For who would take him—or his word? Not I.
‘Legends of the Conquest of Spain.’—Some eighteen years ago, a work in a single volume, entitled as above, and written by the author of the ‘Sketch-Book,’ was issued from the press of Murray, the celebrated London book-seller. It would seem to have been put forth as a kind of avant-courier of ‘The Chronicles of the Conquest of Granada;’ but unlike that elaborate work, was never republished in this country, and has never been included in any of the complete editions of Mr. Irving’s writings. We are indebted to the kind courtesy of a gentleman who has been spending some months with our distinguished countryman and correspondent at Madrid, for a copy of the book, which he obtained at that capital. We have good reason to believe that it has been encountered by few if any readers on this side the Atlantic. A very stirring extract from its pages will be found elsewhere in this Magazine. Mr. Irving introduces the legends to his readers with a few prefatory sentences, in which he states that he has ventured to dip more deeply into the enchanted fountains of old Spanish chronicle than has usually been done by those who have treated of the eventful period of which he writes; but in so doing, he only more fully illustrates the character of the people and the times. He has thrown the records into the form of legends, not claiming for them the authenticity of sober history, yet giving nothing that had not a historical foundation. ‘All the facts herein contained,’ says the writer, ‘however extravagant some of them may be deemed, will be found in the works of sage and reverend chroniclers of yore, growing side by side with long acknowledged truths, and might be supported by learned and imposing references in the margin.’ To discard every thing wild and marvellous in this portion of Spanish history is to discard some of its most beautiful, instructive, and national features; it is to judge of Spain by the standard of probability suited to tamer and more prosaic countries. Spain is virtually a land of poetry and romance, where every-day life partakes of adventure, and where the least agitation or excitement carries every thing up into extravagant enterprise and daring exploit. The Spaniards in all ages have been of swelling and braggart spirit, soaring in thought, and valiant though vainglorious in deed. When the nation had recovered in some degree from the storm of Moslem invasion, and sage men sought to inquire and write the particulars of the tremendous reverses which it produced, it was too late to ascertain them in their exact verity. The gloom and melancholy that had overshadowed the land had given birth to a thousand superstitious fancies; the woes and terrors of the past were clothed with supernatural miracles and portents, and the actors in the fearful drama had already assumed the dubious characteristics of romance. Or if a writer from among the conquerors undertook to touch upon the theme, it was embellished with all the wild extravagances of an oriental imagination, which afterward stole into the graver works of the monkish historians. Hence the chronicles are apt to be tinctured with those saintly miracles which savor of the pious labors of the cloister, or those fanciful fictions that betray their Arabian Authors. Scarce one of their historical facts but has been connected in the original with some romantic fiction, and even in its divorced state, bears traces of its former alliance. The records in preceding pages are ‘illuminated’ by these prefatory remarks of our author, if their truth be not altogether established! How the Count Julian receives the account of the dishonor of his child, and his conduct thereupon; and how Don Roderick hastens, through various tribulation, to his final overthrow; will be matter for another number. Meanwhile the reader will not fail to note the great beauty of the descriptions, which in the hands of our great master of the power and beauty of ‘the grand old English tongue,’ assume form and color, and stand out like living pictures to the eye.
American Ptyalism: ‘Quid Rides?’—A pleasant correspondent, whom our readers have long known, and as long admired and esteemed, in a familiar gossip, (by favor of ‘Uncle Samuel’s mail-bag,) with the Editor, gives us the following ‘running account’ of his ruminations over an early-morning quid of that ‘flavorous weed’ so well beloved of our friend Colonel Stone. It is in some sort a defence of American ptyalism, and in the tendency of its inculcations, reminds us of the arguments in favor of the cultivation of a refined style of murder, which should constitute it one of the fine arts, to which we gave a place many months back: ‘After having in my broken dreams perambulated every part and parcel of the universe, and then tossed about for hours on an ocean of bodily discomforts, each a dagger to repose, and mental disquietudes, of which any one was enough to wither all the poppies of Somnus, I rose about four o’ my watch, and commenced chewing the narcotic weed of Virginia. For you must know that in childhood almost, through a precocious mannishness and a desire of experimental knowledge, I commenced the habit of tobacco-chewing, and the vice born of a freak, has ‘grown with my growth,’ till now it holds me as in a ‘vice’ screwed up and secured by a giant. (Please observe that there’s a pun in that last sentence.) Where the conventionalities of society compel me to attidunize my appearance and customs into the stiffness of gentility, I puff the Havana; but when the privacy of my own room or the solitude of the roads and fields permit me to vulgarize to my liking, I thrust a ball of ‘Mrs. Miller’s fine-cut,’ or a fragment of the ‘natural James’ River sweet,’ between the sub-maxillary bone and its carnal casement, and then masticate and expectorate ‘à la Yankee.’ or ‘more Americano.’ Pah! oh! fie! for shame! and all other interjections indicative of horror, or expressive of disgust. ‘Quousque tandem?’ Beg your pardon, Mrs. Trollope. ‘Quamdiu etiam?’ I implore your commiseration, Captain Basil. ‘Oh, tempora! oh, mores!’ Have mercy, illustrious and praise-bespattered, and almost Sir-Waltered Boz. Do not, under the uneasy weight of glory, and in the intoxicating consciousness of a right to the oligarchic exclusiveness of the goose-quill ‘haute volèe,’ strike right and left among your sturdy democratic adorers, because they choose to convert their mandibles into quid-grinders, and their χασματ᾿ ὀδόντων into ceaseless jet d’eaux of saliva. Reflect that the ‘quid’ assists in a philosophic investigation of the ‘quiddities’ of things, and that from this habit alone perhaps we have made such advances in casuistry as to have discovered equity in repudiation, freedom in mobocracy, and the sword of justice in the bowie-knife. Chewing is eminently democratic, since all chewers are ‘pro hâc vice’ on a perfect equality, and a ‘millionaire;’ or, for that matter, a ‘billionaire,’ if we had him, would not hesitate to take out of his mouth a moiety of his last ‘chew’ and give it to an itinerant Lazarus. What can be more admirable than this ‘de bon air’ plebeianism, and universal right-hand of fellowship? Does not he who extends among the people the use of this democratizing weed, emphatically give them a ‘quid pro quo?’ Are not slovenliness and filth the virtues of republics, while neatness and elegance are vices of court-growth, and expand into their most ramified and minute perfectness of polish only in the palaces of kings? Furthermore, oh laurelled and triumphant Pickwick! if expectoration be filthy, it must be because the ‘thing expectorated’ is unclean; and if so, is it not more decent to become rid of the ‘unclean thing’ by the readiest process, than to retain it, making the stomach a receptacle of abominations? And are you, Sir Baronet of the realm imaginary, subject to no gross corporeal needs and operations? And if, as you will say, you perform those foul rites in a state of retiracy, are you not adding the sin of hypocrisy to your preëxistent guilt? If it has succeeded to you, as to few penny-a-liners, to have emerged by the sale of your Attic-salt from the attics of Grub-street into the ‘swept and garnished chambers’ of the Regent, and if after quaffing the ale of Bow-street, procured by caricatures of Old Baily reports, you have sipped your hockheimer, while standing, scarce yet unbewildered, in the gas-light splendor reflected from the ‘vis-á-vis’ mirrors of Almack’s, yet do not exalt yourself above all that is fleshly. Reflect that you, so lately unrivalled, can now see a Eugene Sue whose brow is umbraged by laurels of a more luxuriant and lovely green. Cease your expectorations of bile upon a great people; admit that mastication of the ‘odorous vegeble’ is a Spartan virtue; and we will again vote you an Anak in the kingdom of pen and paper. Then again shall we be led to believe that your praises and your vituperations are equally unpurchasable. Then once more shall we think you would swallow no golden pill, nor suffer your throat to be ulcerated by a silver quinsy.’
Gossip With Readers and Correspondents.—If any of our readers are desirous of looking into the rationale of irrationality, to employ a highly ‘unitive’ phrase, let them take up, if they can command it, the ‘Annual Report of the Managers of the New York State Lunatic Asylum,’ one of the clearest and most comprehensive documents in its kind that we have ever perused. It proceeds from the capable pen of A. Brigham, M. D. the superintendent and physician of the institution, and is full upon the definition, causes and classification of insanity; the size and shape of the heads of the patients; the pulse; description of the building; daily routine of business, diet, labor, amusements, religious worship, visitors, suggestions to those who have friends whom they expect to commit to the care of the asylum, etc., etc. The cause of insanity in fifty out of two hundred and seventy-six patients is attributed to religious anxiety, produced by long attendance on protracted religious meetings, etc. Want of sleep is decidedly the most frequent and immediate cause of insanity, and one the most important to guard against. ‘So rarely (says the superintendent) do you see a recent case of insanity that is not preceded by want of sleep, that we regard it as almost the sure precursor of mental derangement.’ As evidences of the difficulty of arranging the insane in classes, founded on symptoms, Dr. Brigham gives us the following synopsis of individual peculiarities noticed among certain of the inmates of the Asylum:
‘In addition to emperors, queens, prophets and priests, we have one that says he is nobody, a nonentity. One that was never born, and one that was born of her grandmother, and another dropped by the devil flying over the world. One has had the throat cut out and put in wrong, so that what is swallowed passes into the head, and another has his head cut off and replaced every night. One thinks himself a child, and talks and acts like a child. Many appear as if constantly intoxicated. One has the gift of tongues, another deals in magic, several in animal magnetism. One thinks he is a white polar bear. A number have hallucinations of sight, others of hearing. One repeats whatever is said to him, another repeats constantly words of the same sound, as door, floor. One is pursued by the sheriff, many by the devil. One has invented the perpetual motion and is soon to be rich; others have already acquired vast fortunes: scraps of paper, buttons and chips are to them, large amounts of money. Many pilfer continually and without any apparent motive, while others secrete every thing they can find, their own articles as well as those of others. A majority are disposed to hoard up trifling and useless articles, as scraps of tin, leather, strings, nails, buttons, etc., and are much grieved to part with them. One will not eat unless alone, some never wish to eat, while others are always starving. One with a few sticks and straws fills his room with officers and soldiers, ships and sailors, carriages and horses, the management of which occupies all his time and thoughts. Some have good memory as regards most things, and singularly defective as to others. One does not recollect the names of his associates, which he hears every hour, yet his memory is good in other respects. One says he is Thomas Paine, author of the ‘Age of Reason,’ a work he has never read; another calls himself General Washington; and one old lady of diminutive size calls herself General Scott, and is never so good-natured as when thus addressed. One is always in court attending a trial, and wondering and asking when the court is to rise. Another has to eat up the building, drink dry the canal, and swallow the Little Falls village, and is continually telling of the difficulty of the task.’
The superintendent prefers a classification founded upon the faculties of the mind that appear to be disordered; and he thinks he could place all his patients in one of the three following classes: Intellectual Insanity, or disorder of the intellect without noticeable disturbance of the feelings and propensities; Moral Insanity or derangement of the feelings, affections, and passions, without any remarkable disorder of the intellect; and General Insanity, in which both the intellectual faculties and the feelings and affections are disordered. The State Asylum is a fine imposing edifice, delightfully situated near the pleasant village of Utica, in Oneida county, and is becoming greatly distinguished for success in the treatment and cure of insanity. ••• We heard a little anecdote at a bal costumé the other evening, (whether from the dignified and stately Helen Macgregor or the beautiful Medora, we ‘cannot well make out,’) which is worth repeating. A retired green-grocer, rejoicing in the euphonious name of Tibbs, living at Hackney, near London, sorely against his will, and after warm remonstrance, finally yielded to his wife’s entreaty that he would go in character to a masquerade-ball, given to the ‘middling interest’ by one of his old neighbors. He went accoutred as a knight, wearing his visor down. What was his surprise on entering the room, to find first one and then another member of the motley company slapping him familiarly on the back, with: ‘Halloa! Tibbs! who thought to see you here! What’s the news at Hackney?’ In dismay that his ridiculous secret was out, he hurried from the scene, and hastened home in a state of great excitement from the mortification to which he had been subjected. ‘I told you I should be known,’ said he to his wife; ‘I knew I should!’ ‘No wonder!’ she replied; ‘you’ve got your name and residence on your steel cap: ‘Mr. Tibbs, Hackney!’’ He had forgotten to remove the address which the London costumer had affixed to it as a direction! ••• How many thousand times, in thinking of the onward career of our glorious and thrice-blessed country, have we felt the emotions to which our esteemed friend and contributor, Polygon, gives forceful expression in the closing lines of a beautiful poem of his, which we have encountered to-day for the first time:
‘Oh! long through coming ages, born
When we shall slumber cold and still,
The sultry summer will adorn
The verdant vale and hazy hill;