VIII.—JENTACULAR.
A barrow-tone full of groan and creak, trundling along through the well-known bravura commencing,—
"In Köln, a town of monks and bones," etc.
Yes, the aroma was highly complicate, but not, like the poet, of imagination all compact. It was not Frangipanni, though in part an eternal perfume; nor was it Bergamot, or Attar, or Millefleurs, or Jockey-Club, or New-Mown Hay. No, it was none of these. What was it, then? you ask. I dissected it as well as I could, though not with entire success; but I will tell you the members of this body of death, so far as I found them. I do not for a moment doubt that it was made up of at least the two-and-seventy several parts which bloomed in the bouquet plucked by the bard in Hermann's land; yet my feeble sense could not distinguish all. There was unquestionably a fry,—nay, several; the fumes of coffee soared riotous; I could detect hot biscuits distinctly; the sausage asked a foremost place; pancakes, griddle-cakes, dough-nuts, gravies, and sauces, all struggled for precedence; the land and the sea waged internecine war for place, through their representative fries of steak and mackerel; and as the unctuous pork—no nursling of the flock, but seasoned in ripe old age with salt not Attic—rooted its way into the front rank, I thought of the wisdom of Moses. All these were, so to speak, the mere outlying flakes, the feathery curls, of the balmy cirro-cumulus, whose huge bulk arose out of the bowels of the ship itself. Up and down, in and out, here and there, into every chink and crevice, rolled the blue-white incense-cloud, dense as the cottony puff at the mouths of the guns in Vernet's "Siege of Algiers." Or you might say that these were but the flying-buttresses, the floriated pinnacles, the frets, and the gargoyles of a great frowzy cathedral lying vast and solid far below.
The Captain sat at the head of the table; next him was the fixed star Dūspeptos, with Satellite stationary on the right quarter.
Eupeptos.—Coffee,—that's good. John, fill my cup. Have it strong, mind,—no milk.
Dūspeptos. (Placing hand remonstratingly on arm of Eupeptos.)—My friend, man's life a'n't more'n a span, anyhow; yourn wun't be wuth more'n half a span. Don't ye do it.
Eupeptos. (Gayly.)—Dum vivimus, vivamus. Try a cup, Mr. Rink.
Dūspeptos.—No, Sir. Thousan' dollars'd be no objick at all. There'd be a dead Rink layin' round in less 'n half a shake. I'd want a permit from the undertaker fust, an' hev my measure for a patent casket to order. This child a'n't anxious to cut stick yit awhile.
Eupeptos.—I'm very much of Voltaire's way of thinking about coffee. I don't know but I would agree with Mackintosh, that the measure of a man's brains is the amount of coffee he drinks. I like it in the French style, all but the lait; that destroys the flavor, besides making it despicably weak. Have a hot biscuit, Mr. Rink? I'm afraid they're like Gilpin,—carry weight, you know. But try one, won't you?
Dūspeptos.—I'm shot ef I do. Don't hev any more o' yer nonsense, young man, or I'll git ructions.
Eupeptos.—All right. Advance, pancakes! Here's a prime one, steaming hot, crisp and fizzling. Allow me to put it on your plate, Sir?
Dūspeptos.—Not by a long chalk. Hands off, I tell ye, or there'll be a free fight afore shortly. You'd better make up yer mind to oncet thet this 'ere thing a'n't goin' to ram nohow.
Eupeptos.—Sorry I can't suit you. Better luck next time. Ah! here's the very thing. Waiter, pass the fried steak, salt mackerel, and fried potatoes to Mr. Rink.
Dūspeptos.—Wun't stan' it,—I snore I wun't! I tell ye, I'm gittin' master-riled. Jest you take yer own fodder, an' keep quiet.
Eupeptos.—Pardon me, Sir, but my eye has just fallen on yonder dish of dough-nuts, faced by those incense-breathing griddle-cakes. Look slightly soggy, but not disagreeable. This sea-air, you know, gives a man a tremendous appetite for anything, and the digestion of an ostrich. Risk it, won't you?
Dūspeptos. (With determined air, clenching knife and fork pointing skywards.)—Stranger, le' 's come to a distinct understandin' on this subjick afore we git much older. You know puffickly wal what I am,—a confirmed dyspeptic for twenty-five year. An' I a'n't ashamed on it, nuther; but I'm proud to say I glory in it. You know puffickly wal what my notions is about all this 'ere stuff, an' still you keep stickin' it into my face. Now, ef you want me to lambaste ye, I'm the man to do it, an' do it hahnsome. But ef yer life a'n't insured clean up to the hub, an' ef ye've got any survivin' friends, I advise ye not to tote any more o' that 'ere grub in this direction. I give ye fair warnin',—yer've raised my dander, an' put my Ebenezer up. I'd jest as lieves wallop ye as eat, an' ten times lieveser.
Eupeptos.—Really, Sir, no offence intended. I saw that your taste was delicate, and offered you these various tit-bits in the hope that some one of them might prove acceptable. But pray, Sir, do not starve yourself on my account. What in the world can you eat? Do not, I beseech you, by undue fasting, deprive the world of so distinguished——
Dūspeptos. (Mollifying.)—Fact is, I knew jest how 't was goin' to be. They allers fry everythin' an' cook it up in grease, so no respectable man can git any decent vittles t' eat. So I jest went out an' laid in plenty o' my own provender,—suthin' reliable an' wholesome, ye know. Brought aboard a firkin o' Graham-biscuit,—jest the meal mixed up with water,—no salt, no emptins, no nuthin'. 'T's the healthiest thing out o' jail. It's Natur's own food, an' the best eatin' I know. Raäl good flavor, git 'em good, besides bein' puffickly harmless an' salubrious. I cal'late I've got enough to run the machine, an' keep it all trig up to concert-pitch, till I git ashore, ef so be th' old tub don't send us to Davy Jones's locker. Here, try one,—I've got a plenty,—an' you'll say they're fust-rate. Leave them 'ere pancakes, an' all that p'is'n truck. Arter you take one o' these, you'll never tech nuthin' else.
Eupeptos.—Thank you, Sir, but if it's all the same to you, please excuse me this time. I have other fish to fry. In fact, Sir, I am entirely destitute of equanimity, and have no particle of stability in my disposition. Not a drop of Scotch blood in my veins.
Dūspeptos.—There's no oats about these; an' ef there was, 't wouldn't hurt ye none. It's jest the kernel an' the shell mixed up together.
Eupeptos.—Dangerous combination. I have no military ambition,—wouldn't give a rush for a spread eagle,—don't like the braying by a mortar.
Dūspeptos.—Wal, I mout as wal vamose, 's long as I've hove in my rations. Already gone risin' a good half-ounce above my or'nary 'lowance. 'T wun't do to dissipate, even ef a feller a'n't to hum an' nobody's the wiser. Natur' allers makes ye foot the bill all the same on sea an' shore.
Eupeptos. (Trolling in a low voice the celebrated barcarole,
"My bark is by the shore," etc.)—
Stay, oh, stay, gentle stranger! See yon sausage fatly floating! Be not dogged to go, but come! Prithee, return once more to the festive board! Lo! this—the fattest of the flock—shall be thy portion, most favored Benjamin!
Dūspeptos. (—Muttering in the distance.)—That feller's a raäl jo-fired numbskull. He don't know any more about the fust principles o' human natur' than the babe unborn. Reg'lar goney. Dunno whether he's jokin' or in sober airnest. Good mind to sail into him anyhow. Guess 't 'll do, though, to leave him to Natur'. He'll stuff himself to death fast enough ... pitchin' into p'is'n ... sexton ... six-board box ... coroner's verdick ... run over by a fry ... engineer did his dooty....
IX.—FINALE (con motivo.)
But time would fail me to tell you of the myriad golden spangles so thickly stitched into the hurrying web of those fustian hours. Oh! that dim crepuscular time, when, with toe set to toe squarely on the scratch, we stood up to one another, with eyes glaring through the gloaming, and gave and took manfully, fighting out anew the old battles of the Bourbon vs. China, of King James vs. Virginia, of Graham vs. Greece! I could tell you of the siesta of the new Prometheus, when, perched on the Mount Caucasus of a bleak chain-cable, he gave himself postprandially, in full livery of seisin, to the vulturous sun. Wasted, yet daily renewed, enduring, yet murmuring not, he hurled defiance at Fat, scoffed at the vain rage of Jupiter Pinguis, and proffered to the world below a new life in his fiery gift of stale bran-bread. Would you could have heard that vesper hymn stealing hirsute through the mellow evening-air! It sung the Peptic Saints and Martyrs, explored the bowels of old Time, and at last died away in dulcet cadence as it chanted the glories of the coming Age of Grits. Again, in the silent night-watches, did sage Mentor become vocal, going over afresh the story of the Nervous and the Mucous, classifying their victims, generalizing laws, discriminating the various dyspepsies of the nations, and summing up at last the inestimable benefits conferred by our modern dyspepsy on the character, the literature, and the life of this nineteenth century.
Once more—for the last time—did the sable robe inwrap us. Once more the night-blooming cereus oped its dank petals; and amid its murky fragrance I sank to rest. When I woke, the whank!—tick-a-lick!—whank!—tick-a-lick!—had ceased, and we were safely moored. I leaped lightly to the shore, and, reverently stooping, saluted with fond gratitude my Mother Earth. Rising, I beheld for the last time the gaunt form of the Martyr standing on the deck,—a bar sinister sable blazoned athwart the golden shield of the climbing sun. And once more he lift up his voice:—
"Hullo! What! up killick an' off a'ready? Ye'r' bound to go it full chisel any way,—don't mean to hev grass grow under your heels, that's sartin. Wal, 't 's the early bird thet ketches the worm; an' it's the early worm thet gits picked, too,—recollember that. I cal'late you reckon the Markerstown's about played out, an' a'n't exackly wut she's cracked up to be. It's pooty plain thet that 'ere blamed grease has ben one too many for ye, arter all yer lingo. Ef a man will dance, he's got to pay the fiddler. You can't go it on tick with Natur'; she's some on a trade, an' her motto is, 'Down with the dosh.' Ef you think you can play 'possum, an' pull the wool over her eyes, jest try it on, that's all; you'll find, my venerable hero, thet you're shinnin' a greased pole for the sake of a bogus fo'pence-ha'penny on top.
"Now, young man, afore you hurry up your cakes much further, I've got jest two words to say to ye. Don't cut it too fat, or you'll flummux by the way, an' leave nuthin' but a grease-spot. Don't dawdle round doin' nuthin' but stuffin' yerself to kill. Don't act like a gonus,—don't hanker arter the flesh-pots. Wake up, peel your eyes, an' do suthin' for a dyspeptic world, for sufferin' sinners, for yerself. Allers stick close to Natur' an' hyg'ene. Drop yer nonsense, an' come over an' j'in us, an' we'll make a new man of ye,—jest as good as wheat. You're on the road to ruin now; but we'll take ye, an' build ye up, give ye tall feed, an' warrant ye fust-cut health an' happiness. No cure, no pay. An' look here, keep that 'ere card I gev ye continooally on hand, an' peroose it day an' night. I tell ye it'll be the makin' on ye. An' don't forgit the golden rule:—Don't tech, don't g' nigh the p'is'n upus-tree of gravy; beware o' the dorg called hot biscuits; take keer o' the grease, an' the stomach'll take keer of itself. Ef you're in want o' bran-bread at any time, let me know, an' I'm your man,—Rink by name, an' Rink by natur'. An' ef so be you ever come within ten mile o' where I hang out, jest tie right up on the spot, without the slightest ceremony or delayance, an' take things puffickly free an' easy like. Wal, my hearty, I see ye're on the skedaddle. Take keer o' yerself,—yourn till death, N. Rink."
THE TWENTIETH PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION.
The country is now on the eve of an election the importance of which it would be impossible to overrate. Yet a few days, and it will be decided whether the people of the United States shall condemn their own conduct, by cashiering an Administration which they called upon to make war on the rebellious slaveholders of the South, or support that Administration in the strenuous endeavors which it is making to effect the reconstruction of the Republic, and the destruction of Slavery. It is to insult the intelligence and patriotism of the American people to entertain any serious doubt as to the issue of the contest. It can have but one issue, unless the country has lost its senses,—and never has it given better evidence of its sobriety, firmness, and rectitude of purpose than it now daily affords. Were the contest one relating to the conduct of the war, and had the Democratic party assumed a position of unquestionable loyalty, there would be some room for doubting who is to be our next President. It is impossible that a contest of proportions so vast should not have afforded ground for some complaint, on the score of its management. To suppose that the action of Government has been on all occasions exactly what it should have been is to suppose something so utterly out of the nature of things that it presents itself to no mind. Errors are unavoidable even in the ordinary affairs of common life, and their number and their magnitude increase with the importance of the business, and the greatness of the stage on which it is transacted. We have never claimed perfection for the Federal Administration, though we have ever been ready to do justice to the success which it has achieved on many occasions and to the excellence of its intentions on all. Had the Democrats called upon the country to displace the Administration because it had not done all that it should have done, promising to do more themselves against the Rebels than President Lincoln and his associates had effected, the result of the Presidential election might be involved in some doubt; for the people desire to see the Rebellion brought to an end, and the Democratic party has a great name as a ruling political organization, its history, during most of the present century, being virtually the history of the American nation. But, with a want of wisdom that shows how much it has lost in losing that Southern lead which had so much to do with its success in politics, it chose to place itself in opposition to the national sentiment, instead of adopting it, guiding it, and profiting from its existence. The errors of the various parties that have been opposed to it have often been matter for mirth to the Democratic party, as well they may have been; but neither Federalists, nor National Republicans, nor Whigs, nor Know-Nothings, nor Republicans were ever guilty of a blunder so enormous as that which this party itself perpetrated at Chicago, when it virtually announced its readiness to surrender the country into the hands of the men who have so pertinaciously sought its destruction for the last four years. So strange has been its action, that we should be ashamed to have dreamed that any party could be guilty of it. Yet it is a living fact that the Democratic party, in spite of its loud claims to strict nationality of purpose, has so conducted itself as to show that it is willing to complete the work which the slaveholders began, and not only to submit to the terms which the Rebels would dictate, but to tear the Union still further to pieces, if indeed it would leave any two States in a united condition. Thus acting, that party has defeated itself, and reduced the action of the people to a mere, though a mighty, formality. Either this is a plain statement of the case, or this nation is about to give a practical answer to Bishop Butler's famous question, "What if a whole community were to go mad?" For the ratification of the Chicago Platform by the people would be an indorsement of violence and disorder, a direct approval of wilful rebellion, and an announcement that every election held in this country is to be followed by a revolutionary outbreak, until our condition shall have become even worse than that of Mexico, and we shall be ready to welcome the arrival, in the train of some European army, of a cadet of some imperial or royal house, whose "mission" it should be to restore order in the once United States, while anarchy should be kept at a distance by a liberal exhibition of French or German bayonets. What has happened to Mexico would assuredly happen here, if we should allow the country to Mexicanize itself at the bidding of Belmont and Co.
But it may be said, it is unjust to attribute to the masses of the Democratic party intentions so bad as those of which we have spoken. That party, in past times, has done great things for the land, has always professed the highest patriotism, and its name and fame are most intimately associated with some of the noblest passages in the history of the Republic. All this is very true. We admit, what is indeed self-evident, that the Democratic party has done great things for the country, and that it can look back with just pride over the country's history, until a comparatively recent period; and we do not attribute to the masses composing it any other than the best intentions. It is not of those masses that we have spoken. The sentiment of patriotism is ever strong with the body of the people. The number of men who would wilfully injure their country has never been large in any age. But it is not the less true that parties are but too often the blind tools of leaders, of men whose only interest in their country is to use it for their own purposes, to make all they can out of it, and at its expense. The Democratic party has always been a disciplined party, and nothing is more notorious in its history than its submissiveness to its leaders. This has been the chief cause of its almost unbroken career of success; and it has been its pride and its boast that it has been well-trained, obedient, and consequently successful, while all other parties have been quarrelsome and impatient of discipline, and consequently have risen only to endure through a few years of sickly existence, and then to pass away. The Federalists, the National Republicans, the Antimasons, the Whigs, and the Know-Nothings have each appeared, flourished for a short time, and then passed to the limbo of factions lost to earth. This discipline of the Democracy has not been without its uses, and the country occasionally has profited from it; but now it is to be abused, through application to the service of the Great Anarch at Richmond. The Rebel power, which our fleets and armies are steadily reducing day by day, is to be saved from overthrow, and its agents from the severe and just punishment which should be visited upon them for their great and unprovoked crime,—if they are to be saved therefrom,—through the action of the Democratic party, as it calls itself, and which purposes to go to the assistance of the slaveholders in war, as formerly it went to their assistance in peace, the meekest and most faithful and most useful of their slaves. The Democratic party, as a party, instead of being the sword of the Republic, purposes being the shield of the Rebellion. Such is the intention of its leaders, who control the disciplined masses, if their words have any meaning; and, so far as they have been able to act, their actions correspond strictly with their words. The Chicago Convention, which consisted of the crème de la crème of the Democracy, had not a word to say against either the Rebels or the Rebellion, while it had not words enough, or words not strong enough, to employ in denouncing those whose sole offence consists in their efforts to conquer the Rebels and to put down the Rebellion. With a perversion of history that is quite without a parallel even in the hardy falsehood of American politics, the responsibility for the war was placed to the account of the loyal men of the country, and not to the account of the traitors, who brought it upon the nation by a fierce forcing-process. The speech of Mr. Horatio Seymour, who presided over the Belmont band, is, as it were, a bill of indictment preferred against the American Republic; for Governor Seymour, though not famous for his courage, has boldness sufficient to do that which a far greater man said he would not do,—he has indicted a whole people. It follows from this condemnation of the Federal Government for making war on the Rebels, and this failure to condemn the Rebels for making war on the Federal Government, that the Democrats, should they succeed in electing their candidates, would pursue a course exactly the opposite of that which they denounce. They would withdraw the nation from the contest, and acknowledge the independence of the Southern Confederacy; and then they would make such a treaty with its leading and dominant interest as should place the United States in the condition of dependency with reference to the South. That such would be their course is not only fairly inferrible from the views embodied in the Chicago Platform, and from the speeches made in the Chicago Convention, but it is what Mr. Pendleton, the Democratic candidate for the Vice-Presidency, has said it is our duty to do so, so far as relates to acknowledging the Confederacy. He has deliberately said, that, if we cannot "conciliate" the Rebels, and "persuade" them to come back into the Union, we should allow them to depart in peace. Such is the doctrine of the gentleman who was placed on the Democratic ticket with General McClellan for the avowed purpose of rendering that ticket palatable to the Peace men. No man can vote for General McClellan without by the same act voting for Mr. Pendleton; and we know that Mr. Pendleton has declared himself ready to let the Rebels rend the Union to tatters, and that he has opposed the prosecution of the war. General McClellan is mortal, and, if elected, might die long before his Presidential term should be out, like General Taylor, or immediately after it should begin, like General Harrison. Then Mr. Pendleton would become President, like Mr. Tyler, in 1841, who cheated the Whigs, or like Mr. Fillmore, in 1850, who cheated everybody. Nor is it by any means certain that General McClellan would not, once elected, consider himself the Chicago Platform, as Mr. Buchanan avowed himself to be the Cincinnati Platform. He has written a letter, to be sure, in which he has given it to be understood that he is in favor of continuing the war against the Rebels until they shall be subdued; but so did Mr. Polk, twenty yearn ago, write a letter on the Tariff of 1842 that was even more satisfactory to the Democratic Protectionists of those days than the letter of General McClellan can be to the War Democrats of these days. All of us recollect the famous Democratic blazon of 1844,—"Polk, Dallas, and the Tariff of '42!" It was under that sign that the Democrats conquered in Pennsylvania; and had they not conquered in Pennsylvania, they themselves would have been conquered in the nation. Mr. Polk and Mr. Dallas were the chief instruments used to break down the Tariff of '42, in less than two years after they had been elected to the first and second offices of the nation because they were believed to be its most ardent friends. Mr. Polk, as President, recommended that it should be changed, and employed all the influence of his high station to get the Tariff Bill of 1846 through Congress; and Mr. Dallas, who had been nominated for the Vice-Presidency with the express purpose of "catching" the votes of Protectionists, gave his casting vote in the Senate in favor of the new bill, which meant the repeal of the Tariff of '42. The Democrats are playing the same game now that they played in 1844, with this difference, that the stakes are ten thousand times greater now than they were then, and that their manner of play is far hardier than it was twenty years since. Then, the question, though important, related only to a point of internal policy; now, it relates to the national existence. Then, the Free-Traders did not offensively proclaim their intention to cheat the Protectionists; now, Mr. Fernando Wood and Mr. Vallandigham, and other leaders of the extreme left of the Democratic party, with insulting candor, avow that to cheat the country is the purpose which that party has in view. Mr. Vallandigham, who made the Chicago Platform, explicitly declares that that Platform and General McClellan's letter of acceptance do not agree; at the same time Mr. Wood, who is for peace to the knife, calmly tells us that General McClellan, as President, would do the work of the Democracy,—and we need no Daniel to interpret Mr. Wood's words. We mean no disrespect to General McClellan, on the contrary we treat him with perfect respect, when we say that we do not believe he has a higher sense of honor than Mr. Polk possessed; and as Mr. Polk became a tool in the hands of a faction,—being a Protectionist during the contest of '44, and an Anti-Protectionist after that contest had been decided in his favor,—so is it intended that General McClellan shall become a tool in the hands of another faction. Mr. Polk was employed to effect the destruction of a "black tariff": General McClellan is employed to destroy a nation that is supposed to be given up to "black republicanism." We do not believe that the soldier will be found so successful an instrument as the civilian proved to be.
An ounce of fact is supposed to be worth a ton of theory; and the facts of the last four or five years admit of our believing the worst that can be suspected of the purposes of the Democratic party. It is not uncharitable to say that the leaders and managers of that party contemplate, in the event of their triumph in November, the surrender of the country to the slaveholding oligarchy; in the event of their defeat by a small majority, the extension of the civil war over the North. Four years ago we could not be made to believe that Secession was a possible thing. We admitted that there were Secessionists at the South, but we could not be made to believe in the possibility of Secession. Even "South Carolina couldn't be kicked out of the Union," it was commonly said in the North. There were but few disunionists at the South, almost everybody said, and almost everybody believed what was said concerning the state of Southern opinion. In a few weeks we saw, not South Carolina kicked out of the Union, but South Carolina kicking the Union away from her. In a few months we saw eleven States take themselves out of the Union, form themselves into a Confederacy, and raise great armies to fight against the Union. Yet it is certain that in the month of November, 1860, there were not twenty thousand resolute disunionists in all the Slaveholding States, leaving South Carolina and Mississippi aside,—and not above fifty thousand in all the South, including Mississippi and South Carolina. How, then, came it to pass that nearly the whole of the population of the South became Rebels in so short a time? Because they were under the dominion of their leading men, who took them from the right road, and conducted them into the slough of rebellion. Because they were encouraged so to act by the Northern Democracy as made rebellion inevitable. The Northern Democratic press and Northern Democratic orators held such language respecting "Southern rights" as induced even loyal Southrons to suppose that Slavery was to be openly recognized by the Constitution, and spread over the nation. The President of the United States, a Northern Democrat, gravely declared that there existed no right in the Government to coerce a seceding State, which was all that the most determined Secessionist could ask. Instead of doing anything to strengthen the position of the federal Government, the President did all that he could to assist the Secessionists, and left the country naked to their attacks; and he parted on the best of terms with those Rebels who left his Cabinet, where they had long been busy in organizing resistance to Federal authority. The leaders of the Northern Democracy, far from exhibiting a loyal spirit, urged the slaveholders to make demands which were at war with the Constitution and the laws, and which could not have been complied with, unless it had been meant to admit that there was no binding force in existing institutions, the validity of which had not once been called in question for seventy-two years. The real Secessionists of the South, Rhett and Yancey and their followers, availed themselves of the existing state of affairs, and precipitated rebellion,—a step which they never would have taken, had they not been assured that no resistance would be made to their action so long as Mr. Buchanan should remain in the Presidency, and that he would be supported by the leaders of the Northern Democracy, who would take their followers with them along the road that led to the Union's dissolution. South Carolina, rabid as she was, did not rebel until the last Democratic President of the United States had publicly assured her that he would do nothing to prevent her from reducing the Calhoun theory to practice; and had she not rebelled, not another State would have left the Union. The opportunity that she could not get under President Jackson she obtained under President Buchanan,—and she did not hesitate to make the most of that opportunity, all indeed that could be made of it, well knowing that it could not be expected again to occur.
With these facts before them, the American people should be prepared for further rebellious action on the part of that faction whose creed it is that rebellion is right when directed against the ascendency of their political opponents. They have done their utmost to assist the Rebels all through the war, and the great riots in New York last year were the legitimate consequences of their doctrine, if not of their labors. We know that organizations hostile to the Union have been formed in the West, and that there was to have been a rising there, had any striking successes been achieved by the Confederate forces during the last six months. Nothing but the vigor and the victories of Grant and Sherman and Farragut saved the North from becoming the scene of civil war in 1864. Nothing but the vigor and union of the people in their political capacity can keep civil war from the North hereafter. The followers of the Seymours and other ultra Democrats of the North are not more loyal than were nine-tenths of the Southern people in 1860. Few of them now think of becoming rebels, but they would as readily rebel as did the Southern men who have filled the armies of Lee and Beauregard, and who have poured out their blood so lavishly to destroy that nation which owes its existence to the labors of Southern men, to the exertions of Washington, Jefferson, Henry, and others, natives of the very States that have done most in the cause of destruction. The sentiment of nationality is no stronger among Northern Democrats than it was among Southern Democrats; and as the latter were converted into traitors at the bidding of a few leading politicians whose plans were favored by circumstances, so would the former become traitors at the first signal to any move that their leaders should make. As to the two classes of leaders, the Southern men are far superior in every manly quality to those Northern men who are doing their work. It is possible that the men of the South really did believe that their property was in danger, and it is beyond dispute that they were alarmed about their political power; but the men of the North who sympathize with them, and who are prepared to aid them at the first opportunity that shall offer to strike an effective blow, well knew that the victorious Republicans had neither the will nor the power to injure Southern property or to weaken the protection it enjoyed under the Constitution. Their hostility to the Union is purely gratuitous, or springs from motives of the most sordid character.
There is but one way to meet the danger that threatens us,—a danger that really is greater than that with which we were threatened in 1860, and which we have the advantage of seeing, whereas we could see nothing in that year. We must strengthen the Government, make it literally irresistible, by clothing it with the whole of that power which proceeds from an emphatic and unmistakable expression of the popular will. Give Mr. Lincoln, in the approaching election, the strength that comes from a united people, and we shall have peace maintained throughout the North, and peace restored to the South. Reëlect him by a small majority, and there will be civil war in the North, and a revival of warlike spirit in the South. Elect General McClellan, and we shall have to choose between constant warfare, as a consequence of having approved of Secession by approving of the Chicago Platform,—which is Secession formally democratized,—and despotism, the only thing that would save us from anarchy. Anarchy is the one thing that men will not, because they cannot, long endure. Order is indeed now and forever Heaven's first law, and order society must and will have. Order is just as compatible with constitutional government as it is with despotic government; but to have it in connection with freedom, in other words, with the existence of a constitutional polity, the people must do their whole duty. They must rise above the prejudices of party and of faction, and see nothing but their country and liberty. They must show that they are worthy of freedom, or they cannot long have it. Now is the time to prove that the American people know the difference between liberty and license, by their support of the party of order and constitutional government, and by administering a thorough rebuke to those licentious men who are seeking to overwhelm the country and its Constitution in a common ruin.
Of President Lincoln's reëlection no doubt can be entertained, whether we judge of the issue by the condition of the country, or by the sentiments that should animate the great majority of the people, and by which, we are convinced, that majority is animated. The Union candidate, no matter what his name or antecedents, should be elected by a majority so great as to "coerce" the turbulent portion of the Democracy into submission to the laws of the land, and into respect for the popular will, the last thing for which Democrats have any respect. Had the Union National Convention seen fit to place a new man in nomination, it would have been the duty of the voters to support him with all the means honestly at their command; but we must say that there is a peculiar obligation upon Americans to reëlect Mr. Lincoln, and to reëlect him by a vote that should surprise even the most sanguine and hopeful of his friends. The war from which the nation, and the whole world, have been made to suffer so much, and from the effects of which mankind will be long in recovering, was made because of Mr. Lincoln's election to the Presidency. The North was to be punished for having had the audacity to elect him even when the Democracy were divided, and the success of the Republican candidate was a thing of course. He, a mere man of the people, should never become President of the United States! The most good-natured of men, it is known that his success made him an object of personal aversion to the Southern leaders. They did their worst to prevent his becoming President of the Republic, and in that way they wronged and insulted the people far more than they wronged and insulted the man whom the people had elected to the highest post in the land; and the people are bound, by way of vindicating their dignity and establishing their power, to make Mr. Lincoln President of the United States, to compel the acknowledgment of his legal right to be the chief magistrate of the nation as unreservedly, from South Carolina as from Massachusetts. His authority should be admitted as fully in Virginia as it is in New York, in Georgia and Alabama as in Pennsylvania and Ohio. This can follow only from his reëlection; and it can follow only from his reëlection by a decisive majority. That insolent spirit which led the South to become so easy a prey to the Secession faction, when not a tenth part of its people were Secessionists, should be thoroughly, emphatically rebuked, and its chief representatives severely punished, by extorting from the rebellious section a practical admission of the enormity of the crime of which it was guilty when it resisted the lawful authority of a President who was chosen in strict accordance with the requirements of the Constitution, and who entertained no more intention of interfering with the constitutional rights of the South than he thought of instituting a crusade for the recovery of the Holy Sepulchre. The majesty of the law should be asserted and established, and that can best be done by placing President Lincoln a second time at the head of the Republic, the revolt of the slaveholders being directed against him personally as well as against that principle of which he was the legally elected representative. In him the spirit of order is incarnate; and his reëlection by a great popular vote would be the establishment of the fact that under our system it is possible to maintain order, and to humiliate and subdue the children of anarchy.
President Lincoln should be reëlected, if for no other reason, that there may go forth to the world a pointed approval of his conduct from his constituents. As we have said, we do not claim perfection for the policy and acts of the Administration; but we are of opinion that its mistakes have been no greater than in most instances would have been committed by any body of men that could have been selected from the entire population of the country. Take the policy that has been pursued with reference to Slavery. Many of us thought that the President issued his Emancipation Proclamation at least a year too late; but we must now see that the time selected for its promulgation was as skilfully chosen as its aim was laudable. Had it come out a year earlier, in 1861, the friends of the Rebels could have said, with much plausibility, that its appearance had rendered a restoration of the Union impossible, and that the slaveholders had no longer any hope of having their property-rights respected under the Federal Constitution. But by allowing seventeen months to elapse before issuing it, the President compelled the Rebels to commit themselves absolutely to the cause of the Union's overthrow without reference to any attack that had been made on Slavery in a time of war. It has not, therefore, been in the power of their allies here to say that the issuing of the Proclamation placed an impassable gulf between the Union and the Confederacy; for the Confederates were as loud in their declarations that they never would return into the Union before the Proclamation appeared as they have been since its appearance. They were caught completely, and deprived of the only pretence that could have been invented for their benefit, by themselves or by their friends. The adoption of an Emancipation policy did not cause us the loss of one friend in the South, while it gained friends for our cause in every country that felt an interest in our struggle. It prevented the acknowledgment of the Southern Confederacy by France, and by other nations, as French example would have found prompt imitation. Its appearance was the turning event of the war, and it was most happily timed for both foreign and domestic effect. It will be the noblest fact in President Lincoln's history, that by the same action he announced freedom to four millions of bondmen, and secured his country against even the possibility of foreign mediation, foreign intervention, and foreign war.
The political state of the country, as indicated by the result of recent elections, is not without interest, in connection with the Presidential contest. Since the nomination of General McClellan, elections have been held in several States for local officers and Members of Congress, and the results are highly favorable to the Union cause. The first election was held in Vermont, and the Union party reëlected their candidate for Governor, and all their candidates for Members of Congress, by a majority of more than twenty thousand. They have also a great majority in the Legislature, the Democrats not choosing so much as one Senator, and but few Members of the House of Representatives. The election in Maine took place but six days after that of Vermont, and with similar results. The Union candidate for Governor was reëlected, by a majority that is stated at sixteen thousand. Every Congressional District was carried by the Union men. In one district a Democrat was elected in 1862, at the time when the Administration was very unpopular because of the military failures that were so common in the summer of that dark and eventful year. His majority was one hundred and twenty-seven. At the late election his constituents refused to reëlect him, and his place was bestowed on a friend of the Administration, whose majority is said to be about two thousand. The majorities of the other candidates were much larger, in two instances exceeding four thousand each. The State Legislature elected on the same day is of Administration politics in the proportion of five to one. These two States may be said to represent both of the old parties that existed in New England during the thirty years that followed the Presidential election of 1824. Vermont was of National-Republican or Whig politics down to 1854, and always voted against Democratic candidates for the Presidency. Maine was almost as strongly Democratic in her opinions and action as Vermont was Anti-Democratic, voting but once, in 1840, against a Democratic candidate for the Presidency, in twenty-four years. Her electoral votes were given for General Jackson in 1832, for Mr. Van Buren in 1836, for Mr. Polk in 1844, for General Cass in 1848, and for General Pierce in 1852. Yet she has acted politically with Vermont for more than ten years, both States supporting Colonel Fremont in 1856, and Mr. Lincoln in 1860,—a striking proof of the levelling effect of that pro-slavery policy and action which have characterized the Democratic party ever since the inauguration of President Pierce, in 1853. Had the Democratic party not gone over to the support of the slaveholding interest, Maine would have been a Democratic State at this day.
There were important elections held on the 11th of October in the great and influential States of Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Indiana, and the verdicts which should be pronounced by these States were expected with an interest which it was impossible to increase, as it was felt that they would go far toward deciding the event of the Presidential contest. Vermont's action might be attributed to her determined and long-continued opposition to the Democratic party, which no change in others could operate to lessen; and the course of Maine could be attributed to her "Yankee" character and position: but Pennsylvania has generally been Democratic in her decisions, and she has nothing of the Yankee about her, while Ohio and Indiana are thoroughly Western in all respects. Down to a few days before the time for voting, the common opinion was, that Pennsylvania would give a respectable majority for the Union candidates, that Ohio would pronounce the same way by a great majority, and that Indiana would be found with the Democrats; but early in October doubts began to prevail with respect to the action of Pennsylvania, though no one could say why they came to exist. What happened showed that the change in feeling did not unfaithfully foreshadow the change that had taken place in the second State of the Union. Ohio's decision was not different from what had been expected, her Union majority being not less than fifty thousand, including the soldiers' vote. Indiana's action astonished every one. Instead of furnishing evidence that General McClellan's nomination had been beneficial to his party, the event in the Hoosier State led to the opposite conclusion. The Democratic majority in that State in 1862 was ten thousand, and that it could be overcome, or materially reduced, was not thought possible. Yet the voting done there on the 11th of October terminated most disastrously for the Democrats, the popular majority against them being not less than twenty thousand, while they lost several Members of Congress, among them Mr. Voorhees, who is to Indiana what Mr. Vallandigham is to Ohio, only that he has a little more prudence than the Ohioan. Indiana was the only one of the States in which a Governor was chosen, which made the returns easy of attainment. Governor Morton, who is reëlected, "stumped" the State; and to his exertions, no doubt, much of the Union success is due. In Pennsylvania, at the time we write, it is not settled which party has the majority on the home vote; but, as the soldiers vote in the proportion of about eleven to two for the Republican candidates, the majority of the latter will be good,—and it will be increased at the November election.
The States that voted on the 11th of October give sixty electoral votes, or two more than half the number necessary for a choice of President. They are all certain to be given for Mr. Lincoln, as also are the votes of the six New England States, and those of New York, Illinois, Michigan, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Iowa, Kansas, West Virginia, and California, making 189 in all, the States mentioned being entitled to the following votes:—Massachusetts 12, Maine 7, New Hampshire 5, Vermont 5, Rhode Island 4, Connecticut 6, New York 33, Pennsylvania 26, Ohio 21, Indiana 13, Illinois 16, Michigan 8, Minnesota 4, Wisconsin 8, Iowa 8, Kansas 3, West Virginia 5, and California 5. And so Abraham Lincoln and Andrew Johnson will be President and Vice-President of the United States for the four years that shall begin on the 4th of March, 1865.
REVIEWS AND LITERARY NOTICES.
An American Dictionary of the English Language. By Noah Webster, LL.D. Thoroughly revised, and greatly enlarged and improved, by Chauncey A. Goodrich, LL.D., etc., and Noah Porter, D.D., etc. Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam. Royal 4to. pp. lxxii., 1768.
Beyond cavil, this portly and handsome volume makes good the claim which is set forth on the title-page. The revision which the old edition has undergone is manifestly a most thorough one, extending to every department of the work, and to its minutest details. The enlargement it has received is very considerable, the size of the page having been increased, and more than eighty pages added to the number contained in the previous or "Pictorial" edition. The improvements are not only really such, but they are so many and so great that they amount to a complete remodelling of the work; and hence the objections heretofore brought against it—many of them very justly—have, for the most part, no longer any validity or pertinency. It may be questioned, however, whether the Dictionary, in view of the manifold and extensive changes which have been made in its matter and plan, should not be said to have been based on that of Dr. Webster rather than to be by him. St. Anthony's shirt cannot be patched and patched forever and still remain St. Anthony's shirt. But there is doubtless much virtue in a name, and, so long as the publishers have given us a truly excellent work, it matters little by what title they choose to call it.
We are amazed at the vastness of the vocabulary, which embraces upwards of one hundred and fourteen thousand words, being some ten thousand more, it is claimed, than any other word-book of the language. Such unexampled fulness would be apt to excite a suspicion that a deliberately adopted system of crimping had been carried on within the tempting domains of the natural sciences, to furnish recruits for this enormous army of vocables. But we do not find, upon a pretty careful examination, that many terms of this sort have been admitted which are not fairly entitled to a place in a popular lexicon.
In the matter of definition, we can unqualifiedly commend the principles by which the editor and his coadjutors appear to have been guided, notwithstanding an occasional failure to carry out these principles with entire consistency. The crying fault of mistaking different applications of a meaning of a word for essentially different significations—the head and front of Dr. Webster's offending as a definer, and not of Dr. Webster only, but of almost all other lexicographers—has generally been avoided in this edition. The philosophical analysis, the orderly arrangement of meanings, the simplicity, comprehensiveness, and precision of statement, the freedom from prejudice, crotchets, and dogmatism, the good taste and good sense, which characterize this portion of the work, are deserving of the fullest recognition and the highest praise.
In the department of etymology, the revision has been thorough indeed, and, as all the world knows, the Dictionary stood sadly enough in need of it. But we were not prepared for so entire and fearless an overhauling of Dr. Webster's "Old Curiosity Shop," or for a contribution to philological science so valuable and original. It is not too much to say that no other English dictionary, and no special treatise on English etymology, that has yet appeared, can compare with it. As a fitting introduction to the subject, a "Brief History of the English Language," by Professor James Hadley, is prefixed to the vocabulary, and will well repay careful study.
No excellences, however, we apprehend, in definition or etymology will reconcile scholars to those peculiarities of spelling which are commonly known as Websterianisms, and which, with a few exceptions, are retained in the edition before us. The pages of this magazine are evidence that we ourselves regard them with no favor. But we are bound, in common honesty, to state, that, in every case in which Dr. Webster's orthography is given, it is accompanied by the common spelling, and thus the user of the book is left at liberty to take his choice of modes. We are also bound, in common fairness, to admit that many, if not all, of the quite limited number of changes put forward in the later editions of the Dictionary are, in themselves considered, unquestionable improvements, and that, if adopted by the whole English-writing public on both sides of the water, or even in this country alone, would redeem our common language from some of the gross anomalies and grievous confusion which now make it a monster among the graphic systems of the world, and a stumbling-block and stone of offence to all who undertake to learn it. Furthermore, it must be conceded that almost all our lexicographers have been nearly or quite as ready as Dr. Webster to attempt improvements in orthography, though they may have shown more discretion than he. It is not generally known, we suspect, but it is none the less a fact, that Johnson, Todd, Perry, Smart, Worcester, and various other eminent orthographers, have all deviated more or less from actual usage, in order to carry out some "principle" or "analogy" of the language, or to give sanction and authority to some individual fancy of their own. So much may be said in defence of Dr. Webster against the ignorant vituperation with which he has often been assailed. But, on the other hand, he is fairly open to the charge of having violated his own canons in repeated instances. To take a single case, why should he not have spelt until with two ls, instead of one,—as he does "distill," "fulfill," etc.,—when it was so desirable to complete an analogy, and when he had for it the warrant of a very common, if not the most reputable, usage? Again, it seems to us, that, if our orthography is to be reformed at all, it should be reformed not indifferently, but altogether; for it is, beyond controversy, atrociously bad, poorly fulfilling, as Professor Hadley justly remarks, (p. xxviii.,) its original and proper office of indicating pronunciation, while it no better fufils the improper office, which some would assert for it, of a guide to etymology. Emendations on the here-a-little-there-a-little plan, while they do no harm, do little good. They are but topical remedies, which cannot restore the pristine vigor of a ruined constitution. What we need is a reform as thorough-going as that which has been effected in the Spanish language. Shall we ever have it? or will the irrational conservatism of the educated classes, in all time to come, prevent a consummation so desirable, and so desiderated by the philologist? Max Müller thinks that perhaps our posterity, some three hundred years hence, may write as they speak,—in other words, that our orthography will by that time have become a phonetic one. It is not safe to prophesy; but, whether such a result comes soon or late, the credit of having accomplished it will not be due to those "half-learned and parcel-learned" persons who consider the present written form of the language as a thing "taboo," and look with such horror upon all attempts to better its condition.
As regards pronunciation, we think this will be generally considered one of the strong points of the new Dictionary. The introductory treatise on the "Principles of Pronunciation" is a comprehensive, instructive, and eminently practical, though not very philosophically constructed, exposition of the subject of English orthoëpy. It contains an analysis and description of the elementary sounds of the language, a discussion of certain questions about which orthoëpists are at variance, and a useful collection of facts, rules, and directions respecting a variety of other matters falling within its scope. As a sort of pendant to this, we have a "Synopsis of Words differently pronounced by Different Orthoëpists," which those who regulate their pronunciation by written authorities or opinions may find it useful to consult. The pronunciations given in the body of the work appear to be conformed to the usage of the best speakers. We notice with gratification that such vulgarisms as ab´do-men, pus´sl (for pust´ule!), sword (for s[=o]rd), etc., no longer continue to deface the book.
A large number of wood-cuts, mostly selected with good judgment and skilfully engraved, adorn the pages, and throw light upon the definitions. Besides being inserted in the vocabulary in connection with the words they illustrate, they are brought together, in a classified form, at the end of the volume. This is claimed as an "obvious advantage."
We have left ourselves but little space to notice the very rich and attractive Appendix, the first fifty pages of which are taken up with an "Explanatory and Pronouncing Vocabulary of the Names of Noted Fictitious Persons and Places," etc., by William A. Wheeler. The conception of such a work was singularly happy, as well as original, and, on the whole, the task has been executed with commendable fidelity and discretion. That occasional omissions and mistakes should be discovered will probably surprise no one less than the author. Attention has elsewhere been publicly called, in particular, to the fact that Owen Meredith is given as the pseudonyme of Sir Bulwer Lytton instead of his son, E. R. Bulwer: this would seem to be a bad blunder, but we understand that it was a mere error of oversight, and that it was corrected before the Dictionary was fairly in the market. If other mistakes should be brought to light,—and what work of such multiplicity was ever free from them?—Mr. Wheeler will doubtless call to mind, and his readers must not forget, the eloquent excuse which Dr. Johnson offers, in the preface to his Dictionary, for his own shortcomings:—"That sudden fits of inadvertency will surprise vigilance, slight avocations will seduce attention, and casual eclipses of the mind will darken learning; and that the writer shall often in vain trace his memory at the moment of need for that which yesterday he knew with intuitive readiness, and which will come uncalled into his thoughts to-morrow." The "Pronouncing Vocabularies of Modern Geographical and Biographical Names, by J. Thomas, M. D.," are evidently the product of laborious and conscientious research; and, while we differ widely from Dr. Thomas on various points, general and particular, we must allow that his vocabularies are as yet the only ones of the kind which approximate with any nearness to the character of an authoritative standard. The other Vocabularies or "Tables" of the Appendix seem also to have been prepared with sound judgment and much painstaking, but we cannot dwell upon them.
To sum up, in all the essential points of a good dictionary,—in the amplitude and selectness of its vocabulary, in the fulness and perspicacity of its definitions, in its orthoëpy and (cum grano salis) its orthography, in its new and trustworthy etymologies, in the elaborate, but not too learned treatises of its Introduction, in its carefully prepared and valuable appendices,—briefly, in its general accuracy, completeness, and practical utility,—the work is one which none who read or write can henceforward afford to dispense with.
Mindful of the old adage, we have instituted no comparison between Webster and Worcester. If the latter, excellent as it is, should now be found in some respects inferior to the former, it is to be remembered that the present edition of Webster has the great advantage of being four or five years later in point of time, and that it has been enriched by the use of materials which were not accessible to Worcester. We are glad to see a handsome tribute to the learning and industry of Dr. Worcester, and an honest acknowledgment of indebtedness to his labors, in Professor Porter's Preface. This is as it should be; and we hope that the publishers, on both sides, acting in the same spirit, will forego all unfriendly controversy. Let there be no new War of the Dictionaries. The world is wide enough for both, and both are monuments of industry, judgment, and erudition, in the highest degree creditable to American scholarship, and unequalled by anything that has yet been done by English philologists of the present century.
Dramatis Personæ. By Robert Browning. Boston: Ticknor and Fields.
The title of this new volume of poems expresses the peculiarity which we find in everything that Mr. Browning composes. Notwithstanding the remoteness of his moods, and the curious subtilty with which he follows the trace of exceptional feelings, he impersonates dramatically: there may be few such people as these choice acquaintances of his genius, but they are persons, and not mere figures labelled with a thought. Pippa, Guendolen, Luria, the Duchess, Bishop Blougram, Frà Lippo Lippi, are persons, however much they may be given to episodes and reverie. You find a great deal that is irrelevant to the thorough working-out of a character, much that is not simply individual: Mr. Browning gets sometimes in the way, so that you lose sight of his companion, but it is not as Punch's master overzealously pulls the wires of his puppets. You would not say that a man can find many such companions, but you cannot deny that they are vividly described. Perhaps they appear in only one or two moods, but these have individual life. They are discovered in rare exalted or peculiar moments, but these are in costume and bathed in color. Shutting and opening many doors, balked at one vestibule and traversing another, suddenly you surprise the lord or mistress of the mansion, or from some threshold you silently observe their secret passion, which is unconscious of the daylight, and is caught in all its frankness. You come upon people, and not upon pictures in a house.
But the pictures, too, in all Mr. Browning's interiors, seem to have grown out of the life of the persons. He has not merely come in and hung them up, as poor artist or upholsterer, to make a sumptuous house for fine people to move into. The character in any one of his poems seems to have devised the furnishing: it is distinct, exterior, not always helping or expressing the character's thought, sometimes to be referred to that only with an effort, but still no other character could have so furnished his house. You can find the individuality everywhere, if you care to take the trouble. But if you are in haste, or do not particularly sympathize with the person whose drama you surprise, you and he will be together like vagrants in a gallery, who long for a catalogue, dislocate their necks, and anathematize the whole collection. But do not then say that you have gauged and criticized the life that streams from Mr. Browning's pen.
How vivid and personal is, for instance, "Pictor Ignotus," one of the earlier poems! The painter is no longer unknown, for his mood betrays and describes him. It is not merely his speaking in the first person which saves him from melting into an abstraction, but it is that the "I" takes flesh and lives; the poet dramatizes or shows him.
Of this class of poems is the one entitled "Abt Vogler" in the present volume. The Abbot was a famous musician and organist, the teacher of Meyerbeer. Concerning the new kind of organ which he invented, and which he called an "Orchestricon," we know nothing, save that its effects were merely amplifications of those belonging to an organ. The poem describes the awe and rapture which fill the soul of a great organist when the instrument shudders, soars, rejoices in his inspiration. It is not the description of a musical mood, but the showing of a man who has the mood. It is the exultation and religious feeling of a man in the very act. The noble lines are not fine things attempting to set forth the metaphysics of musical expression and enjoyment, but they represent a man at the very climax of his musical passion. Is the effect any the less dramatic because the man is not committing a murder, or conspiring, or seducing, or overreaching, or infecting an honest ear with jealousy? It is not so theatrical, because the emotion itself is not so broad and popular, but its inmost genius is dramatic.
"A Death in the Desert" is another poem that attempts to restore a fleeting moment, full of profound thought and feeling, by giving it individuals, and showing them living in it, instead of meditating about it with fine after-thoughts. Pamphylax describes the death of St. John in a desert cave. At first the individuals are clearly seen; but the poem soon lapses into philosophizing, and winds up with theology. Still, here is the power of reproducing the tone and sentiments of a long-buried and forgotten epoch, as if the matters involved had immediate interest and were vigorously mauled in all the newspapers. St. John might have died last week, or we might be Syrian converts of the second century, dissolved in tenderness at the thought that the Beloved Disciple at last had gone to lay his head again upon the Master's bosom. The poem talks as if it were trying to satisfy this mixture of memory and curiosity.
Some of the best lines ever written by Mr. Browning are here. Take these, for instance. Pamphylax, reporting John's last words, as the hoary life flickered and clung, gives this:—
"A stick, once fire from end to end;
Now ashes, save the tip that holds a spark!
Yet, blow the spark, it runs back, spreads itself
A little where the fire was: thus I urge
The soul that served me, till it task once more
What ashes of my brain have kept their shape,
And these make effort on the last o' the flesh,
Trying to taste again the truth of things."
And after recalling the inspirations of Patmos:—
"But at the last, why, I seemed left alive
Like a sea-jelly weak on Patmos strand,
To tell dry sea-beach gazers how I fared
When there was mid-sea, and the mighty things.
* * *
Yet now I wake in such decrepitude
As I had slidden down and fallen afar,
Past even the presence of my former self,
Grasping the while for stay at facts which snap,
Till I am found away from my own world,
Feeling for foothold through a blank profound."
The poem entitled "Caliban upon Setebos; or, Natural Theology in the Island," has for a motto, "Thou thoughtest that I was altogether such an one as thyself." Caliban talks to himself about "that other, whom his dam called God." Setebos is the great First Cause as conceived and dreaded in the heart of a Caliban. The poem is by no means a caricature of the natural theology which springs from selfishness and fear. All the phenomena of the world are neither
"right nor wrong in Him,
Nor kind nor cruel: He is strong and Lord.
'Am strong myself, compared to yonder crabs
That march now from the mountain to the sea;
Let twenty pass, and stone the twenty-first,
Loving not, hating not, just choosing so."
The materialist who believes in Forces is brother to the Calvinist who preaches Sovereignty and the Divine Decrees. The preacher lets loose upon the imagination of mankind a Setebos, who after death will plague his enemies and feast his friends. The materialist believes, with Caliban, that
"He doth his worst in this our life,
Giving just respite lest we die through pain,
Saving last pain for worst,—with which, an end."
The grave irony of this poem so bespatters the theologian's God with his own mud that we dread the image and recoil. From the unsparing vigor of these lines we turn for relief to "Rabbi Ben Ezra" and "Prospice." In both of these we have glimpses of Mr. Browning's true theology, which is the faith of his whole soul in the excellence of that world whose beauty he interprets, of the human nature whose capacity he does so much to "keep in repute," and of the Infinite Love.
"Praise be Thine!
I see the whole design,
I, who saw Power, shall see Love perfect too:
Perfect I call thy plan:
Thanks that I was a man!
Maker, remake, complete,—I trust what Thou shalt do!"
We find in this new volume more distinct and tranquil expressions of Mr. Browning's thought upon the relation of the finite to the infinite than he has given us before. And his pen has turned with freedom and satisfaction towards these things, as if the imagination had broken new outlets for itself through the world's beautiful horizon into the great sea. How "like one entire and perfect chrysolite" is the little piece called "Prospice"! But we are all the more surprised to see occasionally a touch of the genuine British denseness, whenever he recollects that there are such people as Strauss, Bishop Colenso, and the men of the "Essays and Reviews" prowling around the preserve where the ill-kept Thirty-Nine Articles still find a little short grass to nibble. When we read the last three verses of "Gold Hair," we set him down for a High-Church bigot: the English discussions upon points of exegesis and theology appear to him threatening to prove the Christian faith false, but for his part he still sees reasons to suppose it true, and this, among others, that it taught Original Sin, the Corruption of Man's Heart! We escape from this to "Rabbi Ben Ezra" for reassurance, not greatly minding the inconsistency that then appears, but confirmed in an old opinion of ours, that John Bull, in this matter of theology, has his mumps and scarlatina very late, and they are likely to go hard with a constitution that is weaned from the pure truth of things.
"Gold Hair," notwithstanding its picturesque lines, is weak and inconclusive. Its moral is conventional, while the incident is too far-fetched for sympathy. The series of little poems called "James Lee" is full of beauties, but it is too vague to make a firm impression. We suppose it tells the story of love that exaggerates a common nature, clings to it, and shrivels away. What can be finer than the way in which an unsatisfied heart makes the wind the interpreter of its pain and dread? This is the sixth poem, "Under the Cliff."
"Or wouldst thou rather that I understand
Thy will to help me?—like the dog I found
Once, pacing sad this solitary strand,
Who would not take my food, poor hound,
But whined and licked my hand."
But in this very poem the figure of the nun is artificial, and interrupts the pathetic feeling. And we cannot make anything out of the piece, "Beside the Drawing-Board," unless we first detach it from its position in the series, and like it alone. On the whole, many fine lines are here, but no real person and no poetic impression.
Neither the dramatic nor the lyrical quality appears in this volume as it did once in the splendid "Bells and Pomegranates," which gave us such vivid shapes, and emotions so consistent and sustained, even though they were so often flawed by over-reflection. In this volume the purposes are less palpable, and the pen seems to have pursued them with less tenacity than usual. It has the air of having been scraped together. Yet how charming is "Confessions," and "Youth and Art," and "A Likeness"! Besides these, the best pieces are those which touch upon the highest themes.
"Mr. Sludge, the Medium," cannot be called a poem. It would not be possible to write satire, epic, idyl, not even elegy, upon that "rat-hole philosophy," as Mr. Emerson once styled the new fetichism of the mahogany tables. It has not one element that asks the sense of beauty to incorporate it, or challenges the weapon of wit to transfix it. It is humiliating, but not pathetic, not even when yearning hearts are trying to pretend that their first-born vibrates to them through a stranger's and a hireling's mind. It is not even grotesque, but it is gross, and flat, and stale; its messages are fatuous, its machinery the rickety heirlooms of old humbugs of Greece and Alexandria. No thrill, no terror, no true awe, nothing but "goose-flesh" and disgust, creep from the medium's presence. Pegasus need not be saddled; summon, rather, the police.
Yet this composition, which Mr. Browning must have undertaken in a moment of high indignation, with the motive of self-relief, is full of common sense. Mr. Sludge's vindication of his career turns upon the point that people like on the whole to be deceived, especially in matters relating to the invisible world. Sludge must be right in this; otherwise the theologians would not have had such a successful run. The facile and eager "circle" betrays the imaginative medium into reporting what it appears most to desire. The superstition of the people excites and feeds his own. He is only one against a crowd which deluges him with its expectation, and resents a scarcity of the supernatural. Mr. Sludge is not so much to blame: the people at length push the thing so far that he is obliged to cheat in self-defence. And when a man tasks his wits successfully, if it be only to mislead the witless, he has a sense of satisfaction in the effort akin to that of the rhetorician and the quack.
But shrewdness and good sense cannot make a poem by assuming the measure of blank verse. And a few Yankee phrases are pasted into Mr. Sludge's talk, such as "stiffish cock-tail," "V-notes," "sniggering," allusions to "Greeley's newspaper," Beacon Street, etc.: there is no character in them at all. Mr. Sludge is a bad Yankee, as well as impudent pleader. The lines never sparkle, even with the poet's indignation, but they seem to be all the time blown into a forced vivacity and heat. Nemesis attends the poet who plunges his arm for a subject into this burrow of Spiritualism.
Let us pass from this to note the noble lesson that the last poem, entitled "Epilogue," conveys. Three speakers tell in turn their feeling of the Divine Presence. The first intones the old Hebrew notion, loved by the childhood of all races and countries, that the Lord's Face fills His earthly temple at stated periods, culminating with the human glory of psalms and hallelujahs, to absorb and shine in the rejoicing of the worshippers, to sink back again into the invisible upon the dying strain. The second speaker describes the reaction, when the enthusiastic belief of early times is replaced by a dull sense that no Face shines, by a doubt if beyond the darkness and the distance there be yet a God who will answer to the old rapture, a sun to rise when man's heart rises, a love corresponding to his ecstasy:—
"Where may hide what came and loved our clay?
How shall the sage detect in yon expanse
The star which chose to stoop and stay for us?
Unroll the records!"
But the third speaker bids the records be closed, that man may worship the God who lives, instead of regretting that He lived of old. Take the least man, observe his head and heart, find how he differs from every other man; see how Nature by degrees grows around him, to nourish, infold, and set him off, to enrich him with opportunities, as if he were her only foster-child, and to flatter thus every other man in turn, making him her darling as though in expectation of finding no other, till, having extorted all his worth and beauty, and cherished him to the utmost of his possible life, she rolls away elsewhere, continually keeping up this pageant of humanity:—
"Why, where's the need of Temple, when the walls
O' the world are that? What use of swells and falls
From Levites' choir, Priests' cries, and trumpet-calls?
That one Face, far from vanish, rather grows,
Or decomposes but to recompose,
Become my universe that feels and knows!"
This is the true religion, hallowing the poet's gifts and inviting them to celebrate and express it. We wish that the lines would let their meaning meet us with a more level gaze. In the poems of this class there is riper thought and a clearer intuition, toward which all the previous poems of Mr. Browning appear to have struggled, faring from the East to contribute myrrh, frankincense, and gems to this simplicity.