Be all that as it may, Andrew Johnson, cutting loose from Congress and the moneyed class, took the executive government into his own hands. Few of us realize what a tremendous power is this government of ours. The framers of it made it so, to guard against the people in whose behalf it was created. The politicians in Congress saw this, and sought to free themselves of Johnson through impeachment. They charged him with selecting his cabinet. The charge was absurd, and failed; and while Johnson, with little dignity and less success, went on fighting politicians, Secretary McCulloch used the power given him to contract our currency, restore our credit, and put the country once more on the road to honest trade and its high prosperity.
No one, however, must open Hugh McCulloch's book with any hope of finding therein a history of this financial crisis and his part in the restoration to honor we enjoyed. The author is a modest man, and leaves to others the truth and the praise the truth awards him.
There is a more serious objection to the work, and that comes of Mr. McCulloch's marked ignorance of men. While clear-sighted and profound in his knowledge of great economic subjects, he scarcely knows one man from another, save as they are labelled and described by popular expression. It is amusing to run over his list of prominent men and see under each, if not an official pedestal, one given by social verdict. With the conservatism of his temperament in his judgment of men, he seldom departs from the recorded estimate of the public. The most ludicrous instance of this is his history of Grant and his summing up of the man's supposed character. It is the political fiction and newspaper lie of the day.
From this we can turn to the views of a statesman on finance, the tariff, and on reconstruction with not only pleasure but profit. So far we have three great historical characters to record as financiers: Hamilton because of his luck, Chase for his blunders, and McCulloch for his ability.
Recent Novels.—The great stream that swells day by day in the form of prose fiction is simply appalling. It is not only the genius of to-day that has seized on this vehicle of thought and feeling, but the amateur pen-driver plunges in without hesitation. Every male citizen of these United States is born to hold office and edit a newspaper. Every female born under the stars and stripes comes into the world prepared to write a novel. No study, no preparation whatever is needed. When the Irishman was asked if he could play upon the French horn, he responded, "Shure, it looks aisy;" and a love story looks so easy that every little girl is ready to produce one.
Of the pile before us we of course seize first on that under the name of Julian Hawthorne. The admiration felt by all for the father, to say nothing of the love that yet lingers in memory for the man, makes the name of Hawthorne sacred. It brings to mind the noble, handsome, Cæsarian head of the master, that was made winning by the shy, gentle, and affectionate manner—so little understood by the many, so fascinating to the few. Then lived our greatest genius in the world of fiction. When one realizes the nature of the material upon which he had to work, the cold, barren soil of New England, the hard, unsympathetic characters, with no background of romance on which to build, the mighty power of the magician looms up before us. The touch of his pen wrought such strange wonders that the very hardness of the groundwork seemed to play into his hand, and from the Twice-Told Tales to that grandest of all tragedies in the English language, The Scarlet Letter, one is held spellbound.
Well, it is not belittling Julian to say that it is a misfortune that he should be the son of his father. We read his charming stories by the light of a past that can never again be renewed, and all the time the memory of the mighty master dwarfs the work of the son. In this way I read aloud to my dear invalid A Dream and a Forgetting. Had there been any other name upon the title-page than Hawthorne, we should have been charmed with the book that Belford, Clarke & Co. have gotten up so beautifully. As it was, we could not help looking for the sunlight through rifts that, alas! can never come again. It is singular to note, however, the Hawthornish traits that yet linger in the son. The same boldness that made the elder Hawthorne accept and use without hesitation the most unpromising characters, and make them not only acceptable but attractive, belongs to the younger. It is this which drives him not only to depict Fairfax Boardwine, but to make his hero such a weak, selfish creature. After all, he is only a foil to Mary Gault, and the true work in the artist lies in the clear yet delicate prominence he gives to his heroine.
The charm the elder Hawthorne threw over the rocky land of New England is evident in the Pot of Gold, by Edward Richard Shaw (Belford, Clarke & Co.). Here is the barren, sandy coast, with a few rough fishermen, the cold, heaving sea, enlightened by no love, but made attractive by the shadowy play of adventure found in piratical ships, that come and go as if they were phantoms of a half-forgotten past. With all the dim, misty character of the piratical craft, the author gives us the coast and its atmosphere, the rough, ignorant characters of its inhabitants, in a way to prove that he is an artist and has made good use of his study. To the average reader, as well as the more cultured, this book is very attractive.
Edgar Saltus, whose immature book, The Truth about Tristrem Varick, won him wide mention as the author of a grotesque bit of immorality, comes to the front again in Eden, a novel published by Belford, Clarke & Co. There is the marked progress in this volume we prophesied in the young author. He has great ability, marred by certain affectations, that will in time, we hope, disappear. Mr. Saltus has been roughly assaulted by the critics. He probably deserved all that he got. We can say to him, as the fond parent said to his son after the youth had been kicked in the face by a mule, "He will not be so handsome hereafter, but he will have more sense."
Mr. Saltus builds his novels on the French methods. His narrative and conversations find expression in short epigrammatic sentences. To the average reader this is easy and delightful, for there is a sense of wisdom that to such is quite captivating. To the more cultured it has the effect of an old-fashioned corduroy road over a swamp. It simply jolts one, and the knowledge that the short sticks and logs cover a quagmire is not comforting. The characters are nearly all alike; and their conversation so much so, that to a listener to one who reads aloud, omitting the names, it seems to be one person dealing out worldly wisdom in short, jerky sentences. As a specimen of style we quote: