| "From woman's eyes this doctrine I derive: They sparkle still the right promethean fire; They are the books, the arts, the academes, That show, contain, and nourish all the world; Else, none at all in aught proves excellent." |
Grayson Griffith is a religious story. We approve of the moral, as a matter of course—who will not? But we do not come quite up to the writer's standard of perfection, for we candidly confess we cannot see the germs of perdition in a social game of whist; and while we detest gambling and gamblers, the proscription of amusements innocent in themselves, because some remote analogy may be traced between them and practices at once immoral and every way destructive, seems to us irreconcileable with sound logic or true philosophy. The attempt to trace the vices of men to early habitudes is not always successful, as the power of good or evil impressions over the mind and habits, is essentially modified by the character of each individual. Besides, accident often determines the destinies of men, so far as we can see, in very spite of every previous tendency. We doubt, for instance, whether the fascinations of the faro-table would not have been as great to Grayson if he had never seen a card, as they proved to be, as related in the story. But we are getting into the discussion of a question which requires more time and space than we have to spare.
The "Letter on the United States, by a Young Scotchman," is generally amusing; but some of the passages in it strike us with surprise. He tells us that, "although the Americans are great novel readers, there is too much matter-of-fact about them; they are too calculating and money-making [this from a Scotchman!] to serve the purposes of the novelist. They form but indifferent heroes and heroines of romance, and hence Cooper is obliged to resort to the sea to rake up pirates and smugglers, or to go back to the revolution or the early settlement of his country to find characters and incidents calculated to give verisimilitude and interest to his tales." This seems to us hasty and jejune criticism. Cooper was not, as we know, "obliged" to rake up pirates and smugglers; but as this writer has told us in the ninth number of the Messenger, "He (Cooper) had been for some years an officer in the American Navy, where he acquired a knowledge of all the minutiæ of nautical life, which was of great service to him in the composition of some of his tales. These are justly considered as his best"—and he might have added, are written with power peculiar to Cooper, of whom it may truly be said:
| "His march is on the mountain wave His home is on the deep." |
And well would it have been for his fame had he never abandoned his proper element. On shore he generally makes as awkward a figure as one of his nautical heroes would do, after a voyage, before he had gotten rid of his "sea legs." We have read Cooper's last, the Monikins, but at too late a period to allow a regular notice of it in this number. En passant, however, we must say that it is an entire failure—vapid, pointless, and inane. It appears to be an attempted satire on mankind, a bungling imitation of Swift's account of the Houynhmins, Mr. Cooper's monkies are a tedious race, and his Yankee captain, "Noah Poke," the principal interlocutor, as the lawyers would term him, is little better. We believe that all who have read this work, will agree, that the sooner its author is "obliged" to take again to salt water, and "rake up pirates and smugglers," the better it will be for his own reputation, and the purses of his booksellers.
In regard to the poetry of this number, we must content ourselves with drawing attention to the pathetic effusion "on the Deaf, Dumb and Blind Girl."
TO CORRESPONDENTS.
Many favors have been again unavoidably postponed. The communication of Scriblerus exhibits talent, and is written well, but is not adapted to the pages of the Messenger. The writer would doubtless succeed upon other subjects, and we invite him to make the experiment. "A fragment of the thirteenth century," has held us in doubt for some days; but we have finally decided upon its exclusion. We are not better pleased with the poetry of Timandi, than with his prose.
The quantity of rhyme poured in upon us, is indeed a matter of admiration. The effusions which we consign to outer darkness monthly, are past enumeration. Such, for instance, as one containing the following lines, and which purports to be "copyed from a young ladies Album"—