist, who is banished from Rome for the crime of being called Giovanni Mazzini! The very name of the late Triumvir—it would seem—is about to be proscribed in the Roman States, as that of Macgregor was, in time gone by, in Scotland. To the question “What’s in a name?” the Roman government gives a very significant and practical reply.
We learn from Münster, Westphalia, that some fresco paintings of the 13th century have been lately discovered in the church at Seremhorst, near that town, and that a curious specimen of painted glass has been found at Legenwinden. In the chief aisle of Patroklus Church, at Soest, Romanic frescos and statuettes of the 12th century have been discovered, and measures taken to remove from them the coatings of lime and plaster which the fanaticism or the ignorance of former years has heaped on them. It has also been discovered that the Nicolai Chapel, in Soest Cathedral, is entirely covered with very curious paintings of the 12th century.
On the 29th October, died at Brighton, Mr. William Wyon, a medal engraver of admirable skill, and probably more widely known by his works than any other living artist. Mr. Wyon was the engraver of the later coins of King George the Fourth, and of all the coins of William the Fourth and of her present Majesty. Mr. Wyon’s medals include the recent war medals of the Peninsula, Trafalgar, Jellalabad, and Cabul—the civic medals of the Royal Academy, the Royal Society, the Royal Institution, the Geological Society, the Geographical Society, the Bengal Asiatic Society, and indeed of almost every learned society, home and colonial. Mr. Wyon was in his 57th year. Much of his genius is inherited by his son Leonard—known by his medals of Wordsworth and others, and honorably distinguished in the recent awards at the Great Exhibition.
The London journals announce the decease of the Rev. J. Hobart Caunter. Eighteen years ago this gentleman’s appearances in the world of ephemeral literature were frequent—and fairly successful. He was the author of “The Island Bride,” a poem of some length, and editor of “The Oriental Annual.” Besides these, Mr. Caunter produced translations, and one or two graver works on historical and Biblical subjects.
The foreign papers report the death of the Chevalier Lavy, Member of the Council of Mines in Sardinia, and of the Academy of Sciences in Turin—and described as being one of the most learned of Italian numismatists. He had created at great cost a Museum of Medals, which he presented to his country, and which bears his name.
The French papers report the death, at Moscow, of M. de Saint Priest—a member of the French Academy, formerly a Peer of France—and the author of several historical works.
Dr. Paul Erman, the Nestor of Prussian savans, died recently at Berlin, at the advanced age of eighty-seven. In addition to innumerable articles on different subjects in scientific periodicals, he published important works on electricity, galvanism, magnetism, physiology, and optics.
The Continental papers report the death, at Jena, of Professor Wolff.—Professor Humbert, of the Academy of Geneva, a distinguished Orientalist, and author of many learned works, is also reported to have died, on the 19th of last month.
MR. POTTS’S NEW YEAR’S.
Mr. T. Pemberton Potts—thus he always wrote his name, though the “Family Record,” which sets forth the genesis of the house of Potts, does not contain the sonorous trisyllable which follows the modest initial T., which is all that he ever acknowledges of his baptismal appellation of Timothy—Mr. Potts had been in great tribulation all day, in the apprehension that hatter, or tailor, or bootmaker would fail to send home the articles of their craft in which he proposed to make a sensation in his to-morrow’s “New-Year’s Calls.” But his apprehensions were groundless. For a wonder, all these artists kept their word; and the last installment arrived fully two hours before the Old Year had taken its place in the silent and irrevocable Past. As one by one came in the brilliant beaver, the exquisite paletot, the unimpeachable swallow-tail, the snowy vest, the delicate, pearl-gray “continuations,” and the resplendent boots, which Cinderella might have assumed, had she lived in the days of “Bloomerism,” Mr. Potts displayed them scientifically over a chair, and gazed upon the picture they presented, as fondly as painter ever gazed upon the canvas upon which he had flung his whole burning soul.
