God forbid that I should suspect you of sympathizing with these miscreants! But, my friend, there is still another class of Democrats with whom I should exceedingly regret to see you associated. I mean those who, without any love for Rebels or their cause, are yet so fearful of being called Republicans that they refuse to support the Government. Can you justify yourself in standing upon such a platform? Is this a time in which to permit your old party animosities to render you indifferent to the honor and welfare of the nation? Are you simply in the position of a violent partisan out of office, eager to embarrass the Administration, and keenly on the watch to discover how best to inflame the prejudices of the populace against the Government? Is there nothing more important just now than to devise means of reinstating your party in power at the next Presidential election? Will it not be well first to settle the question, whether, in the month of November, 1864, we shall still be a free people, competent to elect the candidates of any party? May you not be, nay, are you not sure to be, giving substantial aid and comfort to the enemies of your country, while seeking only to cripple the power of your political opponents? Are not the dearest interests, and, indeed, the very life of the nation, of necessity, so dependent upon a cordial and constant support of the Government, that active hostility to its principal measures, or even absolute neutrality, strengthens the hands and increases the confidence of Rebels in arms?
Notwithstanding the notorious virulence of party feeling in this country, it certainly would not seem to require a very large amount of manly principle to rise superior to such a sordid sentiment in view of our common peril. Patriotism, my friend, is an admirable and most praiseworthy virtue. It is correctly classed among the noblest instincts of human nature. It has in all ages been a fruitful theme of poetic fervor; it has sustained the orator in his loftiest flights of eloquence; it has nerved the arm of the warrior to perform deeds of signal valor; it has transformed the timid matron and the shrinking maiden into heroines whom history has delighted to honor. But when patriotism is really synonymous with self-preservation, when small sacrifices are demanded and overwhelming disasters are to be averted, the love of country, although still highly commendable, does not, perhaps, deserve very enthusiastic praise, while the want of it will be sure to excite universal condemnation and scorn. I cannot believe that you will consent to fasten upon yourself, and upon all who are dear to you, the lasting stigma which will inevitably attach to the man who, whether from a mean partisan jealousy or an ignoble indifference to the honor of his country, has failed in an hour of sorest need to defend the land which gave him birth, and the institutions which his fathers suffered and sacrificed so much to establish.
Hoping that the vital importance of the subject which I have so imperfectly considered will induce you to pardon the length of this communication, I remain, as ever,
Very sincerely yours,
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REVIEWS AND LITERARY NOTICES.
The History of Charles the Bold, Duke of Burgundy. By JOHN FOSTER KIRK. Two Volumes. 8vo. Philadelphia: J.B. Lippincott and Co.
There is probably no period of European history which has been so thoroughly explored and so richly illustrated as the sixteenth century,—that century of great men, lofty ideas, and gigantic enterprise, of intellectual activity, and of tremendous political and religious struggles. The numerous scholars of Continental Europe who have made this era the subject of their researches have generally been content to dig that others might plant and reap, sending forth in abundance the raw material of history to be woven into forms adapted to popular appreciation. In England, also, but only within a very recent period, much solid labor of the same kind has been performed. But the Anglo-Saxon mind, on some sides comparatively deficient in plastic and inventive power, as well as in that of abstract thought, seems to possess in a peculiar degree the faculty of comprehending, representing, and idealizing the varied phases and incessant motion of human life and character. In science it excels less in the discovery than in the application of laws. In what may be termed "pure art," music, sculpture, painting, except where the representation of the Beautiful is subservient to that of the Real, lyrical and idyllic poetry, and all departments of literature in which fancy predominates over reason, it must yield the palm to the genius of Italy, of Germany, of Spain. But in the drama, in the novel, in history, and in works partaking more or less of the character of these, its supremacy is established. Shakespeare and Chaucer are at once the greatest and the most characteristic of English poets; Hogarth and Wilkie, of English painters; Fielding, Scott, Miss Austen, Thackeray, and others whose names will at once suggest themselves, of English writers of fiction; Gibbon, Macaulay, and Hallam, of English historians. The drama, in its highest forms, belongs to the past, and that past which was at once too earnest in its spirit and too narrow in its development to allow of a less vivid or a more expansive delineation. Fiction, to judge from a multitude of recent specimens, seems at present on the decline, with some threatenings of a precipitate descent into the inane. History, on the other hand, is only at the outset of its career. Its highest achievements are in all probability reserved for a still distant future, when loftier points of view shall have been attained, and the haze that now hangs over even the nearest and most conspicuous objects in some measure dissipated. Its endeavors hitherto have only shown how much is still to be accomplished,—how little, indeed, comparatively speaking, it will ever be possible to accomplish. Not the less, on this account, are the laborers deserving of the honors bestowed upon them. Every fresh contribution is a permanent gain. Even in the same field the results of one exploration do not interfere with or supersede those of another. Robertson has, in many respects, been surpassed, but he has not been supplanted, by Prescott; Froude and Motley may traverse the same ground without impairing our interest in the researches of either.
These four distinguished writers have all devoted their efforts to the illustration of the period of which we have before spoken,—the grand and fruitful sixteenth century. With the men and with the events of that age we have thus become singularly familiar. We have been made acquainted, not only with the deeds, but with the thoughts, of Charles V., Philip II., Elizabeth Tudor, Cortés, Alva, Farnese, William the Silent, and a host of other actors in some of the most striking scenes of history. But we have also been tempted into forgetting that those were not isolated scenes, that they belonged to a drama which had long been in progress, and that the very energy they displayed, the power put forth, the conquests won, were indicative of previous struggles and a long accumulation of resources. Of what are called the Middle Ages the general notion might, perhaps, be comprised in the statement that they were ages of barbarism and ignorance, of picturesque customs and aimless adventure. "I desire to know nothing of those who knew nothing," was the saying, in reference to them, of the French philosophe. "Classical antiquity is nearer to us than the intervening darkness," said Hazlitt. And Hume and Robertson both consider that the interest of European history begins with the revival of letters, the invention of printing, the colonization of America, and the great contests between consolidated monarchies and between antagonistic principles and creeds.