This serious character the American is apt to wear abroad as well as at home. When he travels, he is wont to be in a hurry, and to examine curious cities as if he were making sharp bargains against time. In spite of the wonderful power of adaptation which makes him of all men the best cosmopolitan, he never is quite perfect in his assumption of another nationality, and he generally falls short of a thorough appreciation of its mirthful principle. If he emigrate to France, he soon feasts upon frogs as freely and speaks with as accurate an accent as the Parisian, but he cannot quite assume the gay insouciance of the French; if to England, he adores method, learns to grumble and imbibe old ale, yet does not become accustomed to the free, blunt raillery,--the "chaff,"--with which Britons disport themselves; if to China, he lives upon curries and inscribes his name with a camel's-hair pencil, but all Oriental bizarrerie fails to thoroughly amuse him. Wherever he may go, he settles at once and easily into the outward life of the people among whom he is,--while he always reserves within himself a cold, stern individuality; he often is angered when he should be amused, and retorts with resentment when he should reply in repartee. Still, the American is not sombre to the core. He has a kind of grim merriment bestowed somewhere in the recesses of his being. It is quaint and severe, however, and abounding in dry conceits. It inclines more to the nature of sarcasm than of flashing wit or genial humor. There is apt to be the bitterness about it which would provoke a heavy blow, unless it had been itself so weighty in attack as to crush what might have sprung into resistance. It passes from badinage into personalities and recriminations. In these respects it is consonant with the general bearing of the American character. The levity of wit and the pleasantry of humor appear at first purposeless; they are immaterial, and, even when most palpably present, seem, like Macbeth's encountering witches, to make of themselves air, into which they vanish. But sarcasm, and the direct application of ridicule, effect something at once; their course may be swift and cloudy, like that of the bullet, but it has a definite end in view; they are discharged and sweep away invisibly, or like a dark speck at most, but the crash and shiver of the distant target show that the shot has told. They are practical, and the American understands them; as for mere wit and humor, he will perhaps investigate them when there shall come to him that season of leisure which he mythically proposes to enjoy when there shall be no more work to do, and into which he is usually ushered by one busier even than himself, and less tolerant of idleness and folly,--Death, the great Chamberlain of Eternal Halls.
There is another characteristic of American wit and humor: they are evanescent and keen, escaping adroitly from the snares of the printer. America cannot boast of her satirists or humorists as forming a class like the great English and European groups, and yet her literature is enriched with many volumes wherein may be found the most brilliant wit and the most genial, genuine humor. Seldom, however, are these the main features of the books in which they occur; they are not bound in the great, all-important chain, but are woven into the little threads which underlie it; the obtuse or careless reader may easily overlook them, passing on to the end without suspecting the treasures which he has missed; and the foreigner, who does not look for such qualities among a people so perversely practical as Americans, will be apt entirely to ignore their possible existence. Again, if the writers are first-class men, their birth is the most purely American characteristic they possess. Their cast of thought and culture denotes that they belong to other times and lands as well as to this. They would have been at home among the literati of Queen Anne's day,--for their fellowship has been with such in spirit, if not in the flesh. Therefore the prejudiced, and they whose perceptions are not quick to recognize the finer traits which indicate the real character of men and of their works, are wont to say that here is nothing new, nothing indigenous to the soil, only an outgrowth of the Old World,--merely exotics, which would soon perish from the pains of transplanting, if they were not carefully fostered.
As a bit of drift-wood warns the most unpractised eye of the direction which a current takes, so the light, ephemeral brochures of any epoch give a plain hint of the tendency of its thought. The librarian and historian know the value of newspapers and pamphlets, for in them can be found what big books and voluminous records do not contain. From pasquinades, caricatures, and bits of comedy or satire can be drawn an idea of the popular humor of any era, which the works of great authors fail to convey. They are spontaneous and unstudied, regardless alike of reputation already established, which must be maintained, and of that which may yet be won; for they come from unknown sources, and exist solely for their own sakes and by their own vitality. They are, therefore, trustworthy assistants to him who studies the spirit of any people or generation.
In this respect American humor has been ill represented. Comic publications have appeared only at rare intervals, and comic journals have soon degenerated into stupidity or coarseness. Yet this has not been for lack of material, but of a proper editorial faculty, and from the want of a habitude or a willingness on the part of those who conceive clever things to note them down and give them out in black and white. When "Vanity Fair" first appeared, we thought we saw in it the germ of a journal which might be an exponent of our national spirit of mirthfulness, and we took occasion to say so briefly. We have not been disappointed. The five volumes which have already been published in weekly numbers have been true to the honest purpose which the conductors proposed to themselves and the public in their prospectus, and are fair representatives of the wit and humor which are in their essence allied to the merriment and the satire of Hawthorne and Lowell, Holmes and Saxe, although, of course, they are not yet developed with like delicacy and brilliance. There is in these pages a vast deal of genuine, hearty fun, and of sharp, stinging sarcasm; there are also hundreds of cleverly drawn and cleanly cut illustrations. Better than these, there is a fearlessness of consequences and of persons, when a wrong is to be combated, an error to be set right. And this Touchstone has been impartial as well as sturdy in his castigation; he has not been blind to the faults of his friends, or slow in bidding them imitate the excellences of his enemies; he had "a whip of scorpions" for the late Administration, when others, whose intuitions were less quick, saw nothing to chastise, and he has not hesitated to rebuke the official misdemeanors of these days, because officers have per contra done other portions of their duties well. According to his creed, a wrong cannot be palliated into a right, but must be reformed thereto; he has no tolerance for that evil whose cure is obvious and possible, and he treats boldly and severely the subjects of which the timid scarcely dare to speak.
It cannot, of course, be claimed for "Vanity Fair" that it is all clever. The brightest wit must say some dull things, and a comic journal can hardly help letting some dreary attempts at mirth slip into its columns. We could point out paragraphs in this serial which are most chaotic and unmeaning, and some, indeed, which fall below its own excellent standard of refinement; but we do not remember ever to have met in its pages a double-entendre or a foulness of speech. We must advise its conductor (who, we may say in passing, is a gentleman whose writings have not infrequently appeared in the "Atlantic") never to allow his paper to descend to the level of the ignoble vulgus; and we are glad that in wishing "Vanity Fair" long life and prosperity we have to censure it only for some slight violations of good taste, not for any offence against modesty or decorum. It deserves admission to the library and the drawing-room.
RECENT AMERICAN PUBLICATIONS
RECEIVED BY THE EDITORS OF THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY.
Lectures on the Science of Language, delivered at the Royal Institution of Great Britain, in April, May, and June, 1861. By Max Miller, M.A., Fellow of All-Souls College, Oxford, Corresponding Member of the Institute of France. From the Second London Edition, revised. New York. C. Scribner. 12mo. pp. 416. $1.50.
Ballads of the War. No. I. The March to the Capitol. No. II. Sumter. By Augustine J.H. Duganne. Illustrated. New York. John Robins. 4to. paper, each number, pp. 12, 25 cts.