Mr. Olmsted is no ordinary traveller for amusement or adventure. He leaves home to instruct himself through his own eyes and ears concerning matters of general interest about which no trustworthy information was to be found in books. Looking at Slavery merely as an economist, with no political or moral prepossessions to mislead his judgment, he went to study for himself its workings and results as a form of labor, we might almost say, so cool-headed is he, as an application of forces, rather than as a social or political phenomenon. Self-possessed and wary, almost provokingly unsympathetic in his report of what he saw, pronouncing no judgment on isolated facts, and drawing no undue inferences from them, he has now generalized his results in a most interesting and valuable book. No more important contributions to contemporary American history have been made than in this volume and the two that preceded it. We know of no book that offers a parallel to them, except Arthur Young's "Travels in France." To discuss the question of Slavery without passion or even sentiment seemed an impossibility; yet Mr. Olmsted has shown that it can be done, and, having no theory to bolster, has contrived to tell us what he saw, and not what he went to see,—the rarest achievement among travellers. Without the charm of style, he has the truthfulness of Herodotus.
We do not forget that there was wisdom as well as wit in Dr. Johnson's sarcastic classification of facts with donkeys. The great majority of so-called facts, and especially those detailed by travellers, are of no consequence whatever to man or beast. What is it to us that Mr. A. has been condescending enough to look at the Venus of Milo, or that Mr. B., with more time than he knows what to do with already on his hands, must steal a couple of good working hours from Carlyle, worth probably five guineas apiece? That Hannibal crossed the Alps was something; that Goethe did was and is also of some consequence; but the transit of Mr. Anarithmon Smith need cause no excitement in the observatories. That a man has found out, by laborious counting, which is the middle word in the New Testament, is pretty sure to get into the newspapers as a remarkable fact; that he had discovered its central thought, and made it the keystone to knit together his else incomplete outward and inward lives, would hardly be esteemed of so much consequence. Facts are such different things, especially to different persons! The truth is, that we should distinguish between real facts and the mere images of facts, though the newspapers teach us to confound them, putting side by side, as they do, Garibaldi's entry into Naples and Dennis McQuigley's into the lock-up.
The man who gives us a really new fact deserves to be classed with him who makes two blades of grass grow where one grew before, for it contains the germinal principle of knowledge. We owe a large debt in this kind to Mr. Olmsted. He tells us much of what he saw, little of what he thought. He has good eyes, and that something behind them that makes a good observer. As respects the South, he has the advantage of being at once native and foreigner, so that what is merely American does not divide his attention with what is local and peculiar. Making entries in his diary before impressions have had time to cool, he has preserved even the dialect of those with whom he talked, and thus given a lively reality to his narrative.
Nearly one-half of Mr. Olmsted's present volume is devoted to a discussion of the conclusions to be drawn from the mass of observations he has thus far collected. His views are entitled to the more consideration that the tone of his mind is so dispassionate. He finds himself compelled to give his verdict against Slavery, whether it be considered morally, politically, or economically. We cannot but think that the reading of his book will do great good in opening the minds of many to a perception that the agitation of the Slavery question is not a mere clash of unthinking prejudices between North and South, that Slavery itself is not a matter of purely local concern, but that it interests all parts of the Republic equally. It is certainly of paramount importance that we should understand the practical workings of a system which is converting what by natural increase will soon constitute a majority of the population in the fairest portion of our territory into a vast planting, hoeing, and cotton-picking machine.
Mr. Olmsted's qualifications as a traveller are so remarkable that we cannot help wishing that he would make a journey through New England and make us as thoroughly acquainted with its internal condition as we ought to be. We believe there is no book of the kind since that of President Dwight, and that gives us little of the sort of information we desire. It is an insight into the manners, modes of life, and ways of thinking that is of value; and Mr. Olmsted, who goes about, like Chaucer's Somner,
"Ever inquiring upon everything,"
is just the person to supply a great want in our literature. We know less of the domestic habits of a large part of our population than of those of the Saxons in the time of Alfred. But for a few glimpses which we get from Dunton, Madam Knight, the Rev. Jacob Bailey, and the Proceedings of Synods, we should be little better acquainted with the New Englanders of the century following the Restoration than with the primitive Aryans. Bailey's account of his voyage to England is the best contemporary testimony to the truth of Smollett's pictures of sea-life that we ever met with, and we cannot sufficiently regret that the whole of his journal during his college-life was not published. Mr. Olmsted would be sure of a grateful recognition from posterity, if he would do for New England what he has done for the South. We might not be flattered by his report, but we could not fail to be benefited by it. It would, perhaps, lead to the establishment of home missions among the Bad-Bread and Foul-Air tribes, who make more wretched captives for life and kill more children than the French and Indians together ever dreamed of.
Sketches of Parisian Life. The Greatness and Decline of César Birotteau. From the French of HONORÉ DE BALZAC. Translated by O.W. WIGHT and F.B. GOODRICH. New York: Rudd & Carleton, 130 Grand Street. 1860. pp. 387.
We are very glad to see this beginning of a translation of Balzac, or de Balzac, as he chose to christen himself. Without intending an exact parallel, he might be called the Fielding of French Literature,—intensely masculine, an artist who works outward from an informing idea, a satirist whose humor will not let him despise human nature even while he exposes its weaknesses. The story of Caesar Birotteau is well-chosen as an usher to the rest, for it is eminently characteristic, though it does not show the higher imaginative qualities of the author. It is one of the severest tests of genius to draw an ordinary character so humanly that we learn to love and respect it in spite of a thorough familiarity with its faults and absurdities. In this respect Balzac's "Birotteau" is a masterpiece. The translation, as far as we have had time to look into it, seems a very easy, spirited, and knowing one. The translators have overcome the difficulties of slang with great skill, rendering by equivalent vulgarisms which give the spirit where the letter would be unintelligible. We object, however, to a phrase like "vest-pocket," where we find it in the narrative, and not in the mouth of one of the personages. It is tailor's English, which is as bad as peddler's French. But this is a trifle where there is so much to commend in essentials, and we hope the translators will be encouraged to go on in a work so excellently begun.
Home Ballads and Poems. By JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER. Boston: Ticknor & Fields. 1800. pp. 206.