"As truth will paint them, and as bards will not."
When MeClellan's work first appeared, the "Athenaeum" took up spear and shield; but, selon conseil, McClellan declined to reply, and the champion fought the air, without injuring the record.
A prime interest attaches to this work, because, unconsciously, the author has given us, in advance, his repertory of instruments and principles. From the written word we may anticipate the brilliant achievement, while in every case the action may be tested by a reference to the recorded principle.
The retirement of Scott places McClellan in a position where he will have neither partner nor censor in his plans and movements. The graceful and appropriate manner in which the old veteran leaves the field, which age and infirmity will no longer allow him to command, is but a fitting prelude to the military rule of one upon whose brow the dew of youth still rests, and who brings to his responsible task the highest qualities, combined with a veneration for the noble virtues and an emulation of the magnanimous career of his predecessor, at once honorable and inspiring.
Spare Hours. By JOHN BROWN, M.D., Author of "Rab and his Friends." Boston: Ticknor & Fields. 16mo.
It has not yet been satisfactorily explained why doctors are such shrewd and genial men, and, when they appear in the literary field, such charming writers. This is one of the curious problems of the day, and undoubtedly holds its own answer in solution, but has not yet seen fit to make an observable precipitate. Perhaps this is because the times are stirring, and the facts cannot settle. A delightful exhibition is made of something extremely good to take, which we swallow unscrupulously: in other words, we can only guess how many scruples, and of what, this blessed medicine for the mind contains. As it is eminently fit for every American to have an hypothesis upon every subject, we might now, with proper recklessness, rush into print with a few unhesitating suggestions upon this singular phenomenon of doctors gifted and graceful with the pen.
We observe, at any rate, that it is something independent of climate and locality, and not at all endemic. Otherwise it might be true that the restless and inquisitive climate of the Atlantic coast, which wears the ordinary Yankee to leanness, and "establishes a raw" upon the nervous system, does soften to acuteness, mobility, and racy corrugation in the breast of its natural ally, the Doctor. For autocratic tempers are bland towards each other, and murderous characteristics can mutually impart something homologous to the refining interchange of beautiful souls. Therefore we do not yet know how much our climate is indebted to our doctors. It may be suspected that they understand each other, as the quack and the fool do, whose interests are identical.
But this will not account for the literary talent of the doctors. For they write books in England and Scotland, in France and temperate Germany, in every latitude and with a good deal; they are, however, defective in longitude, which is remarkable, when we consider how they will protract their cases. With their pens they are prompt, clean, humane in the matter of ink, their first intention almost always successful, their thought expelled by natural cerebral contraction without stimulus, (we speak of ergot, but of "old rye" we know nothing,) their passion running to its crisis in the minimum of time, and their affections altogether pleasanter than anything of the kind they accuse us of having, as well as less lingering. But with their pills—well, we all know how our ills are nursed by medicine. Is it a relief that their precept is less tedious than their practice? It is good policy for us, perhaps, if our minds are to be under treatment from their books,—and it grows plainer every day that no person of mind can well escape from them,—that our bodies should continue subject to their boluses. Thus we may die daily, but our incorporeal part is better acclimated in the invisible world of truths and realities.
No,—the doctors owe nothing to climate or race. The intelligent ones are everywhere broad, acute, tender, and religious. They uniformly see what is natural and what is morbid, what is fact and what is fancy, what is cutaneous and what is vital, in men and women. They stand on unreal, conventional terms with nothing. They know healthy from inflamed tissues, and run down, grab, and give one dexterous fatal shake to a tissue of lies. One of Dr. Brown's terriers is not more swift, exact, and uncompromising after vermin. This excellent sense for unvarnished realities has been attributed by some to their habit of visiting so many interiors—of men and of their houses—whose swell-fronts are pervious to the sincerity of pain. We never see a doctor's chaise anchored at a door but we imagine the doctor taking in freight up-stairs. In these days he is beginning to receive more than he gives. Let no sarcastic person allude to doctors' fees. We mean that the physician, whose humanity and intelligence are broad diplomas, on presenting which the doors of hearts and houses open with a welcome, enters into the choicest field of his education and research, where his tender observation walks the wards of thought, feeling, and motive, to amass the facts of health and suffering, to be refined at the true drama of pathos, to be ennobled by the spectacle of fair and lofty spiritual traits, to be advised of the weaknesses which he learns to touch lightly with his caustic, while his knowing and friendly look deprecates all excess of pain. It is a school of shrewdness, gentleness, and faith.
But a rich subject is here, altogether too wide for a book-notice, and worthy of deliberate, but enthusiastic treatment. Dr. John Brown of Edinburgh has consulted his own interior, and frequented those of his diocese, to some purpose. The pieces in this volume, which the publishers have selected from the two volumes of "Horae Subsecivae," omitting the more professional papers, are full of humor, tenderness, and common sense. They betray only occasionally, in a technical way, that the author is a disciple, as well as admirer, of Sydenham, and his own countryman, Cullen. But they overflow with the best specifics of the healing art, shrewdness, independence, nice observation; they have a woman's kindness and a man's sturdiness. They honor human nature not the less because the writer knows how to manage it, to raise a smile at its absurdities, to rally, pique, and guide it into health and good-humor. He is very clever with the edge-tools in his surgeon's-case; he whips you out an excrescence before you are quite aware that he meditated an operation, and you find that he had chloroformed you with a shrewd writer's best anaesthetic, a humorous and genial temper.