Recollections Of A Busy Life.
By Horace Greeley.
New York. J. B. Ford and Company. 1868.
The autobiographical papers, which compose the larger part of this volume, were originally published in a weekly journal of this city, and have probably attracted the attention of many thousands of readers. They are now issued in a permanent form, under Mr. Greeley's personal supervision, and will take their place among the standard works of American biography.
Whatever may be said or thought of the religious and political principles from time to time professed and advocated by the "Editor of The Tribune," no man can deny to him the character of an earnest, outspoken, indefatigable supporter of what, at the moment, he believes to be just and right. The manner in which he braved a public opinion thoroughly tyrannical, both at the opening and close of the late war, sufficiently attests his independence of spirit and his fidelity to the dictates of his own judgment.
One interest, however, attaches to Mr. Greeley, chiefly as a man who, from the humblest beginnings, has raised himself, by his own exertions, to one of the most influential and honorable positions in this country. The story of his projects and reverses, of his perseverance and his triumphs, is well told in the volume before us, and will serve to encourage and refresh the hearts of many young men, whose struggles after influence and honest wealth are meeting with continual disappointment.
In the hurry of preparing this work for the press, Mr. Greeley has fallen into an historical error which should certainly be corrected. In his opening chapter he informs us that, in 1641, during the insurrection which occurred in the province of Ulster in Ireland, against the British power, "40,000 Protestant settlers were speedily massacred, with small regard to age or sex." The number who actually suffered in that "rebellion" has been variously estimated by historians not favorable toward Ireland or her people. Sir John Temple fixes it at 150,000; Milton, in his Eiconoclastes, at 154,000 for one province alone; Clarendon puts the number at 40,000. Mr. Greeley follows Clarendon, but with equal reliability he might have taken Temple or Milton for his authority. He might also have stated with the former, that "Hundreds of the ghosts of Protestants, that were drowned by the rebels at Portadown Bridge, were seen in the river, bolt upright, and were heard to cry out for revenge on these rebels. One of these ghosts was seen with hands lifted up, and standing in that posture from December 29th to the latter end of the following Lent." For additional testimony about the presence of the ghosts, he might have called upon Dr. Maxwell, the Protestant Bishop of Kilmore. But if instead of relying upon such ghostly authorities, Mr. Greeley had consulted a little work, entitled Memoir of Ireland, Native and Saxon, written by Daniel O'Connell, and published by Greeley & McElrath in 1844, he would have seen that, in 1641, there were less than 200,000 Protestants in the entire island, and that the number massacred (?) in its most northern province failed to reach any thousands whatever. He would also have discovered that in these insurrections it was the Catholics who suffered, and not Protestants, as, for instance, at Island Magee.
Mr. Greeley is too wise and liberal a man wilfully to repeat so stale a calumny, and he is not so inconsistent as to contradict, in 1868, the statements of a work which he deemed worthy of public confidence in 1844. While, therefore, we point out the error, we impute no malice to the writer; to whom, in view of his constant activity, some inaccuracies may be pardoned. But the injury inflicted by his mistake is not lessened by its thoughtlessness, and the least that can be done to remedy the evil is to correct the error in the next edition, should one be ever issued.
The Ideal In Art.
By H. Taine.
Translated by J. Durand.
New York: Leypoldt & Holt. 1869.
The object of these two lectures, first delivered by M. Taine to the students of the School of Fine Arts in Paris, and now published in an American translation by Messrs. Leypoldt & Holt, is to erect a standard of criticism in art, independent of the taste and fancy of the individual critic, and so based upon established principles as to be worthy of the name of "a law." To our mind, the distinguished author has approached, if not attained, success. The fundamental rule with which he starts, distinguishes between that mechanical skill by which the production of the artist is made a faithful representation of his own ideal, and that artistic genius by which the loftiness and grandeur of the ideal is itself determined. He then proceeds to measure the ideal itself, and, upon the purity and elevation of this, bases the standing of the artist and the merit of his works.