Margaret Fuller, Critic

Margaret Fuller, Critic


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Margaret Fuller, Critic
Writings from the New-York Tribune, 1844–1846

Edited by

Judith Mattson Bean and

Joel Myerson

Columbia University Press, New York

C

columbia university press Publishers Since 1893 New York Chichester, West Sussex Copyright © 2000 Columbia University Press All rights reserved Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Fuller, Margaret, 1810–1850 Margaret Fuller, critic : writings from the New York Tribune, 1844–1846 / edited by Judith Mattson Bean and Joel Myerson. p. cm. Includes index. ISBN 0–231–11132–0 (cloth : alk. paper) 1. Books—Reviews. 2. American Literature—19th century—History and criticism. 3. Literature—History and criticism. I. Bean, Judith Mattson. II. Myerson, Joel. III. Title. PS2502.B43 2000 809—dc21

99–087879

Casebound editions of Columbia University Press books are printed on permanent and durable acid-free paper. Printed in the United States of America c 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Contents

topical table of contents acknowledgments xiii introduction xv textual note xli

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“Emerson’s Essays” 1 “Thanksgiving” 8 “New Year’s Day” 14 “Miss Barrett’s Poems” 20 “The Liberty Bell for 1845” 28 [Review of Charles Lanman, Letters from a Landscape Painter] 32 [Review of James Russell Lowell, Conversations on Some of the Old Poets] 35 “Edgar A. Poe” 42 [Review of Lydia H. Sigourney, Scenes in My Native Land] 46 “French Novelists of the Day: Balzac . . . . . . . George Sand . . . . . . . Eugene Sue” 54 [Review of Richard Hildreth, The Slave; or, Memoirs of Archy Moore] 65 [Review of The Child’s Friend, ed. Eliza L. Follen] 67 [Review of Anton Schindler, The Life of Beethoven] 71 [Review of Henry R. Schoolcraft, Oneota, or The Red Race of America] 80 “Mr. Hudson’s Lecture on Hamlet” 89 [Review of Theodore Parker, The Excellence of Goodness] 93 “Our City Charities. Visit To Bellevue Alms House, to the Farm School, the Asylum for the Insane, and Penitentiary on Blackwell’s Island” 98 “Writers Little Known Among Us. Milnes . . . Landor . . . Julius Hare.” 105 “Frederick Von Raumer upon the Slavery Question” 116 “ ‘Ertheiler’s Phrase-Book’ ” 117 “Mrs. Child’s Letters” 119 v

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[Review of Charles Anthon, A System of Latin Versification] 121 [Review of Arthur Cleveland Coxe, Saul. A Mystery] 124 “‘American Facts’ ” 126 “Prevalent Idea that Politeness is too great a Luxury to be given to the Poor” 128 [Review of Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass] 131 “Asylum for Discharged Female Convicts” 134 “Story Books for the Hot Weather” 138 “United States Exploring Expedition” 143 [Review of Charles Sealsfield, Tokeah; or the White Rose] 145 “The Irish Character” 146 “Fourth of July” 149 [Review of Anna Cora Mowatt, Evelyn] 152 [Review of Edgar Allan Poe, Tales] 153 “The Irish Character” 155 “Thomas Hood” 161 [Review of Caroline Norton, The Child of the Islands, and John Critchley Prince, Hours with the Muses] 173 “First of August, 1845” 183 “Thomas Hood” 189 “Prince’s Poems” 195 “The Great Britain” 207 [Review of Sylvester Judd, Margaret] 210 [Review of Philip James Bailey, Festus] 211 “The Tailor” 220 “Jenny Lind . . . The Consuelo of George Sand” 227 “The Wrongs of American Women. The Duty of American Women” 233 “Ole Bull” 240 [Review of The Prose Works of John Milton] 245 “Italy” [Alfieri] 252 “The Celestial Empire” 259 “Italy” [Dante] 262 [Review of Caroline M. Kirkland, Western Clearings] 267 [Review of Edgar Allan Poe, The Raven and Other Poems] 271 [Review of Frederick Von Raumer, America and the American People] 277 [Review of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Poems] 285 “Study of the German Language” 293 “Peale’s Court of Death” 295

Contents

“Books of Travel” 299 [Review of Thomas Carlyle, Oliver Cromwell’s Letters and Speeches] 306 [Review of The Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley] 317 “1st January, 1846” 323 [Review of Schoolcraft Jones, Ellen; or Forgive and Forget] 333 “Cassius M. Clay” 338 “Methodism at the Fountain” 342 “Publishers and Authors. Dolores by Harro Harring” 350 “The Rich Man—An Ideal Sketch” 359 [Review of Leigh Hunt, Italian Poets] 367 “Consecration of Grace Church” 372 “The Poor Man—An Ideal Sketch” 375 “Instruction in the French Language” 384 “What Fits a Man to be a Voter? Is it to be White Within, or White Without?” 386 “[Robert] Browning’s Poems” 390 “Wiley & Putnam’s Library” 400 [“Age could not wither her . . .” ] 402 “Mistress of herself, though china fall” 406 [Review of Harro Harring, Dolores: A Novel of South America] 410 “Victory” 424 “The Grand Festival Concert at Castle Garden” 426 [Review of Eliza W. Farnham, Life in Prairie Land] 429 [Review of Waddy Thompson, Recollections of Mexico] 431 “Critics and Essayists” 439 [Review of Joel T. Headley, Napoleon and His Marshals] 448 [Review of Nathaniel Hawthorne, Mosses from an Old Manse] 453 [Review of George Sand, Consuelo] 457 [Review of Thomas L. McKenney, Memoirs, Official and Personal] 464 [Review of Charles Brockden Brown, Wieland; or, the Transformation and Ormond; or, the Secret Witness ] 472 [Review of Anna Jameson, Memoirs and Essays ] 476 [Review of Samuel Maunder, The Treasury of History] 481 index

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Topical Table of Contents

American Literature “Emerson’s Essays” 1 “The Liberty Bell for 1845” 28 [Review of Charles Lanman, Letters from a Landscape Painter] 32 [Review of James Russell Lowell, Conversations on Some of the Old Poets] 35 “Edgar A. Poe” 42 [Review of Lydia H. Sigourney, Scenes in My Native Land] 46 [Review of Richard Hildreth, The Slave; or, Memoirs of Archy Moore] 65 [Review of The Child’s Friend, ed. Eliza L. Follen] 67 [Review of Henry R. Schoolcraft, Oneota, or The Red Race of America] 80 “Mr. Hudson’s Lecture on Hamlet” 89 “Mrs. Child’s Letters” 119 [Review of Arthur Cleveland Coxe, Saul. A Mystery] 124 “ ‘American Facts’ ” 126 [Review of Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass] 131 “Story Books for the Hot Weather” (for a review of Nathaniel Parker Willis, Dashes at Life with a Free Pencil) 138 [Review of Charles Sealsfield, Tokeah; or the White Rose] 145 [Review of Anna Cora Mowatt, Evelyn] 152 [Review of Edgar Allan Poe, Tales] 153 [Review of Sylvester Judd, Margaret] 210 [Review of Caroline M. Kirkland, Western Clearings] 267 [Review of Edgar Allan Poe, The Raven and Other Poems] 271 [Review of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Poems] 285 [Review of Schoolcraft Jones, Ellen; or Forgive and Forget] 333 “Wiley & Putnam’s Library” 400 [Review of Eliza W. Farnham, Life in Prairie Land] 429 “Critics and Essayists” (for reviews of Henry T. Tuckerman, Thoughts on the Poets and The Modern British Essayists) 439 ix

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[Review of Joel T. Headley, Napoleon and His Marshals] 448 [Review of Nathaniel Hawthorne, Mosses from an Old Manse] 453 [Review of Charles Brockden Brown, Wieland and Ormond] 472 British Literature “Miss Barrett’s Poems” 20 “Writers Little Known Among Us. Milnes . . . Landor . . . Julius Hare.” 105 “Story Books for the Hot Weather” (for reviews of Benjamin Disraeli’s works) 138 “Thomas Hood” 161 [Review of Caroline Norton, The Child of the Islands, and John Critchley Prince, Hours with the Muses] 173 “Thomas Hood” 189 “Prince’s Poems” 195 [Review of Philip James Bailey, Festus] 211 [Review of The Prose Works of John Milton] 245 [Review of Thomas Carlyle, Oliver Cromwell’s Letters and Speeches] 306 [Review of The Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley] 317 “Methodism at the Fountain” 342 [Review of Leigh Hunt, Italian Poets] 367 “[Robert] Browning’s Poems” 390 “Critics and Essayists” (for reviews of George Gilfillan, Richard Henry Horne, and Thomas Talfourd) 439 [Review of Anna Jameson, Memoirs and Essays ] 476 Cultural and Social Criticism “Thanksgiving” 8 “New Year’s Day” 14 “The Liberty Bell for 1845” 28 [Review of Theodore Parker, The Excellence of Goodness] 93 “Our City Charities. Visit To Bellevue Alms House, to the Farm School, the Asylum for the Insane, and Penitentiary on Blackwell’s Island” 98 “Frederick Von Raumer upon the Slavery Question” 116 “Prevalent Idea that Politeness is too great a Luxury to be given to the Poor” 128 [Review of Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass] 131 “Asylum for Discharged Female Convicts” 134 “United States Exploring Expedition” 143

Topical Table of Contents

“The Irish Character” 146 “Fourth of July” 149 “First of August, 1845” 183 “The Great Britain” 207 “The Wrongs of American Women. The Duty of American Women” 233 “1st January, 1846” 323 “Cassius M. Clay” 338 “The Rich Man—An Ideal Sketch” 359 “Consecration of Grace Church” 372 “The Poor Man—An Ideal Sketch” 375 “What Fits a Man to be a Voter? Is it to be White Within, or White Without?” 386 [“Age could not wither her . . .” ] 402 “Mistress of herself, though china fall” 406 [Review of Harro Harring, Dolores: A Novel of South America] 410 “Victory” 424 [Review of Waddy Thompson, Recollections of Mexico] 431 [Review of Thomas L. McKenney, Memoirs, Official and Personal] 464 European Languages and Literature “French Novelists of the Day: Balzac . . . . . . . George Sand . . . . . . . Eugene Sue” 54 “Frederick Von Raumer upon the Slavery Question” 116 “‘Ertheiler’s Phrase-Book’ ” 117 [Review of Charles Anthon, A System of Latin Versification] 121 “Story Books for the Hot Weather” (for reviews of Eugène Sue’s works) 138 “The Tailor” 220 “Jenny Lind . . . The Consuelo of George Sand” 227 “Italy” [Alfieri] 252 “Italy” [Dante] 262 [Review of Frederick Von Raumer, America and the American People] 277 “Study of the German Language” 293 “Books of Travel” (for reviews of Hermann Heinrich’s and Gustav von Waagen’s works) 299 “Publishers and Authors. Dolores by Harro Harring” 350 “Instruction in the French Language” 384 [Review of George Sand, Consuelo] 457

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Topical Table of Contents

Literary Criticism and Genres of Literature [Review of The Child’s Friend, ed. Eliza L. Follen] (children’s literature) 67 “Story Books for Hot Weather” (fiction) 138 “Prince’s Poems” (poetry) 195 “Italy” [Dante] (translations) 262 “Books of Travel” (travel writing) 299 “Publishers and Authors. Dolores by Harro Harring” (publishing) 350 “Critics and Essayists” (essays) 439 [Review of Joel T. Headley, Napoleon and His Marshals] (biography) 448 [Review of Samuel Maunder, The Treasury of History] (history) 481 Music and Art [Review of Anton Schindler, The Life of Beethoven] 71 “Ole Bull” 240 “The Celestial Empire” 259 “Peale’s Court of Death” 295 “The Grand Festival Concert at Castle Garden” 426

Acknowledgments

This project has been supported by a number of scholars and institutions. Assistance in transcribing Fuller’s words from darkened and aging copies of the New-York Tribune was essential to completing the full collection. Support for this work was provided by Texas Woman’s University and the University of South Carolina. We appreciate the work of Camille Langston, Ginger Cotton, Ann Hoff, Lee Davinroy, Chris Nesmith, Ralph H. Orth, and Todd Richardson, who participated in this effort, and especially the work of Michael McLoughlin. Judith Bean wishes to thank especially Sondra Ferstl, Elizabeth Snapp, and Lucyle Hook. Joel Myerson thanks Robert Newman, chair of the English department of the University of South Carolina, for his support. We are also indebted to a number of libraries and their staffs who assisted in the work of examining Fuller’s papers: the Boston Public Library, the Houghton Library of Harvard University, the Massachusetts Historical Society, the New York Public Library, the Blagg-Huey Library of Texas Woman’s University, and the University of South Carolina. We received helpful encouragement and suggestions from many Fuller scholars. Wilma Ebbitt’s 1943 dissertation editing some fifty of Fuller’s texts from the Tribune proved a valuable source of information. We are grateful to Professor Ebbitt, as well as members of the Margaret Fuller Society, and especially Susan Belasco and Robert N. Hudspeth. Our introduction has benefited from suggestions made by Larry J. Reynolds. Susan Heath has edited the work with precision. We owe a special debt to Jennifer Crewe of Columbia University Press, who helped us through the various stages of this project and was instrumental in helping us achieve the final, comprehensive result. Judith Mattson Bean Joel Myerson

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Introduction

When Margaret Fuller became the literary editor of the New-York Tribune in the fall of 1844, she also embarked on a process of reshaping her identity. Her Tribune essays, like her most famous work, Woman in the Nineteenth Century (1845), can be read not only as cultural critique but also a record of Fuller’s evolving identity. With each column Fuller expressed her sense of self by taking positions that identified her politically and culturally. Before moving to New York City, Fuller lived in Boston, where she participated actively in its culture and identified herself with the progressive and reformist citizens, such as the Reverend William Ellery Channing, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and Amos Bronson Alcott. She initiated an educational experiment by leading seminars (called Conversations) for women and edited the Dial, the Transcendentalists’ literary journal, for two years.1 Although informally educated, she was described as the most brilliant woman in America and one of the leading minds of her time. In Boston her efforts were aimed at interpreting European literature and German literary philosophy, encouraging American literature and art, and developing her own intellectual powers. Her philosophical orientation toward the idealism of the German Romantics such as Herder and Goethe was balanced by her appreciation for classical thought. Although progressive in literary and educational theories, she rejected direct association with “radical” groups such as the abolitionist societies in Boston. Her Tribune essays indicate that her New York experiences transformed her political consciousness and reoriented her perspective. They show that she gained an increased understanding of the opportunities for political action open to women and to intellectuals as she directly considered national political programs and her own role in shaping them through one of the most popular newspapers of the day. Although in the 1840s political endeavor was, by definition, men’s work, Fuller’s columns reveal her growing radicalism and confidence in her political identity. Working for the Tribune brought her into contact with marginalized xv

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women, reformers, and political activists and forced her to express her views on the social issues of her day. Her columns became textual acts of identity produced through individualized responses to this sociohistorical context. Reading and writing were recursive processes through which she developed a socially expanded identity. Each political position or literary judgment she asserted situated her in public debates and developed her credibility as a social and literary critic. Through Fuller’s case, we can examine how women, especially in times of national redefinition, recreate for themselves new identities that challenge prescriptive cultural norms against political activism. The 1840s were a decade of reform in which individuals identified themselves in part by their attitudes toward reform itself. Americans were reexamining the principles of democracy and individualism, questioning the relation of the nation as a whole to segments of the population defined by race (African Americans, Native Americans), class (Irish immigrant laborers), and gender (women). American women were active in reforming public institutions despite social expectations that they confine themselves to private life. During 1846–47 alone, the Tribune reported on the public activities of women such as Dorothea Dix, who was petitioning the New Jersey legislature for improved care of the insane; Abby Kelley, who was lecturing against slavery; and Delia Webster, who was imprisoned for allegedly subverting slavery laws in Kentucky (and to whom Fuller refers in the 28 December 1844 Tribune (“New Year’s Day”). Several women advocated reform in Horace Greeley’s newspaper: Harriet Beecher Stowe published antislavery fiction; Maria Chapman and Frederika Bremer argued for abolition. Lydia Maria Child attacked slavery, nativism, and the persecution of women prisoners; Caroline Kirkland spoke out on women’s rights. Catharine Sedgwick worked quietly to educate and assist women prisoners; Ernestine Rose spoke in a public meeting of the New York Prison Association; and Eliza Farnham became the first woman to supervise and reform a women’s prison. Elizabeth Barrett’s poetry inveighed against the plight of poor and working classes in England. Although women could undertake humanitarian reforms and maintain social respectability, direct political involvement (such as lobbying) and public political argumentation was still very risky. Fuller admired the risk-takers and praised them in her columns, reviewing the works of reformist women writers such as Child, Farnham, Sedgwick, and Barrett. In her praise of individual women, Fuller implicitly identifies herself with them and their public work, displaying a redefinition of self as woman. She praises speakers who do not “make phrases or compliments; [nor] slur over the truth.”2 They are

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“truth-tellers,” an epithet she often applies to herself. Fuller’s recurring metaphor for acts of protest and reform is the grain of mustard seed. Fuller’s readings link acts of reform to texts and present rationales for social transformation. She writes, for example, in “New Year’s Day” (28 December 1844), that, “While reading a notice of a successful attempt to have musical performances carried through in concert by the insane at Rouen [France], we were forcibly reminded of a similar performance we heard a few weeks ago at Sing Sing” (the New York prison for women). After reporting the European precedent and implying that prisoners should be given the same consideration as the insane, she goes on to describe an organizational meeting of the New York Association for the Benefit of Prisoners as a “happy omen . . . [and] cause for thanksgiving.” Thus her reviews, particularly of other women writers, delineate Fuller’s shift toward political activism. Whether this shift constitutes an extension or rejection of Romantic idealism is debatable.3 Fuller vehemently defends reform activity against the charge of superficial sentimentalism when Carlyle labels proponents of abolishing capital punishment as disgusting Rose-Water Philanthropists or advocates of “Jean-Jacques Philanthropy.” She challenges Carlyle’s habit of ridiculing individuals whose political position differs from his and condemns his indiscriminate categorizing.4 His comments call attention to the significant link between romanticism and reform fever in America. Fuller’s growth as a critic of contemporary American culture was possible because in the Tribune, with its reform orientation, she could “address, not our neighbor, who forces us to remember his limitations and prejudices, but the ideal presence of human nature as we feel it ought to be and trust it will be. We address America rather than Americans.”5 In addressing America, Fuller participated in shaping attitudes toward America’s political conduct. Fuller’s Tribune reviews often omit contextualizing comments and assume acquaintance with the New York political and literary milieu. The Tribune’s place in the political landscape was generally within Whig territory (supporting Daniel Webster and Henry Clay), but it was also associated with reformist papers that generally opposed the Whigs. The Tribune generally opposed political positions of the democrats (supporters of Andrew Jackson and Martin Van Buren), which found favor in William Cullen Bryant’s Morning News. Nevertheless, the reformist aims of Horace Greeley (and Fuller) were occasionally similar to the United States Magazine and Democratic Review. On some issues Fuller aligns herself with the Democratic Review and democrats who sympathized with European revolutions. On slavery and the Texas annexation issue,

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she stands with New England Whigs, Greeley, and her friend William Henry Channing. At other times Fuller speaks out individually to bring an issue to public attention. A promoter of associationism, Greeley encouraged Fuller to intensify reformist views and express them with force. He tirelessly covered national political events and supported reform or party work through editorials and excerpts from other periodicals. Greeley’s primary editorial concern was the improvement of prospects for both industry and laborers in America. He assigned Fuller to report on a variety of city events and activities as well as writing literary reviews. Fuller’s first Tribune review appeared just after the Whig presidential defeat of 1844, a political campaign that swamped Greeley’s pages for months and ended with the election of the Jacksonian “Young Hickory,” James Polk. A fierce national division over the Texas annexation issue during the campaign prompted South Carolina to threaten secession and one group in Massachusetts to declare the union dead. The controversy temporarily subsided during 1845 when Texas rejected annexation terms, but when those issues were resolved and Texas was formally annexed in the fall of 1845, war with Mexico erupted in the spring of 1846. Like Greeley, Fuller opposed war with Mexico, not only for antislavery reasons but also from a deeply felt antipathy for the imperialistic impulses of the Manifest Destiny ideology that was used to justify the war. The annexation debate of the 1820s to the 1840s revealed deep cultural tensions. The 1846–48 war with Mexico originated from several causes beyond the expansion of slavery. Indeed, some argue that the strongest supporters of forceful Texas annexation were New York commercial interests who stood to profit from increased trade. Ambition to amass individual fortunes through land speculation was also rampant. A rapidly expanding population of urban poor increased fears of class war, encouraging the annexation of Texas as a safety valve for urban conflict. Yet another factor was anti-Catholic nativism, which provided grounds for opposing Mexican rule of Texas (and, ironically, for the desertion of Irish soldiers from U.S. divisions for service with Mexico). Finally, competition with England for domination in the western hemisphere supported Texas annexation. In New England Whigs rallied to protest annexation because it would increase slave territory. Abolitionism was still an unpopular ideology in New York, and Greeley’s paper expressed a dissenting view. The Tribune featured reports and commentary on antislavery and anti-Texas meetings and on the activities of abolitionists Frederick Douglass, Cassius Clay, and Delia Webster.

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The related issue of black suffrage emerged when New York State began rewriting its constitution. Fuller responded to both the annexation and black suffrage issues in her columns in essays, reviews, allusions, and metaphors (such as a black cloud hanging over America). Initially, Fuller viewed the Texas debate as contesting only slavery, but her later essays exhibit a larger and more complex understanding of the multiple forces that led to war. In them, she realizes that a war would drastically reconfigure the nation’s population and landscape, leaving a legacy of dispossession and ethnic conflict. Fuller’s essays actively resist American imperialism with attempts to subvert racist American expansionist rhetoric and to legitimate Mexican independence and property rights, while simultaneously exposing Mexican oppression of indigenous people. Fuller’s participation in this debate was significant for another reason: the war with Mexico played a critical role in her disillusionment with America. Before her departure for Europe in the fall of 1846, she began to equate U.S. national policy with European despotism and imperialism. When she maintained her opposition to the war after it was declared, she, like Greeley, was exposed not only to classification as a radical and controversial author but also to charges of disloyalty to America (accusations that Greeley defended himself against in the Tribune). Speaking out on controversial issues had its price; for example, the publishing firm Wiley & Putnam demanded that Fuller withdraw some essays from their forthcoming collection of her critical essays. Thus Fuller’s political essays become significant public acts of identity. Through them she creates the authority, subjectivity, and selfhood that anticipate her European dispatches. The Texas conflict was only one of several struggles over national boundaries and identity. At the root of the Mexican conflict was a dispute over philosophies of history and nationhood. Supporters of the war argued that strife between advanced and primitive peoples was as inevitable as was the victory of the advanced race. Others, who held a more organic theory of history, envisioned peaceful growth and expansion as a benign process in which the youthful, vigorous culture would replace degenerate, older civilizations. However, the mixed population of Mexico posed a conundrum. Was Mexico a Spanish, hence degenerate, older civilization, or an Indian, and thus a primitive civilization; was the United States the most advanced or the youngest civilization? How, in other words, was the United States to act in relation to its southern neighbor? Thus the war with Mexico raised fundamental issues of national identity and history. Through her arguments, analysis, allusions, and extensive quotations, Fuller’s political essays allow modern readers to decon-

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struct monolithic descriptions of national myths such as Manifest Destiny that neglect opposing voices. What Fuller’s Tribune essays provide, therefore, in addition to an increased understanding of this writer’s work, is an opportunity to reconfigure the parameters within which antebellum American cultural discourse is defined. Her Tribune essays follow the same impulses that now stimulate feminist and postcolonial literary criticism. Philosophically oriented to the comparative approach employed by Goethe and Herder, Fuller’s essays problematize constructions of American imperialism, recreating the dialogue between the American colonizer and the colonized other. These essays also reveal—through example—the redefinition of political discourse as woman’s work. Fuller was at the center of American and New York City attempts to establish new identities independent of British cultural influence. One dominant feature of the discourse of national identity was the polarization of U.S. democracy in opposition to monarchy worldwide. Czar Nicholas of Russia, whose domain was the world’s largest, epitomized European monarchical power. Thus, when the czar met P. T. Barnum’s protégée, Tom Thumb, the “smallest and the greatest personages in existence met” (“General Tom Thumb’s Career,” NYDT 6 July 1844). With every attempted revolt (in Ireland or Poland, for example) or successful effort to gain independence from a monarch (as in South America), the press celebrated the advance of world democracy for America’s “brothers” in liberty around the globe. Napoleon’s place in history provided considerable debate in the periodical press (including that by Greeley and Fuller) and in public lectures, the dominant oral media of the day. Writers revealed their political stances by their interpretations of Napoleon as either despot or brilliant leader. In reviewing contemporary American literature, Fuller practices a democratic criticism that challenges writers to uphold ideals of liberty and equality. Her political essays also argue that America’s principles of liberty and equality are endangered by American materialism, greed, and the desire for continental domination. She directs attention to the relation of dominant American society to the other, contending that American society is founded upon tolerance and upon recognition of universal human rights rather than domination by force. Because Americans wanted to claim the cosmopolitan sophistication of Europe but to reject its monarchical political systems and alleged cultural decadence, ambivalence marked arguments for a unique national identity. Greeley once claimed that European news was becoming less and less important to America, but elsewhere he held up European cities and cultures as the

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measure of American growth and success. American insecurities appeared in frequent comparisons and attempts to prove U.S. parity with Europe. With a regular column on city life and many reports on city development, Greeley established a personal and journalistic identification with New York, which he saw as a growing American city in contrast to older European urban centers. Evidence that New York was competitively oriented toward European rather than American cities appeared in the higher frequency of Tribune comparisons of New York with London and Paris rather than with such American cities as Boston, Philadelphia, Washington, or Baltimore. Fuller’s readings of foreignlanguage literature and periodicals assisted in creating a cosmopolitan ethos for the Tribune and for New York City, while her attention to American literature and culture developed the theme of national identity. Interest in European culture and politics was intense despite America’s nationalistic feelings; cosmopolitan New Yorkers recognized the importance of transatlantic exchanges in material and intellectual culture, in people, and in technology. Literary commerce was not limited to the import of European books; publishers’ crews raced out to meet ships before they docked, hoping to scoop competing newspapers and publishing houses for European news and pirated editions of literary works. The Tribune featured full-page displays of European news fresh from steamships and advertisements for the latest installments of French novels. In addition to social and political news, the paper provided columns such as “Glimpses of Europe” (a foreign travel column) and Fuller’s columns of “Items of Foreign Gossip,” gleaned from European periodicals. In her reviews of foreign-language periodicals and literature, Fuller argues for the significance of journalism in literary culture and for the importance of reading literatures of other nations. Parisian newspapers, for example, are praised as illustrating the potential for high standards of journalism.6 Fuller’s translations and criticism of others’ translations assert the importance of international literary exchange. Fuller’s Tribune writing illustrates the potential service of the critic as mediator in a pluralistic, cosmopolitan, literary culture. Mirroring New York life in the 1840s, the Tribune displays a heteroglossia of urban cultures and international dialogue. Daily enmeshed in city life, confronted with contradictory theories of culture and national policy, Fuller’s profession involved discourses of race, gender, class, political power, nationhood, economics, authorship, education, and religion (to name a few). By the mid-1840s New York had become a metropolis, a complex of multiple environments, unknown to each other and perhaps unknowable to any single individual through direct or per-

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sonal experience. City life was mediated through the daily press, and the many different environments of the city were represented there.7 Fuller not only wrote for one of the city’s and nation’s most popular papers (circulation two hundred thousand), she also read it and responded to its reports. Fuller’s humanism and background as a critic and translator of foreign literature encouraged her to adopt the role of mediator among classes, ethnic groups, and national literary cultures. Her feminism inclined her to produce feminist criticism (i.e., criticism that is more ethically than aesthetically oriented and that moves toward human change and genuine social improvement). Believing in the socially contingent nature of literature in the tradition of Germaine de Stäel, Fuller read contextually; her aesthetic and social comments were intertwined. Her preference for dialogic, intertextual discourse creates a need on the part of the modern reader for an awareness of Fuller’s cultural milieu. Living in New York increased Fuller’s interest in theories of economics and social class and convinced her of the need for a literature that mediated between classes. By one estimate the richest 1 percent of New York’s population in 1845 owned one-half of the city’s wealth, while the upper 4 percent owned more than four-fifths of the city’s total wealth.8 The problem of poverty was felt to be “a ragged insult to the land of opportunity,” and by 1850 the New York police estimated that three thousand vagrant children lived in the streets.9 Burgeoning immigration, particularly as the Irish famine began, overwhelmed American port cities between 1845 and 1855; New York’s foreignborn population increased from one-third to one-half during those years. One solution was imprisonment; the majority of those sentenced to prison were vagrants. Workhouses were another option; Randall’s Island was used for a children’s farm school, Blackwell’s for a prison and almshouse. New York geography reified the growing divisions, with wealthy New Yorkers building on high ground in mid-island (e.g., Washington Square), while the poor occupied districts near the docks, in the Five Points area, and on the lower East Side. Housing problems contributed to frequent city fires—such as one at the Tribune—and water supply problems continued until the 1842 addition of a new water supply source. Greeley advocated increasing land availability in the east and promoted western homesteading. As an ardent Associationist, he believed that as business prospered, the worker would prosper. To address inadequacies of public assistance, New Yorkers began to organize reform and philanthropic groups such as the Mariners Family Industrial Society and the Association for the Improvement of the Condition of the Poor. The Tribune publicized meetings

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and agendas of groups that advocated land-rent reform, prison reform, postalcost reform, associationism, and temperance. Greeley also campaigned daily for the rights and opportunities of working men and women. A series of articles, “Labor in New-York” (August to October 1845), presented statistical analyses of working conditions and wages for several blue-collar occupations and working women. Fuller wrote essays focusing on the rich and the poor concurrently with this series, and in other essays engaged in the ongoing discourse about growing class divisions. Utilitarianism, or Benthamism, persuasively theorized social, political, and economic aspects of the increasingly industrialized culture. In the Tribune the term political economy referred to utilitarianism. When Fuller refers to its principle, “the greatest good for the greatest number,” her tone suggests ambivalence or opposition.10 Her essays reveal an awareness that utilitarianism seemed democratic but in fact created advantages for dominant groups at the expense of dissenters and social misfits. With the emergence of economics as a science, a sense of social determinism emerged, challenging individualistic ideologies and positing the inevitability of poverty. Utilitarians argued that economic laws were natural laws, an idea that appealed to those who held that the poor were a divinely ordained part of society. In response to the growing appeal of so-called “political economy,” American writers such as Fuller confronted the problem of creating a truly humane and egalitarian society. Although significantly influenced intellectually by contacts with underprivileged women, prisoners, and women reformers, Fuller was not able in New York to transcend class boundaries in a personal sense. Her essays on the rich and poor indicate that, although she expressed sympathy for the imprisoned poor and domestic servants, she had no rebuttal for theories of economic determinism and had not yet questioned the foundations of class relations as she later did in Italy. The theory upon which she relied was an organic model of society that assumed difference but complementarity between mental and manual work, mind and body. A construct similar to one in Catharine Sedgwick’s best-selling novel The Poor Rich Man and the Rich Poor Man (1836) and Edward Everett’s “Lecture on the Working Men’s Party” (1830), the organic model relied upon interdependency rather than competition of classes.11 Nevertheless, contacts with the poor unsettled Fuller’s earlier definitions of self, race, gender, and class, preparing her for a more radical transformation in Europe. She adapted the organic principle to theorize national differences and literature in a pluralistic model, a “beautiful variety in the order of nature,” which assumed that nations possessed individual mental and moral character-

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istics emerging in national literatures.12 Her perspective resembled Herder’s model of the political family as one of diversity and harmony in which the folk express the essential national identity. Fuller’s essays demonstrate her desire to include in the literary culture “the seed of each plant that ever bloomed in the garden of Humanity,” all growths, whether humble and noble.13 Fuller’s pluralistic vision of American culture is illuminated by her cross-cultural thinking; she envisions American culture as receiving not only people but seeds of thought and expression from other nations. Fuller’s New York writing brought her into the busy literary marketplace during the “Golden Age of Periodicals,” and her essays reflect the growing importance of publishers and periodicals. Publishing was stimulated by technological advances, making it more than an activity of elite culture. Literary journalists included Edgar Allan Poe and Walt Whitman, both of whom responded to Fuller’s writing.14 In August 1845 Whitman returned from New York City to Brooklyn to edit the Brooklyn Eagle; he reacted to Fuller’s work as a woman critic and to her calls for an American poet. Poe became the editor of the Broadway Journal as well as publishing his Tales and “The Raven” in 1845. Poe and Fuller met at gatherings of the literati and reviewed each other’s work, engaging in a dialogue marked by polarities of critical theory and practice as well as personal and regional differences. The importance of contemporary periodicals to the literary culture is attested by frequent reviews of periodicals in the Tribune, which regularly previewed The Knickerbocker, the Democratic Review, Graham’s, Godey’s, and others with short notices, extracts, or lists of contents. The Democratic Review established itself as a leader in New York City literary culture and has been cited in histories of magazines for its vigorous political commentary and excellence in literary publications. Although the conservative Knickerbocker presented itself as the ultimate in metropolitan sophistication, its greatest appeal was its literary gossip. The Broadway Journal, under editor Charles F. Briggs, aimed to configure New York as an American Paris. Fuller’s reviews and allusions to Boston’s North American Review exhibit the generally held opinion that it had become stodgy. The Fourieristic Harbinger, published at Brook Farm, received her accolades. Fuller regularly read and alluded to both American and foreign periodicals, such as Blackwood’s and the Liberal Whig Edinburgh Review. Her columns present a dialogue with British and American reviewers who discussed many of the same works and issues. The Democratic Review and its writers became important to Fuller’s thinking about social and literary issues, although she differed from their expan-

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sionist stance and acquiescence with slavery. For example, she moved toward their position that literature was a form of social action and that the writer could shape individual and political perceptions. Fuller also supported its enthusiasm for democratic revolutions in Europe and South America and its calls for a distinctive and democratic American literature. The Democratic Review followed the logic that democracy would equalize wealth, that redistribution of wealth would increase leisure among the masses and thus increase the desire for democratic literature and art. Under this theory, intelligence was presumed to be widely distributed in the masses, but the poor were thought to require satisfaction of their material needs before they could be expected to appreciate the refinements of culture. Like Fuller, the Democratic Review called for “a new species of poetry, expressly designed to represent their condition and utter their aspirations, and at the same time to encourage and sustain their endeavors.”15 Fuller expresses hope for a working-class literature in her reviews of works by Thom and Prince, retitled as “Poets of the People” in Papers on Literature and Art in 1846. Fuller’s work at the Tribune challenged her to consider the nature of work: manual work, mechanized work, and the intellectual work of authorship. All forms of intellectual work were challenged by Adam Smith’s popular theories of productive (manual) labor and “unproductive” intellectual labor, of laborers as the producers of wealth versus unproductive consumers of wealth. In a mass-market economy and democracy what was the value of literature—its market and moral value—to the people and to its producers? Fuller’s complex vision considers not only the author’s spiritual needs but the economics and limitations of publisher and public as well. When she insists that America should “at least, pay interest on this rich capital” from the English mind (in a review of Hood’s poetry) or argues for the intellectual property rights of authors (in “Publishers and Authors”), she engages in an international dispute on the nature of authorship and literature.16 Greeley published several articles related to authorial rights and his own admonitions to authors from the publisher’s perspective. Although England adopted a copyright law in 1842, the United States refused to do so, and pirated editions were a mainstay of publishers such as Harper and Brothers, the largest publisher in the country. Both authors and publishers were tempted to claim ideological justification for monetary motivation. American authors and publishers not only contested definitions of literature and the author but also negotiated relationships of author to publisher and publisher to the democratic public. Fuller presents authorship as a political, economic, and intellectual endeavor. She recognizes

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legitimate aesthetic and material motives entailed in the collaborative process of publication. As part of the industrial revolution, print culture was being redefined by science and technology. Utilitarianism and technological advances were described as progressive “signs of the times,” harbingers of the march of civilization that was revolutionizing New Yorkers’ relationships to the rest of the country and the world. Improvements in printing, bookbinding, imaging, and paper production were covered in the Tribune, but the three technological advances that ignited the most public interest were the steamship, the railroad, and the telegraph. Upon the completion of the first telegraph line in 1844, the Tribune hailed it as the “miracle of the annihilation of space.”17 Franchises and construction of new lines were reported with the same degree of excitement granted to leasing space on the information highway of the 1990s. A three-column, front-page etching of the Great Britain demonstrated the general excitement over the arrival of a colossal steamer, the world’s largest and most technologically advanced ocean liner when it went to sea. Impressed with the transformational potential of the new ship, one writer declared that “Steam [travel] destroys nationality.”18 Enthusiasm for technology was also reflected in the number and kinds of patents reported and the space given by the Tribune to each new theory. Chemistry, geology, photography (and pseudosciences such as the water cure and phrenology) promised new and exciting ways of viewing the world and aiding humanity. Greeley provided agricultural columns to bring new methods to the farmer, and Fuller responded to the steamship and new theories in several essays. Changes in the definition of academic knowledge also added to cultural uncertainty. Material aspects of life (e.g., biology and physics) were now subjected to empirical rather than metaphysical analysis. In Boston Fuller’s contemporaries had stressed the spiritual interpretation of phenomena; in New York the empirical was celebrated and new scientific discoveries hailed. The new empirical approach to political and economic realms added weight to the notion that society as a whole, like the phenomenal world, was governed by scientific laws. Although Fuller read scientific theorists and began to analyze material conditions, she also continued to use physical phenomena as organic metaphors for the social, psychological, or spiritual elements of life. Fuller’s organic theory of literature posits the origin of artistic expression from internal impulses that assume their physical forms (genres) by continuously interacting with specific historical and geographic surroundings. Thus, she writes, the impulse for historical expression emerged as historical romances

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in America rather than the poetic epics of Europe. Founded in German romanticism, this theory legitimates a hermeneutics of literary production and, broadly applied, of literary, material and social history.19 For Shelley, one of the poets Fuller most admired, organicism could be used to theorize a protohistoricist criticism. Shelley (as well as Fuller) felt that poems should remain true to their culture, or in Paul Youngquist’s terms, “incorporate their historicity, representing truth not as a formal product but as socio-historical production.”20 More than a theory unique to the Romantic period, this philosophical orientation has been described as one of four basic perceptual frames. Fuller’s concept of the relation of history to genre (or forms) appears in an analogy of literary production to landscape formation. In an 1843 letter to James Freeman Clarke, she discusses the theory of forms and compares the author to a peasant living at the mouth of a constantly changing river. Fuller portrays the river as the stream of history whose force produces constant shifts in boundaries and rich new soil for literature. The writer, like the farmer, sows seeds of inspiration preserved from the literary past into the new soil, or era. With the reformation of the river delta, the farmer must move frequently, but each time finds newly made and enriched soil for his crops. He prospers because “he does not sigh for the forests and cities of the mainland, but uses the peculiar advantages of his own position.” America, she writes, is positioned “in the stress of a great stream of change.” She argues that American writers should emulate the delta farmer, not sighing “for the sacred depths of the slow growing forests” that are “not ours” but resisting the temptation to “stiffen in our innovations” and using language as a “pliant medium [that] should be presented for the ever present spirit, not brittle but plastic” (emphasis hers).21 Searching for literature native to American soil, Fuller praises travel writing such as Willis’s descriptions of American city life, Melville’s novel of travel to the South Pacific, and Kirkland’s tales of the frontier. She reviews many autobiographical texts and asserts their significance as genuine American expression, for in this genre the individual presents a unique self in relation to the historical moment. Fuller also believes that in America the novel has assumed the position of representative national form—a position comparable to the ballad elsewhere. Fuller’s organic metaphors become a way of knowing and of representing processes of culture, of suggesting symbiotic relationships and discussing issues of national identity. Literary criticism and reviewing for Fuller was, as Renée Welleck has described the practice of German romantics, “a strategy of finding the place of a work of art, discovering its proper readers, defining its position in the world

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of poetry.”22 Although Fuller’s modern reputation is that of a radical and exceptional woman, she employed practices of many other periodical book reviewers. Most reviewers were men, according to Nina Baym, but a significant number (perhaps as high as 20 percent) were women, including Sarah J. Hale, Caroline Kirkland, and Ann Stephens.23 Baym’s study demonstrates that book reviewers expressed deference to public judgment as necessary for literary greatness. They presented reviews of works, as Fuller did, for classes of readers based on age, gender, family, and reading goals (for example, pleasure or education) in the early years of the mass market for printed texts. Methods for defining the position of a work of art in the world of literature were the most disputed aspect of reviewing and literary criticism. Critics disagreed about the relative importance of formal literary technique, of biographical influences, of social issues in literature, of nationality, and of a work’s “morality.” Literary critical standards were formal, political, and moral. Although the moral standard became increasingly important, Fuller usually opposed moralistic reviewing and defended writers such as Shelley and Sand against attacks by self-appointed guardians of morality. “Democratic” criticism (examining a work’s political stance in relation to democracy) was important for American literature, but nationalism made critics sympathetic to native genius and reluctant to offend the public by negative criticism. Fuller’s critical practice exemplifies a conviction that aesthetic excellence cannot suffice as the sole criterion by which to evaluate literature. She endeavors to place works within a cultural context, to employ a comparative model, to read texts according to their own imperatives rather than in relation to externally and ahistorically imposed standards, and to see how texts speak to and out of specific traditions and cultures. Fuller reviews a wide range of print and oral performative genres: works of history, fiction, poetry, autobiography, and travel narratives. She searches for the generating impulses of each form and moves away from a hierarchy of genres. Although like Emerson, Fuller envisions American literature led by a bardic poet, she also argues that “poetry is not a superhuman or supernatural gift”; it can be produced by the “humblest minstrels” as well as the “greatest bards.”24 Fuller increasingly seeks “poets of the people” and argues that ballads show “the existence of poetical energy in a nation, as polished court or literary verses never can.”25 Failing to find native ballads, she concludes that the novel takes its place in American culture. Earlier she had written in a journal: “Novels are the ballads of our day. Read them to know the time.”26 While she recognizes and celebrates literary art, she also valorizes popular literature for

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“interpreting contemporary minds to each other on a larger scale than actual conversation in words or deeds furnishes.”27 In this essay she argues that popular literature (metaphorically, an oak tree) supports and invigorates literary art (metaphorically mistletoe). She argues that the “common and daily purposes of literature are the most important” and that a healthy popular literature need not be disparaged to exalt literary art. She takes pleasure in introducing readers to little known writers who are valuable as “private companions.” Fuller’s early development into a literary critic consisted of extensive reading and responding in private journals and publishing translations and critical reviews for several periodicals (American Monthly Magazine, Boston Quarterly Review, Western Messenger, and the Dial), in addition to publishing Woman in the Nineteenth Century and Summer on the Lakes in 1843 (1844). Fuller’s early reading provided depth and breadth for her book reviews and criticism. Her extant reading journals (1834 to 1844) provided the basis for comparative readings later, stimulating her growth as a perceptive reader and critic. Through journals she developed critical powers, recorded impressions, and inscribed into memory her thoughts about works of philosophy, poetry, fiction, biography, criticism, and drama. Some private assessments are harsher than her public criticism (as in the case of Longfellow), or more favorable (as in the case of Balzac). Other journal entries attack early Victorian moralists who seek to protect young readers from exposure to worldly experience, such as reading Disraeli’s Vivian Grey. She works out systems for reading and critiques the reading of her contemporaries such as George Ripley.28 She discovers the merits and limits of the comparative method by responding to descriptions of Socrates by Xenophon and Plato and concludes that comparison gives us a “standing point” but that in some cases that point is “behind a wall” because two biographical accounts of the same subject may attend to different aspects of that subject; thus she writes that “the Socrates of Xenophon teaches to act, that of Plato to know and to be.”29 Some journals provide direct background for reviews in the Dial and Tribune, but many more illustrate her extensive reading of American, British, German, French, and Italian literature—often in their original languages. She explores the philosophies of Platonism and contemporary theories such as German romanticism, Simonianism, and utilitarianism. Fuller’s journals also indicate the importance of Coleridge in forming her practice of literary criticism. Reading his works extensively in 1836, she records principles that she practices as critic for the Tribune. Her reading of the romantics is balanced by

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her reading of the classical authors, and her early reviews (1836) indicate her consciousness of the critical debate over the alternative merits of the romantic and classical points of view. Her synthesis of these two critical perspectives is the hallmark of her critical approach. Goethe’s importance to Fuller’s literary criticism is evident from Fuller’s journals and her first book, a translation of Eckermann’s Conversations with Goethe (1836), to her later essays. Goethe’s method of reading sympathetically meant to “read a book and let it work upon you, and yield yourself up entirely to its influence, then, and only then, will you arrive at a correct judgment of it.” In Goethe’s essays on literary criticism, he writes that all readers criticize by describing the influence the book has on them. Some of Fuller’s reviews record just this kind of individualized reader response, an extension of her voluminous private reading journals. Another critical principle she favors is that “What is important is to have a soul which loves truth, and receives it wherever it finds it.” A third concept shared with Goethe is that of critic as mediating between cultures, aiding in establishing a world literature: “not that nations shall think alike, but that they shall learn how to understand each other, and, if they do not care to love one another, at least that they will learn to tolerate one another.” In other respects she gradually withdraws from some of Goethe’s strictures. On politics and poetry, he writes “If a poet would work politically, he must give himself up to a party; and so soon as he does that he is lost as a poet; he must bid farewell to his free spirit, his unbiased view, and draw over his ears the cap of bigotry and blind hatred.”30 However, in the politically charged New York culture, Fuller began to see the possibilities for combining literary and political action. Fuller’s nineteenth-century reputation as a critic was based primarily upon her praxis, an integration of theory with practice. As critic and editor of the Dial from 1840 to 1842, Fuller developed a theory of literary criticism based on three approaches to criticism (subjective, apprehensive, comprehensive) and a division of literary works according to the degree of their temporality.31 She proposed adapting one’s critical approach to each work so that standards of excellence differed for works of contemporary social protest and works that aimed to achieve distinction as literary art. In her work for the Dial Fuller generally preferred the “comprehensive” approach that combines understanding for the writer’s aim and method with evaluating and placing a work in relation to literary or social culture. Ideal beauty was a standard used frequently in the Transcendental Dial but less often in the Tribune. Fuller’s Dial criticism included lengthy scholarly essays appropriate for the quarterly peri-

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odicals but less useful for the Tribune. In the Dial she undertook little social criticism, focusing rather on aesthetic issues until her groundbreaking essay, “The Great Lawsuit,” on woman’s position in 1843; but in the Tribune her political and social criticism frequently appeared. At the Tribune Fuller applied and extended her theory of criticism; she expressed increased faith in the potential for literary production by the people, and she relied more on criticism designed to nurture a diverse American literature by adapting her criteria to the work’s perceived aim or function (apprehensive criticism). The convention of authorial prefaces encouraged critics to consider the author’s announced aims. Fuller responded regularly to such prefaces, finding in them grounds for critique when the author seems (as Poe does) to be deliberately insincere or (as Kirkland does) to be playing lip service to conventional femininity. Fuller’s reputation as a critic, recognized formally with the publication of Papers in Literature and Art (1846), had begun with reviews of her translation of Goethe. Her creative and critical writing for the Dial (1840–1844) was reviewed in periodicals such as the New Yorker, the Knickerbocker, Godey’s, and the New York Tribune, where she enhanced her reputation as a literary and social critic. Her major works, Summer on the Lakes, in 1843 (1844), and Woman in the Nineteenth Century (1845) were widely reviewed in American periodicals as well as in some British periodicals. With its progressive arguments for women’s rights, Woman sold well and contributed to the perceptions that Fuller was a radical cultural critic. Stimulated by the hope of publishing a collection of her best essays, Fuller sent a proposal in early 1846 to Evert A. Duyckinck, the advisory editor for Wiley & Putnam’s Library of American Books, writing that, “Among the earlier pieces there is not one that has not excited a good deal of interest in this country and many of them have in England. I judge of this from the correspondence and acquaintance they have brought me.”32 Wiley and Putnam agreed to publish a collection of her essays, but the resulting volumes differed greatly from Fuller’s proposal. She was asked to omit controversial or lengthy essays, and her proposed collection was cut in half for publication, obscuring her political critique and the range of her work as a critic. Focused on literary criticism of British and American literature, Papers received wide critical attention and sold well, with three printings by 1852. Though the book was highly praised by some reviewers, her analysis of American literature incited negative reactions, including satirical sketches by Poe and James Russell Lowell. One of its essays, “American Literature,” synthesized many ideas expressed

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in the Tribune and courageously evaluated the merits of individual writers. Contemporary periodical reviews praised her criticism for its independence, balance, and high aesthetic standards. Fuller’s Preface to Papers alludes to the omission of “more than half the essays I had proposed on the subject of English literature, the greater part of those on Art, and those on continental literature and of a miscellaneous kind entirely.” Among essays omitted from her initial plan, for example, were literary review essays on Goethe, French novelists, and Italian poets, and cultural essays on “The Ideal Rich Man,” “The Ideal Poor Man,” and “Politeness.” Her preface indicates that if she had been advised earlier of the volume’s length restrictions she would have chosen differently to “do more justice to the range and variety of subjects which have been before my mind during the ten years that . . . I have written for the public.”33 Noting that the selection presented in Papers included some of her earliest and crudest as well as some of her latest essays, she expresses hope that at a future date a more complete selection will be published. After the publication of Papers Fuller continued to feel that her design for the book had been ignored at the cost of her literary and political reputation. From London Fuller wrote to Duyckinck that It is a real misfortune to me that Mr. Wiley took the course he did about my miscellanies; the vols [sic] have been kindly recd [sic] but every one mentions their being thin; the arrangement, too, that obliged me to leave out all I had written on Continental lite[rature] was very unfortunate for me. I have reason to feel daily how much use it would have been to me if these essays and others of a radical stamp were now before the readers and that a false impression has been given here of the range and scope of my efforts.34

For the remainder of the nineteenth century, editors of Fuller’s works continued to minimize her criticism of continental literature and her radical political critique. Fuller’s Tribune essays are distinctive in many respects, while maintaining continuity with her earlier and later works. Their unique nature arises from the new location, audience, and media. In the Tribune she writes for multilayered New York and national audiences rather than a highly educated literati. Fuller, like Greeley, was persuaded that the newspaper could be a powerful force for democracy by educating the people and making opportunities available to all. Her style develops increased directness and power in some columns but retains her characteristic dialogic structure and occasionally complex syntax. Her reviews blur the lines of public and private discourse; some columns,

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for example, seem to be letters to the many friends with whom she no longer keeps in regular contact. To her brother she writes that she has embarked on a new and noble career, a public career as distinguished from her earlier role of private friend, and that in her new role she will be communicating with everyone in print.35 Part of the significance of these columns is that they are her primary form of expression for 1845 to 1846. Hints of her personal life appear infrequently: her friendships with Lydia Maria Child and William Henry Channing, her admiration for Greeley, her brief romance with James Nathan, and her involvement with Harro Harring’s lawsuit. Despite her perception that she addresses her friends, her essays rarely assume the private tone of writing for an imaginary individual friend—such as Child assumes in her Letters from New York; rather, they typically address New York, Europe, and America in a public voice, often aiming to educate readers about new or foreign works or to engage in cultural criticism. At the Tribune Fuller explored the full range of the essay as a genre: the character sketch, parable, prose epistle, journalistic essay, periodical essay, hortatory essay, and book review. Stylistically diverse and wide-ranging in topic, Fuller’s literary reviews take three forms common to the professional practice of her day: the literary critique combined with a sociopolitical essay; the aesthetic discussion focusing on features of the text and the author; and the brief notice, with a short evaluative description of a work. These three types correspond to functions Fuller believed were served by literary critics: the discussion of important issues about which contemporary authors were concerned; the use of aesthetic judgment and the cultivation of standards for measuring excellence; and the encouragement of literary production by bringing books to the public notice.36 While her feminist critical essays are relatively well known, the less familiar Tribune essays illuminate Fuller’s critique of American imperialism and exhibit her skill in multiple modes of criticism. The titles or announced subjects of Fuller’s review essays often are only the starting point for discussion of broader ideas, as illustrated by the review of Italian writers Alfieri, Cellini, and Dante in “Italy”;37 its central concern is not Italian literature but the state of American society. According to a contemporary reviewer, Fuller’s reviews created “a broad common ground on which all cultivated readers might meet” and expressed “an eager reverence for truth.”38 Fuller’s Tribune columns also make lively reading today because of her flexibility of tone and control of language. While she can be earnest and serious, she also exercises her wit and keen sense of humor. Directly addressing readers and authors, Fuller creates dialogues and

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encourages responses. She engages directly in spirited debates with writers such as Thomas Carlyle but shifts to indirect critique of Whig political figures such as Waddy Thompson. Dialogues are also created through excerpts from reviewed works, followed by Fuller’s responses. Liveliness and humor are achieved with shifts between formal and colloquial language, as when she describes Leigh Hunt’s writing about Dante, first in formal terms then as “the fly buzzing the lion and blaming him for eating up the great ‘wild Beastesses’ and other atrocities of which his flyship has no taste as not being in his line.”39 To a remarkable extent she adopts the imagery or tone of the writers she is reviewing and occasionally parodies them. Narratives of reading individualize these reviews as she engages in what was termed “subjective criticism.” With intimate tone and elaborate detail she recalls early readings with friends in the woods or her first reading of Shelley (as a fireside enchantment at Christmas). Reviews such as these, differing from her earnest or jeremiadic essays, ultimately create a very human Fuller whose delight in literature originates in a sense of play and pleasure, manifested earlier as collections of meaningful passages copied into journals or recited among groups of readers. These autobiographical moments resemble letters and recall the foundations of her mature critical engagement with literary discourse. Fuller’s characteristic use of numerous extracts from the books she is reviewing illustrates many of her critical principles. Lengthy quotations, she explains, acquaint readers with books too expensive to buy, especially foreign books or philosophical or historical works. In this manner she accommodates class differences in access to literary works. Providing samples of the writer’s style or treatment of a subject, Fuller also demonstrates her desire to encourage readers who are independent and discriminating and allows them to comprehend her judgments. Extracts create the multivocality that is characteristic of Fuller’s style; many reviews become mosaics of quotations or intertextual dialogues. Her multivocal political essays create space for the voices of the other, such as the Mexican, the Indian, or the political exile. She might use, for example, the full speech of a Choctaw Chief from treaty negotiations or the words of Mexican leader Santa Anna. Fuller employs these textual designs along with metaphor and logical analysis to critique stereotypical representations and subvert popular ideologies. Her framing remarks might borrow images or phrases taken from the original work and depend upon the presence of the extract for appropriate interpretations. Fuller also makes strategic use of excerpts to juxtapose popular perceptions with the gritty facts of actual behavior—a “legitimate style of aggression” particularly notable in moments of

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social satire.40 In some cases excerpts allow Fuller to draw authority from others’ personal experience in order to argue implicitly for the same position herself. Fuller’s practice as a feminist writer and critic increased the cultural authority and literary possibilities of other American women through thoughtful reviews, reliance on their works as resources, and recognition for their achievements. In reviews of American women writers Fuller challenges nineteenth-century notions of gender and genre. In “Books of Travel” she reviews six narratives by men and argues that the best travel books in their “observation of particulars and lively expression” are written by women.41 Whereas Poe and others assert that women are suited to the genre of poetry, Fuller argues that women should not be limited to the role of “poetess” but can author diverse genres. Although Fuller does not attribute sentimental poetry entirely to women writers, she considers the tendency of women to write in that style an all-too-frequent problem. Fuller’s critique of sentimental poetry in her review of Elizabeth Barrett’s work has specific reference to conventional elegiac lyrics; she admires Barrett for replacing sentimentalism with “personal feeling . . . enlightened by Reason, [and] ennobled by Imagination.” These reviews indicate her appreciation of the expression of authentic emotion but her skepticism of poetry “adorned by the flowers of feeling.”42 Fuller’s literary criticism does not grant women poets gender exemption from negative criticism; rather, she speaks in the “spirit of truth.” Fuller seeks to nurture American writers—including women—intellectually and to educate American readers in order to achieve “the ripening of a new and golden harvest” for which she feels she will not be present.43 Her critical strategies are designed to encourage women writers and to engender a rich, culturally responsive American literature. The Tribune essays illustrate not only Fuller’s “love of truth and the power to speak it” (as Emerson described it) but also her important contribution to the acceptance of women as critics of literature and society.44 Contemporary critical practices evident in her reviews include searching for women writers of talent, classifying and ranking writers in relation to other writers, and considering the personality and life of writers in conjunction with their works. Women writers were entering the profession in ever increasing numbers, challenging notions of authorship, gender, and genre. Some Fuller reviews participate in an ongoing debate over women’s potential for literary art and the appropriate subjects and manner for women’s literary expression. Fuller’s reviews show that the nineteenth century encouraged “a sense of tra-

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dition . . . among women based on their membership in a separate sexual caste” not along the nationalistic lines advocated by male writers of the period.45 Further study comparing Fuller’s work to that of other women reviewers will be useful in establishing the range of approaches to criticism of women’s literature by women in the nineteenth century. While America redefined itself in terms of utilitarianism, imperialism, and industrialism, Fuller redefined herself as a woman reformer, an egalitarian, socially conscious citizen with an inclusive definition of citizenship. Responding to literature and the social problems of the 1840s, she gained the power of self-expression and chose positions that made her an articulate critic of American and European culture. This selection of Fuller’s Tribune essays, focusing on her criticism of literature and culture, seeks to bring together a representative group of her essays with emphasis on previously uncollected and out-of-print materials. However, some reflective essays are included to present her exploration of the essay as a genre. Minimal representation has been accorded to her investigative reporting, much of which has already been reprinted. The essays have been selected both for their individual merit as works of criticism (length and complexity of thought) and with attention to the subjects of the reviews. Fuller reviewed a wide range of texts in the print culture of her day including belles lettres, popular literature, gift books, history, biography, travel writing, textbooks, pamphlets, public reports, and periodicals. This extraordinary breadth offers students and scholars a unique opportunity to understand the interrelationship of diverse types of texts at a specific historical moment. The arrangement of these essays is chronological with a second, topical table of contents provided for flexible use in the classroom. The chronological order will be useful for readers studying Fuller’s development as a writer. The topical organization, though it is limited by Fuller’s practice of integrating social and literary criticism in most of her essays, is provided to facilitate comparisons with her contemporaries’ writing on major issues of the era. The topics listed here are broad categories only; as the subject index suggests, additonal topics and themes will emerge through close examination of the essays. The essays in this volume are complemented by the complete set of Fuller’s Tribune essays, as well as “American Literature,” available in a searchable electronic format that provides access to all of the essays and their accompanying notes. The selection in this book aims to represent most of the genres Fuller reviewed. While her reviews recognize national literatures, they also include

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works by differing national writers. Because of her significance as a literary critic, major emphasis is given to Fuller’s reviews of American and British works. Her efforts to encourage international intellectual and cultural dialogue are presented through her reviews of European literature. Additional reviews of foreign–language periodicals and Fuller’s translations may be found on the CD-ROM edition. Fuller’s sociopolitical criticism in occasional essays and reviews addresses such issues as the national condition and policies, race, gender, class, progress, and technology; selected criticism of the fine arts is included to indicate her approach to fine arts and performances. Fuller’s extensive quotations from the texts under review have been selectively cut where excerpts are largely appended as examples and do not support the argument of the review; they are retained when feasible where they constitute her efforts to give voice to groups or individuals who challenged dominant ideologies. These essays may be read from many perspectives. They may be read in dialogue with other early critics such as Poe, allowing for a reassessment of their critical practice or read in relation to the history of women’s literature. They allow readers to examine Fuller’s evolving literary and political positions toward issues such as nationality in literature. Those positions continued to develop in her expatriate years when she recast the relation of American art in general to the use of American subjects in art. Bridging the gap in modern publication between Woman and the European dispatches, these essays allow readers to understand the full range of Fuller’s work, her reception and reputation as a critic. Notes 1. For a recent biographical study of Fuller in New York, see Joan Voh Mehren, Minerva and the Muse (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1994). On Fuller’s earlier life, see Charles Capper, Margaret Fuller: An American Romantic Life—The Private Years (New York: Oxford UP, 1992). 2. Margaret Fuller, “Thanksgiving,” New York Daily Tribune (NYDT hereafter) 12 December 1844. 3. Scholars debating this issue include Christina Zwarg, Feminist Conversations: Fuller, Emerson and the Play of Reading (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1995); Bell Gale Chevigny, “Foreword to the Revised Edition,” in The Woman and the Myth: Margaret Fuller’s Life and Writings (Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1994), and Julie Ellison, Delicate Subjects: Romanticism, Gender, and the Ethics of Understanding (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1990). 4. See Fuller, rev. of Carlyle’s Cromwell, NYDT 19 Dec. 1845. 5. Fuller, “American Literature: Its Position in the Present Time and Prospects for the Future,” in Papers on Literature and Art (New York: Wiley & Putnam, 1846), 2:140.

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6. Fuller, rev. of Courrier des Etats Unis, NYDT 7 June 1845. 7. Thomas Bender, New York Intellect: A History of Intellectual Life in New York City, from 1750 to the Beginnings of Our Own Time (New York: Knopf, 1987), 156. 8. Edward Pessen, “The Egalitarian Myth and the American Social Reality: Wealth, Mobility, and Equality in the ‘Era of the Common Man,’ ” American Historical Review 76 (October 1971): 989–1034. See pp. 1022–23 for statistics. 9. Edward K. Spann The New Metropolis: New York City, 1840–1857 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1981), 70, 262. 10. Fuller, rev. of Le Franco-Americain, NYDT 23 May 1846. 11. On Edward Everett’s 1830 “Lecture on the Working Men’s Party,” see Nicholas K. Bromell, By the Sweat of the Brow: Literature and Labor in Antebellum America (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993), 24. 12. Fuller, “Italy,” NYDT 13 November 1845. 13. Fuller, rev. of A System of Latin Versification, NYDT 12 May 1845. 14. For responses of Poe and Whitman, see Joel Myerson, Margaret Fuller: An Annotated Secondary Bibliography (New York: B. Franklin, 1977); Myerson, “Supplement to Margaret Fuller: An Annotated Secondary Bibliography,” Studies in the American Renaissance 1984, ed. Myerson (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1984), 331–85; Myerson, Margaret Fuller: An Annotated Bibliography of Criticism, 1983–1995 (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood, 1998). Some contemporary responses to Fuller’s essays have been reprinted in Myerson, Critical Essays on Margaret Fuller, (Boston: Hall, 1980). 15. [William A. Jones], “Poetry for the People,” Democratic Review 13 (1843): 268. 16. Fuller, rev. of Prose and Verse by Thomas Hood, NYDT 9 August 1845; “Publishers and Authors,” NYDT 3 February 1846. 17. “The Magnetic Telegraph—Its Success,” NYDT 27 May 1844, p. 1. Several subsequent stories refer to the “miracle of the annihilation of space” and record the extension service in the region north of Washington to New York and Boston. When hostilities with Mexico began in May 1846, the Tribune prefaced news with headlines: “BY ELECTRIC TELEGRAPH,” indicating that the telegraph had been extended to New York. 18. “Life in Paris,” NYDT 16 August 1844, p. 1. 19. One of her earliest reviews as a critic had been a review of German literature (in American Monthly July 1836). Heinrich Heine in “The Romantic School” had described the theory of organic forms or genres in relation to literary history: “beginning with the primitive human emotions, following them as they developed in the various epochs and finally assumed artistic form. . . . In the hearts of a nation’s writers there already lies the image of its future.” See Heinrich Heine: Selected Works, trans. and ed. Helen M. Mustard (New York: Random House, 1973), 239–40. 20. Paul Youngquist, “Romanticism, Criticism, and Organicity,” Genre 27 (1994): 183– 208. Youngquist demonstrates the continuity of the metaphor of organicity through nineteenth- and twentieth-century criticism. He concludes that “however dead it may appear, the organic metaphor lives on in contemporary criticism . . . as a representational strategy” (204), whether in positive terms or negative.

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21. Fuller, The Letters of Margaret Fuller (Letters hereafter), ed. Robert N. Hudspeth, 6 vols., (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1983–94), 6:342. 22. Renée Welleck, A History of Modern Criticism: 1750–1950—The Romantic Age (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1965), 2:87. 23. Nina Baym, Novels, Readers, and Reviewers: Responses to Fiction in Antebellum America (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1984), 21. 24. Fuller, rev. of Poems by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, NYDT 10 December 1845. 25. Fuller, rev. of The Nubian Slave by Bela Marsh, NYDT 24 June 1845. 26. Fuller, quoted by permission, “1840 Journal,” Margaret Fuller Papers, Ms. Am. 1086 (3), Houghton Library, Harvard College. She makes the same point in a review of Ellen by Schoolcraft Jones, NYDT 10 Jan. 1846. 27. Fuller, “English Writers Little Known Here. Milnes . . . Landor . . . and Julius Hare,” NYDT 4 March 1845, p. 1. 28. Apparently quoting from her reading, Fuller supports, “The overcoming of deriving your whole pleasure passively from the book itself which can only be effected by excitement of curiosity or some passion. Force yourself to reflect on what you read paragraph by paragraph and in a short time you will derive your pleasure, or an ample portion of it, at least, from the activity of your own mind. All the rest is picture sunshine.” Quoted by permission, “S. M. Fuller’s Bouquet,” Margaret Fuller Papers, Ms. Am. 1086, Houghton Library, Harvard College. 29. Fuller, quoted by permission, “Journal D,” Margaret Fuller Papers, Ms. Am. 1086, Houghton Library, Harvard College. 30. Johann Wolfgang Goethe, Goethe’s Literary Essays, ed. J. E. Spingarn (New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1921), 141, 256, 92, 253 [“judgement of it,” 141; “it finds it,” 256; “tolerate one another,” 92; “blind hatred,” 252]. 31. Fuller, “A Short Essay on Critics,” Dial 1 (July 1840): 134. 32. Fuller to Evert Duyckinck, 5 February 1846, Letters 4:184–85. 33. Fuller, “Preface,” in Papers, v, vi. 34. Fuller to Evert Duyckinck, 30 October 1846, Letters 4:234–35. 35. Fuller to Richard Fuller, 2 March 1845, Letters 4:184. Her shift toward public use of personal experience was protested by Caroline Sturgis who detected a veiled reference to herself; Fuller defended her use and the role of public woman. See Fuller to Sturgis, 13 March 1845, Letters 4:59–60. 36. Fuller’s book reviews include discussion of moral, social, and political principles; biography, history, and plot summaries; and excerpts and assessments of merits and blemishes. Critics such as Poe and those of Blackwood’s extended formalistic analysis into “Tomahawk criticism.” Quarterlies such as the Democratic Review used books as starting points for discussing issues they raised; the North American Review presented lengthy essays surveying a field or group of authors; and many journals offered superficial appreciative essays. 37. NYDT 13 November 1845, p. 1. 38. “Miss Fuller’s Papers on Literature and Art,” United States Magazine and Democratic Review 19 (Sept. 1846): 198; repr. in Myerson, Critical Essays, 40. 39. Fuller, rev. of Leigh Hunt’s Italian Poets, NYDT 18 February 1846. 40. Ellison has also asserted that “Quotation and allusion constitute the mature public

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style of the heterogeneous subject” of Fuller’s letters and Woman and that “The tactics of quotation both accentuate cultural differences and create a feeling of sameness—as diversity is blurred by the identical textual status of discursive bits” (Delicate Subjects, 282–83). 41. The proportion of travel books by women was relatively small (35 of 691 published in America between 1800 and 1868). Mary Suzanne Schriber, “Julia Ward Howe and the Travel Book,” New England Quarterly 62 (1989): 269. 42. Fuller, “Miss Barrett’s Poems,” NYDT 4 January 1845. 43. Fuller, “American Literature,” Papers 2:125. 44. R. W. Emerson, Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, ed. R. W. Emerson, W. H. Channing, and J. F. Clarke (Boston: Phillips, Sampson, 1852), 1:303. 45. Cheryl Walker, The Nightingale’s Burden: Women Poets and American Culture before 1900 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1982), 23, 26.

Textual Note

This edition of Margaret Fuller’s writings in the New-York Tribune prints annotated texts for 88 of the 250 pieces she published in the New-York Tribune between 7 December 1844 and 8 August 1846.1 All 250 pieces are included in the electronic edition. Of these, only 38 (or about 15 percent) have been reprinted in twentieth-century editions. The other 212 texts are in a hard-tolocate and hard-to-read newspaper. We hope that our edition will assist new scholarship on Fuller by presenting for the first time in a modern edition the nearly two years of her creative output in the Tribune. After her death, Fuller’s writings were collected by her brother Arthur (with occasional help from Horace Greeley) as Woman in the Nineteenth Century, and Kindred Papers (1855), At Home and Abroad (1856), and Life Without and Life Within (1860). Unfortunately, he chose very selectively from the materials available, “improved” his sister’s writing by revising what he thought ungraceful style, and deleted what he considered irrelevant (or “inappropriate”) examples and passages. Our edition presents Fuller’s texts as she wrote them for publication in the New-York Tribune. These texts, written under the pressure of deadlines and set by compositors who may not have always been able to read Fuller’s handwriting, and for a medium that does not encourage leisurely proofreading, are nevertheless surprisingly free of error. Our textual policy is simple: we print the texts as they appeared in the Tribune. Emendations have been made in cases of obvious typographical errors or misspellings, or when clarity of thought is disturbed. All emendations are reported by placing a superscript “n” in the text immediately following the word emended (as in “wordn”), with a description of the original reading provided in the footnotes. No attempt has been made to regularize Fuller’s spelling and punctuation practices, or to modernize archaic spellings. The text is as close to Fuller’s intentions as is possible. Some typographical features, such as the use of large and small capitals in the first word(s) of an article have been changed to regular upper- and lowercase letxli

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ters; however, we have retained large and small capitals appearing within an article because they may represent an effort at emphasis. We have not attempted to standardize accent marks in non-English words. Most of Fuller’s book reviews begin with some publication information for the work under consideration; we have moved this to the notes, where a complete bibliographical citation is provided to the edition Fuller used. We follow the Tribune’s erratic practice of placing material quoted from the texts under review in either text-size type or extract-size type. Notes by Fuller are included in our notes, labeled as such. We have placed in brackets any titles we have supplied for essays or reviews. Fuller’s writings in the Tribune begin with a paragraph indent; here, for stylistic reasons, we begin the first paragraph flush left. Also for stylistic reasons, the general layout of Fuller’s articles in this volume differs slightly from how they originally appeared in the Tribune. Like most mid-nineteenth-century book reviewers writing in an age when books were relatively quite expensive, Fuller was usually generous in quoting from the texts under review. As scholars have recently discovered, her decisions about which portions of the texts to include and which to omit often constitute as strong a critical statement as do her own words.2 For this reason, and because so many of the works Fuller reviews are now hard to locate, we have printed the extracts unless the works of the writer are easily available in modern editions (such as those by Robert Browning or Frederick Douglass). Our annotations provide complete bibliographical information for the book(s) under review, and information about the sources of texts that Fuller quotes, people or books she mentions, and other information that helps place the work within its historical context. For critical studies of Fuller’s works or the people she wrote about and/or knew, readers are invited to consult the bibliographies by Joel Myerson.3 Notes 1. To the items listed in Joel Myerson, Margaret Fuller: A Descriptive Bibliography (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1978), 113–38, we have identified and added a review of Harro Harring’s Dolores: A Novel of South America, published in the New-York Daily Tribune, 25 April 1846. Also, because of its importance, we have printed in an appendix of the electronic edition Fuller’s “American Literature; Its Position in the Present Time, and Prospects for the Future” from her Papers on Literature and Art (1846). Because Fuller nearly always signed her pieces with a star or asterisk (“*”), we have been reluctant to add unsigned essays in the Tribune to her list of writings solely on the basis of shared similarities in style and subject matter. The review of Harring’s Dolores is the sole exception. In our work, we have identified as “possibly” by Fuller a translation from the Deutsche Schnellpost on 29 March 1845; a review of Poems by “Amelia” on 18 April 1845; translations from George

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Sand on 24 April 1845 and from Madame de Stäel on 13 May 1845; items of foreign gossip on 8 August and on 23 August 1845; and brief comments on and extracts from advance sheets of Charles Burdett’s Wrongs of American Women on 10 September 1845. Information about the reprintings of individual Tribune essays may be found in Myerson’s bibliography (above) or his “Supplement to Margaret Fuller: A Descriptive Bibliography,” in Studies in the American Renaissance 1996, ed. Myerson (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1996), 187–240. 2. See, for example, Stephen Mailloux, “Misreading as a Historical Act: Cultural Rhetoric, Bible Politics, and Fuller’s 1845 Review of Douglass’s Narrative,” in Readers in History: Nineteenth-Century American Literature and the Contexts of Response, ed. James L. Machor (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1993), 3–31. 3. See Myerson, Margaret Fuller: An Annotated Secondary Bibliography (New York: B. Franklin, 1977); “Supplement to Margaret Fuller: An Annotated Secondary Bibliography,” in Studies in the American Renaissance 1984, ed. Myerson (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1984), 331–85; and Margaret Fuller: An Annotated Bibliography of Criticism, 1983–1995 (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1998).

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Margaret Fuller, Critic


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Emerson’s Essays


At the distance of three years this volume follows the first series of Essays, which have already made to themselves a circle of readers, attentive, thoughtful, more and more intelligent, and this circle is a large one if we consider the circumstances of this country, and of England, also, at this time.1 In England it would seem there are a larger number of persons waiting for an invitation to calm thought and sincere intercourse than among ourselves. Copies of Mr. Emerson’s first published little volume called “Nature,” have there been sold by thousands in a short time, while one edition has needed seven years to get circulated here. Several of his Orations and Essays from “The Dial” have also been republished there, and met with a reverent and earnest response.2 We suppose that while in England the want of such a voice is as great as here, a larger number are at leisure to recognize that want; a far larger number have set foot in the speculative region and have ears refined to appreciate these melodious accents. Our people, heated by a partisan spirit, necessarilyn occupied in these first stages by bringing out the material resources of the land, not generally prepared by early training for the enjoyment of books that require attention and reflection, are still more injured by a large majority of writers and speakers, who lend all their efforts to flatter corrupt tastes and mental indolence, 1. Essays: First Series had been published on 20 March 1841. Fuller comments on the present review in a letter to Emerson: “Your book I have read quite through . . . but will not mar the effect by a few inadequate words. It will be a companion through my life. In expression it seems far more adequate than the former volume, has more glow, more fusion. Two or three cavils I should make at present, but will not, till I have examined further if they be correct” (Letters, 3:243). 2. Perhaps fifteen hundred copies of Nature sold between 1836, when it was published, and 1844; there was no British edition. Both Man the Reformer (1842) and The Young American (1844) were reprinted separately in England from the Dial, and other Dial essays were included with addresses in Nature; an Essay. And Lectures on the Times (1844) and Orations, Lectures, and Addresses (1844) for British publication. necesarily [ necessarily

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instead of feeling it their prerogative and their duty to admonish the community of the danger and arouse it to nobler energy. The aim of the writer or lecturer is not to say the best he knows in as few and well-chosen words as he can, making it his first aim to do justice to the subject. Rather he seeks to beat out a thought as thin as possible, and to consider what the audience will be most willing to receive. The result of such a course is inevitable. Literature and Art must become daily more degraded; Philosophy cannot exist. A man who feels within his mind some spark of genius, or a capacity for the exercises of talent, should consider himself as endowed with a sacred commission. He is the natural priest, the shepherd of the people. He must raise his mind as high as he can toward the heaven of truth, and try to draw up with him those less gifted by nature with ethereal lightness. If he does not so, but rather employs his powers to flatter them in their poverty, and to hinder aspiration by useless words, and a mere seeming of activity, his sin is great, he is false to God, and false to man. Much of this sin indeed is done ignorantly. The idea that literature calls men to the genuine hierarchy is almost forgotten. One, who finds himself able, uses his pen, as he might a trowel, solely to procure himself bread, without having reflected on the position in which he thereby places himself. Apart from the troop of mercenaries, there is one, still larger, of those who use their powers merely for local and temporary ends, aiming at no excellence other than may conduce to these. Among these, rank persons of honor and the best intentions, but they neglect the lasting for the transient, as a man neglects to furnish his mind that he may provide the better for the house in which his body is to dwell for a few years. When these sins and errors are prevalent, and threaten to become more so, how can we sufficiently prize and honor a mind which is quite pure from such? When, as in the present case, we find a man whose only aim is the discernment and interpretation of the spiritual laws by which we live and move and have our being, all whose objects are permanent, and whose every word stands for a fact. If only as a representative of the claims of individual culture in a nation which tends to lay such stress on artificial organization and external results, Mr. Emerson would be invaluable here. History will inscribe his name as a father of the county, for he is one who pleads her cause against herself. If New-England may be regarded as a chief mental focus to the New World, and many symptoms seem to give her this place, as to other centres the characteristics of heart and lungs to the body politic; if we may believe, as the

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writer does believe, that what is to be acted out in the country at large is, most frequently, first indicated there, as all the phenomena of the nervous system in the fantasies of the brain, we may hail as an auspicious omen the influence Mr. Emerson has there obtained, which is deep-rooted, increasing, and, over the younger portion of the community, far greater than that of any other person. His books are received there with a more ready intelligence than elsewhere, partly because his range of personal experience and illustration applies to that region, partly because he has prepared the way for his books to be read by his great powers as a speaker. The audience that waited for years upon the lectures, a part of which is incorporated into these volumes of Essays, was never large, but it was select, and it was constant. Among the hearers were some, who though, attracted by the beauty of character and manner, they were willing to hear the speaker through, always went away discontented. They were accustomed to an artificial method, whose scaffolding could easily be retraced, and desired an obvious sequence of logical inferences. They insisted there was nothing in what they had heard, because they could not give a clear account of its course and purport. They did not see that Pindar’s odes might be very well arranged for their own purpose, and yet not bear translating into the methods of Mr. Locke.3 Others were content to be benefited by a good influence without a strict analysis of its means. “My wife says it is about the elevation of human nature, and so it seems to me,” was a fit reply to some of the critics. Many were satisfied to find themselves excited to congenial thought and nobler life, without an exact catalogue of the thoughts of the speaker. Those who believed no truth could exist, unless encased by the burrs of opinion, went away utterly baffled. Sometimes they thought he was on their side, then presently would come something on the other. He really seemed to believe there were two sides to every subject, and even to intimate higher ground from which each might be seen to have an infinite number of sides or bearings, an impertinence not to be endured! The partisan heard but once and returned no more. But some there were, simple souls, whose life had been, perhaps, without clear light, yet still a search after truth for its own sake, who were able to receive what followed on the suggestion of a subject in a natural manner, as a 3. Pindar (ca. 522–443 b.c.), the greatest of the Greek lyric poets; John Locke (1632–1704), English philosopher and founder of the sensationalist school.

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stream of thought. These recognized, beneath the veil of words, the still small voice of conscience, the vestal fires of lone religious hours, and the mild teachings of the summer woods. The charm of the elocution, too, was great. His general manner was that of the reader, occasionally rising into direct address or invocation in passages where tenderness or majesty demanded more energy. At such times both eye and voice called on a remote future to give a worthy reply. A future which shall manifest more largely the universal soul as it was then manifest to this soul. The tone of the voice was a grave body tone, full and sweet rather than sonorous, yet flexible and haunted by many modulations, as even instruments of wood and brass seem to become after they have been long played on with skill and taste; how much more so the human voice! In the more expressive passages it uttered notes of silvery clearness, winning, yet still more commanding. The words uttered in those tones, floated awhile above us, then took root in the memory like winged seed. In the union of an even rustic plainness with lyric inspirations, religious dignity with philosophic calmness, keen sagacity in details with boldness of view, we saw what brought to mind the early poets and legislators of Greece— men who taught their fellows to plow and avoid moral evil, sing hymns to the gods and watch the metamorphoses of nature. Here in civic Boston was such a man—one who could see man in his original grandeur and his original childishness, rooted in simple nature, raising to the heavens the brow and eyes of a poet. And these lectures seemed not so much lectures as grave didactic poems, theogonies, perhaps, adorned by odes when some Power was in question whom the poet had best learned to serve, and with eclogues wisely portraying in familiar tongue the duties of man to man and “harmless animals.” Such was the attitude in which the speaker appeared to that portion of the audience who have remained permanently attached to him.—They value his words as the signets of reality; receive his influence as a help and incentive to a nobler discipline than the age, in its general aspect, appears to require; and do not fear to anticipate the verdict of posterity in claiming for him the honors of greatness, and, in some respects, of a Master. In New-England he thus formed for himself a class of readers, who rejoice to study in his books what they already know by heart. For, though the thought has become familiar, its beautiful garb is always fresh and bright in hue. A similar circle of like-minded the books must and do form for themselves,

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though with a movement less directly powerful, as more distant from its source. The Essays have also been obnoxious to many charges. To that of obscurity, or want of perfect articulation. Of ‘Euphuism,’ as an excess of fancy in proportion to imagination, and an inclination, at times, to subtlety at the expense of strength, has been styled. The human heart complains of inadequacy, either in the nature or experience of the writer, to represent its full vocation and its deeper needs. Sometimes it speaks of this want as “under-development” or a want of expansion which may yet be remedied; sometimes doubts whether “in this mansion there be either hall or portal to receive the loftier of the Passions.” Sometimes the soul is deified at the expense of nature, then again nature at that of man, and we are not quite sure that we can make a true harmony by balance of the statements.—This writer has never written one good work, if such a work be one where the whole commands more attention than the parts. If such an one be produced only where, after an accumulation of materials, fire enough be applied to fuse the whole into one new substance. This second series is superior in this respect to the former, yet in no one essay is the main stress so obvious as to produce on the mind the harmonious effect of a noble river or a tree in full leaf. Single passages and sentences engage our attention too much in proportion. These essays, it has been justly said, tire like a string of mosaics or a house built of medals. We miss what we expect in the work of the great poet, or the great philosopher, the liberal air of all the zones: the glow, uniform yet various in tint, which is given to a body by free circulation of the heart’s blood from the hour of birth. Here is, undoubtedly, the man of ideas, but we want the ideal man also; want the heart and genius of human life to interpret it, and here our satisfaction is not so perfect. We doubt this friend raised himself too early to the perpendicular and did not lie along the ground long enough to hear the secret whispers of our parent life. We could wish he might be thrown by conflicts on the lap of mother earth, to see if he would not rise again with added powers. All this we may say, but it cannot excuse us from benefiting by the great gifts that have been given, and assigning them their due place. Some painters paint on a red ground. And this color may be supposed to represent the ground-work most immediately congenial to most men, as it is the color of blood and represents human vitality. The figures traced upon it are instinct with life in its fulness and depth. But other painters paint on a gold ground. And a very different, but no less natural, because also a celestial beauty, is given to their works who choose for

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their foundation the color of the sunbeam, which nature has preferred for her most precious product, and that which will best bear the test of purification, gold. If another simile may be allowed, another no less apt is at hand. Wine is the most brilliant and intense expression of the powers of earth.—It is her potable fire, her answer to the sun. It exhilarates, it inspires, but then it is liable to fever and intoxicate too the careless partaker. Mead was the chosen drink of the Northern gods. And this essence of the honey of the mountain bee was not thought unworthy to revive the souls of the valiant who had left their bodies on the fields of strife below. Nectar should combine the virtues of the ruby wine, the golden mead, without their defects or dangers. Two high claims our writer can vindicate on the attention of his contemporaries. One from his sincerity. You have his thought just as it found place in the life of his own soul. Thus, however near or relatively distant its approximation to absolute truth, its action on you cannot fail to be healthful. It is a part of the free air. He belongs to that band of whom there may be found a few in every age, and who now in known human history may be counted by hundreds, who worship the one God only, the God of Truth. They worship, not saints, nor creeds, nor churches, nor reliques, nor idols in any form. The mind is kept open to truth, and life only valued as a tendency toward it. This must be illustrated by acts and words of love, purity and intelligence. Such are the salt of the earth; let the minutest crystal of that salt be willingly by us held in solution. The other is through that part of his life, which, if sometimes obstructed or chilled by the critical intellect, is yet the prevalent and the main source of his power. It is that by which he imprisons his hearer only to free him again as a “liberating God” (to use his own words).4 But indeed let us use them altogether, for none other, ancient or modern, can more worthily express how, making present to us the courses and destinies of nature, he invests himself with her serenity and animates us with her joy. “Poetry was all written before time was, and whenever we are so finely organized that we can penetrate into that region where the air is music, we hear those primal warblings, and attempt to write them down, but we lose ever and anon a word, or a verse, and substitute something of our own, and thus 4. Emerson famously uses the phrase “liberating God” to describe “The Poet” in Essays: Second Series.

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miswrite the poem. The men of more delicate ear write down these cadences more faithfully, and these transcripts, though imperfect, become the songs of the nations.” “As the eyes of Lyncæus were said to see through the earth, so the poet turns the world to glass, and shows us all things in their right series and procession. For, through that better perception, he stands one step nearer to things, and sees the flowing or metamorphosis; perceives that thought is multiform; that within the form of every creature is a force impelling it to ascend into a higher form; and following with his eyes the life, uses the forms which express that life, and so the speech flows with the flowing of nature.” Thus have we in a brief and unworthy manner indicated some views of these books. The only true criticism of these, or any good books, may be gained by making them the companions of our lives. Does every accession of knowledge or a juster sense of beauty maken us prize them more? Then they are good, indeed, and more immortal than mortal. Let that test be applied to these; essays which will lead to great and complete poems—somewhere.  Review of Ralph Waldo Emerson, Essays: Second Series (Boston: James Munroe, 1844). New York Daily Tribune, 7 December 1844, p. 1; reprinted, New-York Weekly Tribune, 14 December 1844, p. 2.

makes [ make

Thanksgiving


Canst thou give thanks for aught that has been given Except by making earth more worth heaven? Just stewardship the master hoped from thee; Harvests from Time to bless Eternity.

Thanksgiving is peculiarly the festival day of New-England. Elsewhere, other celebrations rival its attractions, but in that region where the Puritans first returned thanks that some among them had been sustained by a great hope and earnest resolve amid the perils of the ocean, wild beasts and famine, the old spirit which hallowed the day still lingers, and forbids that it should be entirely devoted to play and plum-pudding. And yet, as there is always this tendency; as the twelfth-night cake is baked by many a hostess who would be puzzled if you asked her, “Twelfth night after or before what?” and the Christmas cake by many who know no other Christmas service, so it requires very serious assertion and proof from the minister to convince his parishioners that the turky and plum-pudding, which are presently to occupy his place in their attention, should not be the chief objects of the day. And, in other regions, where the occasion is observed, it is still more as one for a meeting of families and friends to the enjoyment of a good dinner, than for any higher purpose. This, indeed, is one which we want not to depreciate. If this manner of keeping the day be likely to persuade the juniors of the party that the celebrated Jack Horner is the prime model for brave boys, and that grand parents are chiefly to be respected as the givers of grand feasts, yet a meeting in the spirit of kindness, however dull and blind, is not wholly without use in healing differences and promoting good intentions. The instinct of family love, intended by Heaven to make those of one blood the various and harmonious organs of one mind, is never wholly without good influence. Family love, I say, 8

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for family pride is never without bad influence, and it too often takes the place of its mild and healthy sister. Yet where society is at all simple, it is cheering to see the family circle thus assembled, if only because its patriarchal form is in itself so excellent. The presence of the children animates the old people, while the respect and attention they demand refines the gaiety of the young. Yes, it is cheering to see, in some large room, the elders talking near the bright fire, while the cousins of all ages are amusing themselves in knots. Here is almost all the good, and very little of the ill, that can be found in society, got together merely for amusement. Yet how much nobler, more exhilarating and purer would be the atmosphere of that circle if the design of its pious founders were remembered by those who partake this festival! If they dared not attend the public jubilee till private retrospect of the past year had been taken in the spirit of the old rhyme, which we all bear in mind if not in heart— “What hast thou done that’s worth the doing, And what pursued that’s worth pursuing? What sought thou knew’st that thou shouldst shun, What done thou shouldst have left undone?”

and a crusade been vowed into the wild places of the bosom, which should take for its device, “Lord, cleanse thou me from secret faults”—“Keep back thy servant also from presumptuous sins”—would not that circle be happy as if music, from invisible agents, floated through it—if each member of it considered every other member as a bequest from heaven—if he supposed that the appointed nearness in blood or lot was a sign to him that he must exercise his gifts of every kind as given peculiarly in their behalf—that if richer in temper, in talents, in knowledge, or in worldly goods, here was the innermost circle of his poor—that he must clothe these naked, whether in body or mind, soothing the perverse, casting light into the narrow chamber, or, most welcome task of all! extending a hand at the right moment to one uncertain of his way. It is this spirit that makes the old man to be revered as a Nestor,1 rather than put aside like a worn-out garment. It is such a spirit that sometimes has given to the young child a ministry as of a parent in the house. But, if charity begin at home, it must not end there; and while purifying the

1. Nestor, according to Greek legend, was the King of Pylus, one of the Argonaut explorers, and a counselor to the Greeks before the Battle of Troy.

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innermost circle, let us not forget that it depends upon the great circle, and that again on it; that no home can be healthful in which are not cherished seeds of good for the world at large. Thy child, thy brother are given to thee only as an example of what is due from thee to all men. It is true that, if you, in anger, call your brother fool, no deeds of so-called philanthropy shall saven you from the punishment; for your philanthropy must be from the love of excitement, not the love of man, or of goodness. But then you must visit the Gentiles also, and take time for knowing what aid the woman of Samaria may need.2 A noble Catholic writer, in the true sense as well as by name a Catholic, describes a tailor as giving a dinner on an occasion which had brought honor to his house, which, though humble, was not a poor house. In his glee, the tailor was boasting a little of the favors and blessings of his lot, when suddenly a thought stung him. He stopped, and cutting away half the fowl that lay before him, sent it in a dish with the best knives, bread, and napkin, and a brotherly message that was better still, to a widow near, who must, he knew, be sitting in sadness and poverty among her children. His little daughter was the messenger. If parents followed up the indulgences heaped upon their children at Thanksgiving dinners with similar messages, there would not be danger that children should think enjoyment of sensual pleasures the only occasion that demands Thanksgiving. And suppose while the children were absent on their errands of justice, as they could not fail to think them, if they compared the hovels they must visit with their own comfortable homes, their elders, touched by a sense of right, should be led from discussion of the rivalries of trade or fashion to whether they could not impart all that was theirs, not merely one poor dinner once a year, but all their mental and material wealth for the benefit of all men. If they do not sell it all at once, as the rich young man was bid to do as a test of his sincerity, they may find some way in which it could be invested so as to show enough obedience to the Law and the Prophets to love our neighbor as ourselves. And he who once gives himself to such thoughts will find it is not merely moral gain for which he shall return thanks another year with the return of this day. In the present complex state of human affairs, you cannot be kind unless you are wise. Thoughts of amaranthine bloom will spring up in the

have [ save 2. Jesus’ conversation with the woman of Samaria, who recognizes him as a prophet, is in John 4:1–29.

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fields plowed to give food to suffering men. It would, indeed, seem to be a simple matter at first glance. “Lovest thoun me?”—“Feed my lambs.” But now we have not only to find pasture, but to detect the lambs under the disguise of wolves, and restore them by a spell, like that the Shepherd used, to their natural form and whiteness. And for this present day appointed for Thanksgiving, we may say that if we know of so many wrongs, woes, and errors in the world yet unredressed; if in this nation recent decisions have shown a want of moral discrimination on important subjects, that make us pause and doubt whether we can join in the formal congratulations that we are still bodily alive, unassailed by the ruder modes of warfare, and enriched with the fatness of the land; yet on the other side, we know of causes not so loudly proclaimed why we should give thanks. Abundantly and humbly we must render them for the movement, now sensible in the heart of the civilized world, although it has not pervaded the entire frame. For that movement of contrition and love which forbids men of earnest thought to eat, drink, or be merry, while other men are steeped in ignorance, corruption and wo; which calls the King from his throne of gold, and the Poet from his throne of Mind to lie with the beggar in the kennel, or raise him from it; which says to the Poet, “You must reform rather than create a world,” and to him of the golden crown, “You cannot long remain a King unless you are also a Man.” Wherever this impulse of social or political reform darts up its rill through the crusts of selfishness, scoff and dread arise and hang like a heavy mist above it. But the voice of the rill penetrates far enough for those who have ears to hear. And, sometimes, it is the case that ‘those who came to scoff remain to pray.’ In two articles of reviews, one foreign and one domestic, which have come under our eye within the last fortnight, the writers who began by jeering at the visionaries, seemed as they wrote to be touched by a sense that without a high and pure faith none can have the only true vision of the intention of God as to the Destiny of Man. We recognized as a happy omen that there is cause for thanksgiving and that our people may be better than they seem, the meeting last week to organize an Association for the benefit of Prisoners. We shall not, then, be wholly Pharisees.3 We shall not ask the blessing of this day in the mood of “Lord, I

thous [ thou 3. Pharisees, an ancient Jewish sect that strictly observed religious and secular laws. The term is popularly used to describe people who are self-righteous.

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thank thee that I, and my son, and my brother, are not as other men are,—not as these publicans imprisoned there,” while the still, small voice cannot make us hear its evidence that, but for instruction, example, and the “preventing God,” every sin that can be named might riot in our hearts. The prisoner, too, may become a man. Neither his open nor our secret faults, must utterly dismay us. We will treat him as if he had a soul. We will not dare to hunt him into a beast of prey, or trample him into a serpent. We will give him some crumbs from the table which grace from above and parent love below have spread for us, and, perhaps, he will recover from these ghastly ulcers that deform him now. We were much pleased with the spirit of the meeting. It was simple, business-like, in a serious, affectionate temper. The speakers did not make phrases or compliments; did not slur over the truth. The audience showed a ready vibration to the touch of just and tender feeling. The time was evidently ripe for this movement. We doubt not that many now darkened souls will give thanks for the ray of light that will have been let in by this time next year. It is but a grain of mustard seed, but the promised tree will grow swiftly if tended in a pure spirit; and the influence of good measures in any one place will be immediate in this province, as has been the case with every attempt in behalf of the insane. While reading a notice of a successful attempt to have musical performances carried through in concert by the insane at Rouen, we were forcibly reminded of a similar performance we heard a few weeks ago at Sing Sing.4 There the female prisoners joined in the singing of a hymn, or rather choral, which describes the last thoughts of a spirit about to be enfranchised from the body; each stanza of which ends with the words, “All is well;” and they sang it—those suffering, degraded children of society—with as gentle and resigned an expression as if they were sure of going to sleep in the arms of a pure mother. The good spirit that dwelt in the music made them its own. And shall not the good spirit of religious sympathy make them its own also, and more permanently? We shall see. Should the morally insane, by wise and gentle care, be won back to health, as the wretched bedlamites have been, will not the angels themselves give thanks? And will any man dare take the risk of opposing plans that afford even a chance of such a result? Apart, then, from good that is public and many-voiced, do not each of us 4. An account of the “performance” at Sing Sing is in the 20 December 1844 New-York Daily Tribune, p. 1.

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know, in private experience, much to be thankful for? Not only the innocent and daily pleasures that we have prized according to our wisdom; of the sun and starry skies, the fields of green, or snow scarcely less beautiful, the loaf eaten with an appetite, the glow of labor, the gentle signs of common affection. But have not some, have not many of us cause to be thankful for enfranchisement from error or infatuation; a growth in knowledge of outward things, and instruction within the soul from a higher source. Have we not acquired a sense of more refined enjoyments; clear convictions; sometimes a serenity in which, as in the first days of June, all things grow, and the blossom gives place to fruit? Have we not been weaned from what was unfit for us, or unworthy our care? and have not those ties been drawn more close, and are not those objects seen more distinctly, which shall for ever be worthy the purest desires of our souls? Have we learned to do any thing, the humblest, in the service and by the spirit of the power which meaneth all things well? If so we may give thanks, and, perhaps, venture to offer our solicitations in behalf of those as yet less favored by circumstances. When even a few shall dare do so with the whole heart—for only a pure heart can “avail much” in such prayers—then all shall soon be well.  New-York Daily Tribune, 12 December 1844, p. 2; reprinted, New-York Weekly Tribune, 14 December 1844, p. 1. The Tribune for 3 December 1844, p. 2, reported progress in the formation of a society whose object would be “to promote the highest welfare of the inmates of our prisons, and to provide for them homes and employment when they are set at liberty” (“Association for the Benefit of Prisoners”), and on 7 December 1844, p. 2, the paper reported that the Association for the Reform of Prisons and Their Inmates, known generally as the New York Prison Association, was founded (“Prison Reform Meeting”).

New Year’s Day


It was once a beautiful custom among some of the Indian tribes, once a year, to extinguish all the fires, and, by a day of fasting and profound devotion, to propitiate the Great Spirit for the coming year. They then produced sparks by friction, and lit up afresh the altar and the hearth with the new fire. And this was considered as the most precious and sacred gift from one person to another, binding them in bonds of inviolate friendship for that year, certainly; with a hope that the same might endure through life. From the young to the old it was a token of the highest respect; from the old to the young, of a great expectation. To us might it be granted to solemnize the new year by the mental renovation of which this ceremony was the eloquent symbol! Might we extinguish, if only for a day, those fires where an uninformed religious ardor has led to human sacrifices; which have warmed the household, but, also, prepared pernicious, more than wholesome, viands for their use. The Indian produced the new spark by friction. It would be a still more beautiful emblem, and expressive of the more extended powers of civilized men, if we should draw the spark from the centre of our system and the source of light by means of the burning glass. Where, then, is to be found the new knowledge, the new thought, the new hope, that shall begin a new year in a spirit not discordant with ‘the acceptable year of the Lord?’ Surely, there must be such existing, if latent—some sparks of new fire, pure from ashes and from smoke, worthy to be offered as a new-year’s gift? Let us look at the signs of the times, to see in what spot this fire shall be sought—on what fuel it may be fed. The ancients poured our libations of the choicest juices of Earth, to express their gratitude to the Power that had enabled them to be sustained from her bosom. They enfranchised slaves, to show that devotion to the Gods induced a sympathy with men. Let us look about us to see with what rites, what acts of devotion, this modern Christian nation greets the approach of the New Year; by what signs she 14

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denotes the clear morning of a better day, such as may be expected when the eagle has entered into covenant with the dove! This last week brings tidings that a portion of the inhabitants of Illinois, the rich and blooming region on which every gift of nature has been lavished to encourage the industry and brighten the hopes of man, not only refuses a libation to the Power that has so blessed their fields, but declares that the dew is theirs, and the sunlight is theirs, that they live from and for themselves, acknowledging no obligation and no duty to God or to man. One man has freed a slave,—but a great part of the nation is now busy in contriving measures that may best rivet the fetters on those now chained, and forge them strongest for millions yet unborn. Selfishness and tyranny no longer wear the mask; they walk haughtily abroad, affronting with their hard-hearted boasts and brazen resolves the patience of the sweet heavens. National Honor is trodden under foot for a National bribe, and neither sex nor age defends the redresser of injuries from the rage of the injurer. Yet, amid these reports which come flying on the paper wings of every day, the scornful laugh of the gnomes, who begin to believe they can buy all souls with their gold, was checked a moment when the aged knight of the better cause answered the challenge—truly in keeping with the ‘chivalry’ of the time,—“You are in the wrong, and I will kick you,” by holding the hands of the chevalier till those around secured him. We think the man of old must have held him with his eye, as physicians of moral power can insane patients;— great as are his exploits for his age, he cannot have much bodily strength, unless by miracle. The treatment of Mr. Adams and Mr. Hoar seems to show that we are not fitted to emulate the savages in preparation for the new fire.1 The Indians knew how to reverence the old and the wise. Among the manifestos of the day it is impossible not to respect that of the Mexican Minister for the manly indignation with which he has uttered truths, however deep our mortification at hearing them.2 It has been observed for the

1. Samuel Hoar (1778–1856), after being sent to Charleston, South Carolina, in 1844 by the state of Massachusetts to prepare a test case on behalf of some imprisoned Massachusetts free Negro seamen, was declared an emissary of a foreign government and expelled from the city; John Quincy Adams (1767–1848), sixth president of the United States, also represented his hometown of Quincy, Massachusetts, in the House of Representatives from 1831 until his death. 2. The border dispute between the United States and Mexico climaxed with the annexation of Texas in March 1845 and the arrival of an American force under Zachary Taylor on the disputed land

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last fifty years that the tone of diplomatic correspondence was much improved as to simplicity and directness. Once, diplomacy was another name for intrigue, and a paper of this sort was expected to be a mesh of artful phrases, through which the true meaning might be detected, but never actually grasped. Now here is one where an occasion being afforded by the unutterable folly of the corresponding party, a Minister speaks the truth as it lies in his mind, directly and plainly, as man speaks to man. His statement will command the sympathy of the civilized world. As to the State papers that have followed, they are of a nature to make the Austrian despot sneer, as he counts in his oratory the woolen stockings he has got knit by imprisoning all the free geniuses in his dominions.3 He, at least, only appeals to the legitimacy of blood; these dare appeal to legitimacy, as seen from a moral point of view. History will class them with the brags of sharpers, who bully their victims about their honor, while they stretch forth their hands for the gold they have won with loaded dice.—“Do you dare to say the dice are loaded? Prove it; and I will shoot you for injuring my honor.” The Mexican makes his gloss on the page of American Honor. The girl in the Kentucky prison on that of her Freedom.4 The delegate of Massachusetts on that of her Union. Ye stars! whose image she has placed upon her banner, answer us! Are not your Unions of a different sort? Do they not work to other results? Yet we cannot lightly be discouraged or alarmed as to the destiny of our Country. The whole history of its discovery and early progress indicates too clearly the purposes of Heaven withn regard to it. Could we relinquish the thought that it was destined for the scene of a new and illustrious act in the great drama, the Past would be inexplicable, no less than the Future without hope. Last week, which brought us so many unpleasant notices of home affairs, brought also an account of the magnificent telescope lately perfected by the

that summer. Fuller also refers to Manuel C. Rejon’s “The Mexican Manifesto Against the Annexation of Texas,” which she admires for the forthright rhetoric of the Mexican diplomat, which is a point-bypoint rebuttal of arguments for the annexation of Texas (reported in the Tribune, 13 December 1844, p. 1). 3. Rejon was treated with much disrespect in responses leaked by government officials to the press. 4. The Tribune of 20 December 1844 reports that the abolitionist Delia Webster was jailed in Lexington, Kentucky, on suspicion of assisting three slaves to escape. She remained incarcerated for months, and periodic reports about her appeared in the Tribune. with, [ with

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Earl of Rosse.5 With means of observation, now almost divine, we perceive that some of the brightest stars, of which Sirius is one, have dark companions, whose presence is, by earthly spectators, only to be detected from the inequalities they cause in the motions of their radiant companions. It was a new and most imposing illustration how, in carrying out the Divine scheme, of which we have as yet only spelt out the few first lines, the dark is made to wait upon and, in the full result, harmonize with, the bright. The sense of such pervasive analogies should enlarge patience and animate hope. Yet, if offences must come, wo be to those by whom they come, and that of men, who sin against a heritage like ours, is as that of the backsliders among the Chosen People of the elder day. We too have been chosen, and plain indications been given, by a wonderful conjunction of auspicious influences, that the ark of human hopes has been placed for the present in our charge. Wo be to those who betray this trust! On their heads are to be heaped the curses of unnumbered ages! Can he sleep, who in this past year has wickedly or lightly committed acts calculated to injure the few or many—who has poisoned the ears and the hearts he might have rightly informed—who has steeped in tears the cup of thousands—who has put back, as far as in him lay, the accomplishment of general good and happiness for the sake of his selfish aggrandizement or selfish luxury—who has sold to a party what is meant for mankind? If such sleep, dreadful shall be the waking. Deliver us from evil. In public or in private it is easy to give pain—hard to give pure pleasure; easy to do evil—hard to do good. God does His good in the whole, despite of bad men; but only from a very pure mind will He permit original good to proceed in the day. Happy those who can feel that during the past year, they have, to the best of their knowledge, refrained from evil. Happy those who determine to proceed in this by the light of Conscience. It is but a spark; yet from that spark may be drawn fire-light enough for worlds and systems of worlds, and that light is ever new. And with this thought rises again the memory of the fair lines that light has brought to viewn in the histories of some men. If the nation tends to wrong, there are yet present the ten just men. The hands and lips of this great form may be impure, but pure blood flows yet within her veins—the blood of the noble bands who first sought these shores from the British isles and France for 5. William Parsons, third Earl of Rosse (1800–67), Irish astronomer and telescope builder. veiw [ view

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conscience sake. Too many have come since for bread alone. We cannot blame—we must not reject them, but let us teach them, in giving them bread, to prize that salt, too, without which all on earth must lose its savor. Yes! let us teach them, not rail at their inevitable ignorance and unenlightened action, but teach them and their children as our own; if we do so, their children and ours may yet act as one body obedient to one soul, and if we should act rightly now, that soul a pure soul. And ye, sable bands, forced hither against your will, kept down here now by a force hateful to Nature, a will alien from God; it does sometimes seem as if the Avenging Angel wore your hue and would place in your hands the sword to punish the cruel injustice of our fathers, the selfish perversity of the sons. Yet, are there no means of atonement? Must the innocent suffer with the guilty? Teach us, oh All-Wise! the clue out of this labyrinth, and if we faithfully encounter its darkness and dread, and emerge into clear light, wilt Thou not bid us ‘go and sin no more?’6 Meanwhile, let us proceed as we can, picking our steps along the slippery road. If we keep the right direction, what matters it that we must pass through so much mud? The promise is sure: Angels shall free the feet from stain, to their own hue of snow, If, undismayed, we reach the hills where the true olives grow. The olive-groves, which we must seek in cold and damp, Alone can yield us oil for a perpetual lamp. Then sound again the golden horn with promise ever new; The princely deer will ne’er be caught by those that slack pursue; Let the ‘White Doe’ of angel hopes be always kept in view. Yes! sound again the horn—of Hope the golden horn! Answer it, flutes and pipes, from valleys still and lorn; Warders, from your high towers, with trumps of silver scorn, And harps in maidens’ bowers, with strings from deep hearts torn, All answer to the horn—of Hope the golden horn!

There is still hope, there is still an America, while private lives are ruled by the Puritan, by the Huguenot conscientiousness, and while there are some who can repudiate, not their debts, but the supposition that they will not

6. “Afterward Jesus findeth him in the temple, and said unto him, Behold, thou art made whole: sin no more, lest a worse thing come unto thee” (John 5:14).

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strive to pay their debts to their age, and to Heaven who gave them a share in its great promise.  New-York Weekly Tribune, 28 December 1844, p. 1; reprinted, New-York Daily Tribune, 1 January 1845, p. 1.

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Miss Barrett’s Poems


What happiness for the critic when, as in the present instance, his task is, mainly, how to express a cordial admiration; to indicate an intelligence of beauties, rather than regret for defects! We have read these volumes with feelings of delight far warmer than the writer, in her sincerely modest preface, would seem to expect from any reader, and cannot hesitate to rank her, in vigor and nobleness of conception, depth of spiritual experience, and command of classic allusion, above any female writer the world has yet known. In the first quality, especially, most female writers are deficient. They do not grasp a subject with simple energy, nor treat it with decision of touch. They are in general most remarkable for delicacy of feeling, and brilliancy or grace in manner. In delicacy of perception, Miss Barrett may vie with any of her sex. She has what is called a true woman’s heart, although we must believe that men of a fine conscience, and good organization will have such a heart no less. Signal instances occur to us in the cases of Spenser, Wordsworth and Tennyson.1 The woman who reads them will not find hardness or blindness as to the subtler workings of thoughts and affections. If men are often deficient on this score,n women, on the other hand, are apt to pay excessive attention to the slight tokens, the little things of life. Thus, in conduct or writing, they tend to weary us by a morbid sentimentalism. From this fault Miss Barrett is wholly free. Personal feeling is in its place; enlightened by Reason, ennobled by Imagination. The earth is no despised resting place for the feet, the heaven bends while above, rich in starry hopes, and the air flows around exhilarating and free. 1. Edmund Spenser (ca. 1552–99), English poet best known for The Fairie Queene (1590); William Wordsworth (1770–1850), British poet and a cofounder with Coleridge of the Romantic movement; Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1809–92), named poet laureate of England in 1850 to succeed Wordsworth. score; [ score,

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The mournful, albeit we must own them tuneful, sisters of the lyre might hush many of their strains at this clear note from one who has felt and conquered the same difficulties. perplexed music. “Experience, like a pale musician, holds A dulcimer of patience in his hand: Whence harmonies we cannot understand Of God’s will in his worlds the strain unfolds, In sad perplexed minors. Deathly colds Fall on us while we hear and countermand Our sanguine heart back from the fancy land; With nightingales in visionary wolds. We murmur—‘Where is any certain tune, Or measured music in such notes as these?’ But angels, leaning from the golden seat, Are not so minded; their fine ear hath won The issue of completed cadences; And smiling down the stars, they whisper—sweet.”

We are accustomed now to much verse on moral subjects, such as follows the lead of Wordsworth and seeks to arrange moral convictions as melodies on the harp. But these tones are never deep, unless the experience of the poet, in the realms of intellect and emotion, be commensurate with his apprehension of truth. Wordsworth moves us when he writes an “Ode to Duty,” or “Dion,” because he could also write “Ruth,” and the exquisitely tender poems on Matthew, in whom nature “—for a favorite child Had tempered so the clay, That every hour the heart ran wild, Yet never went astray.”2

The trumpet call of Luther’s ‘Judgment Hymn’ sounds from the depths of a nature capable of all human emotions, or it could not make the human ear

2. William Wordsworth, “Matthew,” ll. 1–4.

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vibrate as it does.3 The calm convictions expressed by Miss Barrett in the sonnets come with poetic force, because she was also capable of writing ‘The Lost Bower,’ ‘The Romaunt of the Page,’ ‘Loved Once,’ ‘Bertha in the Lane,’ and ‘A Lay of the Early Rose.’ These we select as the finest of the tender poems. In the ‘Drama of Exile’ and the ‘Vision of Poets,’ where she aims at a Miltonic flight or Dantesque grasp—not in any spirit of rivalry or imitation, but because she is really possessed of a similar mental scope—her success is far below what we find in the poems of feeling and experience; for she has the vision of a great poet, but little in proportion of his plastic power. She is at home in the Universe; she sees its laws; she sympathises with its motions. She has the imagination all compact—the healthy archetypal plant from which all forms may be divined, and, so far as now existent, understood. Like Milton, she sees the angelic hosts in real presence; like Dante, she hears the spheral concords and shares the planetary motions.4 But she cannot, like Milton, marshal the angels so near the earth as to impart the presence other than by sympathy. He who is near her level of mind may, through the magnetic sympathy, see the angels with her. Others will feel only the grandeur and sweetness she expresses in these forms.—Still less can she, like Dante, give, by a touch, the key which enables ourselves to play on the same instrument. She is singularly deficient in the power of compression. There are always far more words and verses than needed to convey the meaning, and it is a great proof of her strength, that the thought still seems strong, when arrayed in a form so Briarean clumsy and many-handed.5 We compare her with those great poets, though we have read her preface and see how sincerely she deprecates any such comparison, not merely because her theme is the same as theirs, but because, as we must again repeat, her field of vision and nobleness of conception are such, that we cannot forbear trying her by the same high standard to see what she lacks. Of the “Drama of Exile” and other poems of the same character, we may say that we shall never read them again, but we are very glad to have read them once, to see how the grand mysteries look to her, to share with her the conception and outline of what would, in the hands of a more powerful artist, have come forth a great poem. Our favorite, above anything we have read of 3. Martin Luther (1483–1546), famous German prelate. 4. John Milton (1608–74), English poet and political writer; Dante Alighieri (1265–1321), Italian poet and Christian humanist. 5. So-called after Briareus, a Greek legendary monster with one hundred arms.

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hers, is the “Rhyme of the Duchess May,” equally admirable in thought and execution, in poetic meaning and romantic grace. Were there room here, it should be inserted, as a sufficient evidence of the writer’s high claims; but it is too long, and does not well bear being broken. The touches throughout are fine and forcible, but they need the unison of the whole to give them their due effect. Most of these poems have great originality in the thought and the motive powers. It is these, we suppose, that have made “The Brown Rosarie” so popular. It has long been handed about in manuscript, and hours have been spent in copying it, which would have been spared if the publication of these volumes in America had been expected so soon. It does not please us so well as many of the others. The following, for instance, is just as original, full of grace, and, almost, perfectly simple:6 How sweetly natural! and how distinct is the picture of the little girl, as she sits by the brook. The poem cannot fail to charm all who have treasured the precious memories of their own childhood, and remember how romance was there interwoven with reality. Miss Barrett makes many most fair and distinct pictures, such as this of the Duchess May at the fatal moment when her lord’s fortress was giving way: “Low she dropt her head and lower, till her hair coiled on the floor. Toll slowly And tear after tear you heard, fall distinct as any word Which you might be listening for. “Get thee in, thou soft ladie!—here is never a place of thee.” Toll slowly “Braid thy hair and clasp thy gown, that thy beauty in its moan May find grace with Leigh of Leigh.” She stood up in bitter case, with a pale yet steady face, Toll slowly Like a statue thunderstruck, which, though, quivering, seems to look Right against the thunder-place, And her feet trod in, with pride, her own tears i’ the stone beside. 6. “The Romance of the Swan’s Nest” is quoted in full here.

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Toll slowly Go to, faithful friends, go to!—Judge no more what ladies do, No, nor how their lords may ride.”7

and so on. There are passages in that poem beyond praise. Here are descriptions as fine of another sort of person from lady geraldine’s courtship. Her foot upon the new-mown grass—bareheaded—with the flowing Of the virginal white vesture, gathered closely to her throat; With the golden ringlets in her neck, just quickened by her going, And appearing to breathe sun for air, and doubting if to float,— With a branch of dewy maple, which her right hand held above her, And which trembled a green shadow in betwixt her and the skies,— As she turned her face in going, thus she drew me on to love her, And to study the deep meaning of the smile hid in her eyes. For her eyes alone smiled constantly: her lips had serious sweetness, And her front was calm—the dimple rarely rippled on her cheek: But her deep blue eyes smiled constantly,—as if they had by fitness Won the secret of a happy dream, she did not care to speak.

How fine are both the descriptive and critical touches in the following passage: “Ay, and sometimes on the hill-side, while we sat down in the gowans, With the forest green behind us, and its shadow cast before; And the river running under: and across it, from the rowens, A brown partridge whirring near us, till we felt the air it bore— There, obedient to her praying, did I read aloud the poems Made by Tuscan flutes, or instruments, more various, of our own; Read the pastoral parts of Spenser—or the subtle interflowings Found in Petrarch’s sonnets—here’s the book—the leaf is folded down! Or at times a modern volume—Wordsworth’s solemn-thoughted idyl, Howitt’s ballad-dew, or Tennyson’s god-vocal reverie,— Or from Browning some “Pomegranate,” which, if cut deep down the middle, Shows a heart within, blood-tinctured, of a veined humanity. 7. Barrett, “The Rhyme,” ll. 285–300.

“Miss Barrett’s Poems”

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Or I read there, sometimes, hoarsely, some new poem of my making— Oh, your poets never read their own best verses to their worth, For the echo, in you, breaks upon the words which you are speaking, And the chariot-wheels jar in the gate through which you drive them forth. After, when we were grown tired of books, the silence round us flinging A slow arm of sweet compression, felt with beatings at the breast,— She would break out, on a sudden, in a gush of woodland singing, Like a child’s emotion is a god—a naiad tired of rest. Oh, to see or hear her singing! scarce I know which is divinest— For her looks sing too—she modulates her gestures on the tune; And her mouth stirs with the song, like song; and when the notes are finest, ’Tis the eyes that shoot out vocal light, and seem to swell them on. Then we talked—oh, how we talked! her voice so cadenced in the talking, Made another singing—of the soul! a music without bars— While the leafy sounds of wood lands, humming round where we were walking, Brought interposition worthy-sweet,—as skies about the stars. And she spake such good thoughts natural, as if she always thought them— And had sympathies so ready, open-free like bird on branch, Just as ready to fly east as west, which ever way besought them, In the birchen wood a chirrup, or a cock-crow in the grange. In her utmost lightness there is truth—and often she speaks lightly; And she has a grace in being gay, which mourners even approve; For the root of some grave earnest thought is understruck so rightly, As to justify the foliage and the waving flowers above.”

We must copy yet one other poem to give some idea of the range of Miss Barrett’s powers:8 If it be said that the poetry, the tragedy here is in the facts, yet how rare is it to find a mind that can both feel and upbear such facts? We have already said, that, as a poet, Miss Barrett is deficient in plastic energy, and that she is diffuse. We must add many blemishes of overstrained and constrained thought and expression. The ways in which words are coined or forced from their habitual meanings does not carry its excuse with it. We find no gain that compensates the loss of elegance and simplicity. One practice which has already had its censors of using the adjective for the noun, as in 8. “The Cry of the Children” is quoted in full here.

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the cases of “The cry of the Human,” “Leaning from the Golden,” we, also, find offensive, not only to the habitual tastes, but to the sympathies of the very mood awakened by the writer. We hear that she has long been an invalid, and, while the knowledge of this increases admiration for her achievements and delight at the extent of the influence,—so much light flowing from the darkness of the sick room,—we seem to trace injurious results, too. There is often a want of pliant and glowing life. The sun does not always warm the marble. We have spoken of the great book culture of this mind. We must now say that this culture is too great in proportion to that it has received from actual life. The lore is not always assimilated to the new form; the illustrations sometimes impede the attention rather than help its course; and we are too much and too often reminded of other minds and other lives. Great variety of metres are used, and with force and facility. But they have not that deep music which belongs to metres which are the native growth of the poet’s mind. In that case, others may have used them, but we feel that, if they had not, he must have invented them; that they are original with him. Miss Barrett is more favored by the grand and thoughtful, than by the lyric muse. We have thus pointed out all the faults we could find in Miss Barrett, feeling that her strength and nobleness deserve this act of high respect. She has no need of leniency, or caution. The best comment upon such critiques may be made by subjoining this paragraph from her Preface: “If it were not presumptuous language on the lips of one to whom life is more than usually uncertain, my favorite wish for this work would be, that it be received by the public as a deposit, ambitious of approaching to the nature of a security for a future offering of more value and acceptability. I would fain do better, and I feel as if I might do better: I aspire to do better. In any case, my poems, while full of faults, as I go forward to my critics and confess, have my life and heart in them. They are not empty shells. If it must be said of me that I have contributed unworthy verses, I also, to the many rejected by the age, it cannot, at least, be said that I have done so in a light or irresponsible spirit. Poetry has been as serious a thing to me as life itself; and life has been a very serious thing; there has been no playing at skittles for me in either. I never mistook pleasure for the final cause of poetry; nor leisure, for the hour of the poet. I have done my work, so far, as work; not as mere hand and head work apart from the personal being, but as the completest expression of that being to which I could attain; and, as work, I offer it to the public, feeling its faulti-

“Miss Barrett’s Poems”

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ness more deeply than any of my readers, because measured from the hight of my aspiration, but feeling also that the reverence and sincerity with which the work was done should protect it in the thoughts of the reverent and sincere.”

Of the greatest of Grecian sages it was said that he acquired such power over the lower orders of nature, through his purity and intelligence, that wild beasts were abashed and reformed by his admonitions, and that, once, when walking abroad with his disciples, he called down the white eagle, soaring above him, and drew from her willing wing a quill for his use. We have seen women use with skill and grace the practical goose-quill, the sentimental crow-quill, and even the lyrical, the consecrated feathers of the swan. But we have never seen one to whom the white eagle would have descended; and, for a while, were inclined to think that the hour had now, for the first time, arrived. But upon full deliberation, we will award to Miss Barrett one from the wing of the sea-gull. That is also a white bird, rapid, soaring, majestic, and which can alight with ease, and poise itself upon the stormiest wave.  Review of Elizabeth B. Barrett, A Drama of Exile: and Other Poems, 2 vols. (New York: H. G. Langley, 1845). New-York Daily Tribune, 4 January 1845, p. 1; reprinted, New-York Weekly Tribune, 18 January 1845, p. 2; Papers on Literature and Art, 2:22–30. Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806–61), English poet, married her fellow poet Robert Browning (1812–89) in 1846. Fuller and her family later spent time with the Brownings in Florence.

The Liberty Bell for 1845


This Annual is published, as usual, in Massachusetts, for the benefit of the Anti-Slavery Fair. As frontispiece, it has a portrait of wendell phillips, one of the most eloquent leaders of the party, etched by J. Andrews from a Daguerreotype by Southworth, which presents a fac-simile of his keen intellectual expression.1 The face corresponds entirely with his style of oratory. The writers show their usual clearness and full possession of their ground. Even these pieces, which have little merit in point of talent, please by their distinct enunciation of principles. Elizabeth Pease, a valued English friend to the cause, observes, “Although to but few it may be given to be the voices of the world, to startle mankind by the enunciation of some new and earnest thought, or even to act on the universal mind by bringing to light some long concealed gem from the treasury of Truth, yet, to all of us belongs the power of determining of what voices we will be the echo—to what principles we will lend the influence of our example and the advocacy of our lips.”2 And to this responsibility the writers before us have been faithful, so that their words are the echoes of individual conscience, individual mind. They seem happy in the consciousness which Lowell thus finely expresses: “Love, Faith, and Peace, Thy lilies three, Bloom on a single heart’s frail stem That dares Truth’s unpaid bondmaid be;— Father! what lack we, having them? Though Unbelief’s bleak winter freeze, Thy quiet sunshine fences these.”3 1. Wendell Phillips (1811–84), reformer, orator, and abolitionist; Joseph Andrews (1806–73), Boston engraver; Nathaniel Southworth (1806–58), miniaturist. 2. Elizabeth Pease (1807–97), English woman’s rights and antislavery reformer. 3. “The Happy Martyrdom,” by James Russell Lowell (1819–91), poet, critic, and editor of the National Anti-Slavery Standard.

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One of the most interesting features of the book consists in the contributions of the men of color. These not only compare very favorably with those penned by white hands, but—when we see such rapid progress as in the case of Douglass, who was “only six years since a fugitive from a Southern cornfield”—are the most unanswerable arguments in favor of the capacities of the African race.4 Their claims need no argument. A sketch by Edmund Quincy, ‘Philip Catesby,’ is written with much skill and feeling.5 The following letter from Miss Bremer will be read with interest by all classes, and is the best comment on the book and cause of which it is a symbol:6 fredrika bremer on slavery Stockholm, 25th August, 1844 My Dear Mrs. Chapman—Just returned from a tour in one of the northern provinces of my country, (Dalarna, the mother-province of our Liberty,) I hasten to answer your letter from Boston of the 22d February, and am very sorry not to have been capable of answering it before. For that letter and the valuable present that accompanied it, I offer you my sincere thanks. It grieves me indeed not to be able to offer more, and to join in your honorable efforts in a great and sacred cause. O! readily do I lift my voice and join in the universal chorus which is raised on earth by Christianity, for the Liberty of Man—for the Abolition of Slavery. But when you, dear Mrs. Chapman, desire me to take a solo-part in the great concerto for that Abolition, I shrink back, from the very natural feeling that my voice is not strong, not good enough for such a part, and that this effort is not needed, and cannot add an iota to the benefit of the cause. It is my firm opinion (and that has been ratified to me by some here residing Americans) that the principle of the freedom of man and the injustice of Slavery is fully recognized in the United States; (as it necessarily must be, by every man and nation who possesses common

4. Frederick Douglass (1818–95), abolitionist and journalist, whose autobiography Fuller would review in the Tribune on 10 June 1845. 5. Edmund Quincy (1805–77), reformer, abolitionist, and author. 6. Fredrika Bremer (1801–65), Swedish novelist and feminist.

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sense and confesses Christianity,) and that the question there now is not, if Slavery be just or justifiable, but “in what manner and how shall we make Slavery cease?” That is the question. And only he that could show how this liberation can be effected, to the true good of the enslaved as of the slave-holding population in America, would be the true and chief promoter of a cause, for the success of which the great Republic must sigh as for her own moral and spiritual liberation. If such a light, if such a wisdom was given to me, O! then, believe me, I would not draw back in showing it; in taking my part in the glorious drama of liberation; yea, though I should break my neck in the attempt to break the chain that chains the black man to his brother the white man, and a great and rising nation to the king of darkness! But for more able and powerful hands this glorious work is reserved. It is a work for the Genius of America! Out of her own bosom must rise the thought, must spring the word which will give liberty to her enslaved children. And that word—how should America not find it? How can she be untrue to her principal mission in the world? Is not the genius of America called upon to be on earth the missionary of God, to proclaim the freedom of man in the name of the Redeemer? Look at her origin and history! Spiritual Freedom!—was the watchword of those one hundred Puritans who fled to the desert and planted there the tree of liberty which now shadows over the Republic of the United States, and of which the unbloody laurels were so richly blessed by God. Political Freedom!—was the banner under which America rose to its national self-control and greatness. Human Freedom! spiritual and political freedom for every soul redeemed by God, is the great truth still left for America to pronounce and to make real in her realm. Great may be, in the present state of things, the difficulties which prevent the achievement of that great work; still it is the belief of all friends of America here, that her genius will rise superior to all difficulties; that, inspired by the God of freedom and grace, the United States will one day, not far off, unite to break the chains of Slavery and make their enslaved brothers partake of the blessed lot of the free. And then the blessing of the eternal Redeemer will, in tenfold measure, descend on the then truly free and glorious Republic of North America. For the speedy arrival of that day, let me, in my corner, humbly hope and pray, and so at least unite in spirit and heart with you and the noble minds of your people.

“The Liberty Bell for 1845”

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Accept dearest Madam, of my hearty good wishes and kind thanks. Respectfully yours, FREDRIKA BREMER. P.S.—I need hardly say, my dear Madam, that if my letter seems to you good for publication, you may dispose of it as you like. And pray excuse all the sins I may have committed against your language.  Review of The Liberty Bell by Friends of Freedom (Boston: Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Fair, 1845). New-York Daily Tribune, 7 January 1845, p. 2; reprinted, New-York Weekly Tribune, 18 January 1845, p. 2.

[Review of Charles Lanman, Letters from a Landscape Painter]


This is a very pleasing book, and, if the “Essays for Summer Hours” resemble it,1 we are not surprised at the favor with which they have been received, not only in this country but in England. The writer, Mr. Lanman, is by profession a Landscape Painter, by pastime a fisherman of the speckled trout that serve as decoy to the most beautiful inland scenes, or of the larger fish that serve as excuse for passing the day on the boldest crags of the sea-shore. Thus business and pleasure have combined to lead him, during the months of fine weather, to many of the finest scenes, and these are described with grace, force, and a youthful glow of feeling, that make us very willing to be his companions, even where the mind least needs companionship. This is a genuine sort of writing, as the record, in the evenings or rainy days, of what one has seen and enjoyed in the bright full hours. Nor are these the fancy-sketches of those hunters after the picturesque and poetic, of whose farsought delights, and far-fetched analogies we are so weary. They are familiar, free, showing a power of manly discrimination and manly thought, yet agreeably varied by touches of boyish fun. We do not make extracts, because, though there is material for many good ones, they will all be seen to more advantage in connection with the whole, as the charm of the book lies in the stamp of living character upon it, as a whole. We are interested in the criticisms passed by Mr. Lanman on painters, which express his own ideas of this art, and by some sketches of persons such as of the Lilly, and his friends, the “Lions of Burlington.”2 It is very pleasing to 1. Lanman had published Essays for Summer Hours in 1841. 2. Among the literary lions at Burlington, Vermont, home of the university, were; John H. Peck (1785?–1862), a prominent merchant and public figure; Ezra Meech (1773–1856), a lumber baron and farmer who served in the state legislature; Joseph Torrey (1797–1867), professor of moral and intellectual philosophy at the University of Vermont; and Lilly Lanard, a sixteen-year-old girl known as a lover of nature and poetry.

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read the account of Mr. Marsh’s mind, as given by the catalogue of his possessions.3 When Fonthill Abbey was sold, the public got a better transcript of the mind of Beckford,4 in the inventory of the treasures there accumulated, than from any thing he ever wrote. That inventory was a poem. And it pleases us to see a poem, not so splendid but altogether surprising for this scene and time, in the inventory of Mr. Marsh’s possessions. It must be a large piece of clear amber that could exercise such attraction. If Professor Torrey has translated Schelling on the “Relation of the Arts of Design to Nature,” has he published the translation?5 We have never seen it; yet surely, so valuable an addition to this department of literature should not be slow to find its way into print. Mr. Lanman is, we believe, very young, and, as these essays have awakened in us a friendly expectation, which he has time and talent to fulfil, we will, at this early hour, proffer our counsel on two points. 1st. Avoid details so directly personal, as to emotion. A young and generous mind, seeing the deceit and cold reserve which so often palsy men who write, no less than those who act, may run into the opposite extreme. But frankness must be tempered by delicacy, or elevated into the region of poetry. You may tell the world at large what you please, if you make it of universal importance by transporting it into the field of general human interest. But your private griefs, merely as yours, belong to yourself, your nearest friends, to Heaven and to nature. There is a limit set by good taste, or the sense of beauty, on such subjects, which each, who seeks, may find for himself. 2d. Be more sparing of your praise; above all of its highest terms. We should have a sense of mental, as well as moral honor, which, while it makes us feel the baseness of uttering hasty and ignorant censure, will also forbid the hasty and extravagant praise, by which we cannot abide. A man of honor wishes to utter no word by which he cannot abide. The offices of poet, of hero-worship, are sacred, and he who has a heart to appreciate the excellent, should call nothing excellent which falls short of being so. Leave yourself some incense worthy of the best; do not lavish it on the merely good. It is better to be too cool, than extravagant in praise; and, though mediocrity may be elated, if it can draw to itself undue honors, true greatness shrinks from the least exagger3. George Perkins Marsh (1801–82), president of the University of Vermont. 4. William Beckford (1759–1844), English author and collector, whose estate at Fonthill was known for its extravagances. 5. There is no evidence that Joseph Torrey published his translation of the work by Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph von Schelling (1775–1854), German philosopher.

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ation of its claims. The truly great are too well aware how difficult is the attainment of excellence, what labors and sacrifices it requires, even from genius, either to flatter themselves as to their works, or be other than grieved at idolatry from others; and so with best wishes, and a wish to meet again, we bid farewell to the Landscape Painter.  Review of Charles Lanman, Letters from a Landscape Painter (Boston: James Munroe, 1845). New-York Daily Tribune, 18 January 1845, p. 1; reprinted, New-York Weekly Tribune, 25 January 1845, p. 2. Title supplied. Charles Lanman (1819–95), public official, travel writer, and landscape painter.

[Review of James Russell Lowell, Conversations on Some of the Old Poets]


“Hail, bards of mightier grasp! on you I chiefly call, the chosen few, Who cast not off the acknowledged guide, Who faltered not, nor turned aside; Whose lofty genius could survive Privation, under sorrow thrive.”1

By prefixing to his work these lines from Wordsworth, Mr. Lowell indicates his standard as to the hopes and destiny of the Poet. It is a high one; and in its application, he shows great justness of feeling, delicacy of perception, comprehensive views; and, for this country, an unusual refinement and extent of culture. We have been accustomed to hear Mr. Lowell so extravagantly lauded by the circle of his friends, that we should be hopeless of escaping the wrath of his admirers, for any terms in which our expressions of sympathy could be couched, but for the more modest and dignified tone of his own preface, which presents ground on which the world, at large, can meet him. With his admirers, we have often been reminded of a fervent Italian who raved at one of our young country-women as “a heartless girl,” because she would not go to walk with him alone at midnight. But Mr. Lowell, himself, speaks of his work as becomes one conversant with those of great and accomplished minds. “I am not bold enough to esteem these essays of any great price. Standing as yet only in the outer porch of life, I cannot be expected to report those higher mysteries which lie in the body unrevealed in the body of the temple. Yet, as a child, when he has found but a mean pebble, which differs from ordinary only so much as by a stripe of quartz or a stain of iron, calls his companions to behold his treasure, which then also affords matter of delight and wonder; I 1. “Lines Written in a Blank Leaf of Macpherson’s Ossian,” ll. 53–58, by William Wordsworth.

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cannot but hope that my little findings may be pleasant and haply instructive to some few.”

We are thus presented with the agreeable opportunity of responding “pleasant and instructive to many;” for we feel that this book will be a pleasure and advantage to the many who do not receive it at the hands of a coterie. The form of dialogue affords the author great advantage. It is easy and animated, and, though contrast of character, and sustained mental pictures of the speakers, to the extent that we find in Landor’s Pentameron,2 for instance, would add to our enjoyment, yet we are content in its use, merely as a free and various mode of expressing the writer’s own views. It is even more rare to meet a great Critic than a great Poet. True criticism, as distinguished from petty cavil and presumptuous measurement, on the one hand, and encomiums, based merely on personal sympathy, on the other, supposes a range and equipoise of faculties, and a generosity of soul which have as yet been rarely combined in any one person. The great Critic is not merely the surveyor, but the interpreter of what other minds possess; he must have a standard of excellence, founded on prescience of what man is capable of; he must have, no less, a refined imagination and quick sympathies to enter into each work in its own kind, and examine it by its own law, so that he may understand how certain faults are interwoven, in growth, with certain virtues; he must have a cultivated taste, a calm, large, and deep judgment, and a heart to love everything that is good, in proportion to its goodness. In some of these traits the English mind has thus far shown itself so deficient, that there is very little valuable criticism extant in that language, in proportion to the number of attempts. The English, as a nation, have attempted to criticize by tradition, outward rule, or habitual taste, and have, by an inadequate notion of the purposes and means of criticism, failed of its best uses.—Most essays in this kind by English writers are records of the habits and prejudices of the age or the writer; their value is merely historical. Amid honorable exceptions, Coleridge stands foremost,3 but, very generally, a verdict passed in the English speech, has failed of confirmation by the sense of the civilized world. And some critiques whose interest still endures, for the interest of the thoughts they embody, no longer have any value as applicable to the

2. Walter Savage Landor (1775–1864), Romantic poet, published Pentameron in 1837. 3. Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772–1834), English poet and philosopher, and, with Wordsworth, founder of the Romantic movement.

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subject, for the years, as they pass, have brought a measure better proportioned to its size than contemporary mind could furnish. Mr. Lowell belongs to the generous school, who deal more in affirmations than in negations, who have not the poor desire to sum up the merits of the subject, but are rather anxious to express the value received to themselves. His way of looking at greatness is reverent without extravagance, or the taint of mere temporary emotion; his doubts and exceptions are well-considered; and his homage is honorable to its objects and to himself. But let us hear in his own words how he would look at the Poet. “Nature should lead the true poet by the hand, and he has far better things to do than busy himself in counting the warts upon it, as Pope did. A cup of water from Hippocrene, tasting, as it must, of innocent pastoral sights and sounds, of the bleat of lambs, of the shadows of leaves and flowers that have leaned over it, of the rosy hands of children whose privilege it ever is to paddle in it, of the low words of lovers who have walked by its side in the moonlight, of the tears of the poor Hagars of the world who have drank from it, would choke a satirist. His thoughts of the country must have a savior of Jack Ketch, and see no beauty but in a kemp field. Poetry is something to make us wiser and better, by continually revealing those types of beauty and truth which God has set in all men’s souls; not by picking out the petty faults of our neighbors to make a mock of.” * * * * * “Asmodeus’s gift, of unroofing the dwellings of his neighbors at will, would be the rarest outfit for a satirist, but it would be of no worth to a Poet. To a satirist the more outward motives of life are enough. Vanity, pride, avarice— these, and the other external vices, are but the strings of the unmusical lyre? But the Poet need only unroof his own heart. All that makes happiness or misery under every roof of the wide world, whether of palace or hovel, is working also in that narrow yet boundless sphere. On that little stage the great drama of life is acted daily. There the Creation, the Tempting, the Fall may be seen anew. In that withdrawing-closet, Solitude whispers her secrets, and Death uncovers his face. There sorrow takes up her abode, to make ready a pillow and a resting-place for the weary head of love, whom the world casts out. To the Poet nothing is mean, but every thing on earth is a fitting altar to the Supreme Beauty.”

There are passages of free humor and good sense which agreeably relieve this high strain, and which we should like to quote, in juxtaposition with the preceding, had we room. On the topics of the day, Mr. Lowell expresses himself with clear good sense, and in a worthy spirit. He shows such plain reason

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for the faith that is in him that the dullest conservative cannot say it is a blind enthusiasm that has joined him with the Movement party. He well expresses the grounds of such a faith. “He (the Poet) knows that the whole power of God is behind him, as the drop of water in the little creek feels that it is moved onward by the whole weight of the rising ocean.” As to his Poets, the comments on Chaucer are feeling and discerning, and the extracts well-chosen and well-placed. On leading characteristics of Chapman he has seized with great force.4 Some things are admirably thought and said of this Poet. The following remarks, upon Ford please us well:5 “His plots raise him, and carry him along with them wither they please, and it is generally only at their culminating points that he shows much strength; and then it is the strength of passion, not of reason. Indeed, I do not know but it should rather be called weakness. He puts his characters’ insinuations where the heart that has a drop of blood in it finds it easier to be strong than weak. His heroes show that fitful strength which grows out of intense excitement, rather than healthy muscular action; it does not rise with difficulty or danger they are in, and, looking down on it, assert calmly the unsurpassable sovereignty of the soul, even after the flesh is overcome, but springs forward in an exulting gush of glorious despair to grapple with death and fate. In a truly noble bravery of soul, the interest is wholly the fruit of immortality; here is the Sodom-apple of mortality. In the one case we exult to see the infinite overshadow and dwarf the finite; in the other, we cannot restrain a kind of romantic enthusiasm and admiration at seeing the weak clay so gallantly defy the overwhelming power which it well knows must crush it. High genius may be fiery and impetuous, but it can never bully and look big; it does not defy death and futurity, for a doubt of its monarchy over them never over flushed its serene countenance. “john.—Shakespeare’s characters seem to modify his plots as they are modified by them in turn. This may be the result of his unapproachable art; for art in him is but the tracing of nature to her primordial laws; is but nature precipitated, as it were, by the infallible test of philosophy. In his plays, as in life, there is a perpetual seesaw of character and circumstance, now one uppermost, now the other. Nature is never afraid to reason in a circle. We must let her assume her premises, and make our deductions logical accordingly. The actors in Shakespeare’s dramas are only overcome by so much as they fall

4. George Chapman (ca. 1559–1634), English poet, dramatist, and translator of Homer. 5. John Ford (1586?–1640?), English dramatist.

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below their ideal, and are wanting in some attribute of true manhood. Wherever we go with him, the absence of a virtue always suggests its presence; the want of any nobleness makes us feel its beauty the more keenly. “philip.—But Ford’s heroes are strong only in their imperfections, and it is to these that whatever admiration we yield them is paid. They interest us only so far as they can make us forget our quiet, calm ideal. This is the very stamp of weakness. We should be surprised if we saw them show any natural greatness. They are morbid and unhealthy, for, in truth, what we call greatness and nobleness is but entire health; to those only who are denaturalized themselves does it seem wonderful; to the natural man they are as customary and unconscious as the beating of his heart, of the motion of his lungs, as is necessary. Therefore it is that praise always surprises and humbles true genius; the shadow of earth then comes between them and their starry ideal with a cold and dark eclipse. In Ford’s characters, the sublimity, if there be any, is that of a defiant despair. ***** “A contemporary thus graphically describes him: “Deep in a dump John Ford was alone gat. With folded arms and melancholy hat.” A couplet which brings up the central figure on the title-page to the old edition of the “Anatomy of Melancholy” very vividly before our eyes. His dependence on things out of himself is shown also in his historical play of ‘Perkin Warback,’ in which, having no exciting plot to sustain him, he is very gentlemanly and very dull. He does not furnish so many isolated passages which are complete in themselves, a quality remarkable in the old dramatists, among whom only Shakespeare united perfectness of the parts with strict adaptation and harmony of the whole. A play of Shakespeare’s seems like one of those basilican palaces whose roof is supported by innumerable pillars, each formed of many crystals perfect in themselves.”

But presently, when Mr. Lowell criticises in detail Ford’s tragedy of ‘The Broken Heart,’ in his remarks upon the beautiful scene between Orgilus and Penthea, he seems quite undiscerning as to the feelings of Penthea and the motives which induce her to act as she does. Also in what he says of Calantha’s “saving up her heart-break, as it were, until it can come in with proper effect at the end of the tragedy”; though there is some truth in his remarks, he seems to leave out of sight the main-spring of the character, a greatness which Ford had the soul to feel was proper to the heroic character, and which very unheroic persons have been able to feel through him; the property, I mean, of

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being unexpectedly equal to anguish and horror, in proportion to their assault. The mind of Calantha rose instantaneously to the occasion, and like the Roman, when the drop too much came in the cup, she gave no groan, but folded the robe over her breast, and “died smiling.” Indeed, we should dispute many of Mr. Lowell’s criticisms in detail, and are seldom entirely pleased with them; but newspaper limits do not allow of such an examination. Neither does he challenge it; he does not profess to give the results of long acquaintance through varied moods, which, with books as with living acquaintances, can alone enable us to give even as just an estimate as our imperfections permit, the sum total of our best judgment,— “All the false values gone.”

But he offers the flowing mood of the day, and he who does not value it as clarified criticism, may find his profit in it for the companionship of stimulus and suggestion. He says very well, “We do not agree, nor should we be pleasant companions if we did. This would be a dull world indeed if all our opinions must beveln to one standard; when all our hearts do, we shall see blue sky and not sooner.”6

Two points he seems to labor unnecessarily. If he addresses a very ignorant audience, he talks too finely for them; if a cultivated one, he will find such truths recognized far more distinctly than he states them. 1st. That the principles which pervade the Fine Arts are identical, and that nothing but partial organization prevents any man who traces them in one from tracing them in all. The subject is one of such profound interest that the discernment of new analogies is always interesting. It pleases us to hear Architecture called “frozen music,”7 or to know that the dimensions of a pillar may be estimated by the tension of chords, but it is merely that we take pleasure in the application of recognized principles; recognized, we mean, by all the thinking part of the world now. 2d. In what he says of metres, Mr. Lowell does not do justice to the poetic facts. The reasons he gives are inadequate. It is true, as he says, that the mind (bend?) [ bevel See note 6 6. The Tribune reading of “(bend?)” is probably a compositor’s query about Fuller’s handwriting; Lowell’s text has “bevel.” 7. Emerson calls architecture “frozen music” in the “Discipline” chapter of Nature.

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rises from prose into poetic measure quite naturally, as from speech to song, when it has something to express above the level of the lower necessities of life. It is true that rhythm cannot more easily be disengaged from the poetic thought expressed in it than the skin from the pulp of the grape. But this is not merely because it holds it together “in a compact and beautiful form.” Metres themselves are actually something apart from the thought they are destined to convey. They are the music of that thought; its more or less perfect organization. Madame de Stael was not wrong in receiving a high delight from the mere cadence of verses that she did not understand.8 As the same thought is expressed in all Gothic Cathedrals, but with peculiar force in that at Cologne, so may the same thought be expressed with equal distinctness in two metres, but with more force in one than the other. Just so two faces may look on you with love and you may translate the meaning of either look—Love—but one will be full-fraught with soul, and will express the beauty of love, the other not. The charms of metres are subtle and more deeply grounded than the obvious meaning of the words; their analysis is not impossible, but it requires as clear a knowledge of the laws of harmony, i.e. of proportion, as delicate a sense of the subtle efficacy of thoughts, i.e. of spiritual gradation, as the analysis of what are more strictly styled musical compositions does; therefore, while many men are too dully organized to feel their power, a larger proportion of those who can feel cannot render a reason. Let us put from us, once for all, the vulgar frivolity of assuming that that does not exist for which we cannot yet render a reason. Let us hear, with joyous hope, deep calling unto deep, where our steps may not yet venture. It is needless to recommend Mr. Lowell’s book to general reading, as the extensive popularity of his Poems has made his name a sufficient passport.  Review of James Russell Lowell, Conversations on Some of the Old Poets (Cambridge: John Owen, 1845). New-York Daily Tribune, 21 January 1845, p. 1; reprinted, New-York Weekly Tribune, 25 January 1845, p. 1. Title supplied. Lowell would later caricature Fuller in his A Fable for Critics (1848) as Miranda, with an “I-turn-the-crank-of-the-Universe air”. 8. Madame de Staël (1766–1817), French novelist and social critic.

Edgar A. Poe


Graham’s Magazine, February 1845. This number of Graham’s Magazine has a likeness of Edgar A. Poe, with a critique upon that critic and a brief outline of his career thus far, by James Russell Lowell.1 This article is frank, earnest, and contains many just thoughts, expressed with force and point. We quote the following: “Talent may make friends for itself, but only genius can give to its creations the divine power of winning love and veneration. Enthusiasm cannot cling to what itself is unenthusiastic, nor will he ever have disciples, who has not himself impulsive zeal enough to be a disciple. Great wits are allied to madness only inasmuch as they are possessed and carried away by their demon, while talent keeps him, as Paracelsus did, securely prisoned in the pommel of his sword. To the eye of genius, the veil of the spiritual world is ever rent asunder, that it may perceive the ministers of good and evil that throng continually round it. No man of mere talent ever flung his inkstand at the devil.” * * “In judging of the merit of an author, and assigning him his niche among our household gods, we have a right to regard him from our own point of view, and to measure him by our own standard.—But in estimating his works, we must be governed by his own design, and, placing them by the side of his own ideal, find how much is wanting.”

Among the poems quoted from Mr. Poe, before unknown to ourselves, two please us so much, that they must be inserted here. The first must have been copied, on every side; yet we may introduce it to the eye of some whom it might otherwise escape;

1. The article on Poe in the February 1845 Graham’s Magazine by James Russell Lowell has been widely reprinted.

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the haunted palace. In the greenest of our valleys, By good angels tenanted, Once a fair and stately palace— Radiant palace—rear’d its head. In the monarch Thought’s dominion— It stood there! Never seraph spread a pinion Over fabric half so fair! Banners yellow, glorious, golden, On its roof did float and flow, (This—all this—was in the olden Time, long ago,) And every gentle air that dallied, In that sweet day, Along the ramparts plumed and pallid, A winged odor went away. Wanderers in that happy valley, Through two luminous windows, saw Spirits moving musically, To a lute’s well-tuned law, Round about a throne where, sitting (Porphyrogene!) In state his glory well befitting, The ruler of the realm was seen. And all with pearl and ruby glowing Was the fair palace door, Through which came flowing, flowing, flowing, And sparkling evermore, A troop of Echoes, whose sweet duty Was but to sing, In voices of surpassing beauty, The wit and wisdom of their king. But evil things, in robes of sorrow, Assail’d the monarch’s high estate. (Ah, let us mourn!—for never morrow Shall dawn upon him desolate!) And round about his home the glory

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That blush’d and bloom’d, Is but a dim-remember’d story Of the old time entomb’d. And travelers now, within that valley, Through the red litten windows see Vast forms, that move fantastically To a discordant melody, While, like a ghastly rapid river, Through the pale door, A hideous throng rush out for ever, And laugh—but smile no more.

But, to us, still more interesting is the poem written at the age of fourteen,2 of such distinguished beauty in thought, feeling, and expression, that we might expect the life unfolded from such a bud to have the sweetness and soft lustre of a rose: to helen. Helen, thy beauty is to me Like those Nicéan barks of yore, That gently, o’er a perfum’d sea, The weary, way-worn wanderer bore To his own native shore. On desperate seas long wont to roam, Thy hyacinth hair, thy classic face, Thy Naiad airs have brought me home To the glory that was Greece And the grandeur that was Rome. Lo! in yon brilliant window-niche How statue-like I see thee stand! The agate lamp within thy hand, Ah! Psyche, from the regions which Are Holy Land!

A person of fine perceptions, and unacquainted with the writings of Mr. Poe, observed, on looking at this head of him, that the lower part of the face 2. The story, started in 1831 by a magazine editor, that Poe wrote “To Helen” at the age of fourteen, is unfounded.

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is that of the critic, cold, hard, and self-sufficient; while the upper part, especially the brows, expresses great feeling, and tenderness of feeling. We wish the “Psyche” had taken him far enough in that “Nicéan bark,” to give the expression of the upper part of the face a larger preponderance than we find in his reviews of the poets.  New-York Daily Tribune, 24 January 1845, p. 1; reprinted, New-York Weekly Tribune, 1 February 1845, p. 2. Edgar Allan Poe (1809–49), poet, short-story writer, and journalist. Not only did Fuller and Poe joust in print (see the sketch of her in his “Literati of New York City” series in the August 1846 Godey’s Magazine and Lady’s Book), but she personally helped to retrieve letters written him by a female friend.

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[Review of Lydia H. Sigourney, Scenes in My Native Land]


This is a book that will have a permanent value as a traveling companion. It is written in a very plain and natural manner, and with good taste and feeling, giving, with regard to the places described, just those leading facts that the visitor desires to know. Those which relate to Monte-Video—Huguenot Fort—the Charter Oak at Hartford—the Moravian settlements at Bethlehem and Nazareth—and the story from the Vale of Wyoming, were the most interesting to ourselves. We extract a part of Huguenot Fort as a fair specimen of the book:

huguenot fort, At Oxford, Massachusetts. I stood upon a breezy hight, and marked The rural landscape’s charms; fields thick with corn, And new-mown grass that bathed the ruthless scythe With a forgiving fragrance, even in death Blessing its enemies; and broad-armed trees Fruitful, or dense with shade or crystal streams That cheered their sedgy banks. But at my feet Were vestiges that turned the thoughts away From all this summer beauty. Moss-clad stones That formed their fortress, that in earlier days Sought refuge here, from their own troubled clime, And from the madness of a tyrant king, Were strewed around. Methinks, yon wreck stands forth Is rugged strength once more, and firmly guards From the red Indian’s shaft, those sons of France, Of purple vintage, found but welcome cold 46

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From thee, my native land! The wintry moan Of wind-swept forests, and the appaling frown Of icy floods. Yet didst thou leave them free To strike the sweet harp of the secret soul, And this was all their wealth. For this they blest Thy trackless wilds, and ’neath their lowly roof At morn and night, or with the murmuring swell Of stranger waters, blent their hymn of praise ––––– Green Vine! That mantlest in thy fresh embrace Yon old, grey rock, I hear that thou with them Didst brave the ocean surge Say drank thy germ The dews of Languedoc? or slow uncoiled As infant fibre, ’mid the fruitful mould Of smiling Rouseillon? or didst thou shrink From the fierce footsteps of a warlike train, Brother with brother fighting unto death, At fair Rochelle? Hast thou no tale for me? ––––– Methought its broad leaves shivered in the gale, With whispered words. There was a gentle form, A fair, young creature, who at twilight hour Oft brought me water, and would kindly raise My drooping head. Her eyes were dark and soft, As the gazelle’s, and well I knew her sigh Was tremulous with love. For she had left One in her own fair land, with whom her heart From childhood had been twined. Oft by her side, What time the youngling moon went up the sky, Conquering with silvery beam their woven bower; He strove to win her to the faith he held, Speaking of heresy with flashing eye, Yet with such blandishment of tenderness, As more than argument dissolveth doubt With a young pupil, in the school of love. Even then, sharp lightening quivered through the gloom Of persecution’s cloud, and soon its storm

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Burst on the Huguenots Their churches fell, Their pastors fed the dungeon or the rack; And ’mid each household-group, grim soldiers sat, In frowning espionage, troubling the sleep Of infant innocence. Stern war burst forth; And civil conflict on the soil of France Wrought fearful things. The peasant’s blood was plowed In, with the wheat to be planted, while from cliffs That overhung the sea, from caves and dens The hunted worshippers were madly driven, Out, ’neath the smiling sabbath skies, and slain, The anthem on their tongues. The coast was thronged With hapless exiles, and that dark-haired maid, Leading her little sister in the steps Of their afflicted parents, hasting left The meal uneaten, and the table spread In their sweet cottage, to return no more. The lover held her to his heart, and prayed That from her erring people she would turn To the true fold of Christ, for so he deemed That ancient Church, for which his breast was clad In soldier’s panoply. But she, with tears Like Niobe, a never ceasing flood, Drew her soft hand from his, and dared the deep. And so, as years sped on, with patient brow She bare the burdens of the wilderness, His image, and an everlasting prayer Within her soul. And when she sank away, As fades the lily when the day is done, There was a deep-drawn sigh, and unpraised glance Of earnest supplication, that the hearts Severed so long might join, where bigot zeal Should find no place. She hath a quiet bed Beneath you turf, and an unwritten name

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On earth, which sister angels speak in heaven. ––––– Vine of Rousaillon! Tell me other tales Of that high-hearted race, who for the sake Of conscience, made those western wilds their home? How to their door the prowling savage stole, Staining their hearth-stone with the blood of babes, And as the Arab strikes his fragile tent Making the desert lonely, how they left Their infant Zion with a mournful heart To seek a safer home? Fain would I sit Beside this ruined fort and muse of them Mingling their features with their humble verse, Whom many of the noblest of our land Claim as their honored sires. On all who bear Their name, or lineage, may their mantle rest, That firmness for the truth, that calm content With simple pleasures, that unswerving trust In toil, adversity and death, which cast Such healthful leaven ’mid the elements That peopled this New World. ––––– When Louis XIV, by the revocation of the Edict of Nantz, scattered the rich treasure of the hearts of more than half a million of subjects to foreign climes, this Western World profited by his mad prodigality. Among the wheat with which its newly broken surface was sown, none was more purely sifted than that which France thus cast away. Industry, integrity, moderated desires, piety without austerity, and the sweetest domestic charities, were among the prominent characteristics of the exiled people. Among the various settlements made by the Hugueno’s, at different periods upon our shores, that at Oxford, in Massachusetts, has the priority in point of time. In 1686, thirty families with their clergyman, landed at Fort Hill, in Boston. There they found kind reception and entertainment, until ready to proceed to their destined abode. This was at Oxford, in Worcester County, where an area of 12,000 acres was secured by them from the township of eight miles square which had been laid out by Governor Dudley. The appearance of the country, though uncleared, was pleasant to those who counted as their chief wealth, “freedom to worship God.” They gave the name

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of French River to a stream, which, after diffusing fertility around their new home, becomes a tributary of the Quinabaug, in Connecticut, and finally merged in the Thames, passing on to Long Island Sound. Being surrounded by the territory of the Nipmug Indians, their first care was to build a fort, as a refuge from savage aggression. Gardens were laid out in its vicinity, and stocked with the seeds of vegetables and fruits, brought from their own native soil. Mills were also erected, and ten or twelve years of persevering industry, secured many comforts to the colonists, who were much respected in the neighboring settlements and acquired the right of representation in the Provincial Legislature. But this tribe of Indians by whom they were encompassed, had, from the beginning, met with a morose and intractable spirit their proffered kindnesses. A sudden, and wholly unexpected incursion, with the massacre of one of the emigrants and his children, caused the breaking up of the peaceful little settlement, and the return of its inmates to Boston. Friendships formed there on their first arrival, and the hospitality that has ever distinguished that beautiful city, turned the hearts of the Huguenots towards it as a refuge, in this, their second exile. This reception, and the continuance of their names among the most honored of its inhabitants, proved that the spot was neither ill chosen, nor uncongenial. Here, their excellent pastor, Father Pierre Dulle, died in 1715. His epitaph, and that of his wife, are still legible in the “Granary Burying Ground.” He was succeeded by Mr. Andrew LeMerier, author of a history of Geneva. Their place of worship was in School street, and known by the name of the French Protestant Church. About the year 1713, Oxford was resettled by a stronger body of colonists, able to command more military aid; and thither, in process of time, a few of the Huguenot resorted, and made their abode in those lovely and retired vales.

Some pleasing anecdotes follow of traditions related to the author by descendants of these Huguenot families. In mentioning visits during childhood to the burial-place of the Mohegans near Norwich, these interesting particulars were given of the last rest of “the last of the Mohegans.” Seated there, as we returned from school at the close of a summer-day, loaded with our books, and sometimes with the baskets which had contained our noon-repast, we read the simple inscriptions on the rude grave-stones, and listened to the moan of the cataract, as it stole, softened by distance, to that solitary and not uncongenial recess. One of these epitaphs used especially to attract our attention. It was com-

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posed at the request of the Indians, by Dr. Tracy, a highly respected physician, whose philanthropy was often called into exercise, for the red-browed race. “Here lies Samuel Uncas, the second and beloved son of his father, John Uncas, who was the grandson of Uncas, Grand Sachem. He died July 31st, 1741, in the 28th year of his age. For beauty, wit, and sterling sense, For temper mild, and eloquence, For courage bold, and things waureegan He was the glory of Mohegan, Whose death hath caused great lamentation, Both to the English and the Indian nation.” The term ‘waureegan,’ in the language of our Indian neighbors, signifies ‘good things,’ or praiseworthy conduct. Some writers have translated it as ‘good tidings,’ or costly apparel; but this is not conformable to the usage of the Mohegans. Over another mossy stone, the little critics sometimes paused, thinking that the close of its inscription possessed wonderful force and simplicity. “In memory of young Seasar Jonus, who died April 30th, 1749, in the 28th year of his age. And he was cousin to Uncas.” The latest interment in this royal cemetery, was that of Mazeen, about twenty years since, the last man in whose veins flowed the royal blood of Mohegan. He was in the 28th year of his age, and deeply mourned by his people. That tribe, in all conveyances of land to the white people, strenuously reserved this sacred sepulchral ground.

The coincidence of all these deaths in the 28th year of the age has an air somewhat Homeric and solemn. The following particulars are related of Samuel Wyllys,1 the gentleman who owned the ground on which the Charter Oak grew: “By his virtuous and dignified deportment, he acquired great influence over the Indians, whose wigwams were thickly planted in the great meadows toward the south-east, and along the margin of Connecticut river. When their midnight carousals arose to such a point that a quarrel might be apprehended, he often stilled their uproar, and sent them affrighted to their homes, by a few words uttered from his open window through a speaking-trumpet in the name

1. Samuel Wyllys (1632–1709), Connecticut magistrate, owned the ground on which grew the Charter Oak, so called because it once held the state’s constitution when that document was threatened.

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of their Great Spirit. Such was the security and confidence in the honesty of the people, in which that honorable and wealthy family dwelt, that till within sixty years, a large silver cup was left unharmed by a well, for the accommodation of all, who in passing through the premises might wish to taste of its waters.”

That is a romantic picture of Hon. Mr. Wyllys bidding the Indians, scattered over the broad meadows, good night, through his speaking-trumpet. In contrast with the love of ravage which distinguishes the American settler and which makes the marks of his first passage over this land, like those of corrosive acid upon the cheek of beauty, rather than that smile of intelligence which would ensue from the touch of an intelligent spirit, Mrs. S. observes: “It seems almost a wickedness, wantonly to smite down a vigorous healthful tree. It was of God’s planting, and in its veins is circulating the life which He has given.”

We have often marveled to see the Reformers who weary every one by their protest against violence done to life in the animal kingdom, coolly hewing down and heaping on the hearth trunks that half a century had been required to rear, trunks of trees, the home of birds, and the fairest monuments of earth’s devotion. We suppose that the hatred of our people for trees is from a feeling that they are symbols of a wilderness to be conquered; and inherited from a time when each was a shield or hiding place for an Indian foe. But it is time that the barbarous form of this prejudice should give place. With it contrast the Old English feeling: “The reverence of our ancestors, in England, for trees, is well known. It is not uncommon in some of their parks, to observe by a clump of fine trees, a stone monument, recording when and by whom it was planted; thus coupling the name of the founder with these masses of umbrageous foliage which deepen as ages pass by.”

We may be sure, if we do not resume some of this old Druidical veneration for trees, no oak will bear for us the sacred mistletoe, emblem of the purest thoughts. The mention of a taste for art, as developed in the creation of scarecrows at Fonda and Johnstown, is pretty:

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“Something of the kind is often seen in New-England among planted fields or loaded cherry trees, but not worthy to be compared with these in device or execution. Here were parti-colored pennons, broad white flags, long ropes hung with bright tin filings, and braided wisps of straw, flapping in every breeze; stuffed boys, with one foot raised as in the act of ascension; men in full vigor, brandishing the semblance of a fowling-piece, or some other nondescript weapons; aged sires, with uplifted brow, in an attitude of supplication. Surely some incipient Chantry must ennoble this region!”

It is, indeed, pleasing to see among our people some of the Greek spirit that leads to turn the common occasions of life to themes of fancy, and something like a love of creation. We marked several parts of this book for comment, but our limits, at present, forbid this.—Only one thing we must speak of,—the apologetic tone for hours passed in the contemplation of natural beauty, and the assumption of calling such a person as the hermit of Niagara “erring brother,” because he sequestered some part of his life to this purpose. We have no patience with all this sort of remark, which so strongly marks a gross materialist tendency in our time and place. Mrs. Sigourney does not share it, but is so often conversant with those who do, that she is led to speak of those pure natural enjoyments, meant by Heaven for a great means of education to man for his proper place in his universe in this dubious or apologetic tone. Let those “erring brethren” apologize who spend their lives in gossip, or money-making; not those who think it worth while to devote some hours to sympathy with the glories that surround them. Is it such a fault, then, to take a little time from the service of Mammon? What do you mean by your “social duties?” What are they good for, except to educate the soul to worship? This mania as to “social duties,” is so fostered among us that for any one to pass a day alone in contemplation of the most sublime work of the Great Spirit is enough to make him pointed or jeered at as “crazy” or (more deadly stigma, it would seem,) “peculiar.” My friends! angels and poets are peculiar; and to be gregarious is not the way to be social. Good society can only be composed of intelligent and devout men.  Review of Lydia H. Sigourney, Scenes in My Native Land (Boston: James Munroe, 1845). New-York Daily Tribune, 28 January 1845, p. 1; reprinted, New-York Weekly Tribune, 1 February 1845, p. 1. Title supplied. Lydia Howard Huntley Sigourney (1791–1865), poet and lady of letters.

French Novelists of the Day: Balzac . . . . . . . George Sand . . . . . . . Eugene Sue


This thirteenth number of the “Wandering Jew,” just published by Winchester,1 has delivered us from our anxieties as to the objects of Jesuit persecution, though by a coup de main clumsier than is usual even with Sue. Now, we have matters arranged for a few months more of contest with the Society of Jesus, but we think our author must depend for interest during the last volume, no longer on the conduct of the plot, but on the portraiture of characters. It is cheering to know how great is the influence such a writer as Sue exerts, from his energy of feeling on some objects of moral interest. It is true that he has also much talent and a various experience of life; but writers who far surpass him here, as we think Balzac does, wanting this heart of faith, have no influence, except merely on the tastes of their readers. We hear much lamentation among good people at the introduction of so many French novels among us, corrupting, they say, our youth by pictures of decrepit vice and prurient crime, such as would never, otherwise, be dreamed of here, and corrupting it the more that such knowledge is so precocious—for the same reason that a boy may be more deeply injured by initiation into wickedness than a man, for he is not only robbed of his virtue, but prevented from developing the strength that might restore it. But it is useless to bewail what is the inevitable result of the movement of our time. Europe must pour her corruptions, no less than her riches, on our shores, both in the form of books and of living men. She cannot, if she would, check the tide which bears them hitherward; no defenses are possible, on our vast extent of shore, that can preclude their ingress. We have exulted in premature and hasty growth; we must brace ourselves to bear the evils that ensue. Our only hope lies in rousing, in our own community, a soul of goodness, a wise aspiration, that shall give us strength to assimilate this unwholesome food to better substance, or 1. The Wandering Jew, translated by H. W. Herbert, was published by J. Winchester in nineteen parts between 1844 and 1845.

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cast off its contaminations. A mighty sea of life swells within our nation, and, if there be salt enough, foreign bodies shall not have power to breed infection there. We have had some opportunity to observe that the worst works offered are rejected. On the steamboats we have seen translations of vile books, bought by those who did not know from the names of their authors what to expect, torn, after a cursory glance at their contents, and scattered to the winds. Not even the all but all-powerful desire to get one’s money’s worth, since it had once been paid, could contend against the blush of shame that rose on the cheek of the reader. It would be desirable for our people to know something of these writers and of the position they occupy abroad; for the nature of their circulation, rather than its extent, might be the guide both to translator and buyer. The object of the first is generally money—of the last, amusement. But the merest mercenary might prefer to pass his time in translating a good book, and our imitation of Europe does not yet go so far that the American milliner can be depended on to copy any thing from the Parisian grisette, except her cap. One of the most unexceptionable and attractive writers of modern France is de Vigny.2 His life has been passed in the Army, but many years of peace have given him time for literary culture, while his acquaintance with the traditions of the Army, from the days of its dramatic achievements under Bonaparte,3 suppliesn the finest materials both for narrative and reflection. His tales are written with infinite grace, refined sensibility, and a dignified view. His treatment of a subject shows that closeness of grasp and clearness of sight which are rarely attained by one who is not at home in active as well as thoughtful life. He has much penetration, too, and has touched some of the most delicate springs of human action. His works have been written in hours of leisure; this has diminished their number but given him many advantages over the thousands of professional writers that fill the coffee houses of Paris by day, and its garrets by night. We wish he were more read here in the original: with him would be found good French, and the manners, thoughts, and feelings of a cosmopolite gentleman. We have seen, with pleasure, one or two of his tales translated into the pages of the Democratic Review. But the three who have been and will be most read here, as they occupy the

2. Alfred Victor, Count de Vigny (1799–1863), French poet, dramatist, and novelist. 3. Napoleon Bonaparte (1769–1821), French general and ruler. supply [ supplies

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first rank in their own country, are Balzac, George Sand, and Eugene Sue. Balzac has been a very fruitful writer, and as he is fond of juggler’s tricks of every description, and holds nothing earnest or sacred, he is vain of the wonderful celerity with which some of his works, and those quite as good as any, have been written. They seem to have been conceived, composed and written down with that degree of speed with which it is possible to lay pen to paper. Indeed, we think he cannot be surpassed in the ready and sustained command of his resources. His almost unsurpassed quickness and fidelity of eye, both as to the disposition of external objects, and the symptoms of human passion, combined with a strong memory, have filled his mind with materials, and we doubt not that if his thoughts could be put into writing with the swiftness of thought, he would give us one of his novels every week in the year. Here end our praises of Balzac; what he is, as a man, in daily life, we know not.n He must originally have had a heart, or he could not read so well the hearts of others; perhaps there are still private ties that touch him. But as a writer, never was the modern Mephistopheles, “the spirit that denieth,” more worthily represented than by Balzac. He combines the spirit of the man of science, with that of the amateur collector. He delights to analyze, to classify; there is no anomaly too monstrous, no specimen too revolting, to ensure his ardent, but passionless scrutiny. But then—he has taste and judgment to know what is fair, rare and exquisite. He takes up such an object carefully and puts it in a good light. But he has no hatred for what is loathsome, no contempt for what is base, no love for what is lovely, no faith in what is noble. To him there is no virtue and no vice; men and women are more or less finely organized; noble and tender conduct is more agreeable than the reverse, because it argues better health; that is all. Nor is this from an intellectual calmness, nor from an unusual power of analyzing motives, and penetrating delusions merely; neither is it mere indifference. There is a touch of the demon, also, in Balzac; the cold but gayly familiar demon, and the smile of the amateur yields easily to a sneer, as he delights to show you on what foul juices the fair flower was fed. He is a thorough and willing materialist. The trance of Religion is congestion of the brain; the joy of the Poet the thrilling of the blood in the rapture of sense; and every good not only rises from, but hastens back into, the jaws of death and nothingness: a rainbow arch above a pestilential chaos! Thus Balzac, with all his force and fulness of talent, never rises one moment not, He [ not. He

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into the region of genius. For genius is, in its nature, positive and creative, and cannot exist where there is no heart to believe in realities. Neither can he have a permanent influence on a nature which is not thoroughly corrupt. He might for a while stagger an ingenuous mind which had not yet thought for itself. But this could not last. His unbelief makes his thought too shallow. He has not that power which a mind, only in part sophisticated, may retain, where the heart still beats warmly, though it sometimes beats amiss. Write, paint, argue, as you will, where there is a sound spot in any human being, he cannot be made to believe that this present bodily frame is more than a temporary condition of his being, though one to which he may have become shamefully enslaved by fault of inheritance, education, or his own carelessness. Taken in his own way, we know no modern tragedies more powerful than Balzac’s “Eugenie Grandet,” “Sweet Pea,” “Search after the Absolute,” “Father Goriot.” See there goodness, aspiration, the loveliest instincts, stifled, strangled by fate, in the form of our own brute nature—The fate of the ancient Prometheus was happiness to that of these who must pay for ever having believed there was divine fire in Heaven, by agonies of despair, and conscious degradation, unknown to those who began by believing man to be the most richly endowed of brutes—no more! Balzac is admirable in his description of look, tone, gesture. He has a keen sense of whatever is peculiar to the individual. Nothing in modern romance surpasses the death-scene of Father Goriot, the Parisian Lear, in the almost immortal life with which the parental instincts are displayed. And with equal precision and delicacy of shading he will paint the slightest by play in the manners of some young girl. “Seraphitus” is merely a specimen of his great powers of intellectual transposition. Amid his delight at the botanical riches of the new and elevated region in which he is traveling, we catch, if only by echo, the hem and chuckle of the French materialist. No more of him!—We leave him to his suicidal work. An entirely opposite character, in every leading trait, yet bearing traces of the same influences, is the celebrated George Sand. It is probably known to a great proportion of readers that this writer is a woman, who writes under the name of and frequently assumes the dress and manners of a man. It is also known that she has not only broken the marriage bond, and, since that, formed other connections independent of the civil or ecclesiastical sanction, but that she first rose into notice through works which systematically assailed the present institution of marriage and the social bonds which are connected with it.

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No facts are more adapted to startle every feeling of our community; but, since the works of Sand are read here, notwithstanding, and cannot fail to be so while they exert so important an influence abroad, it would be well they should be read intelligently, as to the circumstances of their birth, and their tendency. George Sand we esteem to be a person of strong passions, but of original nobleness and a love of right sufficient to guide them all to the service of aims. But she fell upon evil times. She was given in marriage according to the fashion of the old regime; she was taken from a convent where she had heard a great deal about the law of God and the example of Jesus, into a society where no vice was proscribed, if it would wear the cloak of hypocrisy. She found herself impatient of deception, and loudly called by passion: she yielded; but she could not do so, as others did, sinning against what she owned to be the rule of right, and the will of Heaven. She protested; she examined; she assailed. She “hacked into the roots of things,” and the bold sound of her axe called around her every foe that finds a home amid the growths of civilization. Still she persisted. “If it be real,” thought she, “it cannot be destroyed; as to what is false, the sooner it goes the better; and I, for one, had rather perish beneath its fall than wither in its shade.” Schiller4 puts into the mouth of Mary Stuart these words as her only plea: “The world knows the worst of me; and I may boast that, though I have erred, I am better than my reputation.” Sand may say the same. All is open, noble; the free descriptions, the sophistry of passion are, at least, redeemed by a desire for truth as strong as ever beat in any heart. To the weak or unthinking the reading of such books may not be desirable, for only those who take exercise as men can digest strong meat. But to anyone able to understand the position and circumstances, we believe this reading cannot fail of bringing good impulses, valuable suggestions, and it is quite free from that subtle miasma which taints so large a portion of French literature, not less since the Revolution than before. This we say to the foreign reader. To her own country Sand is a boon precious and prized, both as a warning and a leader, for which none there can be ungrateful. She has dared to probe its festering wounds, and if they be not past all surgery, she is one who, most of any, helps toward a cure. Would, indeed, the surgeon had come with quite clean hands! A woman of Sand’s genius, as free, as bold, and pure from even the suspicion of error, might have filled an apostolic station among her people. Then with what force had 4. Johann Christoph Friedrich von Schiller (1759–1805), German philosopher.

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come her cry, “If it be false, give it up; but, if it be true, keep to it—one or the other!” But we have read all we wish to say upon this subject, lately uttered just from the quarter we could wish. It is such a woman, so unblemished in character, so high in aim, and pure in soul, that should address this other, as noble in nature, but clouded by error, and struggling with circumstances. It is such women that will do such justice. They are not afraid to look for virtue and reply to aspiration, among those who have not ‘dwelt in decencies for ever.’ It is a source of pride and happiness to read this address from the heart of Elizabeth Barrett: to george sand. A Desire. Thou large-brained woman and large-hearted man, Self-called George Sand! whose soul, amid the lions Of thy tumultuous senses moans defiance, And answers roar for roar, as spirits can: I would some mild miraculous thunder ran Above th’ applauded circus, in appliance Of thine own nobler nature’s strength and science, Drawing two pinions, white as wings of swan, From the strong shoulders, to amaze the place With holier light! that thou to woman’s claim, And man’s, might join, beside, the angel’s grace Of a pure genius sanctified from blame; Till child and maiden pressed to thine embrace, To kiss upon thy lips a stainless fame.

to the same. A Recognition True genius, but true woman! dost deny Thy woman’s nature with a manly scorn, And break away the gauds and armlets worn By weaker women in captivity? Ah, vain denial! that revolted cry Is sobbed in by a woman’s voice forlorn:— Thy woman’s hair, my sister, all unshorn, Floats back disheveled strength in agony,

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Disproving thy man’s name, and while before The world thou burnest in a poet-fire, We see thy woman-heart beat evermore Through the large flame. Beat purer, heart, and higher, Till God unsex thee on the spirit shore; To which alone unsexing, purely aspire.

This last sonnet seems to have been written after seeing the picture of Sand, which represents her in a man’s dress, but with long, loose hair, and an eye whose mournful fire is impressive even in the caricatures. For some years Sand has quitted her post of assailant. She has seen that it is better to seek some form of life worthy to supersede the old, than rudely to destroy it, heedless of the future. Her force is bending towards philanthropic measures. She does not appear to possess much of the constructive faculty, and, though her writings command a great pecuniary compensation, and have a wide sway, it is rather for their tendency than their thought. She has reached no commanding point of view from which she may give orders to the advanced corps. She is still at work with others in the trench, though she works with more force than almost any. In power, indeed, Sand bears the palm above any of the Novelists. She is vigorous in conception, often great in the apprehension and the contrast of characters. She knows passion, as has been well hinted, at a white heat, when all the lower particles are remoulded by its power. Her descriptive talent is very great, and her poetic feeling exquisite. She wants but little of being a poet, but that little is indispensable. Yet she keeps us always hovering on the borders of the enchanted fields. She has, to a signal degree, that power of exact transcript from her own mind of which almost all writers fail. There is no veil, no half-plastic integument between us and the thought. We vibrate perfectly with it. This is her chief charm, and, next to it, is one in which we know no French writer that resembles her, except Rousseau,5 though he, indeed, is vastly her superior in it. This is, of concentrated glow. Her nature glows beneath the words, like fire beneath the ashes, deep;—deep! Her best works are unequal; in many parts written hastily, or carelessly, or with flagging spirits. They all promise far more than they perform; the work is not done masterly; she has not reached that point where a writer sits at the

5. Jean Jacques Rousseau (1712–78), French philosopher and one of the founders of romanticism.

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helm of his own genius. Sometimes she plies the oar; sometimes she drifts. But what greatness she has is genuine; there is no tinsel of any kind, no drapery carefully adjusted or chosen gesture about her. May Heaven lead her, at last, to the full possession of her best self, in harmony with the higher laws of life! We are not acquainted with all her works, but among those we know, mention “La Roche Mauprat,” “André,” “Jacques,” “Les Sept Cordes de la Lyre,” and “Les Maitres Mosaistes” as representing her higher inspirations, her sincerity in expression, and her dramatic powers. They are full of faults; still they also show her scope and aim with some fairness, which those readers who chance at first on such of her books as “Leone Leoni,” may fail to find, or even such as “Simon” and “Spiridion,” though into the imperfect web of these are woven threads of pure gold. Such is the first impression made by the girl Fiamma as she appears before us, so noble, with the words “E l’onore;” such the thought in “Spiridion” of making the apparition the reward of virtue. The work she is now publishing, “Consuelo,” with its sequel “Baroness de Rudolstadt,” exhibit her genius poised on a firmer pedestal, breathing a serener air. Still it is faulty in conduct, and showsn some obliquity of vision. She has not reached the Interpreter’s house yet. But when she does, she will have clues to guide many a pilgrim whom one less tried, less tempted than herself, could not help on the way. Eugene Sue is a writer of far inferior powers, on the whole, to Sand, though he possesses some brilliant talents that she wants. His aims and modes are more external than hers;n he is not so deeply acquainted with his own nature, or with that of any other person. Like her, he began life in a corrupt society—struggled, doubted, half despaired; erred, apparently, himself, and feared there was no virtue and no truth; but is conquering now. We observe, in a late notice of Sue, that he began to write at quite mature age, at the suggestion of a friend. We should think it was so; that he was by nature intended for a practical man, rather than a writer. He paints all his characters from the practical point of view. As an observer, when free from exaggeration, he has as good an eye as Balzac, but he is far more rarely thus free, for, in temperament, he is unequal and sometimes muddy. But then he has the heart and faith that Balzac wants, yet is less enslaved by emotion than Sand, therefore he has made more impression on his time and place than either. We refer now to his later works; though show [ shows her’s; [ hers;

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his earlier show much talent, yet his progress, both as a writer and thinker, has been so considerable that those of the last few years entirely eclipse his earlier essays. These latter works are the “Mysteries of Paris,” “Matilda,” and the “Wandering Jew,” which is now in course of publication. In these, he has begun and is continuing a crusade against the evils of a corrupt civilization which are inflicting such woes and wrongs upon his contemporaries. Sue, however, does not merely assail, but would build up. His anatomy is not intended to injure the corpse, or, like that of Balzac, to entertain the intellect merely. Earnestly he hopes to learn from it the remedies for disease and the conditions of health. Sue is a Socialist. He believes he sees the means by which the heart of mankind may be made to beat with one great hope, one love; and instinct with this thought, his tales of horror are not tragedies. This is the secret of the deep interest he has awakened in this country that he shares a hope which is, half unconsciously to herself, stirring all her veins. It is not so warmly out-spoken as in other lands, both because no such pervasive ills as yetn call loudly for redress, and because private conservation is here great, in proportion to the absence of authorized despotism. We are not disposed to quarrel with this; it is well for the value of new thoughts to be tested by a good deal of resistance. Opposition, if it does not preclude free discussion, is of use in educating men to know what they want. Only by intelligent men, exercised by thought and tried in virtue, can such measures as Sue proposes be carried out; and when such Associates present themselves in sufficient numbers, we have no fear but the cause of Association, in its grander forms, will have fair play in America.6 As a writer, Sue shows his want of a high kind of imagination by his unshrinking portraiture of physical horrors. We do not believe any man could look upon some things he describes and live. He is very powerful in his description of the workings of animal nature; especially when he speaks of them in animals merely, they have the simplicity of the lower kind with the more full expression of human nature. His pictures of women are of rare excellence, and it is observable that the more simple and pure the character is, the more justice he does to it. This shows that, whatever his career may have yet yet [ yet 6. François Marie Charles Fourier (1772–1837), French social thinker, whose idea on association (large communities called “phalanxes” in which each person had assigned roles) influenced the American communitarian movement. The experiment at Brook Farm (1841–47), for example, revised its constitution in 1845 to become the Brook Farm Phalanx.

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been, his heart is uncontaminated. Men he does not describe so well, and fails entirely when he aims at one grand and simple enough for a great moral agent. His conceptions are strong, but in execution he is too melodramatic. Just compare his “Wandering Jew” with that of Beranger.7 The latter is as diamond compared with charcoal. Then, like all those writers who write in numbers that come out weekly or monthly, he abuses himself and his subject; he often must; the arrangement is false and mechanical. The attitude of Sue is at this moment imposing, as he stands, pen in hand— this his only weapon against an innumerable host of foes, the champion of poverty, innocence and humanity, against superstition, selfishness and prejudice. When his works are forgotten, and for all their strong points and brilliant decorations, they may ere long be forgotten, still the writer’s name shall be held in imperishable honor as the teacher of the ignorant, the guardian of the weak, a true Tribune for the people of his own time. To sum up this imperfect account of their merits, I see De Vigny, a retiring figure, the gentleman, the solitary thinker, but, in his way, the efficient foe of false honor, and superstitious prejudice. Balzac is the heartless surgeon, probing the wounds and describing the delirium of suffering men for the amusement of his students. Sand a grand, fertile, aspiring, but, in some measure, distorted and irregular nature. Sue a bold and glittering crusader, with endless ballads jingling in the silence of the night before the battle. They are much right and a good deal wrong; for instance, all, even Sand, who would lay down her life for the sake of truth, will let their virtuous characters practice stratagems, falsehood, and violence; in fact, do evil for the sake of good. They still show this taint of the old regime, and no wonder! La belle France has worn rouge so long that the purest mountain air will not, at once, or soon, restore the natural hues to her complexion. But they are fine figures, and all ruled by the onward spirit of the time. Led by that spirit, I see them moving on the troubled waters; they do not sink, and I trust they will find their way to the coasts where the new era will introduce new methods, in a spirit of nobler activity, wiser patience, and holier faith than the world has yet seen. Will Balzac also see that shore, or has he only broken away the bars that hindered others from setting sail? We do not know. When we read an expression of such lovely innocence as the letter of the little country maidens to their Parisian brother (in Father Goriot), we hope; but presently we see him sneering behind the mask, and we fear. Let Frenchmen speak to this. They 7. Pierre Jean de Béranger (1780–1857), French lyric poet.

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know best what disadvantages a Frenchman suffers under, and whether it is possible Balzac be still alive, except in his eyes. Those, we know, are well alive. To read these or any foreign works fairly, the reader must understand the national circumstances under which they were written. To use them worthily, he must know how to interpret them for the use of the Universe.  New-York Daily Tribune, 1 February 1845, p. 1; reprinted, New-York Weekly Tribune, 22 February 1845, p. 2. Honoré de Balzac (1799–1850), prolific French novelist; George Sand, Baroness Dudevant (1804–76), French author whose personal life scandalized Paris; Eugène Sue (1804–57), French novelist.

[Review of Richard Hildreth, The Slave; or, Memoirs of Archy Moore]


—“Leave wringing of your hands; peace: sit you down: And let me wring your heart; for so I shall, If it be made of penetrable stuff; If damned custom hath not brazed it so, That it be proof and bulwark against sense.” Hamlet.1

This narrative is written with a vigor, power of conduct in the plot, and in sketches of character, that would have given the author a high rank throughout this country, as a novelist, had not his theme been one calculated to waken hostility in many readers and fear in more. History will class it as one of the most remarkable and interesting productions of our time. It will not be forgotten, for the same allowance is to be made for the earnest devotion of the writer to the cause of an injured race, and for the necessity of bringing forward the principal features of abuse in order to develop his plan, with less interval of repose, and less alleviation from good than exists in fact. Still the picture, as a whole, is true to the life, and it not only is, but seems, true, for the writer is, evidently, raised above the need of pleading a cause and his determined convictions are based on knowledge. The tone is noble; in its calm, but heart-felt, respect for the claims of man reminding us of Godwin.2 With all its feeling, it is still more an intellectual expression. Passion, woe, distortion, and sophistry are seen, but seen from the intellectual point of view, and thus the sketch is made with a strong and steady hand, and shows the educated eye of manhood. Such productions have results upon the world, such as fierce invective and mechanical arrangements for the expression of opinion never can.

1. Hamlet, act 3, scene 4. 2. William Godwin (1756–1836), English philosopher and miscellaneous writer, brought the spirit of the French Revolution to Britain.

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[Review of The Slave; or, Memoirs of Archy Moore]

 Review of Richard Hildreth, The Slave; or, Memoirs of Archy Moore, 5th. ed., two volumes in one (Boston: Jordan, Swift and Wiley, 1845). New-York Daily Tribune, 4 February 1845, p. 1. Title supplied. Richard Hildreth (1807–65), historian and novelist, published the first edition of The Slave in 1836.

[Review of The Child’s Friend, ed. Eliza L. Follen]


There is no branch of literature that better deserves cultivation, and none that so little obtains it from worthy hands as this of Children’s books. It requires a peculiar development of the genius and sympathies, rare among the men of factitious life, who are not men enough to revive, with force and beauty, the thoughts and scenes of childhood. It is all idle to talk baby-talk, with malice prepense, and to give shallow accounts of deep things, thinking thereby to interest the child.—He does not like to be too much puzzled, but it is simplicity he wants and not silliness. We fancy, their angels, who are always waiting in the courts of our Father, smile, somewhat sadly, at the ignorance of those who would feed them on milk and water too long, and think it would be quite as well to give them a stone. There is too much among us of the French way of palming off false accounts of things on children to do them good, and showing nature to them in a magic lantern, “purified for the use of childhood,” and telling stories of good little girls, and sweet little girls, or brave little boys; oh! all so good! or so bad! and, above all, so little, and every thing about them so little!—Children, accustomed to move in full-sized apartments, and converse with full-grown men and women, do not need so much of this baby-house style in their literature. They like, or would like, if they could get them, better things much better. They like the “Arabian Nights,” and “Pilgrim’s Progress,” and “Bunyan’s Emblems,”1 and Shakspeare, and the “Iliad” and “Odyssey;” at least, they used to like them; and, if they do not now, it is because their taste has been injured by so many sugar-plums. The books that were written in the childhood of nations suit an uncorrupt childhood now. They are simple, picturesque, robust. Their moral is not forced, nor is the truth veiled with a well-meant, but 1. John Bunyan (1628–88), English nonconformist preacher and writer, published his Pilgrim’s Progress, an allegory of Christian life, in 1678, and Divine Emblems, or Temporal Things Spiritualised in 1686.

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sure-to-fail, hypocrisy. Sometimes they are not moral at all, only free plays of the fancy and intellect. These, also, the child needs, just as the infant needs to stretch its limbs, and grasp at objects it cannot hold. We have become so fond of the moral that we forget the nature in which it must find its root; so fond of instruction, that we forget development. Where ballads, legends, and fairy-tales are moral, the morality is heart-felt; if instructive, it is from the healthy common sense of mankind, and not for the convenience of nursery rule, nor the “peace of schools and families.” O that winter! freezing, snow-laden winter, which slowly ushered in our eighth birthday.2—There, in the lonely farm-house, the day’s work done, and the bright wood fire a’ in a low, we were permitted to slide back the panel of the cupboard in the wall; most fascinating object still in our eyes, with which no stateliest alcoved library can vie; and there saw, neatly arranged on its two shelves, not, praised be our natal star! Peter Parley nor “A history of the good little boy that never took anything that did not belong to him;” but—the “Spectator,” “Telemachus,” “Goldsmith’s Animated Nature” and the “Iliad.”3 Forms of gods and heroes more distinctly seen and with eyes of nearer love then than now!—Our true Uncle, Sir Roger de Coverley,4 and ye, fair realms of Nature’s history whose pictures we tormented all grown persons to illustrate with more knowledge—still more, how we bless the chance that gave to us your great realities which life has daily helped us—helps us still, to interpret, instead of thin and baseless fictions that would, all this time, have hampered us although only with cobwebs. Children need some childish talk, some childish play, some childish books. But they also need, and need more, difficulties to overcome, and a sense of the vast mysteries which the progress of their intelligence shall aid them to unravel. This sense is naturally their delight, as it is their religion, and it must not be dulled by premature explanations, nor subterfuges of any kind. There has been too much of this lately. Miss Edgeworth is an excellent writer for children.5 She is a child herself as

2. Fuller spent the first part of 1818 living with her grandmother at Canton, Massachusetts. 3. Samuel Griswold Goodrich (1793–1860), editor and children’s writer, is said to have published over one hundred volumes under the name “Peter Parley”; the Spectator (1711–12, 1714), a topical English periodical edited by Joseph Addison (1672–1719) and Richard Steele (1672–1729); Telemachus, the son of Odysseus and Penelope, appears in the Odyssey; Oliver Goldsmith (1730?–74), poet, novelist, dramatist, and essayist, published History of the Earth and Animated Nature in 1774. 4. Sir Roger de Coverley, a character created as one of the supposed authors of the Spectator. 5. Maria Edgeworth (1767–1849), English novelist and writer for children.

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she writes, nursed anew by her own genius. It is not by imitating but by reproducing childhood that the writer becomes its companion. Then, indeed, we have something especially good, for “Like wine, well-kept and long; Heady; nor harsh, nor strong; With each succeeding year is quaffed A richer, purer, mellower draught.”6

Miss Edgeworth’s grown people live naturally with the children; they do not talk to them continually about angels, or flowers, or blue riband, but about the things that interest themselves.—They do not force them forward nor keep them back. The relations are simple and honorable; all ages in the family seem at home under one roof and sheltered by one care. “The Juvenile Miscellany,” formerly published by Mrs. Child, was much and deservedly esteemed by children.7 It was a healthy, cheerful, natural and entertaining companion to them. “The Child’s Friend” is edited by Mrs. Follen, a lady admired and loved by a large circle of personal friends, best known to the public at large by a memoir of her husband worthy in its tone of the beauty of its subject. No task could have been more difficult: few have been fulfilled with such delicacy.—We think this periodical for children is, in some degree, obnoxious to the censure of too monotonously tender a manner, and too constant attention to the moral inference. We should prefer a larger proportion of the facts of natural or human history, and that they should speak for themselves. There are many good things in the work, and it is calculated to lead the child into the region of worthy resolve and liberal views. Among the contributions from other hands, we would notice a translation of Goethe’s excellent tale of “Ferdinand” and a story called “The Little Expecter,” which, if it betray too great a degree of intellectual consciousness for the free flow of fairy poesy, has refined fancy and judgment, with a simplicity and strength in manner rarely seen in modern fantasies of this kind.8 6. “Youth Renewed,” ll. 27–30, by James Montgomery (1771–1854), Scottish poet. Fuller used these lines again in the 10 April 1846 New-York Daily Tribune. 7. Lydia Maria Francis Child (1802–80), abolitionist, editor, novelist, and writer for children. 8. John Wolfgang von Goethe (1749–1832), Germany’s most famous writer; The Daily, but not the Weekly issue of the Tribune reprints, after a line rule, the story “The Little Expector, or, Fairy Music,” from the January 1845 Child’s Friend.

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 Review of The Child’s Friend, ed. Eliza L. Follen. New-York Daily Tribune, 5 February 1845, p. 1; reprinted, New-York Weekly Tribune, 22 February 1845, p. 1. Title supplied. This periodical was published between 1843 and 1858. Eliza Lee Cabot Follen (1787–1860), abolitionist and miscellaneous writer.

[Review of Anton Schindler, The Life of Beethoven]


This book bears on its outside the title, Life of Beethoven, by Moscheles. It is really only a translation of Schindler’s,1 and it seems quite unfair to bring Moscheles so much into the foreground merely because his name is celebrated in England. He has only contributed a few notes and a short introduction, giving a most pleasing account of his own devotion to the Master.—Schindler was the trusty friend of Beethoven, and one whom he, himself, selected to write his biography. Inadequate as it is, there is that fidelity in the collection of materials which makes it serviceable to our knowledge of Beethoven and we wish it might be reprinted here,—though there is little knowledge of music here, yet, so far as any exists in company with a free development of mind, the music of Beethoven is the music which delights, which awakens, which inspires an infinite hope. This influence of the most profound, bold, original, and singular compositions, even upon the uninitiated,n above those of a simpler construction and more obvious charms, we have observed with great pleasure. For we think its cause lies deep, far beneath fancy, taste, fashion, or any accidental cause. It is because there is a real, and steady unfolding of certain thoughts which pervades the civilized world. It strikes its roots through to us, beneath the broad Atlantic, and those roots shoot upwards stems to the light wherever the soil allows them free course. Our era which permits of freer inquiry, of bolder experiment than ever before, and on a firmer, broader basis may also, we firmly trust, be depended on for nobler discovery, and a grander scope of thought. Although we sympathize with the sadness of those who lament the decay of forms and methods round which so many associations had wound their tendrils, and understand the sufferings which gentle, tender natures undergo from 1. Anton Schindler (1796–1864), German violinist and conductor. unitiated, [ uninitiated,

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the forlorn homelessness of a period of doubt, speculation, reconstruction in every way, yet we cannot disjoin ourselves, by one moment’s fear, or regret from the advanced corps. That body, leagued by an invisible tie, have received too deep an assurance that the Spirit is not dead nor sleeping, to look back to the past if they had to advance uniformly through scenes of decay and the rubbish of falling edifices. But how far it is from being so! How many developements in various ways of Truth! How manifold the aspirations of Love. In the church the attempt is now to reconstruct on the basis proposed by its founder, “Love one another”;—in the philosophy of mind, if completeness of system is, as yet, far from being attained, yet mistakes and vain dogmas are set aside and examination conducted with intelligence and an enlarged discernment of what is due, both to God and man. Science advances, in some routes with colossal strides; new glimpses are daily gained into the arcana of natural history, and the mysteries attendant on the modes of growth are laid open to our observation; while in chemistry, electricity, magnetism, we seem to be getting nearer to the law of life which governs them, and in astronomy “fathoming the Heavens” (to use the sublime expression of Herscheln;2) daily to greater depths, we find ourselves admitted to a perception of universal laws and causes, where harmony, permanence, and perfection leave us no excuse for a moment of despondency,n while under the guidance of a Power who has ordered all so well. Then, if the other arts suffer a temporary paralysis, and notwithstanding the many proofs of talent and genius, we consider that this is the case with architecture, painting and sculpture, music is not only thoroughly vital, but in a state of rapid development. The last hundred years have witnessed a succession of triumphs in this art, the removal of obstructions, the transcending of limits and the opening new realms of thought to an extent that makes the infinity of promise and hope very present with us. And take notice that the prominent means of excellence now are not in those ways which give form to thoughts already existent, but which open new realms to thought. Those who live most with the life of their age, feel that it is one not only beautiful, positive, full of suggestion, but vast, flowing, of infinite promise. It is dynamics that

Herschell [ Herschel 2. John Frederick William Herschel (1792–1871), English astronomer known for his catalogues of the stars at the Cape of Good Hope. dispondency [ despondency

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interest us now, and from electricity and music we borrow the best illustrations of what we know. Let no one doubt that these grand efforts at synthesis are capable of as strict analysis. Indeed, it is wonderful with what celerity and precision the one process follows up the other. Of this great life which has risen from the stalk and the leaf into bud, and will, in the course of this age, be in full flower, Beethoven is the last and greatest exponent. His music is felt by every soul whom it affects to be the explanation of the past, and the prophecy of the future. It contains the thoughts of the time. A dynasty of great men preceded him, each of whom made conquests and accumulated treasures which prepared the way for his successor. Bach, Handel, Haydn, Mozart, were corner-stones of the glorious temple.3 Who shall succeed Beethoven? A host of musicians full of talent, even of genius, live now he is dead, but the greatest among them is confessed by all men to be but of Lilliputian size compared with this demi-god. Indeed, it should be so!— As copious draughts of soul have been given to the earth as she can quaff for a century or more.—Disciples and critics must follow to gather up the gleanings of the golden grain. It is observable as an earnest of the great Future which opens on this country that such a genius is so easily and so much appreciated here, by those who have not gone through the steps that prepared the way for him in Europe. He is felt, because he expresses, in full tones, the thoughts that lie at the heart of our own existence, though we have not found means even to stammer them as yet. To those who have obtained some clue to all this—and their number is daily on the increase—this biography of Beethoven will be very interesting. They will there find a picture of the great man, as he looked and moved in actual life, though imperfectly painted, as by one who saw the figure from too low a stand-point. It will require the united labors of a constellation of minds to paint the portrait of Beethoven. That of his face, as seen in life, prefixed to these volumes, is better than any we have seen. It bears tokens of the force, the grandeur, the grotesque of his genius, and, at the same time, shows the melancholy that came to him from the great misfortune of his life, his deafness, and the affectionateness of his deep heart.

3. Johann Sebastian Bach (1685–1750), German composer; Georg Friedrich Handel (1685–1759), German-born composer; Joseph Haydn (1732–1809), Austrian composer; Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756–91), Austrian composer.

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Moscheles gives a very pleasing account of his first cognizance of Beethoven “I have been placed under the guidance and tuition of Dionysius Weber, the founder and present director of the Prague Musical Conservatory; and he, fearing that, in my eagerness to read new music, I might injure the systematic development of my pianoforte playing, prohibited the library, (a circulating musical library); and, in a plan for my musical education which he laid before my parents, made it an express condition, that for three years I should study no other authors but Mozart, Clementi, and S. Bach. I must confess, however, that, in spite of such prohibitions, I visited the library, gaining access to it through my pocket money. It was about this time that I learned from some schoolfellows that a young composer had appeared at Vienna, who wrote the oddest stuff possible—such as no one could either play or understand; crazy music, in opposition to all rule; and that this composer’s name was Beethoven. On repairing to the library to satisfy my curiosity as to this so-called eccentric genius, I found there Beethoven’s Sonate pathetique. This was in the year 1804. My pocket money would not suffice for the purchase of it, so I secretly copied it. The novelty of its style was so attractive to me, and I became so enthusiastic in my admiration of it, that I forgot myself so far as to mention my new acquisition to my master, who reminded me of his injunction, and warned me not to play or study any eccentric productions until I had based my style upon more solid models.—Without, however, minding his injunctions, I seized upon the pianoforte works of Beethoven as they successively appeared, and in them found a solace and delight such as no other composer afforded me. In the year 1809, my studies with my master, Weber, closed; and being then also fatherless, I chose Vienna for my residence to work out my future musical career. Above all, I longed to see and become acquainted with that man who had exercised so powerful an influence over my whole being; whom, though I scarcely understood, I blindly worshipped. I learnt that Beethoven was most difficult of access, and would admit no pupil but Ries; and for a long time, my anxiety to see him remained ungratified. In the year 1810, however, the longed-for opportunity presented itself. I happened to be one morning in the music shop of Demenico Artaria, who had just been publishing some of my early attempts at composition, when a man entered with short and hasty steps, and, gliding through the circle of ladies and professors assembled on business, or talking over musical matters, without looking up, as though he wished to pass unnoticed, made his way direct for Artaria’s private office at the bottom of the shop. Presently Artaria called me in, and said, “This is Beethoven!” and to the composer, “This is the youth of whom I have just been speaking to you.” Beethoven gave me a friendly nod, and said he had just been hearing a favor-

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able account of me. To some modest and humble expressions which I stammered forth, he made no reply, and seemed to wish to break off conversation. I stole away with a greater longing for that which I had sought than before this meeting, thinking to myself—“Am I then, indeed, such a nobody that he could not put one musical question to me? Nor express one wish to know who had been my master, or whether I had any acquaintance with his works?” My only satisfactory mode of explaining the matter and comforting myself for this omission, was in Beethoven’s tendency to deafness, for I had seen Artaria speaking close to his ear. But I made up my mind that the more I was excluded from the private intercourse which I so earnestly coveted, the closer I would follow Beethoven in all the productions of his mind.”

If Moscheles had never seen more of Beethoven, how rejoiced he would have been on reading his pathetic expressions recorded in those volumes, as to the misconstructions he knew his fellow men must put on conduct caused by his calamity, at having detected the true cause of coldness, in his own instance, and that no mean suggestions of offended vanity made him false to the genius, because repelled by the man. Moscheles did see him further, and learned a great deal from the intercourse, though it never became intimate. He closes with these excellent remarks: “My feelings with respect to Beethoven’s music have undergone no variation, save to become warmer. In the first half-score of years of my acquaintance with his works, he was repulsive to me as well as attractive: In each of them, while I felt my mind fascinated by the prominent idea, and my enthusiasm kindled by the flashes of his genius, his unlooked for episodes, shrill dissonances, and bold modulations gave me an unpleasant sensation—But how soon did I become reconciled to them! All that had appeared hard, I soon found indispensable. The gnome-like pleasantries, which at first appeared too distorted—the stormy masses of sound, which I found too chaotic—I have, in after times, learned to love. But, while retracting early critical exceptions, I must still maintain as my creed, that eccentricities like those of Beethoven’s are reconcilable with his works alone, and are dangerous models to other composers, many of whom have been wrecked in their attempts at imitation.”

No doubt the peculiarities of Beethoven are inimitable, though as great would be as welcome in a mind of equal greatness. The natural office of such a genius is to rouse others to a use and knowledge of their own faculties, never to induce imitation of its own individuality.

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As an instance of the justness and undoubting clearness of such a mind as to its own methods, take the following anecdote, from Beethoven’s “Pupil Ries.” “All the ‘initiated’ must be interested in the striking fact which occurred respecting one of Beethoven’s last solo-Sonatas (in B major, with the great fugue Op. 106)—a Sonata which has forty-one pages of print. Beethoven had sent it to me to London for sale, that it might appear there at the same time as in Germany. The engraving was completed, and I in daily expectation of the letter naming the day of publication. This arrived at last, but with this extraordinary request:—‘Prefix the beginning of the Adagio.’ This Adagio has from nine to ten pages in print. I own the thought struck me involuntarily that all might not be right with my dear old master, a rumor to that effect having often been spread. What! add two notes to a composition already worked out and out, and completed six months ago? But my astonishment was yet to be heightened by the effect of these two notes. Never could such be found again,—no, not even if contemplated at the very beginning of the composition. I would advise every true lover of the art to play this Adagio first without, and then with these two notes, which now form the first bar, and I have no doubt he will share in my opinion.”

No instance could more forcibly show how in the case of Beethoven, as in that of other transcendent geniuses, the cry of insanity is raised by vulgar minds on witnessing extraordinary manifestations of power. Such geniuses perceive results so remote, are alive to combinations so subtle, that common men cannot be raised to see why they think or do as they do, and settle the matter easily to their own satisfaction, by crying, “He hath a devil.”—“He is mad.” Genius perceives the efficacy of slight signs of thought and loves best the simplest symbols; coarser minds demand coarse work; long preparations,— long explanations. But genius heeds them not, but searches and searches the atmosphere with irresistible parity, till they also are pervaded byn the delicate influence, which, too subtle for their ears and eyes, enters with the air they breathe, or through the pores of the skin. The life of a Beethoven is written in his works, and all that can be told of his life beside is but as marginal notes on that broad page. Yet since we have these notes, it is pleasant to have them in harmony with the page. The acts and words of Beethoven are what we should expect, noble, leonine, impetuous, but be [ by

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tender. His faults are the faults of one so great that he found few paths wide enough for his tread and knew not how to moderate it. They are not faults in themselves, but only in relation to the men who surrounded him. Among his peers he would not have had faults. As it is they hardly deserve the name.— His acts were generally great and benignant: only in transports of sudden passion at what he thought base did he ever injure any one. If he found himself mistaken, he could not humble himself enough, but far outwent, in his contrition, what was due to those he had offended. So it is apt to be with magnanimous and tender natures; they will humble themselves in a way that those of coarser or colder make think shows weakness or want of proper pride. But they do so because a little discord and a little wrong is as painful to them as a great deal to others. In one of his letters to a young friend, Beethoven thus humbly confesses his errors: “I could not converse with you and yours with that peace ofn mind which I could have desired, for the late wretched altercation was hovering before me, showing me my own despicable conduct. But so it was; and what would I not give, could I obliterate from the page of my life this past action, so degrading to my character and so unlike my usual proceedings.”

It seems this action of his was not of importance in the eyes of others. Of the causes which acted upon him at such times he gives intimations in another letter. “I have been wrought into this burst of passion by many an unpleasant circumstance of an earlier date. I have the gift of concealing and restraining my irritability on many subjects; but if I happen to be touched at any time when I am more than usually susceptible of anger, I burst forth more violently than any one else. B. has doubtless most excellent qualities, but he thinks himself utterly without faults, and yet is most open to those for which he blames others. He has a littleness of mind which I have held in contempt since my infancy.”

As a correspondent example of the manner in which true greatness apologises for its errors, we must quote a letter lately made public from Sir Isaac Newton to Mr. Locke:4 peace [ peace of 4. Sir Isaac Newton (1642–1727), English natural philosopher and mathematician.

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“Sir: Being of the opinion that you endeavored to embroil me with women, and by other means, I was so much affected with it, as when one told me you were sickly and would not live, I answered ’twere better if you were dead. I desire you to forgive me this uncharitableness, for I am now satisfied that what you have done is just, and I beg your pardon for having had hard thoughts of you for it, and for representing that you struck at the root of morality, in a principle you laid in your book of ideas, and designed to pursue in another book, and that I took you for a Hobbist. I beg you pardon also for saying or thinking that there was a design to sell me an office or to embroil me. I am your most humble and unfortunate servant. “Is. Newton.”n

And this letter, observe, was quoted as proof of insanity in Newton. Locke, however, shows by his reply that he did not think the power of full sincerity and elevation above self-love proved a man to be insane. At a happy period Beethoven thus unveils the generous sympathies of his heart: “My compositions are well paid, and I may say I have more orders than I can well execute; six or seven publishers and more being ready to take any of my works; I need no longer submit to being bargained with; I ask my terms, and am paid. You see this is an excellent thing; as, for instance, I see a friend in want, and my purse does not at the moment permit me to assist him, I have but to sit down and write, and my friend is no longer in need.”

Some additional particulars are given in the letters collected by Moscheles of the struggles of his mind at the coming on of deafness. This calamity falling upon the greatest genius of his time, in the prime of manhood, a calamity which threatened to destroy, not only all enjoyment of life, but the power of using the vast treasure with which he had been endowed for the use of all men, casts common ills so into the shade that they can scarcely be seen. Who dares complain, since Beethoven could resign himself to such an ill at such a time as this? “This beautiful country of mine, what was my lot in it? The hope of a happy futurity. This might now be realized if I were freed from my affliction. Oh! freed from that, I should compass the world! I feel it, my youth is but beginning—have I not been hitherto but a sickly creature? My physical powers have for some time been materially increasing, those of my mind likewise; I Newton. [ Newton.”

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feel myself nearer and nearer the mark—I feel, but cannot describe it. This alone is the vital principle of your Beethoven. No rest for me, I know of none but in sleep, and I grieve at having to sacrifice to it more time than I have hitherto deemed necessary. Take but one half of my disease from me, and I will return to you a matured and accomplished man, renewing the ties of our friendship, for you shall see as happy as I may be in this sublunary world—not as a sufferer—no, that would be more that I could bear. I will blunt the sword of fate—it shall not utterly destroy me. How beautiful it is to live a thousand lives in one!—No, I am not made for a retired life—I feel it.”

He did blunt the sword of fate; he did live a thousand lives in one; but that sword had power to inflict a deep and poisoned wound; those thousand lives cost him the pangsn of a thousand deaths. He, born for perpetual conquest, was condemned through life to “resignation.” Let any man, disposed to complain of his own ills, read the “Will” of Beethoven; and see if he dares speak of himself above a whisper, after. The matter of interest new to us in this English book is in notes and appendix. Schindler’s biography, whose plain and naive style is fit for the subject, is ironed out and plaited afresh to suit the “genteel” English in this translation. Elsewhere, we have given in brief the strong lineaments, and piquant anecdotes from this biography; here there is not room.5 Smooth and shorn as it is we wish the translation might be reprinted here. We may give at parting two directions for the study of Beethoven’s genius and the perusal of his biography in two sayings of his own. For the biography—“The limits have never yet been discovered which genius and industry could not transcend.” For the music—“From the depths of the soul brought forth, she (Poesy) can only by the depths of the soul be received or understood.”  Review of Anton Schindler, The Life of Beethoven, Including His Correspondence with his Friends, Numerous Characteristic Traits, and Remarks on his Musical Works, ed. Ignace Moschelles (London: Henry Colburn, 1841). New-York Daily Tribune, 7 February 1845, p. 1; reprinted, New-York Weekly Tribune, 8 February 1845, p. 1. Title supplied. Ludwig van Beethoven (1770–1827), famous German composer; Ignaz Moscheles (1794–1870), German pianist and composer.

thepangs [ the pangs 5. See Fuller’s “Lives of the Great Composers, Haydn, Mozart, Handel, Bach, Beethoven” in the October 1841 Dial.

[Review of Henry R. Schoolcraft, Oneota, or The Red Race of America]


Now that the Red Race have well nigh melted from our sight, relentings and regret arise that they had not been more prized, at least as an object of study. With the primitive features of the landscape this primitive aspect of human nature was indissolubly united; before the advance of the white settler both vanish, almost with the rapidity of thought, and soon will be but a memory, yet we should wish that memory to be faithful for there was a grandeur in that landscape, and in the figures that animated it, in itself too poetic, to be misused as theme or suggestion for mere fancy pictures. Mr. Schoolcraft possesses unusual pretensions to this rare merit of fidelity. His long and intimate connexion with the race, and the knowledge possessed by his wife and her family of the people from whom they were descended on the mother’s side, combined with a power of examining materials from the European point of view, have brought into his possession a large stock of valuable and well-prepared materials. We hope the public will, by a ready sympathy, encourage him to devote himself to arranging them all for general use. Mr. Schoolcraft gives the following account of the prejudices which he shares with most of our people, the hatred of the injurer for the injured. “My earliest impressions of the Indian race were drawn from fireside rehearsals of incidents which had happened during the perilous times of the American Revolution, in which my father was a zealous actor, and were all inseparably connected with the fearful ideas of the Indian yell, the tomahawk, the scalping knife, and the fire-brand. In these recitals the Indian was depicted as the very impersonation of evil—a sort of wild demon, who delighted in nothing so much as blood and murder. Whether he had mind, was governed by any reasons, or even had any soul, nobody inquired, and nobody cared. It was always represented as a meritorious act in old Revolutionary reminiscences, to have killed one of them in the border wars, and thus aided in ridding the land of a cruel and unnatural race, in whom all feelings of pity, justice, and mercy were supposed to be obliterated. These early ideas were sustained by printed 80

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narratives of captivity and hair-breadth escapes of men and women from their clutches, which, from time to time, fell into my hands, so that, long before I was ten years old, I had a most definite and terrific idea impressed on my imagination of what was sometimes called in my native precincts ‘the bow and arrow race.’ ”

Although he knew in his ‘native precincts’ a few Indians, whose gentle and peaceable conduct, when undisturbed by aggression, might have dispelled such prejudices, he says they did not yield till he saw the Red man in large masses, in their own place, and their own life. After such acquaintance he says: “The Indians, viewed as a distinct branch of the human race, have some peculiar traits and institutions, from which their history and character may be advantageously studied. They hold some opinions, which are not easily discovered by a stranger or a foreigner, but which yet exert a powerful influence on their life and conduct. There is a subtlety in some of their modes of thought and belief, on life and the existence of spiritual and creative power, which would seem to have been eliminated from some intellectual crucible, without the limits of their present sphere. Yet, there is much relative to all the common concerns of life, which is peculiar to it. The author has witnessed many practices and observances, such as travelers have often noticed, but, like others, attributed them to accident, or some cause different from the true one. By degrees, he has been admitted into their opinions, and, if we may so call it, the philosophy of their minds; and the life of an Indian no longer appears to him a mystery.”

The following extract gives a fair notion of the degree of liberality and discernment to be expected from this observer: “Books, and the readers of books, have done much to bewilder and perplex the study of the Indian character. Fewer theories and more observation, less fancy and more fact, might have brought us to much more correct opinions than those which are now current. The Indian is, after all, believed to be a man much more fully under the influence of common sense notions, and obvious every-day motives of thought and action, hope and fear, than he passes for. If he does not come to the same conclusions, on passing questions, as we do, it is precisely because he sees the premises, under widely differently circumstances. The admitted errors of barbarism and the admitted truths of civilization, are two very different codes. He is in want, of almost every source of true knowl-

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edge and opinion, which we possess. He has very imperfect notions on many of those branches of knowledge in what we suppose him best informed. He is totally in the dark as to others. His vague and vast and dreamy notions of the Great Author of Existence, and the mode of his manifestations, to the human race, and the wide and complicated system of superstition and transcendental idolatry which he had reared upon this basis, place him, at once, with all his sympathies and theories, out of the great pale of truth and civilization. This is one of the leading circumstances which prevents him from drawing his conclusions as we draw them. Placed under precisely similar circumstances, we should perhaps coincide in his opinions and judgments. But aside from these erroneous views, and after making just allowances for his ignorance and moral depression, the Indian is a man of plain common sense judgment, acting from what he knows, and sees, and feels, of objects immediately before him, or palpable to his view. If he sometime employs a highly figurative style to communicate his thoughts, and even stoops, as we now know he does, to amuse his fire-side circle with tales of extravagant and often wild demonic fancy, he is very far from being a man who, in his affairs of lands, and merchandise, and business, exchanges the sober thoughts of self preservation and subsistence, for the airy conceptions of fancy. The ties of consanguinity bind him strongly. The relation of the family is deep and well traced amongst the wildest tribes, and this fact alone forms a basis for bringing him back to all his original duties, and re-organizing Indian society. The author has, at least, been thrown into scenes and positions, in which this truth has strongly presented itself to his mind, and he believes the facts are of a character which will interest the reader, and may be of some use to the people themselves, so far as affects the benevolent plans of the age, if they do not constitute an increment in the body of observational testimony, of a practical nature, from which the character of the race is to be judged.”

Mr. Schoolcraft says, “The old idea that the Indian mind is not susceptible of a high, or an advantageous cultivation, rests upon very questionable data.” He might have added, that the experiment has never been tried. For ourselves, brought up, like others, in the vulgar notion that the Indian obstinately refused to be civilized, and long ignorant that the white man had no desire to make the red owner of the land,n his fellow citizen there, but to intoxicate, plunder, and then destroy or exile him, we have been amazed, on looking into such experiments as have been made, at the degree of success that has attended them. In every instance where any fidelity was shown to the duty of land [ land,

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reconciling two races opposed to one another in every characteristic of organization and manners, a surprising success has ensued. We mention this merely to do justice in word and thought; it is too late for act; the time is gone by when the possessors of the soil might have been united as one family with their invaders; nothing remains but to write their epitaph with some respect to truth. Mr. S. speaks of the Indian as pre-eminently a religious being. Here all writers agree. To his own standard of what is required by a supernatural power the Indian acts up. Old Adair has written most feelingly on this point,1 and we believe his descriptions of the Indian going forth on the dangerous and fatiguing war-path, without breaking his fast, trusting the Great Spirit, if solely relied on, would sustain his spirits and strength, unaided by material food, would have been pleasing and intelligibly grand to the Jewish lawgiver. Mr. S. mentions him, also, as being much more ruled by the gentler affections than is commonly supposed. There is a chapter on the family relations, where he attempts to prove that the position and advantages of women are by no means so inferior to those of men, as has been supposed; that she has not an undue share of labor, and that polygamy is not the common usage, is not approved by public opinion, and that there are always some, even in the wildest forests, who hold it in utter repugnance.—We are aware that the power of woman must be always great, for she cannot fail to be “the mistress of the lodge,” and that polygamy is put down always by unusual elevation of character; but we think Mr. S. overstates on his own side. There are too many incontestable facts on the other, and no one can see the Indian women without seeing that they occupy and have occupied for ages an inferior position. It is written on their forms, and in the soft melancholy of their eyes. There are two most interesting stories given of the conduct of first wives, when the husband chooses a second, that show alike the rule and the exception. We are pleased that Mr. Schoolcraft should head one portion of his record “Lives of Noted Men and Women,” and we will quote a specimen of noble character in each: “There lived a noted chief at Michilimackinac, in days past, called Gitsche Naygow, or the Great-Sand-Dune, a name, or rather nick-name, which he had, probably, derived from his birth and early residence at a spot of very

1. James Adair (1709?–83?), Irish-born trader who published The History of the American Indian in 1775.

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imposing appearance, so called, on the southern shore of Lake Superior, which is east of the range of the Pictured Rocks. He was a Chippewa, a warrior and a counsellor, of that tribe, and had mingled freely in the stirring scenes of war and border foray, which marked the closing years of French domination in the Canadas. He lived to be very old, and became so feeble at last, that he could not travel by land, when Spring came on and his people prepared to move their lodges, from their sugar-camp in the forest, to the open lake shore. They were then inland, on the waters of the Monistee river, a stream which enters the northern shore of Lake Michigan. It was his last winter on earth; his heart was gladdened by once more feeling the genial rays of Spring, and he desired to go with them, to behold, for the last time, the expanded lake and inhale its pure breezes. He must needs be conveyed by hand. This act of piety was performed by his daughter, then a young woman. She carried him on her back from their camp to the lake shore, where they erected their lodge and passed their spring, and where he eventually died and was buried. This relation I had from her own lips, at the agency of Michilimackinac, in 1833. I asked her how she had carried him. She replied, with the Indian apekun, or head-strap. When tired she rested, and again pursued her way, onwa-be-win, by on-wa-be-win, or rest by rest, in the manner practised in carrying heavy packages over the portages. Her name was Nadowakwa, or the female Iroquois. She was then, perhaps, about fifty-five years of age, and the wife of a chief called Saganosh, whose home and jurisdiction were in the group of the St. Martin’s Islands, north of Michilimackinac. The incident was not voluntarily told, but came out, incidentally, in some inquiries I was making respecting historical events, in the vicinity.”

One other is of a Chief named Andaig Weos, who lived on the Lake Superior shore. Among several stories illustrative of his wisdom, honor, dignity and tact, we select the following: “A French trader had entered Lake Superior so late in the season, that with every effort, he could get no farther than Pointe La Petite Fille, before the ice arrested his progress. Here he was obliged to build his wintering house, but he soon ran short of provisions, and was obliged to visit La Pointe, with his men, in order to obtain fish—leaving his house and store-room locked, with his goods, ammunition, and liquors, and resolving to return immediately. But the weather came on so bad, that there was no possibility of his immediate return, and the winter proved so unfavorable that he was obliged to spend two months at that post.

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During this time, the chief Andaig Weos, with fifteen of his men, came out from the interior, to the shores of the lake, for the purpose of trading, each carrying a pack of beaver, or other furs. On arriving at the point La Petite Fille, they found the trader’s house locked and no one there. The chief said to his followers—It is customary for traders to invite Indians into their house, and to receive them politely; but as there is no one to receive us, we must act in accordance to circumstances. He then ordered the door to be opened, with as little injury as possible, walked in, with his party, and caused a good fire to be built in the chimney. On opening the store-door he found they could be supplied with all they wanted. He told his party, on no account to touch, or take away any thing, but to shut up the door, and said, “that he would, on the morrow, act the trader’s part.” They spent the night in the house. Early the next morning he arose and addressed them, telling them, that he would now commence trading with them. This he accordingly did, and when all was finished, he carefully packed up the furs, and piled the packs, and covered them with an oilcloth. He then again addressed them, saying that it was customary for a trader to give tobacco and a keg of spirits, when Indians had traded handsomely. He, therefore, thought himself authorized to observe this rule, and accordingly gave a keg of spirits and some tobacco. “The spirits,” he said, “must not be drank here. We must take it to our hunting camp,” and gave order for returning immediately. He then caused the doors to be shut, in the best manner possible, and the outer door to be barricaded with logs, and departed. When the traders returned, and found his house had been broken into, he began to bewail his fate, being sure he had been robbed; but on entering his store-room and beholding the furs, his fears were turned to joy. On examining his inventory, and comparing it with the amount of his furs, he declared, that had he been present, he could not have traded to better advantage, nor have made such a profit on his goods.”

There are valuable particulars given with regard to the growth of language, the change and disuse of arts. But we suppose Mr. Schoolcraft will go more thoroughly into these researches in some of the other works he proposes. His own personal reminiscences are not so written as to make them of much interest. As a writer of narrative he wants vivacity, terseness, and a tact of seizing upon the more important points, and leaving out or lightly touching on the rest. A quick but keen and broad glance we love in such narratives. To us, by far the most charming part of these records is in the legends or mythological tales. Those before us appear to be written down with a more

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simple fidelity than those in the Algic Researches.2 What those want of the artful, graceful construction we expect in the tales of cultivated minds is made up for by the free presence and subtle tokens of nature, and the lively play of fancy. They bring us closer to the Indian mind than any thing except the glance of the Indian eye. As a happy specimen of these and one very illustrative of Indian charactern we give in conclusion shingebiss. From the Odjibwa-Algonquin There was once a Shingebiss, [the name of a kind of duck]3 living alone, in a solitary lodge, on the shores of the deep bay of a lake, in a coldest winter weather. The ice had formed on the water, and he had but four logs of wood to keep his fire. Each of these would, however, burn a month; and, as there were but four cold winter months, they were sufficient to carry him through till spring. Shingebiss was hardy and fearless, and cared for no one. He would go out during the coldest day, and seek for places where flags and rushes grew through the ice, and plucking them up with his bill, would dive through the openings in quest of fish. In this way, he found plenty of food, while others were starving; and he went home daily ton his lodge, dragging strings of fish after him on the ice. Kabebonicca observed him, and felt a little piqued at his perseverence and good luck in defiance of the severest blasts of wind he could sent from the North West. “Why! this is a wonderful man,” said he; “he does not mind the cold, and appears as happy and contented as if it were the month of June. I will try whether he cannot be mastered.” He poured forth ten-fold colder blasts and drifts of snow, so that it was next to impossible to live in the open air. Still the fire of Shingebiss did not go out; he wore but a single strip of leather around his body, and he was seen, in the worst weather, searching the shores for rushes and carrying home fish. “I shall go and visit him,” said Kabebonicca one day, as he saw Shingebiss dragging along a quantity of fish; and accordingly, that very night he went to the door of his lodge. Meantime Shingebiss had cooked his fish and finished his meal, and was lying, partly on his side, before the fire, singing his songs. After Kabebonicca had come to the door, and stood listening there, he sang as follows: 2. Schoolcraft published Algic Researches in 1839. charactor [ character 3. Brackets are in the original. to [end of line] to [ to

[Review of Oneota, or The Red Race of America]

Ka Be Bon Oc Ca

Neej In In Ec. We-ya!

Ka Be Bon Oc Ca

Neej In In Ec. We-ya!

The number of words in this song are few and simple, but they are made up from compounds which carry the whole of their original meanings, and are rather suggestive of the ideas floating in the mind than actual expressions of those ideas. Literally he sings: Spirit of the North-West! you are but my fellow-man. By being broken into syllables to correspond with a simple chant, and by the power of intonation and repetition, with a chorus, these words are expanded into melodious utterance, if we may be allowed the term, and may be thus rendered: Windy god, I know your plan, You are but my fellow-man; Blow you may your coldest breeze, Shingebiss you cannot freeze; Sweep the strongest wind you can, Shingebiss is still your man. Heigh! for life—and ho! for bliss; Who so free as Shingebiss? The hunter knew that Kabebonicca was at his door, for he felt his cold and strong breath; but he kept on singing his songs, and affected utter indifference. At length Kabebonicca entered, and took his seat on the opposite side of the lodge; but Shingebiss did not regard or notice him. He got up as if nobody were present, and, taking his poker, pushed the log, which made the fire burn brighter, repeating as he sat down again; You are but my fellow-man. Very soon the tears began to flow down Kabebonicca’s cheeks, which increased so fast that presently he said to himself, “I cannot stand this—I must go out.” He did so, and left Shingebiss to his songs; but resolved to freeze up all the flag orifices and make the ice thick, so that he could not get any more

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fish. Still Shingebiss, by dint of great diligence, found means to pull up new roots and dive under for fish. At last Kabebonicca was compelled to give up the contest. “He must be aided by some Monedo,” said he; “I can neither freeze him, nor starve him; he is a very singular being. I will let him alone.”

 Review of Henry R. Schoolcraft, Oneota, or The Red Race of America; their History, Traditions, Customs, Poetry, Picture-Writing, &c. in Extracts from Notes, Journals and other unpublished Writings (New York: Burgess, Stringer, 1844). New-York Daily Tribune, 12 February 1845, p. 1; reprinted, New-York Weekly Tribune, 15 February 1845, p. 1. Title supplied. Henry Rowe Schoolcraft (1793–1864), ethnologist and explorer.

Mr. Hudson’s Lecture on Hamlet


The warm commendations from respected critics elsewhere, which had heralded the appearance of Mr. Hudson among us,1 secured him a good audience for his first lecture—good in every sense, both as including a sufficient range of minds and some of the best minds. We believe the audience were very favorably impressed. Indeed, no one could refuse sympathy to the straight-forward manner of the address. There was no phrasing, no pretension, no persuasion, but just what the lecturer had to say, stated without circumlocution. And, strange to say, this is a rare merit. Though any person, of native tact and shrewdness, must see that a manner of the greatest simplicity and directness, whether that manner be vulgar or refined, clumsy or beautiful, is the only one that can succeed, yet there are few who are not too weak or vain to act upon this knowledge. Their minds stammer, and their lips weave phrases in the face of a multitude; they dread its censure more than their own. Mr. Hudson faces his audience like a man; he is willing they should take him as he is, for better or for worse. Though his manner is, in itself, very bad, yet it is well calculated to set off his own best things. He brings down every sentence with a knock at the end, as if he was nailing down shingle after shingle, and when he makes a good hit, the effect is excellent. His general appearance is merely that of a Yankee pedlar, shrewd and knowing, but his eye has an unusual brilliancy, and when kindled by thought or feeling, gives forth sparks that do not fail to kindle the spectator likewise. They bespeak an intellect ardent but also genial, and which has the dignity of earnestness. We liked the lecturer better than his lecture, and expect more satisfaction from that on Macbeth, which we shall attend next Friday evening. The view

1. Henry Norman Hudson (1814–86), lecturer and Shakespearean scholar. He later published Lectures on Shakespeare in 1848. The Tribune published a summary of the lecture on Macbeth (24 February 1845) and on the genius of Shakespeare (27 February 1845).

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of Hamlet was not unworthy, but this is a theme where we are as fastidious as we can be with regard to any production of human genius. To speak of Hamlet is to speak of the whole capacity of man. The view which is taken of it by any one mind seems poor and partial to another, who, perhaps, could not succeed as well in reflecting the desired image. This revelation, as to our inmost nature, seems to have been given us as one of the few things great enough to be our companions and instructors through life; we may daily learn and draw illustrations from it, but the attempt to survey it from any one point is useless; we must first complete the circle of our own development. Some excellent things were said in speaking of Ophelia. We will not assail as to others where we are not pleased, since the character seems the idol of the lecturer’s imagination. We liked the energy of his feeling and expression about it, even when we were tired by his prolixity as to details. We should have many exceptions to take as to the sketch of Polonius. Shakespeare never painted men in that one-sided way. Polonius is as poor and mean, as bad as Mr. Hudson represents, but also better. The noble sentence, “To thine own self be true Thou canst not then be false to any man,”2

was represented by the politic old courtier, because that which had no root in his life found an echo in the chambers of his brain. Such seeming contradictions we see on every side; ay! here in New-York, in the next street thou may’st see them. The most selfish and worldly man will admire a grand sentiment till he is made to understand the cost of putting it into practice. Mr. Hudson’s style is worse that his elocution: it is overloaded, too full of antitheses, and diffuse. It reminds us of several well-known writers, and not of their best qualities. Here and there bursts of simple energy relieve it, and indicate the power of forming a better style and one more in harmony with the mind of the speaker. If people in general read Shakespeare, we must say, for ourselves, that we could not recommend their listening to these, or any lectures on the subject. Shakespeare is not a subject for critical essays, but for devoted study, reverence and love. It were better to yield ourselves to be raised by his power, without caring to take measure of our impressions at any one period, for they must vary 2. Hamlet, act 1, scene 3.

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with our growth. The world at large has felt this, and but little has been written expressly on Shakespeare, and of that little the least part by minds really worthy to share his influence. Some of these names we mention with gratitude. Of Schlegel we do not think as highly as is comfortable with the received opinion.3 Schlegel did not content himself with a simple statement of what he received, but tried too hard to comprehend and make a whole; therefore a large part of what he has written is without permanent value. The few sentences which Goethe has given are worth volumes of Schlegel.4 Goethe never overstates his thought, never pushes it beyond its natural limits; whatever he has given us is real experience, and of inestimable worth. All that Coleridge has said is admirable; perhaps the best things ever written on the plays of Shakespeare are in Coleridge’s “Remains.” Some noble and penetrating remarks, worthy to be put in the same line with those, may be found in essays, not yet published, by our countryman, R. H. Dana.5 Lamb is always excellent; what he says may not be perfectly just in itself, but it is the genuine result of genius upon his individuality, and valuable as the clear verdict of one mind.6 Mrs. Jameson sees and feels; there is always a basis of truth in her statements, but she gilds the refined gold, and paints the lily.7 With her and with Hazlitt Mr. Hudson may well compare.8 Those who take pleasure in them may take as much or more in him; for he has the warm sympathies of the lady without her sentimentality, and the brilliancy, and, sometimes, the point of Hazlitt, with a better moral nature. And thus, to the attention of the many who, as sad experience has convinced us, are so lost and poor as not to read Shakespeare, and to those others, many, if fewer, who, reading him, delight in a comparison of experiences, we cordially commend these lectures. They are the expressions of a sincere, an ardent, and vigorous mind, and if they do not meet the same reception as in a sister city, one of whose favorite “notions” it is to load a new acquaintance with garlands, only to give him the cold shoulder if he is encouraged to repeat his visit, perhaps a better grounded and more per-

3. Friedrich von Schlegel (1772–1829), German author and critic. 4. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749–1832), Germany’s most famous writer and a great favorite of Fuller’s, whose first extended literary project was to be a biography of him. 5. Richard Henry Dana, Sr. (1787–1879), poet, essayist, and founder of the North American Review. Fuller had attended his lectures in Providence. 6. Charles Lamb (1775–1834), English essayist and poet. 7. Anna Brownell Jameson (1794–1860), art and literary critic whose works Fuller reviewed later: see reviews of The Heroines of Shakespeare (30 June 1846) and Memoirs and Essays (24 July 1846). 8. William Hazlitt (1778–1830), English essayist, journalist, and critic.

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manent sympathy may be expected in an atmosphere where more various elements impede the too rapid spread of mental epidemics.  New-York Daily Tribune, 19 February 1845, p. 2; reprinted, New-York Weekly Tribune, 22 February 1845, p. 1.

[Review of Theodore Parker, The Excellence of Goodness]


This discourse derives interest, not so much from intrinsic claims, as from the circumstances under which it was delivered, and the position occupied by the preacher in New England. We cannot wonder at the hopes entertained by the ancient Catholic church, of seeing its dominion renewed and strengthened on earth, when we see the almost universal dereliction among Protestants from the great principle of Protestantism;—respect for the right of private judgment and the decision of conscience in the individual. From Luther downward, each sect claiming to be Protestant, has claimed no less to utter its anathema against those who differed from it, with the authority of a Golden Bull, nor were Lutherans distinguished for tolerating any new evidences of the spirit of Luther. In our own country this has been manifested in the most marked manner. The Puritans came hither to vindicate for themselves the rights of conscience, but learnt from their experience of suffering no lesson that enabled them to respect those rights in others,n and, as yet, in this country, after so many years of political tolerance, there exists very little notion, far less practice, of spiritual tolerance. Men cannot be content, even in cases where they see the practice bear excellent fruit, to leave the doctrine between the man and his God. Each little coterie has its private pope, distinguished, indeed, from the old by the impossibility of obtaining from him indulgences (at least for heresy;) and an infidelity in the power of Truth, and the wisdom of the Ruler of the Universe is betrayed, which darkens the intellect and checks the good impulses of natural sympathy. The Unitarians of New-England saw these errors, in looking over the history of opinion, and promised themselves and others that they would refrain from such. They arrogated to themselves the title of Liberal Christians, and

others. [ others,

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they did not fail to be steadily admonished, by the dread, the scorn, or unthinking blame, heaped by other sects upon them, of the desirableness of reviving in Christendom the spirit of him who feared not to call the Gentile to his flock, and had no difficulty in worshiping upon the mountains outside Jewry, “By their fruits,” said he, “Ye shall know them.”1 There have not been wanting some among them who were true to this desire, and could be called liberal Christians, not only in reference to those who did not go so far, but to those who went a little farther than themselves. The late Dr. Channing, the greatest man who has yet arisen among them, was truly a liberal Christian.2 He had confidence in the vital energy of Truth, and was not afraid to trust others with the same privileges he had vindicated for himself, even if they made use of them in a different manner. He had preached much of “the dignity of human nature,” and he showed by his tolerance of its varied manifestations and modes of growth, that he deeply believed what he preached. How often must we mourn his departure! for there seems to be no mind which, by its union of decision and mildness with an appreciation of its own principles, could so well fulfil the office of a Peace-maker. For that office consists not in hushing up truth, or stifling individual feeling, but in allowing distinctly the claims of all, and casting a light from above upon their nature and their significance. He is much wanted now to cast this light upon the course taken by the Unitarian clergy in the case of Mr. Parker. Mr. Parker was a highly esteemed member of the Christian Unitarian body till, some four years since, he uttered himself with freedom on a few points, in a way distasteful to the majority.3 Part of the offence consisted in views expressed by him as to the nature of inspiration, and the facts of Bible history, in which he really differs from the majority; part in attacks upon abuses which he saw, or thought he saw, in the church to which he belonged, such as may be inferred from the heads of “The Pharisees,” “Idolatry,” &c. Then arose a good deal of outcry which was well, for it called on Mr. Parker to explain himself, and give the multitude of hearers an opportunity to consider his arguments, and judge whether they coincided with his censures. He 1. “Whereby their fruits, ye shall know them” (Matthew 7:20). 2. William Ellery Channing (1780–1842), the most famous Unitarian minister of the day, and a supporter of abolitionism. 3. Parker’s Discourse on the Transient and Permanent in Christianity (1841), which conservative Unitarians considered scandalous because of its lack of respect for the historical veracity of the Bible and the person of Jesus, nearly got him expelled from the main ministerial organization.

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delivered many lectures to full and eager audiences, and, no doubt, where there existed in that community a tendency congenial with his, has been a principal agent in its development. At the same time, a very strong and wide dissent was manifested.n A tacit persecution followed on the part of the clergy, in which they were sustained by a part of the community. It was almost impossible for Mr. Parker to obtain an exchange with any pulpit. As to this, we think that a clergyman has a right to avoid uncongenial cooperation in this way, just as he has to decline uncongenial books, or uncongenial visitors, but we think also that it is unwise to exercise this right. 1st; because we all need uncongenial statements, and the view of the other side, to prevent the mind from becoming petrified and narrowed. Free air is needed, even if it doesn sometimes come harshly, sometimes sultry. 2d; it is the sure way to give the proscribed party influence. So it was in this case. The flock ran out of the fold to seek the wolf. Mr. Parker was invited to lecture every where, and the meeting-house was deserted for the lecture-room. There seemed reason too to think that the clergy were not only repelled by the opinions of Mr. Parker, but nettled by his assaults, and extremely afraid of the scandal; that they had not confidence enough in those principles which had been the animating soul of their body to be raised above dread of the comment passed by other sects upon this latitudinarian conduct among them. “It will do great hurt,” they cried, and, in so doing, echoed the tones of bigotry about themselves and deserted their banner. Still it was not so bad while each one, for himself merely, abstained from exchanging with Mr. Parker and cast private blame on the few who did, as they might have censured any other act in which they, as men, did not sympathize. Their censure was personal more than clerical. But there has lately been an attempt to put down bodily any willingness to make these exchanges, which deserves severe censure, and will receive it from the page of history. Two clergymen, the Rev. Mr. Sargentn and the Rev. Mr. Clarke, of the Church of the Disciples,4 have this winter chosen to exchange with the

manifested [ manifested. do [ does Sargeant [ Sargent 4. John Turner Sargent (1808–77), liberal Unitarian who ministered to the poor; James Freeman Clarke (1810–58), Unitarian minister who began his Church of the Disciples in Boston in 1841, and friend of Fuller’s since they were young.

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excommunicated preacher, not, as they explicitly declare, from sympathy with his doctrines, but with the wise and generous perception that, in so doing, they upheld the principles of liberal Christianity, allowing to each man the right of private interpretation as to the great truths he professes to acknowledge, and the right to be heard, if he can find persons disposed to listen.5 For these acts they have been visited, the one by the associate clergy, the other by certain self-elected deacons of his church, with a sort and degree of reproof entirely false to the basis Unitarian Christianity assumed in its early stages. Much has been spoken and published on this subject and much in a spirit of narrowness, and short-sighted self-conceit, mortifying to those who look upon Massachusetts as a candle set upon a hill. Remarks have been published such as could not have been expected at this stage of mental development in the civilized world. The effect, of course, of all the opposition has been to strengthen Mr. Parker. Hundreds go to hear him to one that went before. The Rev. Mr. Clarke, of the Church of the Disciples, has, in the public prints upon this occasion, in a truly manly and enlightened manner, exhibited the true grounds and modes of tolerance. The discourse before us is the one preached upon the occasion of his exchange with Mr. Parker.—There is nothing very marked in it; except a large and healthy manner of treatment; the writer did not take the occasion to bring forward his peculiar views. Mr. Parker is a man of vigorous abilities and extensive information. He writes in a forcible and full, but not diffuse, style. His great attraction for his hearers is his perfect frankness. He is willing to lay his mind completely open, without circumlocution or complaisance, and possesses the power of doing this adequately. What God sees, man may see and make what use of it he can.—He is no orator, but has a full and manly style of speaking commensurate with his matter. We do not find in Mr. Parker a depth of spiritual discernment, nor the poetic faculty.n He is, as a mind, more broadn than high or deep. Persons of far inferior mental development can see clearly fallacies in his esti-

5. The Boston Association of Congregational Ministers had forbidden its members to exchange with Parker because they believed his views to be heretical. In November 1844 Sargent, a member of the association, allowed Parker to preach in his church and was forced to resign his position as a result. In January 1845, Clarke, even though he disagreed with Parker’s views, also allowed Parker to preach but, because Clarke was an independent minister, no action could be taken. The Excellence of Goodness was Parker’s discourse upon the latter occasion. poeticfaculty. [ poetic faculty. bread [ broad

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mate of facts in religious history. He is too combative for our taste; he loves to assail the false, or what he esteems to be such, as well as to declare truths. But his large ken and mental integrity entitle him to be heard. We doubt not that any agitation caused by him in the atmosphere will show, in its results, the purifying power of electricity. And we regret that, in the nineteenth century, “liberal Christians” should not be liberal enough cheerfully to allow an honorable mind free course, and fearlessly leave the result to God and His unfailing Agent, Time.  Review of Theodore Parker, The Excellence of Goodness. A Sermon Preached in the Church of the Disciples, in Boston, on Sunday, January 26, 1845 (Boston: Benjamin H. Greene, 1845). New-York Daily Tribune, 26 February 1845, p. 1; reprinted, New-York Weekly Tribune, 1 March 1845, p. 1. Title supplied. Theodore Parker (1810–60), reformist minister and abolitionist.

Our City Charities. Visit To Bellevue Alms House, to the Farm School, the Asylum for the Insane, and Penitentiary on Blackwell’s Island


The aspect of Nature was sad; what is worse, it was dull and dubious, when we set forth on these visits. The sky was leaden and lowering, the air unkind and piercing, the little birds sat mute and astonished at the departure of the beautiful days which had lured them to premature song. It was a suitable day for such visits. The pauper establishments that belong to a great city take the place of the skeleton at the banquets of old. They admonish us of stern realities, which must bear the same explanation as the frequent blight of Nature’s bloom. They should be looked at by all, if only for their own sakes, that they may not sink listlessly into selfish ease, in a world so full of disease. They should be looked at by all who wish to enlighten themselves as to the means of aiding their fellow creatures in any way, public or private. For nothing can really be done till the right principles are discovered, and it would seem they still need to be discovered or elucidated, so little is done, with a great deal of desire in the heart of the community to do what is right. Such visits are not yet calculated to encourage and exhilarate, as does the story of the Prodigal Son; they wear a grave aspect and suit the grave mood of a cold Spring day. At the Alms House there is every appearance of kindness in the guardians of the poor, and there was a greater degree of cleanliness and comfort than we had expected. But the want of suitable and sufficient employment is a great evil. The persons who find here either a permanent or temporary refuge have scarcely any occupation provided except to raise vegetables for the establishment, and prepare clothing for themselves. The men especially have the most vagrant, degraded air, and so much indolence must tend to confirm them in every bad habit. We were told that, as they are under no strict discipline, their labor at the various trades could not be made profitable; yet surely the means of such should be provided, even at some expense. Employments of various kinds must be absolutely needed, if only to counteract the bad effects of such a position. Every establishment in aid of the poor should be planned with a view to their education. There should be instruction, both practical and in the 98

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use of books, openings to a better intercourse than they can obtain from their miserable homes, correct notions as to cleanliness, diet, and fresh air. A great deal of pains would be lost in their case, as with all other arrangements for the good of the many, but here and there the seed would fall into the right places, and some members of the down-trodden million, rising a little from the mud, would raise the whole body with them. As we saw old women enjoying their dish of gossip and their dish of tea, and mothers able for a while to take care in peace of their poor little children, we longed and hoped for that genius, who shall teach how to make, of these establishments, places of rest and instruction, not of degradation. The causes which make the acceptance of public charity so much more injurious to the receiver than that of private are obvious, but surely not such that the human mind which has just invented the magnetic telegraph and Anastatic printing,1 may not obviate them. A deeper religion at the heart of Society would devise such means. Why should it be that the poor may still feel themselves men; paupers not? The poor man does not feel himself injured but benefitted by the charity of the doctor who gives him back the bill he is unable to pay, because the doctor is acting from intelligent sympathy—from love. Let Society do the same. She might raise the man, who is accepting her bounty, instead of degrading him. Indeed, it requires great nobleness and faith in human nature, and God’s will concerning it, for the officials not to take the tone toward these under their care, which their vices and bad habits prompt, but which must confirm them in the same. Men treated with respect are reminded of self-respect, and if there is a sound spot left in the character, the healthy influence spreads. We were sorry to see mothers with their newborn infants exposed to the careless scrutiny of male visitors. In the hospital, those who had children scarce a day old were not secure from the gaze of the stranger. This cannot be pleasant to them, and, if they have not refinement to dislike it, those who have should teach it to them. But we suppose there is no woman who has so entirely lost sight of the feelings of girlhood as not to dislike the scrutiny of strangers at a time which is sacred, if any in life is. Women they may like to see, even strangers, if they can approach them with delicacy. In the yard of the hospital, we saw a little Dutch girl, a dwarf, who would

1. Anastatic printing describes printing from characters in relief on zinc plates, wherein the design is transferred to a zinc plate and the parts not covered with ink are eaten out, leaving a facsimile in relief to be printed from.

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have suggested a thousand poetical images and fictions to the mind of Victor Hugo or Sir Walter Scott.2 She had been brought here to New-York, as we understood, by some showman and then deserted, so that this place was her only refuge. No one could communicate with her or know her feelings, but she showed what they were, by running to the gate whenever it was opened, though treated with familiar kindness and seeming pleased by it. She had a large head, ragged dark hair, a glowering wizard eye, an uncouth yet pleasant smile, like an old child;—she wore a gold ring, and her complexion was as yellow as gold, if not as bright; altogether she looked like a gnome, more than any attempt we have ever known to embody in Art that fabled inhabitant of the mines and secret caves of earth. From the Alms House we passed in an open boat to the Farm School. We were unprepared to find this, as we did, only a school upon a small farm, instead of one in which study is associated with labor. The children are simply taken care of and taught the common English branches till they are twelve years old, when they are bound out to various kinds of work. We think this plan very injudicious. It is bad enough for the children of rich parents, not likely in after life to bear a hard burden, and who are, at any rate, supplied with those various excitements required to develope the character in the earliest years; it is bad enough, we say, for these to have no kind of useful labor mingled with their plays and studies. Even these children would expand more, and be more variously called forth, and better prepared for common life, if another course were pursued. But, in schools like this at the farm, where the children, on leaving it, will be at once called on for adroitness and readiness of mind and body, and where the absence of natural ties and the various excitements that rise from them inevitably give to life a mechanical routine calculated to cramp and chill the character, it would be peculiarly desirable to provide various occupations, and such as are calculated to prepare for common life. As to economy of time, there is never time lost, by mingling other pursuits with the studies of children; they have vital energy enough for many things at once, and learn more from books when their attention is quickened by other kinds of culture. Some of these children were pretty, and they were healthy and well-grown, considering the general poverty or vice of the class from which they were taken. That terrible scourge, ophthalmia, disfigured many among them. This 2. Victor Marie Hugo (1802–85), French poet, novelist, and dramatist; Sir Walter Scott (1771–1832), prolific Scottish novelist.

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disease, from some cause not yet detected, has been prevalent here for many years. We trust it may yield to the change of location next summer. There is not water enough here to give the children decent advantages as to bathing. This, too, will be remedied by the change. The Principal, who has been almost all his life connected with this establishment and that at Bellevue, seemed to feel a lively interest in his charge. He has arranged the dormitories with excellent judgment, both as to ventilation and neatness. This, alone, is a great advantage these children have over those of poor families living at home. They may pass the night in healthy sleep, and have thereby a chance for innocent and active days. We saw with pleasure the little children engaged in the kind of drill they so much enjoy, of gesticulation regulated by singing. It was also pretty to see the babies sitting in a circle and the nurses in the midst feeding them, alternately, with a spoon. It seemed like a nest full of little birds, each opening its bill as the parent returns from her flight. Hence we passed to the Asylum for the Insane. Only a part of this building is completed, and it is well known that the space is insufficient. Twice as many are inmates here as can be properly accommodated. A tolerable degree, however, of order and cleanliness is preserved. We could not but observe the vast difference between the appearance of the insane here and at Bloomingdale, or other Institutions where the number of attendants and nature of the arrangements permit them to be the objects of individual treatment; that is, where the wants and difficulties of each patient can be distinctly and carefully attended to. At Bloomingdale, the shades of character and feeling were nicely kept up, decorum of manners preserved, and the insane showed in every way that they felt no violent separation betwixt them and the rest of the world, and might easily return to it. The eye, though bewildered, seemed lively, and the tongue prompt. But here, insanity appeared in its more stupid, wild, or despairing forms. They crouched in corners; they had no eye for the stranger, no heart for hope, no habitual expectation of light. Just as at the Farm School, where the children show by their unformed features and mechanical movements that they are treated by wholesale, so do these poor sufferers. It is an evil incident to public establishments, and which only a more intelligent public attention can obviate. One figure we saw, here also, of high poetical interest. It was a woman seated on the floor, in the corner of her cell, with a shawl wrapped gracefully around her head and chest, like a Nun’s veil. Her hair was grey, her face attenuated and very pallid, her eyes large, open, fixed and bright with a still fire. She

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never moved them nor ceased chanting the service of the Church. She was a Catholic, who became insane while preparing to be a Nun. She is surely a Nun now in her heart; and a figure from which a painter might study for some of the most consecrated subjects. Passing to the Penitentiary, we entered on one of the gloomiest scenes that deforms this great metropolis. Here are the twelve hundred, who receive the punishment due to the vices of so large a portion of the rest. And under what circumstances! Never was punishment treated more simply as a social convenience, without regard to pure right, or a hope of reformation. Public attention is now so far awake to the state of the Penitentiary that it cannot be long, we trust, before proper means of classification are devised, a temporary asylum provided for those who leave this purgatory, even now, unwilling to return to the inferno from which it has for a time kept them, and means presented likely to lead some, at least, among the many, who seem hardened, to better views and hopes. It must be that the more righteous feeling which has shown itself in regard to the prisons at Sing Sing and elsewhere, must take some effect as to the Penitentiary also. The present Superintendent enters into the necessity of such improvements, and, should he remain there, will do what he can to carry them into effect. The want of proper matrons, or any matrons, to take the care so necessary for the bodily or mental improvement or even decent condition of the seven hundred women assembled here, is an offence that cries aloud. It is impossible to take the most cursory survey of this assembly of women; especially it is impossible to see them in the Hospital, where the circumstances are a little more favorable, without seeing how many there are in whom the feelings of innocent childhood are not dead, who need only good influences and steady aid to raise them from the pit of infamy and wo into which they have fallen. And, if there was not one that could be helped, at least Society owes them the insurance of a decent condition while here. We trust that interest on this subject will not slumber. The recognized principles of all such institutions which have any higher object than the punishment of fault, (and we believe few among us are so ignorant as to avow that as the only object, though they may, from want of thought, act as if it were,) are—Classification as the first step, that the bad may not impede those who wish to do well; 2d. Instruction, practical, oral, and by furnishing books which may open entirely new hopes and thoughts to minds oftener darkened than corrupted; 3d. A good Sanitary system, which promotes self-respect, and, through health and purity of body, the same in mind.

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In visiting the Tombs the other day, we found the air in the upper galleries unendurable, and felt great regret that those confined there should be constantly subjected to it.3 Give the free breath of Heaven to all who are still permitted to breathe.—We cannot, however, wonder at finding this barbarity in a prison, having been subjected to it at the most fashionable places of public resort. Dr. Griscom has sent us his excellent lecture on the health of NewYork, which we recommend to all who take a vital interest in the city where they live, and have intellect to discern that a cancer on the body must in time affect the head and heart also.4 We thought, while reading, that it was not surprising typhus fever and ophthalmia should be bred in the cellars, while the families of those who live in palaces breathe such infected air at public places, and receive their visitors on New Year’s day by candle-light. (That was a sad omen for the New Year—did they mean to class themselves among those who love darkness rather than light?) We hope to see the two thousand poor people, and the poor children, better situated in their new abode, when we visit them again. The Insane Asylum will gain at once by enlargement of accommodations; but more attendance is also necessary, and, for that purpose, the best persons should be selected. We saw, with pleasure, tame pigeons walking about among the most violent of the insane, but we also saw two attendants with faces brutal and stolid. Such a charge is too delicate to be intrusted to any but excellent persons. Of the Penitentiary we shall write again. All criticism, however imperfect, should be welcome. There is no reason why New-York should not become a model for other States in these things. There is wealth enough, intelligence, and good desire enough, and surely, need enough. If she be not the best cared for city in the world, she threatens to surpass in corruption London and Paris. Such bane as is constantly poured into her veins demands powerful antidotes. But nothing effectual can be achieved while both measures and men are made the sport of political changes. It is a most crying and shameful evil, which does not belong to our institutions, but is a careless distortion of them, that the men and measures are changed in these institutions with changes from Whig to Democrat, from Democrat to Whig. Churches, Schools, Colleges, the care of the Insane, and suffering Poor, should be preserved from the uneasy tossings of this delirium. The Country, the State, should look to it that

3. The Tombs, a jail in New York City, was so called because it resembled an Egyptian temple. 4. John Hoskins Griscom (1809–74) published The Sanitary Condition of the Laboring Population of New York in 1845.

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only those fit for such officers should be chosen for such, apart from all considerations of political party. Let this be thought of; for without an absolute change in this respect no permanent good whatever can be effected; and farther, let not economy but utility be the rule of expenditure, for, here, parsimony is the worst prodigality.  New-York Daily Tribune, 19 March 1845, p. 1; reprinted, New-York Weekly Tribune, 22 March 1845, p. 1.

Writers Little Known Among Us. Milnes . . . Landor . . . Julius Hare.


As several readers have expressed their pleasure in the opportunity of reading the poems of milnes, with which we adorned a previous notice, we must copy one more, from among the “Memorials of Many Scenes.” It is not one of much poetic merit, but for its delicacy of feeling, and the living picture of a Southern moonlit night, delightful to read, especially in the frosty dullness of a Northern Spring: ode to the moon of the south Let him go down,—the gallant Sun! His work is nobly done: Well may He now absorb Within his solid orb The rays so beautiful and strong, The rays that have been out so long Embracing this delighted land as with a mystic song. Let the brave Sun go down to his repose, And though his heart be kind, He need not mourn for those He leaves behind; He knows, that when his ardent throne Is rolled beyond the vaulting sky, The earth shall not be left alone In darkness and perplexity. We shall not sit in sullen sorrow Expectant of a tardy morrow, But there where he himself arose, Another power shall rise, And gracious rivalry disclose 105

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To our reverted eyes, Between the passing splendor and the born, Which can the most our happy world adorn. The light of Night shall rise,— Not as in Northern skies, A memory of the day, a dream Of sunshine, something that might seem Between a shadow and a gleam, A mystery, a maiden Whose spirit worn and shadow-laden Pleasant imaginations wile Into a visionary smile, A novice veiled in vapory shrouds, A timid huntress, whom the clouds Rather pursue than shun,— With far another mien, Wilt thou come forth serene, Thou full and perfect Queen, Moon of the South! twin sister of the Sun! Still harbored in his tent of cloth of gold He seems thy ordered presence to await, In his pure soul rejoicing to behold The majesty of his successor’s state, Saluting thy assent With many a tender and triumphant tone Compassed in his celestial instrument, And harmonies of hue to other climes unknown. He, too, who knows what melody of word May with that visual music best accord Why does the Bard now his homage now delay? As in the ancient East, The royal Minstrel-Priest Sang to his harp that Hallelujah lay Of the Sun-bridegroom ready for his way, So, in the regions of the later West This blessed even-tide, Is there no Poet whose divine behest Shall be to hail the bride? A feeble voice may give an earnest sound, And grateful hearts are measured not by power,

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Therefore may I, tho’ nameless and uncrowned, Proffer a friendly tribute to thy dower. For on the midland Sea I sailed of old, Leading thy line of narrow rippled light, And saw it grow a field of frosted gold, With every boat a Shadow in the Bright; And many a playful fancy has been mine, As I have watched the shapes thy glory made, Glimpsing like starlight through the massive pine, Or finely trellised by mimosa shade; And now I trace each moment of thy spell, That frees from mortal stain these Venice isles. From eve’s rich shield to morn’s translucid shell, From Love’s young glow to Love’s expiring smiles! We gaze upon the faces we hold dear, Each feature in thy rays as well defined, As just a symbol of informing mind, As when the noon is on them full and clear; Yell all some wise attempted and subdued, Not far from what to Faith’s prospective eyes Transfigured creatures of beatitude From earthly graves arise. Those evenings, oh! those evenings, when with one, Then the world’s loveliness, now wholly mine, I stood beside the salient founts that shone Fit frontispiece to Peter’s Roman shrine; I knew how fair were She and They In every bright device of day, All happy as a lark on wing, A singing, glistening, dancing thing, With joy and grace they seemed to be Of nature’s pure necessity; But when, O holy moon! thy might Turned all the water into light, And each enchanted Fountain wore Diviner beauty then before A pillar of aspiring beams, An ever-falling veil of gleams,— She who in day’s most lively hour Had something of composing power

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About her mirthful lips and eyes,— Sweet folly making others wise,— Was vested with a sudden sense Of great and grave intelligence, As if in thy reflex she saw The process of eternal law, God’s conscious pleasure working out Through all the Passion, Pain, and Doubt;— And thus did She and Thou impart Such knowledge to my listening heart, Such sympathies as word or pen Can never tell again! All spirits find themselves fulfilled in Thee, The glad have triumph and the mourning balm: Dear God! how wondrous that a thing should be So very glorious and so very calm! The lover, standing on a lonely hight, Rests his sad gaze upon the scene below, Lapt in the trance of thy pervading glow, Till pleasant tears obscure his pensive sight; And in his bosom those long-smothered flames, The scorching elements of vain desire, Taking the nature of thy gentle fire, Play round the heart in peace, while he exclaims, “Surely, my love is out somewhere to-night!” Why art thou thus companionable? Why Do we not love thy light alone, but Thee? Is it that though thou art so pure and high, Thou dost not shock our senses, as they be? That our poor eyes rest on thee, and descry Islands of earth within thy golden sea? Or should the root be sought In some unconscious thought, That thy fine presence is not more thine own Than are our soul’s adorning splendors ours?— Than are the energies and powers, With which reflected light alone Illuminates the living hours, From our own wells of being brought, From virtue self-infused or seed of life self-sown?

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Thus with ascent more ready may we pass From this delightful sharing of thy gifts Up to the common Giver, Source, and Will; And if, alas! His daily affluent sun-light seldom lifts To thankful ecstasy our hearts’ dull mass, It may be that our feeble sight Will not confront the total light, That we may love, in nature frail, To blend the vivid with the pale, The dazzling with the dim: And lo! how God, all-gracious still, Our simplest fancies to fulfil, Bids us, O Southern Moon, thy beauty hail, In thee rejoicing and adoring Him.

Walter Savage Landor is another writer of the class, heretofore defined, who do not address the common heart or the prophetic soul of mankind, but require a peculiar culture in the reader to be duly appreciated.1 But some degree of this is not so rare that his works, if republished here, could fail to find a small circle whom they could benefit, and soon create a large one. His books of Conversations are a magazine of refined thoughts and exact observations, expressed with the utmost terseness, elegance and force.2—He boasts of being almost the only man now living who can write English, and we concede him this, as we read his pages, so entirely pure from useless phrases and circumlocutions, so faithful to the peculiar genius of the language. There is no self-indulgence, no slovenliness, the thing is clearly said and fully said, yet with a conciseness and delicacy of shade and touch, undreamed of by other writers. Yet this style is not deficient in flow; like the movements of a highbred person, it is self-contained, easy, soft in strength not weakness. Even the

1. Fuller very much liked Landor; indeed, she once wrote her brother that one of her “few regrets” in “not having money is that I cannot own all his works. I do own most other book[s] of my contemporaries that I prize. H[ow]ever I have him much by heart and own the Pericles and Aspasia” (Letters, 3:248). After Landor wrote a poem on the death of Fuller, Emerson wrote to Carlyle: “She had such reverence and love for Landor that I do not know but at any moment in her natural life she would have sunk in the sea, for an ode from him; and now this most propitious cake is offered to her Manes” (The Correspondence of Emerson and Carlyle, ed. Joseph Slater [New York: Columbia University Press, 1964], p. 482). 2. Landor’s Imaginary Conversations appeared in various series between 1824 and 1853.

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bitter and rabid prejudices win a beauty from the style in which they are expressed, as ugly insects might from being encased in amber. For Landor has fierce prejudices, and mean prejudices too. You cannot depend, in any case, upon his justice or candor. If he is right, he is deeply right, and does admirable justice to the right. If he is wrong, he is fiercely, blindly, pedantically wrong, and angry with all that are not equally so. There is a want of equipoise and harmony in the faculties of this rare nature. He wants that which is the highest charm of the highest genius, as well as of the simplest character—perfect health. There are spots where venom rankles, distorted bones and rigid limbs. But where there are beauty and force, they are of a very high order. Scarce any writer bears so well the detachment of sentences and paragraphs from the page, as Landor. We have collects of these which never wear out or seem less worthy ofn recitation, crystals of thought from the slimy cavern, unsuitable haunt for timid footsteps and visited often by the sullen roar of a cold and ruthless wave.3 Yet Landor’s, though a fierce, and at times a vulgar mind, is also one of the most exquisite tenderness, exalting sweetness, and capable of repose on the calmest, purest heights of life. To one who knows him well, the blemishes recede from the field of vision, the impurities filter soon and for ever from the precious draught. They are there—but, if we remember them, it is to wonder that they are still there. “Pericles and Aspasia” has been republished here. There is no finer modern vase, in imitation of the antique. Its beauty is a Grecian beauty.—Love and Friendship have never been painted in more lovely and dignified relations. The thousand graces of familiar fondness are shown to be compatible with intellectual intercourse the most refined. Aspasia beautifully says of Anaxagoras, as to his friendship for Pericles: “He is the golden lamp that shines upon the image I adore,” and all the figures, all the relations, are worthy to be seen by the light of such a lamp. What can be more charmingly graceful than the petulant sallies of the young Alcibiades, and the letters in which the childish sports of the two girls are described. The little lament after the willows of which they used to make their baskets is a poem. The little pieces in verse, interspersed through the volumes, are just what poems that spring out of daily intercourse ought to be, a little more beautiful than, but perfectly congenial with, the commonest pursuits worthy recitation, [ worthy of recitation, 3. Fuller’s collects of Landor appear in Memoirs, 2:136.

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of the day, garlands woven from the trees, beneath which the friends sat at their work. How truly they belong to ourselves! such simple graceful poems as, “Beauty! thou art a wanderer on the earth, And hast no temple in the fairest isle Or city over-sea, where Wealth and Mirth, And all the Graces—all the Muses, smile. Yet these have always nursed thee, with such fond, Such lasting love, that they have followed up Thy steps through every land, and placed beyond The reach of thirsty Time thy nectar-cup. Thou art a wanderer, Beauty! like the rays That now upon the platan, now upon The sleepy lake, glance quick or idly gaze, And now are manifold, and now are none. I have called, panting, after thee, and thou Hast turned, and looked, and said some pretty word, Parting the hair, perhaps, upon my brow, And telling me none ever was preferred. In more then one bright form hast thou appeared, In more than one sweet dialect hast spoken; Beauty! thy spells the heart with me heard— Grieved that they bound it, grieves me that they are broken.”

Or this, in which are expressed the feelings of Pericles on the evening of a weary day: “When Pericles is too grave and silent, I usually take up my harp and sing to it; for music is often acceptable to the ear when it would avoid or repose from discourse. He tells me that it not only excites the imagination, but invigorates eloquence and refreshes memory; that playing on my Harp to him is like besprinkling a tessellated pavement with odoriferous water, which brings out the images, cools the apartment, and gratifies the senses by its fragrance.”

“That instrument,” said he, “is the rod of Mercury; it calls up the spirits from below or conducts them back again to Elysium. With what ecstasy do I throb and quiver under these refreshing showers of sound.”

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“Come sprinkle me soft music o’er the breast, Bring me the varied colors into light That now obscurely on its tablet rest, Show me its flowers and figures fresh and bright, Waked at thy voice and touch, again the chords Restore what restless years had moved away, Restore the glowing cheeks, the tender words, Youth’s short-lived spring and Pleasure’s summer-day.”

Perhaps these lines which represent Pericles in his private relations give a better idea of him than all that is said of his public career, though that is excellent. But the good sense and delicacy exhibited in the following simple statement could not fail to make him act wisely in public as in private. “History wants them (metaphors) occasionally: in oratory they are nearly as requisite as poetry; they come opportunely wherever the object is persuasion or intimidation, and no less where delight stands foremost. In writing a letter I would neither seek nor reject one; but I think, if more than one came forward, I might decline its services. If, however, it had come in unawares, I would take no trouble to send it away. But we should accustom ourselves to think always with propriety, in little things as in great, and neither be too solicitous of our dress in the house, nor negligent because we are at home. I think it as improper and indecorous to write a stupid or a silly note to you, as one in a bad hand, or on coarse paper. Familiarity ought to have another and a worse name when it relaxes in its attentiveness to please. Among the losses I sustained by the flight of youth, I ought to regret my vanity. I had not enough of it for a robe, but I had enough for a vest; enough to keep me warm and comfortable. Not a remnant have I now!” “You are prudent, and your prudence is of the best quality; instinctive delicacy.” “Imagination is little less strong in our later years then in our earlier. True, it alights on fewer objects, but it rests longer on them, and sees them better.” the speech of pericles in defence of anaxagoras. “O, men of Athens!” said he, calmly, “I wish it had pleased the gods that the vengeance of Diapithes had taken its first aim against me, whom you have heard so often, known so long, and trusted so implicitly. But Diapithes hath skulked from his ambush and seized upon the unsuspecting Anaxagoras, in the hope that, few knowing him, few can love him. The calculation of Diapithes is correct; they who love him are but few. They, however, who esteem and reverence him can only be numbered by him who possesses a register of all the wise and all the virtuous men of Greece.”

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See in the following another instance of his admirable powers of expression: innumerablen as worthy might be added, were there room: “Euripides.—He has not the fine manners of Sophocles; nor the open and unreserved air, which Pericles tells me he admired so much in the soldierly and somewhat proud Eschylus; grave and taciturn like himself, unless when something pleased him, and then giving way to ebullitions and bursts of rapture and filling every one with it round about.”

We must add this, which describes Aspasia’s way of living and growing: “You build your nest, Aspasia, like the swallow, Bringing a little on the bill at once, And fixing it attentively and proudly, And trying it, and then from your soft breast Warming it with the inmost of the plumage. Nests there are many, of this very year Many the nests are, which the winds shall shake, The rains run through, and the birds beat down; Yours, O Aspasia! rests against the temple Of heavenly Love, and thence inviolate, It shall not fall this winter nor the next.”

This was the woman worthy of the grave, the deep, the fervent, the perfect love of such a man as Pericles. Such was the woman who could call this graceful regret from Anaxagoras. “Where are the blooms of many dyes That used in every path to rise? Whither are gone the lighter hours? What leave they?—I can only send My wisest, loveliest, latest friend These weather-worn and formless flowers.”

Another book of Landor’s which ought to be republished here, as a boon to minds refined, or capable of refinement, is his Pentameron. This is a series of conversations between the great Italians, Petrarch and Boccaccio.4 Petrarch is

innnmerable [ innumerable 4. Petrarch (1304–74), Italian poet.

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represented as on a visit to his friend, who is just recovering from a severe illness. The main topic of discourse is criticism on the works of Dante. This criticism is of little or no value. Landor is not only fond of riding a hobby, but of running thereon a tilt against armies of knights mounted on real live horses.— This is just such a case. The critic attempts to give new views of matters which the general sense of men appreciates far better than any one carping, sifting, prying mind can. Unsought judgments are the only genuine. Dante towers majestic above all this small work, and no one capable of knowing him could take the trouble to read through these strictures of Landor’s. But the fine part of the book consists in the picture given of the position and mutual relations of the persons. This is done with a power that makes them truly present to us in original beauty, yet it cannot be called dramatic power. It is the same sort of pleasure we derive from a fine drawing; we are not aided by color or moulding, yet have the secret of the whole. The descriptions of the landscape round the villa, the festival day, the story of Maria, are masterpieces; the latter is somewhat to know by heart. The two dreams of the Poets are as fine as any thing that has come from this mind; their elevated and pensive beauty raises the language in which they are written almost to the perfection of angel-speech. The two Poets are well represented, especially Boccaccio, with his gay grace, and richer, more cordial and widely ranging nature. But the fairest picture is that of the little serving-maid Appantina.n Never was saint or fairy so naturally domesticated in a kitchen, nor perfect feminine innocence, and the influence of its unconscious grace on intellect more worthily felt. All her looks, gestures, and girlish ways are full of instruction. Boccaccio well says of her, “I have no fear about the girl. He might as well whistle to the moon on a frosty night, and expect as reasonably her descending. She is adamant; a bright sword now first scabbarded—no breath can hang about it. A seal of beryl, of chrysolite, or ruby; to make impressions, all in good time and proper place though; and receive none—incapable, just as they, of splitting, or cracking, or flawing, or harboring dust.”

From Julius Hare we have one volume modestly entitled “Guesses at Truth:” that he has often guessed aright—and his essay was well worthy the crucible

Assuntina [ Appantina

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no thoughtful mind would hesitate to affirm. It is a genuine kind of writing: this little book containing the result of many years’ thought and observation. Whenever any impression had come to him with peculiar force, or the workings of hidden causes had led unexpectedly to a conclusion, he has written down what came into his mind exactly; just that and no more.—Sometimes, we have only a sentence or a verse full of feeling that falls straight upon the heart, like a tear, sometimes two or three pages where there was a flow of thought, always every word is worth reading. The mind is not rich nor bold, but highly cultivated by varied and reverent intercourse with the best books and best men, independent, clear and dignified, refined and penetrating. Happy the man to whom a long life has yielded such an amount of thoughts really worth preserving and worthily set down. Life has been to him not merely a series of changes, but an upward progress, and to the next stage of being he goes, not as a beggar and a foundling, but as one to whom an earlier home has furnished a rosary, the memento of many prayers answered and an encouragement to more. In this age of book-making, got-up celebrities, and factitious action, such a book cannot be too much prized, for it contains a part of the real value of a man’s life, and by its Guesses at Truth will more exhilarate and fortify the sincere seeker, than all the philosophers with their vamped-up systems. He finds a companion in this true record who assures him that life need not be idealized to be ideal. Such books console, like private letters which grew from the occasion without second purpose.  New-York Daily Tribune, 28 March 1845, p. 1; reprinted, New-York Weekly Tribune, 29 March 1845, p. 1. Richard Monckton Milnes (1809–85), English poet and man of letters; Julius Hare (1795–1855), English cleric and historian.

Frederick Von Raumer upon the Slavery Question


Von Raumer has lately read before the “Scientific Union” in Berlin some account of his visit to North America and of Slavery in the United States. He confined himself principally to a statement of arguments by the Anti-Abolitionists for the continuance of slavery in the Southern States, among which he dwelt particularly on the position of the Negro as being in regard to the moral and political Idea of the Free States preferable to that of our laborers and operatives in manufactories. The lecturer seemed not disinclined to coincide with this view, though he spoke with decision only of the difficulties of emancipation so as not to invade the rights of property or place the Negro in a worse position than at present. The lecture was certainly in an anti-abolitionist spirit, so as to cause much distaste to the women present, and to all those who believe no improvement impossible on which the human soul is bent with earnest desire.  New-York Daily Tribune, 29 March 1845, p. 1; reprinted, New-York Weekly Tribune, 5 April 1845, p. 2. Friedrich Ludwig Georg Von Raumer (1781–1873), German historian.

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This little book will be found of real use by those who are learning German in an intelligent manner. It is usually taught by a pedantic routine which makes its attainment unnecessarily difficult, as well as tedious. The writer, by methods similar to that proposed in this book, learned in three weeks what those who proceed in the common course do not in three months, to translate books in a simple style and on familiar subjects with considerable fluency. Nor is this method of learning superficial: on the contrary it implies a speedy insight to the construction of the language, which will never be attained merely by writing exercises in grammar, or hunting for each word singly in the dictionary. The two difficulties to be conquered in learning this language are the construction of the sentence which to us is, at first, clumsy and perplexing, and the many compounds, which are an endless task to those who count the leaves of the plant, instead of inferring them from their root. Both these difficulties are best overcome by some use of interlinear translation, with an intelligent analysis of compound words by the teacher. The writer regrets the prejudice that exists against the study of this language as a difficult one, being of opinion that acquaintance with it and its literature is the one most likely to counteract the defects, to which our country tends, of hasty observation, shallow judgment, self-complacent ignorance, and a devotion to the merely temporal uses of life. It is also likely to further what exists among us of the truly catholic spirit in criticism and in faith. A wide experience in teaching the language, no less than the speed with which it was learned, shows this prejudice to be unfounded, and we would gladly prove to many more that it is so. We see with pleasure translations, many of them quite good, multiplying among us; but only by acquaintance with it in its native language, can the German mind in its purity, in its piety, its homely tenderness, its boundless aspiration, and its unwearied diligence (reader this last is climax, not bathos,) be brought home to us and “pressed to the heart of

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daily experience.” Learn it, and you will find yourself nearer in love to nature, more sincerely versed in your own life.  Review of Moritz Ertheiler, A Phrase Book in English and German (New York: Greeley and McElrath, 1845). New-York Daily Tribune, 1 May 1845, p. 2; reprinted, New-York Weekly Tribune, 10 May 1845, p. 1.

Mrs. Child’s Letters


The extensive and growing popularity of Mrs. Child as a writer is an earnest of good. It shows that the world is ready to value, if it cannot appreciate, the sincere purpose and active fidelity of the inner life, when brought near to it through a character so affectionate, humane, and lively as hers.—Let those who cannot make themselves heard rouse themselves to a sense of their deficiencies! These pictures of New-York life, so interesting now from their familiar freedom, will retain a permanent value from the same cause. They will take their place in the history of a growth so rapid that only “Fine-ear” can discern its pulses, and of which few even of the fine-ear genius have skill, spirit, and time united to take count. These sketches are not superficial, but show a true and companionable insight to the purposes, no less than the symptoms, of our life. The insight is well expressed in the following passage: “The New Year’s show in the windows was exceedingly beautiful this year. The shawls are of richer colors, the patterns more delicately tinged, the jewelry, cutlery, and crockery, are of more tasteful patterns. I look with interest on these continually progressive improvements, because they seem to me significant of a more perfect state of society than we have yet known. The outward is preparing itself for the advancing idea of the age, as a bride adorns herself for her husband.”

Mrs. Child’s acquaintance with common life is large, and various, such as can be won only by powers of ardent sympathy, balanced by a love of justice. Yet still dearer to her are the hours when fancy takes flight above experience, or the mind, rooted in reality, raises its eyes with assurance to the region of spiritual laws. Thus there will be found in this book two kinds of pleasure and instruction, which will meet the wants of two different classes of readers. For him who

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seeks sprightly, well defined and sympathetic narratives of events that lie around us all, but which few have eyes to see, or hearts to understand, without prompting, this book will be the New-York Spectator. Another class will find more satisfaction in the part, a large one in the present volume, which expresses the more intimate experiences of the mind, new revelations on Music, illustrations of the doctrine of Correspondences, and a general intelligence of the mode in which the warp and woof of life have mingled, are mingling, which casts light upon the beauty and meaning of the pattern. To these last the story of “Thot and Freia,” would be of great interest; but, as this has been seen already in the pages of a magazine, we give rather the story of Leopold Sturmvogel, in which many may recognize lineaments of a form whose passage never failed to excite deep feelings in the minds of the bystanders, and will answer, though sadly, inquiries which have been made from many quarters as to “What has become of him, the gifted, the unhappy man? We cannot hope to hear of welfare, but we would gladly know how he fares.” These flying leaves will be before hand with the book, though that cannot fail in due time to travel far and wide.1  Review of Lydia Maria Child, Letters from New-York. Second Series (New York: C. S. Francis, 1845). New-York Daily Tribune, 10 May 1845, p. 1; reprinted, New-York Weekly Tribune, 10 May 1845, p. 1.

1. Letter XVII from Letters From New-York: Second Series is quoted in full.

[Review of Charles Anthon, A System of Latin Versification]


The author says in his short preface—“It will be perceived, from an examination of the present volume, that the exercises contained in it have been arranged in such a way as to form a regular and progressive course; and it is believed that, after the student has been carefully taken over the entire work, he will be fully qualified to enter upon the task of original composition in Latin verse, an accomplishment which forms decidedly the truest and most enduring ornament of classical education.” Such an accomplishment is, indeed, of great value to one who can estimate its bearings, or who, in receiving the discipline its attainment brings, has not forfeited others of far greater importance. A growing prejudice prevails in the more living and larger portion of our society against the boasted advantages of a “classical education.”— The man brought up in familiarity with outward nature, and to a use of his own bodily and instinctive powers, feels a contempt for the purblind scholar who cannot see through his spectacles what is imperatively required by a young and growing life like ours. The man whose mind has been cultivated not classically, nor in classes, but by earnest seeking and grasping on every side for what is demanded by the wants of his individual mind, doubts whether there is time, amid the vast new conquests of science, the profuse fruits of modern literature and arts, the needs in a great novel life of original thought and methods suited to the period, for a careful attention to the making of verse in the dead languages. He doubts whether the boy whose eyes have been during his best years turned too exclusively to the past will ever see as clear into the present and future as his neighbors, less schooled in the classics but better in nature and the spirit of the times. Yet there is a beautiful propriety in referring back to the Greeks and Romans, could this but be done with intelligence and in harmony with the other branches of culture. It is only pedantry and indolence that makes this dangerous. The honey of Hymettus need not spoil the taste of the American

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wild bee, but only teach him not to content himself with the coarsest flowers when he might do better.1 Those nations brought some things to a perfection that the world will probably never see again. We must not lose the sense of this greatness because our practice is in a different sphere. For this it is that marks the true eclectic, that he need not cling to the form because he reveres the spirit that informed it, but treasures the seed of each plant that ever bloomed in the garden of Humanity, without demanding their fruit when the season is past. “At Christmas he no more desires a rose, Then asks for ice ’mong June’s new-fangled shows.”2

The metres, the methods of verse that grow up in a nation are one of the highest expressions of its spirit, one of the finest organizations of its life.n The rules which are derived from them give the science of that life as far as it can be understood from without. Genius needs not to learn, but will take pleasure in examining them. To make verse according to rule will enable no man to write one word of poetry, but it may make him more deeply familiar with the sense in which poetry has been written, by refining the taste and cultivating the ear. To know these Greek and Roman writers critically, to imitate by rule their methods, has the same benefit for the mind, that external association with a graceful person does on the manners. A deeper intimacy may arise; mind may speak to mind, and grace to love; but, unfortunately, the way in which acquaintance is begun more frequently hinders than furthers this higher benefit. The little girl imitates the graceful lady and thus spoils her own manners, instead of, by intelligent sympathy, awakening within herself that soul of beauty from which graceful manners flow. The boy learns how the great poets wrote in measure, and copies the cadence of their feet, but neither by his tutor is he taught, nor of his own seeking mind does he learn, that metres are nothing except the harmonious movements of a mind deeply conscious of the universal harmony, and that only by adoring and studying that can he really emulate them. Were this otherwise, were the spirit made known with or through the letter, classical education, and this branch of it especially, would

1. Mount Hymettus in Attica was celebrated in ancient Greece for its honey. 2. Love’s Labours Lost, act 1, scene 1. life, [ life.

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be of true and deep value, and demand far less time too than it has hitherto, for the mind runs quick when it apprehends the goal.  Review of Charles Anthon, A System of Latin Versification, in a Series of Progressive Exercises, Including Specimens of Translations from English and German Poetry into Latin Verse for the Use of Schools and Colleges (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1845). New-York Daily Tribune, 12 May 1845, p. 1; reprinted, New-York Weekly Tribune, 17 May 1845, p. 5. Title supplied. Charles Anthon (1797–1867), Greek and Latin scholar who taught at Columbia College (later University).

[Review of Arthur Cleveland Coxe, Saul. A Mystery]


This is a book, heavy and ineffectual to the last degree, about which the only mystery is that it should ever have been written, for it must have taken a great deal of time, and been very slow work, and does no where show one spark of that impatient fire, which will sometimes excuse a man very clumsy-handed for seizing the pen. The author expresses great reverence and terror at having taken up a subject from Biblical history, but we cannot think he feels it, or he would not put such long and dull speeches in the mouths of persons well known to us as of powerful, heroic, and poetic nature. They are well known to us not only in the first simple narrative but through the great painters, nor has the iron grasp of Alfieri, in his Saul, nor the thrilling note of Byron in his Hebrew Melodies, done them wrong.1 The author says, “Passages, which I approved as an artist, I have been forced to prune away as a Christian.” Has he ever seen the story of Joseph and his brethren as reproduced by the celestial love of Raphael2 does he know the majesty of Moses as he appeared before the deep religious eye of Michael Angelo?3 Let such admonish him that it is a total want of the inspiration of the artist that made him anxious before the inspirations of this history, and let the fault of writing such a book be to him the means of enlarging his mind. Even his demon, where we presume there was no conscientious anxiety to paralyze him, and a creation of a sort in which most writers show some vivacity, is as dull and weak as the rest; this ought to show him where the difficulty lies, and chide him from attempts at the great dramatic form forever.

1. Count Vittorio Alfieri (1749–1803), Italian dramatist, published Saul in 1782; George Gordon, Lord Byron (1788–1824), English Romantic poet, published his Hebrew Melodies in 1815. 2. Raphael (1483–1520), Italian painter whose works adorn the Vatican. 3. Michaelangelo or Michelangelo Buonarroti (1475–1564), Italian painter, sculptor, and poet.

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 Review of Arthur Cleveland Coxe, Saul. A Mystery (New York: D. Appleton, 1845). NewYork Daily Tribune, 12 May 1845, p.1; reprinted, New-York Weekly Tribune, 17 May 1845, p. 5. Title supplied. Arthur Cleveland Coxe (1818–96), clergyman and hymnist.

‘American Facts’


Such is the title of a volume just issued from the press:—a grand title, which suggests the epic poet or the philosopher. The purpose, however, of the work is modest. It is merely a compilation, from which those who have lived at some distance from the great highway may get answers to their questions, as to events and circumstances which have escaped them. It is one of those books which will be valued in the back-woods. It would be a great book, indeed, and one that would require the eye and heart of a great man,—great as a judge, great as a seer, and great as a prophet— that could select for us and present in harmonious outline the true American facts. To select the right point of view supposes command of the field. Such a man must be attentive, a quiet observer of the slighter signs of growth. But he must not be one to dwell superstitiously on details, nor one to hasten to conclusions. He must have the eye of the eagle, the courage of the lion, the patience of the worm, and faith such as is the prerogative of Man alone, and of Man on the highest step of his culture. We doubt not the destiny of our Country, that she is destined to accomplish great things for Human Nature and be the mother of a nobler race, perhaps, than the world has yet known. But she has been so false to the scheme made out at her nativity that it is now hard to say which way that destiny points. We can hardly point out the true American facts, without some idea of the true character of America. Only one thing seems clear, that the energy here at work is very great, though the men employed in carrying out its purposes may have generally no more individual ambition to understand those purposes or cherish noble ones of their own, than the coral insect through whose restless working new continents are upheaved from Ocean’s breast. Such a man passing in a boat from one extremity of the Mississippin to

Mississipi [ Mississippi

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another, and observing every object on the shore as he passed, would yet learn nothing of universal or general value, because he has no principles, even in hope, by which to classify them. American facts! Why! what has been done that marks individuality? Among men there is Franklin! he is a fact, and an American fact.1 Niagara is another, in a different style. The way that newspapers and other periodicals are managed is American. A go-ahead, fearless adroitness is American; so is not, exclusively, the want of strict honor. But we look about in vain for traits as characteristic of what may be individually the character of the Nation, as we can find at a glance of Spain, England, France or Turkey. America is as yet but an European babe:—some new ways and motions she has, consequent on a new position, but that soul that may shape her mature life scarce begins to know itself yet. One thing is certain: we live in a large place, no less morally than physically; wo to him who lives meanly there and knows the exhibitions of selfishness and vanity as the only American facts.  Review of George Palmer Putnam, American Facts. Notes and Statistics Relative to the Government, Resources, Engagements, Manufactures, Commerce, Religion, Education, Literature, Fine Arts, Mariners and Customs of the United States of America (London: Wiley and Putnam, 1845). New-York Daily Tribune, 19 May 1845, p. 1; reprinted, New-York Weekly Tribune, 24 May 1845, p. 1. George Palmer Putnam (1814–72), editor and publisher. 1. Benjamin Franklin (1706–90), statesman, author, printer, editor, and inventor.

Prevalent Idea that Politeness is too great a Luxury to be given to the Poor


A few days ago, a lady, crossing in one of the ferry boats that ply from this city, saw a young boy, poorly dressed, sitting with an infant in his arms on one of the benches. She observed that the child looked sickly and coughed. This, as the day was raw, made her anxious in its behalf, and she went to the boy and asked whether he was alone there with the baby, and if he did not think the cold breeze dangerous for it. He replied that he was sent out with the child to take care of it, and that his father said the fresh air from the water would do it good. While he made this simple answer, a number of persons had collected around to listen, and one of them, a well-dressed woman, addressed the boy in a string of such questions and remarks as these: “What is your name? Where do you live? Are you telling us the truth? It’s a shame to have that baby out in such weather; you’ll be the death of it. (To the bystanders:) I would go and see his mother and tell her about it, if I was sure he had told us the truth about where he lived. How do you expect to get back? Here, (in the rudest voice,) somebody says you have not told the truth as to where you live.”

The child, whose only offence consisted in taking care of the little one in public, and answering when he was spoken to, began to shed tears at the accusations thus grossly preferred against him. The bystanders stared at both; but among them all there was not one with sufficiently clear notions of propriety and moral energy to say to this impudent questioner, “Woman! do you suppose, because you wear a handsome shawl, and that boy a patched jacket, that you have any right to speak to him at all, unless he wishes it, far less to prefer against him those rude accusations. Your vulgarity is unendurable; leave the place or alter your manner.” Many such instances have we seen of insolent rudeness or more insolent

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affability founded on no apparent grounds, except an apparent difference in pecuniary position, for no one can suppose in such cases the offending party has really enjoyed the benefit of refined education and society, but all present let them pass as matters of course. It was sad to see how the poor would endure—mortifying to see how the purse-proud dared offend. An excellent man who was, in his early years, a missionary to the poor, used to speak afterwards with great shame of the manner in which he had conducted himself towards them.—“When I recollect,” said he, “the freedom with which I entered their houses, inquired into all their affairs, commented on their conduct and disputed their statements I wonder I was never horsewhipped and feel that I ought to have been; it would have done me good, for I needed as severe a lesson on the universal obligations of politeness in its only genuine form of respect for man as man, and delicate sympathy with each in his peculiar position.” Charles Lamb, who was indeed worthy to be called a human being from those refined sympathies, said, “You call him a gentleman: does his washerwoman find him so?” We may say, if she did so, she found him a man, neither treating her with vulgar abruptness, nor giving himself airs of condescending liveliness, but treating her with that genuine respect which a feeling of equality inspires. To doubt the veracity of another is an insult which in most civilized communities must in the so-called higher classes be atoned for by blood, but, in those same communities, the same men will, with the utmost lightness, doubt the truth of one who wears a ragged coat, and thus do all they can to injure and degrade him by assailing his self-respect, and breaking the feeling of personal honor—a wound to which hurts a man as a wound to its bark does a tree. Then how rudely are favors conferred, just as a bone is thrown to a dog. A gentleman indeed will not do that without accompanying signs of sympathy and regard. Just as this woman said, “If you have told the truth I will go and see your mother,” are many acts performed on which the actors pride themselves as kind and charitable. All men might learn from the French in these matters. That people, whatever be their faults, are really well-bred, and many acts might be quoted from their romantic annals, where gifts were given from rich to poor with a graceful courtesy, equally honorable and delightful to the giver and the receiver. In Catholic countries there is more courtesy, for charity is there a duty, and must be done for God’s sake; there is less room for a man to give himself the Pharisaical tone about it. A rich man is not so surprised to find himself in con-

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tact with a poor one; nor is the custom of kneeling on the open pavement, the silk robe close to the beggar’s rags, without profit. The separation by pews, even on the day when all meet nearest, is as bad for the manners as the soul. Blessed be he or she who has passed through this world, not only with an open purse and willingness to render the aid of mere outward benefits, but with an open eye and open heart, ready to cheer the downcast, and enlighten the dull by words of comfort and looks of love. The wayside charities are the most valuable both as to sustaining hope and diffusing knowledge, and none can render them who has not an expansive nature, a heart alive to affection, and some true notion, however imperfectly developed, of the nature of human brotherhood. Such an one can never sauce the given meat with taunts, freeze the bread by a cold glance of doubt, or plunge the man who asked for his hand deeper back into the mud by any kind of rudeness. In the little instance with which we begun, no help was asked, unless by the sight of the timid little boy’s old jacket. But the license which this seemed to the well-clothed woman to give to rudeness was so characteristic of a deep fault now existing, that a volume of comments might follow and a host of anecdatos be drawn from almost any one’s experience in exposition of it. These few words, perhaps, may awaken thought in those who have drawn tears from others’n eyes through an ignorance brutal, but not hopelessly so, if they are willing to rise above it.  New-York Daily Tribune, 31 May 1845, p. 2; reprinted, New-York Weekly Tribune, 7 June 1845, p. 3.

others [ others’

[Review of Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass]


Frederick Douglass has been for some time a prominent member of the Abolition party. He is said to be an excellent speaker—can speak from a thorough personal experience—and has upon the audience, beside, the influence of a strong character and uncommon talents. In the book before us he has put into the story of his life the thoughts, the feelings and the adventures that have been so affecting through the living voice; nor are they less so from the printed page. He has had the courage to name the persons, times and places, thus exposing himself to obvious danger, and setting the seal on his deep convictions as to the religious need of speaking the whole truth. Considered merely as a narrative, we have never read one more simple, true, coherent, and warm with genuine feeling. It is an excellent piece of writing, and on that score to be prized as a specimen of the powers of the Black Race, which Prejudice persists in disputing. We prize highly all evidence of this kind, and it is becoming more abundant. The Cross of the Legion of Honor has just been conferred in France on Dumas and Souliè, both celebrated in the paths of light literature.1 Dumas, whose father was a General in the French Army, is a Mulatto; Souliè, a Quadroon. He went from New-Orleans, where, though to the eye a white man, yet, as known to have African blood in his veins, he could never have enjoyed the privileges due to a human being. Leaving the Land of Freedom, he found himself free to develop the powers that God had given. Two wise and candid thinkers,—the Scotchman, Kinmont,n prematurely lost to this country, of which he was so faithful and generous a student,2 and the late Dr. Channing,—both thought that the African Race had in them a

1. Alexandre Dumas (1802–70), French novelist and dramatist; Frédéric Souliè (1800–47), French novelist, poet, and dramatist. Kinment, [ Kinmont, 2. Alexander Kinmont (1799–1838), Scottish-born philosophical writer, who emigrated to America in 1823 and became a leading exponent of Swedenborgianism.

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peculiar element, which, if it could be assimilated with those imported among us from Europe, would give to genius a development, and to the energies of character a balance and harmony beyond what has been seen heretofore in the history of the world. Such an element is indicated in their lowest estate by a talent for melody, a ready skill at imitation and adaptation, an almost indestructible elasticity of nature. It is to be remarked in the writings both of Souliè and Dumas, full of faults but glowing with plastic life and fertile in invention. The same torrid energy and saccharine fulness may be felt in the writings of this Douglass, though his life being one of action or resistance, was less favorable to such powers than one of a more joyous flow might have been. The book is prefaced by two communications,—one from Garrison, and one from Wendell Phillips.3n That from the former is in his usual over emphatic style. His motives and his course have been noble and generous. We look upon him with high respect, but he has indulged in violent invective and denunciation till he has spoiled the temper of his mind. Like a man who has been in the habit of screaming himself hoarse to make the deaf hear, he can no longer pitch his voice on a key agreeable to common ears. Mr. Phillips’s remarks are equally decided, without this exaggeration in the tone. Douglass himself seems very just and temperate. We feel that his view, even of those who have injured him most, may be relied upon. He knows how to allow for motives and influences. Upon the subject of Religion, he speaks with great force, and not more than our own sympathies can respond to. The inconsistencies of Slaveholding professors of religion cry to Heaven. We are not disposed to detest, or refuse communion with them. Their blindness is but one form of that prevalent fallacy which substitutes a creed for a faith, a ritual for a life. We have seen too much of this system of atonement not to know that those who adopt it often began with good intentions, and are, at any rate, in their mistakes worthy of the deepest pity. But that is no reason why the truth should not be uttered, trumpet-tongued, about the thing. “Bring no more vain oblations”;4 sermons must daily be preached anew on that text. Kings, five hundred years ago, built Churches with the spoils of War; Clergymen to-day command Slaves to obey a Gospel which they will not allow them to read, and call themselves Christians amid the curses of their fellow men.—The world

3. William Lloyd Garrison (1805–79), abolitionist and editor of the most important antislavery newspaper of the day, the Liberator, from 1830 to 1865. Phillips [ Phillips. 4. Isaiah 1:13.4.

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ought to get on a little faster than that, if there be really any principle of improvement in it. The Kingdom of Heaven may not at the beginning have dropped seed larger than a mustard-seed, but even from that we had a right to expect a fuller growth than can be believed to exist, when we read such a book as this of Douglass. Unspeakably affecting is the fact that he never saw his mother at all by day-light. “I do not recollect of ever seeing my mother by the light of day. She was with me in the night. She would lie down with me, and get me to sleep, but long before I waked she was gone.”

The following extract presents a suitable answer to the hacknied argument drawn by the defender of Slavery from the songs of the Slave, and is also a good specimen of the powers of observation and manly heart of the writer. We wish that every one may read his book and see what a mind might have been stifled in bondage,—what a man may be subjected to the insults of spendthrift dandies, or the blows of mercenary brutes, in whom there is no whiteness except of the skin, no humanity except in the outward form, and of whom the Avenger will not fail yet to demand—“Where is thy brother?”5  Review of Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave, Written by Himself (Boston: Anti-Slavery Office, 1845). New-York Daily Tribune, 10 June 1845, p. 1; reprinted, New-York Weekly Tribune, 14 June 1845, p. 1. Title supplied. 5. The “following extract” is from the second chapter of the Narrative, from the seventh paragraph (beginning “The home plantation of Colonel Lloyd”) to the end of the chapter.

Asylum for Discharged Female Convicts


The ladies of the Prison Association have been, for some time, engaged in the endeavor to procure funds for establishing this asylum. They have met, thus far, with little success; but, touched by the position of several women, who, on receiving their discharge, were anxiously waiting in hope there would be means provided to save them from return to their former suffering and polluted life, they have taken a house and begun their good work in faith that Heaven must take heed that such an enterprise may not fail, and touch the hearts of men to aid it. They have taken a house and secured the superintendence of an excellent woman. There are already six women under her care. But this house is unprovided with furniture or the means of securing food for body and mind to these unfortunates during the brief novitiate which gives them so much to learn and unlearn. The object is to lend a helping hand to the many who show a desire of reformation, but have hitherto been inevitably repelled into infamy by the lack of friends to procure them honest employment, and a temporary refuge till it can be procured. Efforts will be made to instruct them how to break up bad habits and begin a healthy course for body and mind. The house has in it scarcely any thing; it is a true Lazarus establishment, asking for the crumbs that fall from the rich man’s table.1 Old furniture would be acceptable; andn clothes, books that are no longer needed by their owners. Such a statement we make in appealing to the poor, though they are, usually, the most generous. Not that they are, originally, better than the rich, but circumstances have fitted them to appreciate the misfortunes, the trials, the wrongs, that beset those a little lower down than themselves. But we have 1. A rich man denied Lazarus the crumbs that fell from his table; after their deaths the poor man goes to heaven and the rich man does not (Luke 16:19–25). acceptable clothes [ acceptable; and clothes

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seen too many instances where those who were educated in luxury would cast aside with eagerness the sloth and selfishness that ensue when once awakened to better things, not to hope in appealing to the rich also. And to all we appeal. To the poor, who will know how to sympathize with those who are not only poor but degraded, diseased, likely to be harried onward to a shameful, hopeless death. To the rich, to equalize the advantages of which they have received more than their share. To men, to atone for the wrongs inflicted by men on that “weaker sex,” who should, they say, be soft, confiding, dependent on them for protection. To women, to feel for those who have not been guarded either by social influence or inward strength from that first mistake which the opinion of the world makes irrevocable for women alone. Since their danger is so great, their fall so terrible, let mercies be multiplied when there is a chance of that partial restoration which society at present permits. In New-York we have come little into contact with that class of society who have a surplus of leisure at command; but in other cities we have found in that class many, some men, more women, who wanted only a decided object and clear light to fill the noble office of disinterested educators and guardians to their less fortunate fellows. It has been our happiness, in not a few instances, by merely apprising such persons of what was to be done, to rouse that generous spirit which relieved themselves from ennui, dejection, and a gradual ossification of the whole system, into a thoughtful, sympathetic and beneficent existence. Such no doubt are near us here, if we could but know it. A poet writes thus of the cities: “Cities of proud hotels, Houses of rich and great, A stack of smoking chimneys, A roof of frozen slate. It cannot conquer folly, Time and space conquering steam, And the light-outspeeding telegraph Bears nothing on its beam. “The politics are base, The letters do not cheer, And ’t is far in the deeps of history The voice that speaketh clear; Trade and the streets ensnare us, Our bodies are weak and worn,

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We plot and corrupt each other, And we despoil the unborn. “Yet there in the parlor sits Some figure of noble guise, Our angel in a stranger’s form, Or woman’s pleading eyes; Or only a flashing sunbeam In at the window-pane, Or music pours on mortals Its beautiful disdain.”2

These pleading eyes, these angels in a stranger’s form we meet or seem to meet as we pass through the thoroughfares of this great city. We do not know their names or homes. We cannot go to those still and sheltered homes and tell them the tales that would be sure to awaken the heart to a deep and active interest in this matter. But should these words meet their eyes, we would say, Have you entertained your leisure hours with the Mysteries of Paris or the pathetic story of Violet Woodville?3 Then you have some idea how innocence worthy of the brightest planet may be betrayed by want, or by the most generous tenderness; how the energies of a noble reformation may lie hidden beneath the ashes of a long burning, as in the case of La Louve. You must have felt that yourselves are not better, only more protected children of God than those. Do you want to link these fictions, which have made you weep, with facts around you where your pity might be of use? Go to the Penitentiary at Blackwell’s Island. You may be repelled by seeing those who are in health, while at work together, keeping up one another’s careless spirit and effrontery by bad association. But see them in the hospital where the worn features of the sick show the sad ruins of past loveliness, past gentleness. See in the eyes of the nurses the woman’s spirit still, so kindly, so inspiring. See those little girls huddled in a corner, their neglected dress and hair contrasting with some ribbon of cherished finery held fast in a childish hand. Think what “sweet seventeen” was to you, and what it is to them, and see if you do not wish to aid in any enterprise that gives them a chance of better days. We assume no higher claim for this enterprise. The dreadful social malady which creates the need of it is one that imperatively demands deep-searching preventive measures; it is 2. “The World-Soul,” ll. 9–32, by Ralph Waldo Emerson. 3. Eugène Sue published Mysteries of Paris in 1842–43; Violet Woodville, or The Life of an Opera Dancer; a Tale of Human Passions and Character, attributed to “Miss Brougham,” was published in 1843.

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beyond cure. But, here and there, some precious soul may be saved from unwilling sin, unutterable woe. Is not the hope to save, here and there one, worthy of great and persistent exertion and sacrifice? Although Hood’s poem, “The Bridge of Sighs,” has been inserted once before in this paper, we are anxious to make use of it again, as more touching and forcible than any thing that has been or is likely to be written on this subject. We think that many will be willing to give much time, thought, hope and money to save even one from falling from this.4  New-York Daily Tribune, 19 June 1845, p. 1; reprinted, New-York Weekly Tribune, 28 June 1845, p. 6.

4. “The Bridge of Sighs” by Thomas Hood (1799–1845), English poet and humorist, is reprinted in its entirety here. Fuller had also reprinted it in full on 16 January 1845 in her review of of The Waif, edited by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807–82), one of the most popular poets of the day.

Story Books for the Hot Weather


Does any shame still haunt the age of bronze—a shame, the lingering blush of a heroic age, at being caught in doing anything merely for amusement? Is there a public still extant which needs to excuse its delinquencies by the one story of a man who liked to lie on the sofa all day and read novels, though he could, at time of need, write the gravest didactics! Live they still, those reverend signiors, the object of secret smiles to our childish years, who were obliged to apologize for midnight oil spent in conning story books, by the “historic bearing” of the novel, or the “correct and admirable descriptions of certain countries, with climate, scenery and manners therein contained,” wheat for which they, industrious students, were willing to winnow bushels of frivolous loveadventures? We know not—but incline to think the world is now given over to frivolity so far as to replace by the novel the minstrel’s ballad, the drama, and worse still, the games of agility and strength in which it once sought pastime, for indeed, mere pass-time is sometimes needed. The nursery legend comprised a primitive truth of the understanding and the wisdom of nations in the lines— “All play and no work makes Jack a mere toy; But, all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.”

We having reversed the order of arrangement to suit our present purpose. For we, O useful reader, being ourselves so far of the useful class as to be always wanted somewhere, have also to fight a good fight for our amusements, either with the foils of excuse, like the reverend signiors above mentioned, or with the sharp weapons of argument, or maintenance of a view of our own without argument, which we take to be the sharpest weapon of all. Thus far do we defer to the claims of the human race, with its myriad of useful errands to be done, that we read most of our novels in the long sunny days, which call all beings to chirp and nestle or fly abroad as the birds do, and permit the very oxen to ruminate gently in the just-mown fields. 138

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On such days it was well, we think, to read “Sybil or the Two Worlds.”1 We have always felt great interest in D’Israeli. He is one of the many who share the difficulty of our era, which Carlyle says, quoting, we believe, from his master, consists in unlearning the False in order to arrive at the True.2 We think these men, when they have once taken their degree, can be of far greater use to their brethren than those who have always kept their instincts unperverted. In ‘Vivian Grey,’ the young D’Israeli, an educated Englishman, but with the blood of sunnier climes glowing and careering in his veins, gave us the very flower and essence of factitious life. That book sparkled and frothed, like champagne; like that, too, it produced no dull and imbecile state by its intoxications, but one witty, genial, spiritual even. A deep soft melancholy thrilled through its gay mockeries; the eyes of Nature glimmered through the painted mask; and a nobler ambition was felt beneath the follies of petty success and petty vengeance. Still the chief merit of the book, as a book, was the light and decided touch with which he took up the follies and the poesies of the day, and brought them all before us. The excellence of the foreign part, with its popular superstitions, its deep passages in the glades of the summer woods, and above all, the capital sketch of the prime minister, with his original whims and secret history of romantic sorrows, were beyond the appreciation of most readers. Since then, D’Israeli has never written any thing to be compared with this first jet of the fountain of his mind in the sunlight of morning. ‘The Young Duke’ was full of brilliant sketches, and showed a soul struggling, blinded by the gaudy mists of fashion, for realities. ‘The Wondrous Tale of Alroy’ showed great power in conception, though, in execution, it is a failure. ‘Henrietta Temple,’ Mr. Willis3 with his usual justness of perception, has praised as containing a collection of the best love-letters ever written, and which show that excellence, signal and singular among the literary tribe, of which D’Israeli never fails, of daring to write a thing down exactly as it rises in his mind. Now he has come to be a leader of Young England and a rooted plant upon her soil. If the performance of his prime doesn not entirely correspond with the

1. Benjamin Disraeli (1804–81), English statesman and novelist, published Vivian Grey in 1826, The Young Duke in 1831, The Wondrous Tale of Alroy in 1833, Henrietta Temple in 1837, Coningsby, or, The New Generation in 1844, and Sybil, or, The Two Nations in 1845. 2. Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881), prolific Scottish essayist and writer. 3. Nathaniel Parker Willis (1806–67), journalist, editor, and poet. do [ does

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brilliant lights of its dawn, it is yet aspiring, and with a large kernel of healthy nobleness in it.—D’Israeli shows now not only the heart but the soul of a Man. He cares for all Men. He wishes to care wisely for all. ‘Coningsby’ was full of talent, yet its chief interest lay in this aspiration after reality, and the rich materials taken from contemporary life. There is nothing in it good after the original manner of D’Israeli, except the sketches of Eton, and, above all, the noble school-boy’s letter. The picture of the Jew, so elaborately limned, is chiefly valuable as affording keys to so many interesting facts. “Sybil” is an attempt to do justice to the claims of the laboring classes and investigate the duties of those, in whose hands the money is at present, toward the rest. It comes to no result; it only exhibits some truths in a more striking light than heretofore. D’Israeli shows the taint of old prejudice in the necessity he felt to marry the daughter of the People to one not of the People. Those worthy to be distinguished must still have good blood, or rather old blood, for what is called good needs now to be renovated from a homelier source. But his leaders must have old blood; the fresh Ichor, the direct flow from Heaven, is not enough to animate their lives to the deeds now needed. D’Israeli is another of those who give testimony in behalf of our favorite idea that a leading feature of the new era will be in new and higher developments of the feminine character. He looks at women as a man does, who is truly in love. He does not paint them well, that is, not with profound fidelity to nature. But, ideally, he sees them well, for they are to him the inspirers and representatives of what is holy, tender, and simply great. There are good sketches of the manufacturers at home, not the overseers but the real makers. Sue is a congenial activity with D’Israeli, but with clearer notions of what he wants. His “DeRohan” is a poor book, though it contains excellent morceaux.4 But it is faulty, even more so than is usual to him, in heavy exaggerations, and less redeemed by brilliant effects, good schemes, and lovely little strains of feeling. The wish to unmask Louis XIV is defeated by the hatred with which the character inspired him, the Liberal of the Nineteenth Century.5 The Grand Monarque was really brutally selfish and ignorant, as Sue

4. The American edition of Eugène Sue’s De Rohan; or, the Court Conspirator, an Historical Romance was published in 1845. 5. Louis XIV (1638–1715), King of France during a period in which art flowered, was known for the magnificence of his court.

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represents him, but then there was a native greatness which justified in some degree the illusion he diffused and which falsifies all Sue’s representation. It is not by an inventory of facts or traits that what is most vital in a character and which makes its due impression on contemporaries can be apprehended or depicted—“DeRohan”n is worth reading for particulars of an interesting period put together with accuracy and with a sense of physiological effects, if not of the spiritual realities that they represented. “Self, by the author of Cecil,” is one of the worst of a paltry class of novels;6 those which aim at representing the very dregs in a social life, now at its lowest ebb. If it has produced a sensation, that only shows the poverty of life among those who can be interested in it. I have known more life lived in a day among factory girls, or in a village school than informs these volumes, with all their great pretension and affected vivacity. It is not worth our while to read this class of English novels; they are far worse than the French, morally as well as mentally. This has no merits as to the development of character or exposition of motives; it is a poor, external, lifeless thing. “Dashes at Life, by N. P. Willis.”7 The life of Mr. Willis is too European for him to have a general, or permanent fame in America. We need a life of our own and a literature of our own. Those writers who are dearest to us, and really most interesting, are those who are, at least, rooted to the soil. If they are not great enough to be the prophets of the new Era, they at least exhibit the features of their native climate and the complexion given by its native air. But Mr. Willis is a son of Europe, and his writings can interest only the fashionable world of this country, which, by imitating Europe, fails entirely of a genius, grace, and invention of its own. Still, in their way, they are excellent. They are most lively pictures; showing the fine natural organization of the writer, on whom none, the slightest, symptom of what he is looking for is thrown away; sparkling with bold, light wit, succinct, and colored with glow, and for a full light. Some of them were new to us, and we read them through, missing none of the words, and laughed, with a full heart and without one grain of complaisance, which is much, very much to say in these days. We said these sketches would not have a permanent fame, and yet we may be wrong. The new, full, original, radiant American Life may receive them as an heir-loom from this DeRohan [ “DeRohan” 6. Catherine Grace Frances Gore (1799–1861), prolific English novelist and dramatist, published Cecil, or, The Adventures of a Coxcomb and Cecil, a Peer: a Sequel to Cecil, or, The Adventures of a Coxcomb in 1841, and Self in 1845. 7. Willis published Dashes at Life with a Free Pencil in 1845.

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transitive state we are in now, and future generations may stare at the mongrel products of Saratoga, and maidens still laugh till they cry at the “Letter of Ione S. to her Spirit Bridegroom.” All these story books show even to the languor of the hottest day the solemn signs of revolution. Life has become too factitious; it has no longer a leg left to stand upon, and cannot be carried much farther in this way. England! ah! who can resist visions of Phalansteries in every park, and the treasurers of art turned into public galleries for use of the artificers who will no longer be unwashed, but raised and educated by the refinements of sufficient leisure and the instructions of genius. England must glide, or totter or fall into revolution—there is not room for such selfish Selves, and unique young Dukes in a country so crowded with men and with those who ought to be women, and are turned into work-tools. Theren are very impressive hints on this last topic in Sybil or the Two Worlds (of the Rich and the Poor.) God has time to remember the design with which he made this world also.  New-York Daily Tribune, 20 June 1845, p. 1; reprinted, New-York Weekly Tribune, 28 June 1845, p. 6.

These [ There

United States Exploring Expedition


The last volumes of Wilkes’s Narrative have reached us now, and, though like the first they are written in too prolix a style, and show the writer without high qualifications for such a task, they are upon ground so much less familiar that they are far more interesting than the first.1 The work really contains many facts of value. The illustrations, too, are many, and sufficient to impart a lively idea of the scenes and people. Thus, apart from the practical results attained, the nation has derived from this great national enterprise sufficient food for its intelligence to stimulate the desire for a series of such. Slight as is the intercourse held by the voyager with the South Sea Islanders, his narrative is always more prized by us than those of the missionary and traders, who, though they have better opportunity for full and candid observation, rarely use it so well, because their minds are biased towards their special objects. It is deeply interesting to us to know how much and how little God has accomplished for the various nations of the larger portion of the earth, before they are brought into contact with the civilization of Europe and the Christian religion. To suppose it so little as most people do, is to impugn the justice of Providence. We see not how any one can contentedly think that such vast multitudes of living souls have been left for thousands of years without manifold and great means of instruction and happiness. To appreciate justly how far these have availed them, to know how far they are competent to receive new benefits, is essential to the philanthropist as a means of benefitting them, no less than it is important to the philosopher who wishes to see the universe as God made it, not as some men think he ought to have made it. The want of correct knowledge and a fair appreciation of the cultivated man as he stands is a cause why even the good and generous fail to aid him, and contact with Europe has proved so generally more of a curse than a bless1. See Fuller’s earlier review of “Com. Wilkes’s Narrative” in the 7 May 1845 New-York Daily Tribune.

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ing. It is easy enough to see why our Red man, to whom the White extends the Bible or crucifix with one hand and the rum-bottle with the other, should look upon Jesus as only one more Manitou, and learn nothing from his precepts or the civilization connected with them. The Hindoo, the South American Indian, who knew their teachers first as powerful robbers, and found themselves called upon to yield to violence not only their property, personal freedom, and peace, but also the convictions and ideas that had been rooted and growing in their race for ages, could not be other than degraded and stupefied by a change effected through such violence and convulsion. But not only those who came with fire and sword, crying “Believe or die,”n “understand or we will scourge you”—“understand and we will only plunder and tyrannize over you;” not only these ignorant despots, self-deceiving robbers, have failed to benefit the people they dared esteem more savage than themselves, but the good and generous have failed from want of patience and an expanded intelligence.—Would you speak to a man, first learn his language! Would you have the tree grow, learn the nature of the soil and climate in which you plant it! Better days are coming, we do hope, as to these matters, days in which the new shall be harmonized with the old, rather than violently rent asunder from it, when progress shall be accomplished by gentle evolution, as the stem of the plant grows up, rather than with the blasting of rocks and blindness or death of miners. The knowledge which can lead to such results must be collected, as all true knowledge is, from the love of it. In the healthy state of the mind, the state of elastic youth, which would be perpetual in the mind if it were nobly disciplined and animated by immortal hopes, it likes to learn just how the facts are, seeking truth for its own sake, not doubting that the design and cause will be made clear in time. A mind in such a state will find many facts ready for its use in these volumes relative to the South Sea Islanders and other objects of interest.  New-York Daily Tribune, 28 June 1845, p. 1; reprinted, New-York Weekly Tribune, 5 July 1845, p. 6. Charles Wilkes (1798–1877), admiral, explorer, and scientist who visited South America, the South Pacific, Antarctica, and similar places on his expedition of 1839–42, which circumnavigated the globe.

die.” [ die,”

[Review of Charles Sealsfield, Tokeah; or the White Rose]


We notice this fiction, because, though upon an Indian subject it is not tedious, and though it would seem, both from the circumstances under which it was written, and mistakes as to matters of fact in the book, that the author had had but brief and scanty opportunity for personal acquaintance with the red men, yet the sketches, especially of the girl, Canondah, are excellent, spirited and lifelike. This author is himself like the man of the wilds in some respects. He feels little need of an object in life, or harmony of character, but delights to note the signs of individuality, and the workings of common instincts. He has a keen sense for physiology, and excels in defining the shades of temperament.— What merit he has is genuine, for he notes down his impressions just as they are received; this merit we must mention wherever we find it—it is so rare at a time when the fear of public opinion and the spirit of imitation make so large a part of literature hackneyed or vapid. A book may be coarse and low, but still if it is something, there is a satisfaction and a life even in rejecting it, which cannot be derived from these sad painted shadows of sometime somethings.  Review of Charles Sealsfield, Tokeah; or the White Rose. An Indian Tale, 2d ed. (Philadelphia: Lea and Blanchard, 1845). New-York Daily Tribune, 28 June 1845, p. 1; reprinted, New-York Weekly Tribune, 5 July 1845, p. 6. Title supplied. Charles Sealsfield is the pseudonym of Karl Postl (1793–1864), a Moravian-born monk who settled in America in 1823, becoming a novelist and travel writer.

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The Irish Character


In one of the eloquent passages quoted in The Tribune of Wednesday under the head ‘Spirit of the Irish Press,’ we find these words: “Domestic love, almost morbid from external suffering, prevents him (the Irishman) from becoming a fanatic and a misanthrope, and reconciles him to life.”1

This recalled to our mind the many touching instances known to us of such traits among the Irish we have seen here. We have seen instances of morbidness like this. A girl sent “home,” after she was well established herself, for a young brother of whom she was particularly fond. He came, and, shortly after, died. She was so overcome by his loss, that she took poison and died. The great poet of serious England says, and we believe it to be his serious thought though laughingly said, “Men have died and worms have eaten them, but not for love.”2 Whether or no death may follow from the loss of a lover or a child, we believe that among no people but the Irish would it upon loss of a young brother. Another poor woman, in the flower of her youth, denied herself, not only every pleasure, but almost the necessaries of life, to save the sum she thought ought to be hers before sending to Ireland for a widowed mother. Just as she was on the point of doing so, she heard that her mother had died fifteen months before. The keenness and persistence of her grief defy description. With a delicacy of feeling which shewed the native poetry of the Irish mind she dwelt, most of all, upon the thought that while she was working and pinching and dreaming of happiness with her mother, it was, indeed, but a dream, and that cherished parent lay still and cold in the ground. She felt fully

1. “Spirit of the Irish Press,” New-York Daily Tribune, 25 June 1845, p. 1, reprinted from the Nation. 2. As You Like It, act 4, scene 1.

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the cruel cheat of fate. “Och, and she was dead all those times I was a thinking on her!” was the deepest note of her lament. They are able, however, to make the sacrifice even of these intense family affections in a worthy cause. We knew a woman who postponed sending for her only child, whom she had left in Ireland, for years, while she maintained a sick friend who had none else to help her. The poetry of which I have spoken shows itself even here, where they are separated from old romantic associations, and begin the new life in the new world by doing all its drudgery. We know flights of poetry repeated to us by those present at their wakes—passages of natural eloquence from the lamentations for the dead, more beautiful than those recorded in the annals of Brittanyn of Roumelia. It is the same genius, so exquisitely mournful, tender, and glowing too with the finest enthusiasm, that makes their national music, in these respects, the finest in the world. It is the music of the harp; its tones are deep and thrilling. It is the harp so beautifully described in “The harp of Tara’s halls,” a song whose simple pathos is unsurpassed. A feeling was never more adequately embodied. It is the genius which will enable Emmet’sn appeal to draw tears from the remotest generations, however much they may be strangers to the circumstances which called it forth.3 It is the genius which beamed in chivalrous loveliness through each act of Lord Edward Fitzgerald,—the genius which, ripened by English culture, favored by suitable occasions, has shed such glory on the land which has done all it could to quench it on the parent hearth.4 When we consider all the fire which glows so untameably in Irish veins, the character of her people, considering the circumstances—almost miraculous in its goodness—we cannot forbear, notwithstanding all the temporary ills they aid in here, to give them all a welcome to our shores. Those ills we need not enumerate; they are known to all, and we rank among them what others would not, that by their ready service to do all the hard work they make it easier for the rest of the population to grow effeminate and help the country to grow too fast. But that is her destiny, to grow too fast; it is useless talking against it. Their extreme ignorance, their blind devotion to a priesthood, the

Britany [ Brittany Emmett’s [ Emmet’s

3. Robert Emmet (1778–1803), Irish patriot hanged for leading an insurrection against English rule. 4. Lord Edward Fitzgerald (1809–83), English poet and translator.

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pliancy in the hands of demagogues threaten continuance of these ills; yet, on the other hand, we must regard them as a most valuable element in the new race. They are looked upon with contempt for their want of aptitude at learning new things, their ready and ingenious lying, their eye service. These are the faults of an oppressed race which must require the aid of better circumstances through two or three generations to eradicate. Their virtues are their own;—they are many, genuine, and deeply rooted. Can an impartial observer fail to admire their truth to domestic ties, their power of generous bounty and more generous gratitude, their indefatigable good humor, (for ages of wrong, which have driven them to so many acts of desperation, could never sour their blood at its source,)n their ready wit, their elasticity of nature. They are at bottom one of the best nations of the world.—Would they were welcomed here, not to work merely, but to intelligent sympathy and efforts, both patient and ardent for the education of their children. No sympathy could be better deserved, no efforts wiselier timed. Future Burkes and Currans would know how to give thanks for them,5 and Fitzgeralds rise upon the soil, which boasts the magnolia with its kingly stature and majestical white blossoms, to the same lofty and pure beauty. Will you not believe it, merely because that bogbred youth you solaced in the mud-hole tells you lies and drinks to cheer him in those endless diggings? You are short-sighted, my friend; you do not look to the future, you will not turn your head to see what may have been the influences of the past; you have not examined your own breast to see whether the monitor there had not commanded you to do your part to counteract these influences, and yet the Irishman appeals to you eye to eye. He is very personal himself; he expects a personal interest from you. Nothing has been able to destroy this hope, which is the fruit of his nature. We were much touched by O’Connell’s direct address to the Queen as “Lady,” but she did not listen,6 and we fear few ladies and gentlemen will, till the prayers of destiny compeln them.  New-York Daily Tribune, 28 June 1845, p. 2; reprinted, New-York Weekly Tribune, 5 July 1845, p. 1.

source) [ source,)

5. Edmund Burke (1729–97), Irish politician and natural philosopher; John Philpot Curran (1750–1817), Irish orator. 6. Daniel O’Connell (1775–1847), Irish nationalist and patriot, known as “the Liberator.” compels [ compel

Fourth of July


The bells ring; the cannon rouse the echoes along the river shore; the boys sally forth with shouts and little flags and crackers enough to frighten all the people they meet from sunrise to sunset. The orator is conning for the last time the speech in which he has vainly attempted to season with some new spice the yearly panegyric upon our country; its happiness and glory; the audience is putting on its best bib and tucker, and its blandest expression to listen. And yet, no heart, we think, can beat to-day with one pulse of genuine, noble joy. Those who have obtained their selfish objects will not take especial pleasure in thinking of them to-day, while to unbiased minds must come sad thoughts of National Honor soiled in the eyes of other nations, of a great inheritance, risked, if not forfeited. Much has been achieved in this country since the first Declaration of Independence. America is rich and strong; she has shown great talent and energy; vast prospects of aggrandizement open before her. But the noble sentiment which she expressed in her early youth is tarnished; she has shown that righteousness is not her chief desire, and her name is no longer a watchword for the highest hopes to the rest of the world. She knows this, but takes it very easily; she feels that she is growing richer and more powerful, and that seems to suffice her. These facts are deeply saddening to those who can pronounce the words ‘My Country’ with pride and peace only so far as steadfast virtues, generous impulses find their home in that country. They cannot be satisfied with superficial benefits, with luxuries and the means of obtaining knowledge which are multiplied for them. They could rejoice in full hands and a busy brain, if the soul were expanding and the heart pure, but, the higher conditions being violated, what is done cannot be done for good. Such thoughts shadow patriot minds as the cannon-peal bursts upon the ear. This year, which declares that the people at large consent to cherish and extend Slavery as one of our “domestic institutions,” takes from the patriot his 149

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home. This year, which attests their insatiate love of wealth and power, quenches the flame upon the altar. Yet there remains that good part which cannot be taken away. If nations go astray, the narrow path may always be found and followed by the individual man. It is hard, hard indeed, when politics and trade are mixed up with evils so mighty that he scarcely dares touch them for fear of being defiled. He finds his activity checked in great natural outlets by the scruples of conscience. He cannot enjoy the free use of his limbs, glowing upon a favorable tide; but struggling, panting, must fix his eyes upon his aim and fight against the current to reach it. It is not easy, it is very hard just now to realize the blessings of Independence. For what is Independence if it doesn not lead to Freedom?—Freedom from fraud and meanness, from selfishness, from public opinion so far as it does not consent with the still small voice of one’s better self? Yet there is still a great and worthy part to play. This country presents great temptations to ill, but also great inducements to good. Her health and strength are so remarkable; her youth so full of life that disease cannot yet have taken deep hold of her. It has bewildered her brain, made her steps totter, fevered, but not yet tainted, her blood. Things are still in that state when ten just men may save the city. A few men are wanted, able to think and act upon principles of an eternal value. The safety of the country must lie in a few such men—men who have achieved the genuine independence, independence of wrong, of violence, of falsehood. We want individuals to whom all eyes may turn as an example of the practicability of virtue. We want shining examples. We want deeply rooted characters, who cannot be moved by flattery, by fear, even by hope, for they work in faith. The opportunity for such men is great, they will not be burnt at the stake in their prime for bearing witness to the truth, yet they will be tested most severely in their adherence to it. There is nothing to hinder them from learning what is true and best, no physical tortures will be inflicted on them for expressing it. Let men feel that in private lives, more than in public measures must the salvation of the country lie. If that country has so widely veered from the course she prescribed to herself and that the hope of the world prescribed to her, it must be because she had not men ripened and confirmed for better things. They leaned too carelessly on one another; they had not deepened and purified the private lives from which the public must spring, as the verdure of the plain from the fountains of the hills.

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What a vast influence is given by sincerity alone? The bier of General Jackson has just passed, upbearing a golden urn.1 The men who placed it there lament his departure and esteem the measures which have led this country to her present position wise and good. The other side esteem them unwise, unjust, and disastrous in their consequences. But both respect him thus far that his conduct was boldly sincere. The sage of Quincy!2 Men differ in their estimate of his abilities. None, probably, esteem his mind as one of the first magnitude. But both sides, all men, are influenced by the bold integrity of his character. Mr. Calhoun speaks straight out what he thinks.3 So far as this straightforwardness goes, he confers the benefits of virtue. If a character be uncorrupted, whatever bias it takes, it thus far is good and does good. It may help others to a higher, wiser, larger independence than its own. We know not where to look for an example of all or many of the virtues we would seek from the man who is to begin the new dynasty that is needed of Fathers of the Country. The Country needs to be born again; she is polluted with the lust of power, the lust of gain. She needs Fathers good enough to be God-fathers—men who will stand sponsors at the baptism with all they possess, with all the goodness they can cherish, and all the wisdom they can win, to lead this child the way she should go, and never one step in another. Are there not in schools and colleges the boys who will become such men? Are there not those on the threshold of manhood who have not yet chosen the broad way into which the multitude rushes, led by the banner on which, strange to say, the royal Eagle is blazoned, together with the word Expediency? Let him decline that road, and take the narrow, thorny path where Integrity leads, though with no prouder emblem than the dove. He may there find the needed remedy which, like the white root, the Moly, detected by the patient and resolved Odysseus, shall have power to restore the herd of men, disguised by the enchantress to whom they had willingly yielded in the forms of brutes, to the stature and beauty of men.4  New-York Daily Tribune, 4 July 1845, p. 2; reprinted, New-York Weekly Tribune, 5 July 1845, p. 1.

1. A report of the funeral of Andrew Jackson (1767–1845), seventh president of the United States, who had died on 8 June, appeared in “City Items,” New-York Daily Tribune, 25 June 1845, p. 2. 2. John Quincy Adams. 3. John C. Calhoun (1782–1850), South Carolina congressman who consistently represented southern views, especially states’ rights. 4. In the Odyssey Ulysses is protected by the herb moly when Circe turns his companions into swine.

[Review of Anna Cora Mowatt, Evelyn]


This is a very well written tale. The characters and events are taken from our every-day experience and described with nature and simplicity. The story is remarkably well told, and the catastrophe brought on with but little semblance of improbability. There is a little; for these strange results which the workings of the passions produce in real life are incredible in fiction, unless the inward cause can be made as palpable as the outward phenomenon. Not to mention works of the highest genius; in those of Godwin and Balzac—the most singular facts do not surprise us, because we are led to expect them through the minds of the agents. But “the true is not always the probable,” and, in the tale before us, the difficulty in making it seem probable is not always met. We cannot conceive of Evelyn rejoining her lover, after returning home to see her child; this might happen; but we are not made to feel the possibility of it in this instance.—The tone of thought and feeling is very good. The tale is a moral tale; but its morality is animated by a gentle and feeling heart. Many details show that the writer makes her observations with the aid of good sense, good taste and discretion.  Review of Anna Cora Mowatt, Evelyn: or a Heart Unmasked—A Tale of Domestic Life (Philadelphia: G. B. Zieber, 1845). New-York Daily Tribune, 7 July 1845, p. 1; reprinted, NewYork Weekly Tribune, 12 July 1845, p. 6. Title supplied. Anna Cora Ritchie Mowatt (1819–70), novelist, dramatist, and actress.

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[Review of Edgar Allan Poe, Tales]


Mr. Poe’s tales need no aid of newspaper comment to give them popularity; they have secured it. We are glad to see them given to the public in this neat form, so that thousands more may be entertained by them without injury to their eye-sight. No form of literary activity has so terribly degenerated among us as the tale. Now that every body who wants a new hat or bonnet takes this way to earn one from the magazines or annuals, we are inundated with the very flimsiest fabrics ever spun by mortal brain. Almost every person of feeling or fancy could supply a few agreeable and natural narratives, but when, instead of using their materials spontaneously, they set to work, with geography in hand, to find unexplored nooks of wild scenery in which to locate their Indians, or interesting farmers’ daughters, or with some abridgement of history to hunt up monarchs or heroes yet unused to become the subjects of their crude coloring, the sale-work produced is a sad affair indeed and “gluts the market” to the sorrow both of buyers and lookers-on. In such a state of things, the writings of Mr. Poe are a refreshment, for they are the fruit of genuine observations and experience, combined with an invention, which is not “making up,” as children call their way of contriving stories, but a penetration into the causes of things which leads to original but credible results. His narrative proceeds with vigor, his colors are applied with discrimination, and where the effects are fantastic they are not unmeaningly so. The “Murders of the Rue Morgue” especially made a great impression upon those who did not know its author and were not familiar with his mode of treatment. Several of his stories make us wish he would enter the higher walk of the metaphysical novel, and, taking a mind of the self-possessed and deeply marked sort that suits him, give us a deeper and longer acquaintance with its life and the springs of its life than is possible in the compass of these tales. As Mr. Poe is a professed critic, and of all the band the most unsparing to others, we are surprized to find some inaccuracies in the use of words, such as 153

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these “he had with him many books, but rarely employed them.”—“His results have, in truth, the whole air of intuition.” The degree of skill shown in the management of revolting or terrible circumstances makes the pieces that have such subjects more interesting than the others. Even the failures are those of an intellect of strong fibre and wellchosen aim.  Review of Edgar Allan Poe, Tales (New York: Wiley and Putnam, 1845). New-York Daily Tribune, 11 July 1845, p. 1; reprinted, New-York Weekly Tribune, 19 July 1845, p. 6. Title supplied.

The Irish Character


Since the publication of a short notice under this head in The Tribune several persons have expressed to us that their feelings were awakened on the subject, especially as to their intercourse with the lower Irish. Most persons have an opportunity of becoming acquainted, if they will, with the lower class of Irish, as they are so much employed among us in domestic service, and other kinds of labor. We feel, say these persons, the justice of what has been said as to the duty and importance of improving these people. We have sometimes tried, but the want of real gratitude which, in them, is associated with such warm and wordy professions of regard, with their incorrigible habits of falsehood and evasion, have baffled and discouraged us. You say their children ought to be educated, but how can this be effected, when the all but omnipotent sway of the Catholic religion and the example of parents are both opposed to the formation of such views and habits as we think desirable to the citizen of the new world? We answer first, with regard to those who have grown up in another land and who, soon after arriving here, are engaged in our service. First, as to ingratitude. We cannot but sadly smile at the remarks we hear so often on this subject. Just Heaven, and to us how liberal! who has given those who speak thus an unfettered existence, free from religious or political oppression, who has given them the education of intellectual and refined intercourse with men to develop those talents which make them rich in thoughts and enjoyment, perhaps in money too, certainly rich in comparison with the poor emigrants they employ, what is thought in Thy clear light of those who expect in exchange for a few shillings spent in presents or medicine, a few kind words, a little casual thought or care, such a mighty payment of gratitude? Gratitude!—Under the weight of old feudalism, their minds were padlocked by habits against the light; they might be grateful then, for they thought their lords were as gods, of another frame and spirit than theirs, and that they had 155

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no right to have the same hopes and wants, hardly to suffer from the same maladies with those creatures of silk and velvet and cloth of gold. Then, the crumbs that fell from the rich man’s table might be received with gratitude, and, if any but the dogs came to tend the beggar’s sores, such might be received as angels. But the institutions which sustained such ideas have fallen to pieces; it is understood, even in Europe, that “The rank is but the guinea stamp, The man’s the gowd for a’ that.” “A man’s a man for a’ that;”1

And being such, has a claim on this earth for something better than the nettles of which the French peasantry made their soup, and with which the persecuted Irish, “under hiding,” turned to green the lips white before with famine. And, if this begins to be understood in Europe, can you suppose it is not by those who, hearing that America opens a mother’s arms with the cry “All men born free and equal,” rush to her bosom to be consoled for centuries of woe, for their ignorance, their hereditary degradation, their long memories of black bread and stripes? However little else they may understand, believe they understand well this much. Such inequality of privileges among men all born of one blood should not exist. They darkly feel that those to whom much has been given owe to the Master an account of stewardship. They know now that your gift is but a small portion of their right. And you, O giver! how did you give? With religious joy, as one who knows that he who loves God cannot fail to love his neighbor as himself?n With joy and freedom, as one who feels that it is the highest happiness of gift to us that we have something to give again? Didst thou put thyself into the position of the poor man, and do for him what thou wouldest have had one able do for thee? Or, with affability, and condescending sweetness made easy by internal delight at thine own wondrous virtue, didst thou give five dollars to balance five hundred spent on thyself? Did you say, “James, I shall expect you to do right in every thing and attend to my concerns as I should myself, and, at the end of the quarter, I will give you my old clothes and a new pocket handkerchief, beside seeing that your mother is provided with fuel against Christmas?” 1. “A Man’s a Man For a’ That,” ll. 7–8, by Robert Burns (1759–96), Scotland’s most famous poet. a shimself? [ as himself?

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Line upon line and precept upon precept the tender parent expects from the teacher to whom he confides his child, vigilance unwearied, day and night, throughout long years. But he expects the raw Irish girl, or boy, to correct at a single exhortation the habit of deceiving those above them, which the expectation of being tyrannized over has rooted in their race for ages. If we look fairly into the history of their people and the circumstances under which their own youth was trained, they cannot expect that any thing short of the most steadfast patience and love can enlighten them as to the beauty and value of implicit truth, and having done so, fortify and refine them in the practice of it. This we admit at the outset. 1st. You must be prepared for a religious and patient treatment of those people, not merely uneducated but ill-educated, a treatment far more religious and patient than is demanded by your own children, if they were born and bred under circumstances at all favorable. 2d. Dismiss from your minds all thought of gratitude. Do what you do for them for God’s sake and as a debt to humanity, interest to the common creditor upon principal left in your care. Then insensibility, forgetfulness or relapse will not discourage you, and you will welcome proofs of genuine attachment to yourself chiefly as being tokens that your charge has risen into a higher state of thought and feeling, so as to be enabled to value the benefits conferred through you. Could we begin so, there would be hope of our really becoming the instructors and guardians of this swarm of souls which come from their regions of torment to us, hoping, at least, the benefits of purgatory. The influence of the Catholic Priesthood must continue very great till there is a complete transfusion of character in the minds of their charge. But as the Irishman or any other foreigner becomes Americanized, he will demand a new form of religion to suit his new wants. The priest, too, will have to learn the duties of an American citizen; he will live less and less for the Church and more for the People, till, at last, if there be Catholicism still, it will be under Protestant influences, as begins to be the case in Germany. It will be, not Roman, but American Catholicism—a form of worship which relies much, perhaps, on external means and the authority of the clergy, for such will always be the case with religion while there are crowds of men still living an external life, and who have not learned to make full use of their own faculties, but where a belief in the benefits of confession and the power of the Church, as Church, to bind and loose, atone for, or decide upon sin, with similar corruptions, must vanish in the free and searching air of a new era. At present, the Catholic priesthood are the best friends of these poor peo-

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ple, and, if they do them harm, do them also great good. All that is desirable is that they should also have other friends as sympathizing, as well acquainted with their wants and weaknesses, and who view their situation from another point. Thus they would have the benefit of various aids and means. Between employer and employed there is not sufficient pains taken on the part of the former to establish a mutual understanding. People meet in the relations of master and servant who have lived in two different worlds. In this respect we are much worse situated than the same parties have been in Europe. There is less previous acquaintance between the upper and lower classes. (We must, though unwillingly, use these terms to designate the state of things as at present existing.) Meals are taken separately, work is seldom shared, there is very little to bring the parties together, except sometimes the farmer works with his hired Irish laborer in the field, or the mother keeps the nurse-maid of her baby in the room with her. In this state of things the chances for instruction, which come every day of themselves where parties share a common life instead of its results merely, do not occur. Neither is there opportunity to administer instruction in the best manner nor to understand when and where it is needed. The farmer who works with his men in the field—the farmer’s wife who attends with her women to the churn and the oven, may, with ease, be true father and mother to all who are in their employ, and enjoy health of conscience in the relation, secure that, if they find cause for blame, it is not from faults induced by their own negligence. The merchant who is from home all day, the lady receiving visiters or working slippers in her nicely furnished parlor, cannot be quite so sure that their demands, or the duties involved in them, are clearly understood, nor estimate the temptations to prevarication. It is shocking to think to what falsehoods human beings like ourselves will resort to excuse a love of amusement, or hide ill-health, while they see us indulging freely in the one, yielding lightly to the other; and yet we have, or ought to have, far more resources in either temptation than they. For us it is hard to resist, to give up going to the places where we should meet our most interesting companions, or do our work with an aching brow. But we have not people over us whose careless hasty anger drives us to seek excuses for our failures; if so, perhaps—perhaps, who knows? we, the better educated, rigidly, immaculately true as we are at present, might tell falsehoods. Perhaps we might, if things were given us to do which we never had seen done, if we were surrounded by new arrangements in the nature of which none instructed us. All this we must think over before we can be of much use.

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We have spoken of the nursery-maid as the hired domestic with whom her mistress, or even the master, is most likely to be acquainted. But, only a day or two since, we saw, what we see so often, a nursery-maid, with the family to which she belonged, in a public conveyance. They were having a pleasant time, but in it she had no part, except to hold a hot, heavy baby and receive frequent admonitions to keep it comfortable. No inquiry was made as to her comfort—no entertaining remark, no information as to the places of interest we passed was addressed to her. Had she been in that way with that family ten years, she might have known them well enough for their characters lay only too bare to a careless scrutiny; but her joys, her sorrows, her few thoughts, her almost buried capacities, would have been as unknown to them and they as little likely to benefit her, as the Emperor of China. Let the employer place the employed first in good physical circumstances, so as to promote the formation of different habits from those of the Irish hovel and illicit still-house. Having thus induced feelings of self-respect, he has opened the door for a new set of notions. Then let him become acquainted with the family circumstances and history of his new pupil. He has now got some ground on which to stand for intercourse. Let instruction follow for the mind, not merely by having the youngest daughter set, now and then, copies in the writing-book, or hear read aloud a few verses in the Bible, but by putting good books in their way if able to read, and by intelligent conversation when there is a chance, the master with the man who is driving him, the lady with the woman who is making her bed; explain to them the relations of objects round them; teach them to compare the old with the new life. If you show a better way than theirs of doing work, teach them, too, why it is better. Thus will the mind be prepared by development for a moral reformation; there will be some soil fitted to receive the seed. When the time is come,—and will you think a poor, uneducated person in whose mind the sense of right and wrong is confused, the sense of honor blunted, easier of access than one refined and thoughtful? Surely you will not, if you yourself are refined and thoughtful, but rather that the case requires far more care in choice of a favorable opportunity.—When then the good time is come, perhaps it will be best to do what you do in a way to make a permanent impression. Show the Irishman that a vice not indigenous to his nation (for the rich and noble who are not so tempted are chivalrous to an uncommon degree in their openness, bold sincerity, and adherence to their word,) has crept over and become deeply rooted in the poorer people from the long oppressions they have undergone. Show them what efforts and care will be

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needed to wash out the taint. Offer your aid, as a faithful friend, to watch their lapses and refine their sense of truth. You will not speak in vain. If they never mind, if habit is too powerful, still their nobler nature will not have been addressed in vain. They will nor forget the counsels they have not strength to follow, and the benefits will be seen in their children or children’s children. Many say—“Well, suppose we do all this, what then?—They are so fond of change they will leave us.” What then? Why, let them go to carry the good seed elsewhere. Will you be as selfish and short-sighted as those who will never plant trees to shade a hired house lest some one else should be blest by their shade? It is a simple duty we ask you to engage in; it is also a great patriotic work. You are asked to engage in the great work of mutual education, which must be for this country the system of mutual insurance. We have some hints upon this subject, drawn from the experience of the wise and good—some encouragement to offer from that experience, that the fruits of a wise planting sometimes ripen sooner than we could dare to expect. But this must be for another day. One word as to this love of change. We hear people blaming it onn their servants, who can and do go to Niagara, to the South, to the Springs, to Europe, to the sea-side; in short, who are always on the move whenever they feel the need of variety to reanimate mind, health, or spirits. Change of place, as to family employment, is the only way domestics have of “seeing life.” The only way immigrants have of getting thoroughly acquainted with the new society into which they have entered; how natural that they should incline to it? Once more, put yourself in their places, and then judge them gently from your own, if you would be just to them, if you would be of any use.  New-York Daily Tribune, 15 July 1845, p. 1; reprinted, New-York Weekly Tribune, 19 July 1845, p. 1.

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Thomas Hood


Now almost the last light has gone out of the galaxy that made the first thirty years of this age so bright. Wordsworth and Moore alone remain.1 And the dynasty that now reigns over the world of wit and poetry is poor and pale, indeed, in comparison. We are anxious to pour due libations to the departed; we need not economize our wine; it will not be so often needed now. Hood has closed the most fatiguing career in the world, that of a professed wit;2 and we may say with deeper feeling than of others who shuffle off the load of care, may he rest in peace! The fatigues of a conqueror, a missionary preacher, even of an active philanthropist, like Howard, are nothing to those of a professed wit.3 Bad enough when he is only a man of society, by whom everyone expects to be enlivened and relieved, who can never talk gravely in a corner without those around observing that he must have heard some bad news to be so out of spirits—who can never make a simple remark while eating a peaceful dinner without the table being set in a roar of laughter, as when Sheridan, on such an occasion, opened his lips for the first time to say that “he liked currant jelly.”4 For these unhappy men there are no intervals of social repose, no long silences fed by the mere feeling of sympathy or gently entertained by observation, no warm quietude in the mild liveries of green or brown, for the world has made up its mind that motley is their only wear and teases them to jingle their bells forever. But far worse is it when the professed wit is also by profession a writer, and finds himself obliged to coin for bread those jokes, which in the frolic exuberance of youth, he so easily coined for fun. We can conceive of no existence more cruel, so tormenting, and, at the same time, so dull. We hear that Hood was forever behind hand with his promises to publishers; no wonder! But 1. Thomas Moore (1779–1852), Irish poet. 2. Thomas Hood died on 3 May 1845. 3. John Howard (1726–90), English philanthropist and prison reformer. 4. Richard Brinsley Sheridan (1751–1816), English dramatist and statesman.

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when we hear that he, in consequence, lost great part of the gains of his hard life; and was, in consequence, harassed by other cares, we cannot mourn to lose him if “After life’s fitful fever he sleeps well,”5

or if, as our deeper knowledge leads us to hope, he is now engaged in a better life, where his fancies shall take their natural place and flicker like light on the surface of a profound and full stream flowing betwixt rich and peaceful shores, such as, no less than the drawbacks upon his earthly existence, are indicated in the following sonnet. The curse of Adam, the old curse of all Though I inherit in this feverish life Of worldly toil, vain wishes, and hard strife, And fruitless thought in care’s eternal thrall, Yet more sweet honey than of bitter gall I taste through thee, my Eva, my sweet wife. Then what was Man’s lost Paradise? how rife Of bliss, since love is with him in his fall? Such as our own pure passion still might frame Of this fair earth and its delightful bowers, If no fell sorrow, like the serpent, came To trail its venom o’er the sweetest flowers; But oh! as many and such tears are ours As only should be shed for guilt and shame!

In Hood, as in all true wits, the smile lightens on the verge of a tear. True wit and humor show that exquisite sensibility to the relations of life, that fine perception as to slight tokens of its fearful, hopeful mysteries, which imply pathos to a still higher degree than mirth. Hood knew and welcomed the dower which nature gave him at his birth when he wrote thus: “All things are touched with Melancholy Born of the secret soul’s mistrust,

5. Macbeth, act 3, scene 2.

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To feel her fair ethereal wings Weigh’d down with vile degraded dust; Even the bright extremes of joy Bring on conclusions of disgust, Like the sweet blossoms of the May, Whose fragrance ends in must. O give her, then, her tribute just, Her sighs and tears and musings holy; There is no music in the life That sounds with idiot laughter solely; There’s not a string attuned to mirth But has its chord in melancholy.”6

Hood was true to this vow of acceptance. He vowed to accept willingly the pains as well as joys of life for what they could teach. Therefore years expanded and enlarged his sympathies, and gave to his lightest jokes an obvious harmony with a great moral design. Not obtrusively obvious, but enough so to give a sweetness and permanent complacency to our laughter. Indeed, what is written in his gayer mood has affected us more, as spontaneous productions always do, than what he has written of late with grave design, and which has been so much lauded by men too obtuse to discern a latent meaning, or to believe in a good purpose unless they are formally told that it exists. The later serious poems of Hood are well known; so are his jest-books and novel.7 We have now in view to speak rather of a little volume of poems published by him some years since, republished here, but never widely circulated. When a book or a person comes to us in the best possible circumstances, we judge—not too favorably, for all that the book or person can suggest is a part of its fate, and what is not seen under the most favorable circumstances is never quite truly seen, either as to promise or performance—but we form a judgment above what can be the average sense of the world in general as to its merits, which may be esteemed, after time enough has elapsed, a tolerably fair estimate of performance, though not of promise or suggestion. We became acquainted with these poems in one of those country towns which would be called, abroad, the most provincial of the province.8 The inhabitants had lost the simplicity of farmers’ habits, without gaining in its 6. “Ode to Melancholy,” ll. 109–22, by Thomas Hood. 7. Hood published Tylney Hall in 1834. 8. Fuller recalls Hallowell, Maine; see Memoirs, 2:44.

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place the refinement, the variety, the enlargement of civic life. Their industry had received little impulse from thought; their amusement was gossip. All men find amusement in gossip—literary, artistic, or social; but the degrees in it are almost infinite. They were at the bottom of the scale; they scrutinized their neighbors’ characters and affairs incessantly, impertinently, and with minds unpurified by higher knowledge; consequently the bitter fruits of envy and calumny abounded. In this atmosphere I was detained two months, and among people very uncongenial both to my tastes and notions of right. But I had a retreat of great beauty. The town lay on the bank of a noble river; behind it towered a high and rocky hill. Thither every afternoon went the lonely stranger, to await the fall of the sunset on the opposite bank of the full and rapid stream. It fell like a smile of heavenly joy; the white sails on the stream glided along like angel thoughts; the town itself looked like a fair nest, whence virtue and happiness might soar with sweetest song. So looked the scene from above; and that hill was the scene of many an aspiration and many an effort to attain as high a point of view for the mental prospect, in the hope that little discrepancies, or what seemed so when on a level with them, might also, from above, be softened into beauty and found subservient to a noble design in the whole. The town boasted few books, and the accident which threw Hood’s poems in the way of the watcher from the hill, was a very fortunate one. They afforded a true companionship to hours which knew no other, and, perhaps, have since been overrated from association with what they answered to or suggested. Yet there are surely passages in them which ought to be generally known and highly prized. And if their highest value be for a few individuals with whom they are especially in concord, unlike the really great poems which bring something to all, yet those whom they please will be very much pleased. These few remarks we will add, and then to the poems. Hood never became corrupted into a hack writer. This shows great strength under his circumstances. Dickens has fallen and Sue is falling, for few men can sell themselves by inches without losing a cubit from their stature.9 But Hood resisted the danger. He never wrote when he had nothing to say, he stopped when he had done, and never hashed for a second meal old thoughts which had been drained of their choicest juices. His heart is truly human, tender and

9. Charles Dickens (1812–70), popular English novelist.

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brave. From the absurdities of human nature he argues the possibility of its perfection. His black is admirably contrasted with his white, but his love has no converse of hate. His descriptions of nature, if not accurately or profoundly evidencing insight, are unstudied, fond, and reverential. They are fine reveries about nature. He has tried his powers on themes where he had great rivals—In ‘The plea of the Midsummer Fairies’ and “Hero and Leander.”10 The latter is one of the finest subjects in the world, and one, too, which can never wear out as long as each mind shall have its separate ideal of what a meeting would be between two perfect lovers, in the full bloom of beauty and youth, under circumstances the most exalting to passion, because the most trying, and with the most romantic accompaniments of scenery. There is room here for the finest expression of love and grief, for the wildest remonstrance against fate. Why are they made so lovely and so beloved—why was a flower brought to such perfection, and then culled for no use? One of the older English writers has written an exquisite poem on this subject, painting a youthful pair, fitted to be not only a heaven but a world to one another. Hood had not power to paint or to conceive such fullness of character; but, in a lesser style, he has written a fine poem. The best part of it, however, is the innocent cruelty and grief of the Sea Syren. “Lycus and Centaur” is also a poem once read never to be forgotten. The hasty trot of the versification, unfit for any other theme, on this betokens well the frightened horse. Its mazy and bewildered imagery, with its countless glancings and glimpses, expresses powerfully the working of the Circean spell,11 while the note of human sadness, a yearning and condemned human love, thrills through the whole and gives it unity. This is a passage from Lycus’s wanderings after the witch had transformed him form man to Centaur: Oh! I once had a haunt near a cot where a mother Daily sat in the shade with her child, and would smother Its eyelids in kisses, and then in its sleep Sang dreams in its ear of its manhood, while deep In a thicket of willows I gazed o’er the brooks, That murmured between us and kissed them with looks;

10. Fuller refers to Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream and to Christopher Marlowe (1564–93), English dramatist, whose Hero and Leander was published in 1598. 11. In the Odyssey, only Ulysses is protected when Circe turns his companions into swine.

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But the willows unbosomed their secret, and never I returned to a spot I had startled forever. Though I oft longed to know, but could ask it of none, Was the mother still fair, and how big was her son? For the haunters of fields they all shunned me by flight, The men in their horror, the women in fright; None ever remained save a child once that sported Among the wild bluebells, and playfully courted The breeze; and beside him a speckled snake lay Tight strangled, because it had hissed him away From the flower at his finger; he rose and drew near, Like a son of Immortals, one born to know fear, But with the strength of black locks and with eyes azure bright, To grow to large manhood of merciful might. He came with his face of bold wonder, to feel The hair of my side and to life up my heel, And questioned my face with wide eyes; but when under My eyes he saw tears,—for I wept at his wonder, He stroked me, and uttered such kindliness then, That the once love of women, the friendship of men In past sorrow, no kindness o’er came like a kiss On my heart in its desolate day such as this! And I yearned at his cheeks in my love, and down bent, And lifted him up in my arms with intent To kiss him,—but he, cruel kindly,—alas! Held out to my lips a plucked handful of grass! Then I dropt him in horror, but felt as I fled The stone he indignantly hurled at my head, That dissevered my ear, but I felt not, whose fate Was to meet more distress in his love than his hate.12

Is it not fine the portrait of the child born, to grow to large manhood of merciful might,

and the Centaur holding him up while he offers the handful of grass? Ancient sculptors might have gloried in such a theme as the contrast betwixt the two forms presents. “Fair Ines,” “The Ballad,” “She’s up and gone, the graceless 12. From “Lycus the Centaur.”

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Girl,” and “I remember,” more widely known than most of those from having been set to music, are all of equal originality and beauty. We must quote three poems, different in style from one another and equally distinguished, the first as picture, the second for its lyric tenderness and elevation of sentiment, the last as the finest of those reveries upon nature we have spoken of. ruth . She stood breast high amid the corn, Clasped by the golden light of morn. Like the sweetheart of the Sun, Who many a glowing kiss had won. On her cheek an autumn flush Deeply ripened;—such a blush In the midst of brown was born, Like red poppies grown with corn. Round her eyes her tresses fell; Which were blackest none could tell; But long lashes veiled a light That had else been all too bright. And her hat, with shady brim, Made her tressy forehead dim;— Thus she stood amid the stooks, Praising God with sweetest looks:— Sure, I said, heaven did not mean, Where I reap thou shouldst but glean, Lay thy sheaf adown and come, Share my harvest and my home. ––––––

ballad. Sigh on, sad heart, for Love’s eclipse And Beauty’s fairest queen. Though ’t is not for my peasant lips To soil her name between: A king might lay his sceptre down, But I am poor and nought;

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The brow should wear a golden crown That wears her in its thought. The diamonds glancing in her hair, Whose sudden beams surprise, Might bid such humble hopes beware The glancing of her eyes; Yet looking once, I looked too long, And if my love is sin, Death follows on the heels of wrong, And kills the crime within. Her dress seemed wove of lily leaves, It was so pure and fine; O lofty wears and lowly weaves, But hodden grey is mine; And homely hose must step apart, Where gartered princes stand; But may he wear my love at heart That wins her lily hand! Alas! there’s far from russet frieze To silks and satin gowns, But I doubt if God made like degrees In courtly hearts and clowns My father wronged a maiden’s mirth, And brought her cheeks to blame, And all that’s lordly of my birth Is my reproach and shame! ’T is vain to weep—’t is vain to sigh; ’T is vain this idle speech: For where her happy pearls do lie, My tears may never reach; Yet when I’m gone, e’en lofty pride May say what of what has been. His love was nobly born and died, Though all the rest was mean! My speech is rude—but speech is weak Such love as mine to tell; Yet had I words, I dare not speak— So, Lady, fare thee well!

“Thomas Hood”

I will not wish thy better state Was one of low degree, But I must weep that partial Fate Made such a churl of me. ––––––

ode . . . . autumn I. I saw old Autumn in the misty morn Stand shadowless like silence, listening To silence, for no lonely bird would sing Into his hollow ear from woods forlorn, Nor lowly hedge nor solitary thorn;— Shaking his languid locks all dewy bright With tangled gossamer that fell by night, Pearling his coronet of golden corn. II. Where are the songs of Summer?—With the sun, Op’ning the dusky eyelids of the South, Till shade and silence waken up as one, And Morning sings with a warm odorous mouth. Where are the merry birds!—Away, away, On panting wings through the inclement skies, Lest owls should prey Undazzled at noon-day, And tear with horny beak their lustrous eyes. III. Where are the blooms of summer?—In the West, Blushing their last to the last sunny hours, When the mild Eve by sudden Night is prest Like tearful Proserpine, snatched from her flowers To a most gloomy breast. Where is the pride of Summer—the green prime— The many, many leaves all twinkling?—Three On the mossed elm; three on the naked lime Trembling—and one upon the old oak tree! Where is the Dryad’s immortality?— Gone into the dark cypress and dark yew, Or wearing the long gloomy winter through In the smooth holly’s green eternity.

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IV. The squirrel gloats on his accomplished hoard, The ants have brimmed their garners with ripe grain, And honey-bees have stored The sweets of Summer in their luscious cells; The swallows all have winged across the main; But here the Autumn melancholy dwells, And sighs her tearful spells Amongst the sunless shadows of the plain. Alone, alone, Upon a mossy stone, She sits and reckons up the dead and gone With the last leaves for a love-rosary, Whilst all the withered world looks drearily, Like a dim picture of the drowned past In the hushed mind’s mysterious far away, Doubtful what ghostly thing will steal the last Into that distance, grey upon the grey. V. O go and sit with her, and be o’ershaded Under the languid downfall of her hair: She wears a coronal of flowers faded Upon her forehead and a face of care;— There is enough of withered every where To make her bower—and enough of gloom; There is enough of sadness to invite, If only for the rose that died—whose doom Is Beauty’s—she that with the living bloom Of conscious cheeks most beautifies the light;— There is enough of sorrowing, and quite Enough of bitter fruits the earth doth bear— Enough of chilly droppings for her bowl; Enough of fear and shadowy despair, To frame her cloudy prison for the soul!

The Sonnets, “It is not death,” &c. and that on Silence are equally admirable. Whoever reads these poems will give Hood nearly as high a rank as a poet as that he holds as a wit. This was our present aim, and therefore we shall leave to others, or another

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time, the retrospect of his comic writings. But having, on the late promptings of love for the departed, looked over these we have been especially amused with ‘the Schoolmistress Abroad,’ which was new to us. Miss Crane, a “she Mentor, stiff as starch, formal as a Dutch hedge, sensitive as a Daguerreotype, and so tall, thin and upright, that supposing the Tree of Knowledge to have been a poplar, she was the very Dryad to have fitted it,” was left, with a sister little better endowed with the pliancy and power of adaptation that the exigencies of this varied world-scene demand, in attendance upon a sick father in a foreign inn where she cannot make herself understood because her French is not ‘French French, but English French,’ and no two things in nature or art can be more unlike. Now look at the position of the Sisters. “The younger, Miss Ruth, was somewhat less disconcerted. She had by her position the share in the active duties of Lebanon House; and under ordinary circumstances, would not have been utterly at a loss what to do for the comfort or relief of her parent. But in every direction in which her instinct and habits would have prompted her to look, the materials she sought were deficient. There was no easy chair—no fire to wheel it to—no cushion to shake up—no cupboard to go to—no female friend to consult—no Miss Parfitt—no Cook—no John to send for the Doctor—no English—no French—nothing but that dreadful “Gefullig” or “Ja Wohl” and the equally incomprehensible “Gnadige Frau!” “Der herr,” said the German coachman, “ist sehr krank;” (the gentleman is very sick.) The last word had occurred so frequently on the organ of the Schoolmistress, that it had acquired in her mind some important significance. “Ruth, what is krank?” “How should I know?” retorted Ruth, with an asperity apt to accompany intense excitement and perplexity. “In English, it’s a thing that helps to pull the bell. But look at papa—do help to support him—you’re good for nothing.” “I am, indeed,” murmured poor Miss Priscilla, with a gentle shake of her head, and a low, slow sigh of acquiescence. Alas! as she ran over the catalogue of her accomplishments, the more she remembered what she could do for her sick parent, the more helpless and useless she appeared. For instance, she could have embroidered him a night-cap—or knitted him a silk purse—or plaited him a guard-chain—or cut him out a watch paper—or ornamented his braces with bead-work—or embroidered his waistcoat—or worked him a pair of slippers—or open-worked his pocket handkerchief. She could even—if such an operation would have been comforting or salutary—have rough-

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casted him with shell-work—or coated him with red or black seals—or encrusted him with blue alum—or stuck him all over with colored wafers—or festooned him. But alas! alas! what would it have availed her poor dear papa in the spasmodics, if she had even festooned him, from top to toe, with little rice-paper roses?”

The comments of the female chorus as the author reads aloud the sorrows of Miss Crane are droll as Hood’s drollest; who can say more? So farewell, gentle, generous, inventive, genial and most amusing friend. We thank thee for both tears and laughter; tears which were not heart-breaking, laughter which was never frivolous or unkind. In thy satire was no gall, in the sting of thy winged wit no venom, in the pathos of thy sorrow no enfeebling touch! Thou hadst faults as a writer, we know not whether as a man; but who cares to name or even to note them? Surely, there is enough on the sunny side of the peach to feed us and make us bless the tree from which it fell.  New-York Daily Tribune, 18 July 1845, p. 1; reprinted, New-York Weekly Tribune, 19 July 1845, p. 1.

[Review of Caroline Norton, The Child of the Islands, and John Critchley Prince, Hours with the Muses]


The Hon. Mrs. Norton and Prince, “a reed-maker for weavers,”1 meet upon a common theme—the existing miseries and possible relief of that most wretched body, England’s Poor: most wretched of the world’s sufferers in being worse mocked by pretensions of freedom and glory, most wretched in having minds more awakened to feel their wretchedness. Mrs. Norton and Prince meet on the same ground, but in strongly contrasted garb and expression, as might be expected from the opposite quarters from which they come. Prince takes this truly noble motto: “Knowledge and Truth and Virtue were his theme, And lofty hopes of Liberty divine.”—Shelley.2

Mrs. Norton prefaces a poem on a subject of such sorrowful earnestness, and in which she calls the future sovereign of a groaning land to thought upon his duties, with this weak wish couched in the verse of Moore: “As half in shade, and half in sun, This world along its course advances, May that side the sun’s upon Be all that shall ever meet thy glances.”3

Thus unconsciously showing her state of mind. It is a very different wish that a good friend, ‘let alone’ a good angel, would proffer to the Prince of Wales at this moment. Shame indeed will it be for him if he does wish to stand in the sun, while the millions that he ought to spend all his blood to benefit are shivering in the cold and dark. The position of the heirs of fortune in that coun1. Prince was the son of a reed-maker. 2. “Alastor,” ll. 158–59, by Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792–1822), English Romantic poet. 3. “Peace be around thee,” ll. 13–16, by Thomas Moore.

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try, under present circumstances, is one of dread, which to a noble soul would bring almost the anguish of crucifixion. How can they enjoy one moment in peace the benefit of their possessions? And how can they give them up, and be sure it will be any benefit to others? The causes of ill seem so deeply rooted in the public economy of England, that, if all her rich men were to sell all they have and give to the poor, it would yield but a temporary relief. Yea! all those heaped-up gems, the Court array of England’s beauty, the immense treasures of art, enough to rouse old Greece from her grave; the stately parks, full of dewy glades and bosky dells, haunted by the stately deer and still more thickly by exquisite memories; the enormous wealth of episcopal palaces, might all be given up for the good of the people at large, and not relieve their sufferings ten years. It is not merely that sense of right usually dignified by the name of generosity that is wanted, but wisdom—a deeper wisdom by far as to the conduct of national affairs than the world has ever yet known. It is not enough now for prince or noble to be awakened to good dispositions. Let him not hope at once to be able to do good with the best dispositions: things have got too far from health and simplicity for that; the return must be tedious, and whoever sets out on that path must resign himself to be a patient student, with a painfully studying world for his companion. In work he can for a long time hope no shining results; the miners dig in the dark as yet for the ransom of the suffering million. Hard is the problem for the whole civilized world at present, hard for bankrupt Europe, hard for endangered America. We say bankrupt Europe, for surely nations are so who have not known how to secure peace, education, or even bodily sustenance for the people at large. The lightest lore of fairy tale is wise enough to show that such nations must be considered bankrupt, notwithstanding the accumulation of wealth, the development of resources, the prodigies of genius and science they have to boast. Some successes have been achieved, but at what a price of blood and tears, of error and of crime! And, in this hard school-time, hardest must be the lot of him who has turned outward advantages above the rest, and yet is at all awakened to the wants of all. Has he mind? how shall he learn? time—how employ it? means— where apply them? The poor little “trapper,” kept in the dark at his automaton task twelve hours a day, has an easy and happy life before him, compared with the prince on the throne, if that prince possess a conscience that can be roused, a mind that can be developed. The position of such a prince is indicated in the following extract which we take from the Schnellpost. Laube says in his late work called “Three royal

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cities of the North”:4 “King Oscar still lives in the second story of the castle at Stockholm, where he lived when he was crown prince. He was out, and his dressing gown thrown upon an elbow chair before the writing table: all was open, showing how he was occupied. I found among the books, that seemed in present use, many in German, among them the ‘Staats Lexicon,’ ‘Julius upon Prisons,’ ‘Rotteck’s History of the World.’n It is well known that King Oscar is especially interested in studies for the advantage of the most unhappy classes of citizens, the poor and the prisoners, and has, himself, written upon the subject. His apartment shows domestic habits like those of a writer. No fine library full of books left to accumulate dust, but what he wants, chosen with judgment, ready for use around him. A hundred little things showed what should be the modern kingly character, at home in the intellectual life of our time, earnest for a general culture. Every thing in his simple arrangements showed the manly democratic prince. He is up, early and late, attending with zealous conscientiousness the duties of his office.” Such a life should England’s prince live, and then he would be only one of the many virtuous seekers, with a better chance to try experiments. The genius of the time is working through myriad organs, speaking through myriad mouths, but condescends chiefly to men of low estate. She is spelling a new and sublime spell; its first word we know is brotherhood, but that must be well pronounced and learnt by heart before we shall hear another so clearly. One thing is obvious; we must cease to worship princes even in genius. The greatest geniuses will in this day rank themselves as the chief servants only. It is not even the most exquisite, the highest, but rather the largest and deepest experience that can serve us. The Prince of Wales, like his poetess, will not be so able a servant on account of the privileges she so gracefully enumerates and cannot persuade herself are not blessings. But they will keep him, as have kept her, farther from the truth and knowledge wanted than he would have been in a less sheltered position. Yet we sympathize with Mrs. Norton in her appeal. Every boy should be a young prince; since it is not so, in the present distorted state of society. It is natural to select some one cherished object as the heir to our hopes. Children become the angels of a better future to all who attain middle age without los-

4. Heinrich Laube (1806–84), German political writer, dramatist, and novelist, whose Drei Konigstadte im Norden was published in 1845. “Staats Lexicon,” “Julius upon Prisons,” “Rottack’s History of the World.” [ ‘Staats Lexicon,’ ‘Julius upon Prisons,’ ‘Rottack’s History of the World.’

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ing from the breast that chief jewel, the ideal of what man and life should be. They must do what we hoped to do, but find time, strength, perhaps even spirit, failing. They show not yet their limitations; in their eyes shines an infinite hope; we can imagine it realized in their lives, and this consoles us for the deficiencies in our own, for the soul, though demanding the beautiful and good every where, can yet be consoled if it is found some where. ’T is an illusion to look for it in these children more than in ourselves, but it is one we seem to need, being the second strain of the music that cheers our fatiguing march through this part of the scene of life. There was a good deal of prestige about Queen Victoria’s coming to the throne.5 She was young, “and had what in a princess might be styled beauty.”— She wept lest she should not reign wisely, and that seemed as if she might. Many hoped she might prove another Elizabeth,6 with more heart, using the privileges of the woman, her high feeling, sympathy, tact and quick penetration in unison with and as corrective of the advice of experienced statesmen. We hoped she would be a mother to the country.—But she has given no signs of distinguished character; her walk seems a private one. She is a fashionable lady and the mother of a family. We hope she may prove the mother of a good prince, but it will not do to wait for him; the present generation must do all it can. If he does no harm, it is more than is reasonable to expect from a prince—does no harm and is the keystone to keep the social arch from falling into ruins till the time be ripe to construct a better in its stead. Mrs. Norton, addressing herself to the Child of the Islands, goes through the circling seasons of the year and finds plenty of topics in their changes to subserve her main aim. This is to awaken the rich to their duty. And, though the traces of her education are visible and weak prejudices linger among newly awakened thoughts, yet, on the whole, she shows a just sense of the relationship betwixt man and man, and thus musically doth she proclaim her creed: The stamp of imperfection rests on all Our human intellects have power to plan; ’T is Heaven’s own mark, fire-branded at the fall, When we sank lower than we first began, And the Bad Angel stained the heart of man:

5. Queen Victoria (1819–1901) came to the throne of England in 1838. 6. Queen Elizabeth (1533–1603), ruled England (1558–1603) during a golden age of politics and literature.

[Review of The Child of the Islands and Hours with the Muses]

The good our nature struggles to achieve Becomes, not what we would, but what we can: Oh! shall we therefore idly, vainly grieve, Or coldly turn away reluctant to relieve? Even now a radiant Angel goeth forth, A spirit that hath healing on his wings, And flieth East and West, and South and North, To do the bidding of the King of Kings: Stirring men’s hearts to compass better thing, And teaching brotherhood as that sweet source Which holdeth in itself all better springs; And showing how to guide its silver course, When it shall flood the world with deep, exulting force, And some shall be too indolent to teach, And some too proud of other men to learn; And some shall clothe the thought in mystic speech, So that we scarce their meaning may discern; But all shall feel their hearts within them burn, (Even those by whom the Holy is denied,) And in their worldly path shall pause and turn, Because a Presence walketh by their side, Not of their earthlier mould, but pure and glorified; And some shall blindly overshoot the mark Which others, feeble-handed, fail to hit; And some, like that lone Dove that left the Ark, With restless and o’erwearied wing to flit Over a world by lurid storm-gleams lit, Shall seek firm landing for a deed of worth, And see the water-floods still cover it; For there are many languages on Earth, But only one in Heaven, where all good plans have birth. Faint not, oh Spirit, in dejected mood, Thinking how much is planned, how little done; Revolt not, Heart, though still misunderstood; For Gratitude, of all things ’neath the sun, Is easiest lost and insecurest won. Doubt not, clear Mind, that workest out the Right For the right’s sake: the thin thread must be spun, And Patience weave it, ere that sign of might, Truth’s banner, wave afloat, fall flashing to the light.

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Saw ye the blacksmith, with a struggling frown, Hammer the sparkle-drifting iron straight Saw ye the comely anchor, holding down The storm-tried vessel with its shapely weight? Saw ye the bent tools, old and out of date, The crucibles, and fragments of pale ore, Saw ye the lovely coronet of state Which in the festal hour a monarch wore, The sceptre and the orb which in her hand she bore? Saw ye the trudging laborer with his spade Plant the small seedling in the rugged ground? Saw ye the forest trees within whose shade The wildest blasts of winter wander round, While the strong branches toss and mock the sound? Saw ye the honey which the bee had hived, By starving men in desert wandering found; And how the soul gained hope, the worn limbs thrived, Upon the gathered store by insect skill contrived? Lo! out of chaos was the world first called, And Order out of blank Disorder came, The feebly-toiling heart that shrinks appalled, In dangers weak, in difficulties tame, Hath lost the spark of that creative flame Dimly permitted still on earth to burn, Working out slowly Order’s perfect frame; Distributed to those whose souls can learn, As laborers under God, His taskwork to discern.

“To discern,” ay! that is what is needed. Only these “laborers under God” have that clearness of mind that is needed, and though in the present time they walk as men in a subterranean passage where the lamp sheds its light only a little way onward, yet that light suffices to keep their feet from stumbling while they seek an outlet to the blessed day. The above presents a fair specimen of the poem. As poetry it is inferior to her earlier verses, where, without pretension to much thought or commanding view, Mrs. Norton expressed simply the feelings of the girl and the woman. Willis has described them well in one of the most touching of his poems, as being a tale

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“of feelings which in me are cold. But ah! with what a passionate sweetness told!”

The best passages in the present poem are personal, as where a mother’s feelings are expressed in speaking of infants and young children, recollections of a Scotch Autumn, and the description of the imprisoned gipsy:7 She lies, crouched up upon her pallet-bed, Her slight limbs starting in unquiet sleep, And oft she turns her feverish, restless head, Mourns, frets or murmurs, or begins to weep; Anon, a calmer hour of slumber deep Sinks on her lids; some happier thought hath come, Some jubilee unknown she thinks to keep, With liberated steps that wander home, Once more with gipsy tribes a gipsy life to roam. But no, her pale lips quiver as they moan: What whisper they? A name, and nothing more; But with such passionate tenderness of tone, As shows how much those lips that name adore. She dreams of one who shall her loss deplore With the unbridled anguish of despair; Whose forest-wanderings by her side are o’er, But to whose heart one braid of her black hair Were worth the world’s best throne and all its treasures rare. The shadow of his eyes is on her soul, His passionate eyes that held her in such love; Which love she answered, scorning all control Of reasoning thoughts which tranquil bosoms move: No lengthened courtship it was his to prove, (Gleaming capricious smiles by fits and starts,) Nor feared her simple faith lest he should rove; Rapid and subtle as the flame that darts To meet its fellow flame, shot passion through their hearts. And though no holy priest that union blessed, By gipsy laws and customs made his bride,

7. “Summer,” stanzas 8–16.

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The love her looks avowed, in words confessed, She shared his tent, she wandered by his side; His glance her morning star—his will her guide. Animal beauty and intelligence Were her sole gifts—his heart they satisfied. Himself could claim no higher, better sense, So loved her with a love, wild, passionate, intense! And oft, where flowers lay spangled round about, And to the dying twilight incense shed, They sat to see heaven’s glittering stars come out, Her cheek down-leaning on his cherished head— That head upon her heart’s soft pillow laid In fulness of content, and such deep spell Of loving silence, that the word first said With startling sweetness on their senses fell, Like silver coins dropped down a many-fathomed well. Look! her brows darken with a sudden frown, She dreams of Rescue by his angry aid— She dreams he strikes the Law’s vile minions down, And bears her swiftly to the wild-wood shade; There, where their bower of bliss at first was made. Safe in his sheltering arms once more she sleeps; Ah! happy dream! she wakes, amazed, afraid, Like a young panther from her couch she leaps, Gazes bewildered round, then madly shrieks and weeps! For, far above her head, the prison-bars Mock her with narrow sections of that sky She knew so wide, and blue, and full of stars, When gazing upward through the branches high Of the free forest! Is she then to die? Where is he!—where, the strong-armed and the brave, Who in that vision answered her wild cry? Where is he?—where, the lover who should save And snatch her from her fate—an ignominious grave? Oh pity her! all sinful though she be, While thus the transient dreams of freedom rise, Contrasted with her waking destiny: Scorn is for devils; soft compassion lies In angel hearts, and beams from angel-eyes.

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Pity her! Never more, with wild embrace, Those flexile arms shall clasp him ere she dies; Never the fierce, sad beauty of her face Be lit with gentler hope, or love’s triumphant grace! Lonely she perishes; like some wild bird That strains its wing against opposing wires; Her heart’s tumultuous panting may be heard, While to the thought of rescue she aspires, Then, of its own deep strength, it faints and tires; The frenzy of her mood begins to cease; Her varying pulse with fluttering stroke expires, And the sick weariness that is not peace Creeps slowly through her blood, and promises release.

In the same soft and flowing style and with the same unstudied fidelity to nature, is the grief of the gipsy husband painted when he comes and finds her dead. After the first fury of rage and despair is spent, he “weepeth like a child”— And many a day, by many a sunny bank, Or forest-pond, close fringed with rushes dank, He wails, his clench’d hands on his eyelids prest; Or by lone hedges, where the grass grows rank, Stretched prone, as travellers deem, in idle rest, Mourns for that murdered girl, the dove of his wild nest.

To such passages the woman’s heart lends the rhetoric. Generally the poem is written with considerable strength, in a good style, sustained, and sufficiently adorned by the flowers of feeling. It shows an expansion of mind highly honorable to a lady placed as Mrs. Norton has been, and for which she, no doubt, is much indebted to her experience of sorrow. She has felt the need of faith and hope, of an enlargement of sympathy. The poem may be read through at once and without fatigue; this is much to say for an ethical poem, filling a large volume. It is, however, chiefly indebted for its celebrity to the circumstances of its authorship. A beautiful lady, celebrated in aristocratic circles, joins the democratic movement, now so widely spreading in light literature, and men hail the fact as a sign of the times. The poem is addressed to the “upper classes,” and, even from its defects, calculated to win access to their

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minds. Its outward garb, too, is suited to attract their notice. The book is simply but beautifully got up, the two stanzas looking as if written for the page they fill, and pre-existent harmony with the frame-work and margin. There is only one ugly thing, and that frightfully ugly, the design for the frontispiece by Maclise.8 The Child of the Islands, represented by an infant form to whose frigid awkwardness there is no correspondence in the most degraded models that can be found in Nature for that age, with the tamest of angels kneeling at his head and feet, angels that have not spirit and sweetness enough to pray away a fly forms the centre. Around him are other figures of whom it is impossible to say whether they are goblins or fairies, come to curse or bless. The accessoriesn are as bad as the main group, mean in conception, tame in execution. And the subject admitted of so beautiful and noble an illustration by Art! We marvel that a person of so refined taste as Mrs. Norton, and so warmly engaged in the subject, should have admitted this to its companionship. The volume may be found at Appleton’s. We intended to have given some account of Prince and his poems, in this connection, but must now wait till another number, for we have spread our words over too much space already.  Review of Caroline Norton, The Child of the Islands (London: Chapman and Hall, 1845), and John Critchley Prince, Hours with the Muses, 2d ed. (London: Simpkin, Marshall, 1841). New-York Daily Tribune, 26 July 1845, p. 1; reprinted, New-York Weekly Tribune, 2 August 1845, p. 1; Papers on Literature and Art, 2:14–21. Title supplied. Caroline Sheridan Norton (1808–77), English poet, novelist, and essayist on woman’s rights; John Critchley Prince (1808–66), factory worker and poet. 8. Daniel Maclise (1806–70), Irish historian and figure painter. accessaries [ accessories

First of August, 1845


Among the holidays of the year, some portion of our people borrow one from another land.1 They borrow what they fain would own, since their doing so would increase, not lessen, the joy and prosperity of the present owner. It is a holiday, not to be celebrated, as others are, with boast, and shout, and gay procession, but solemnly, yet hopefully, in humiliation and prayer for much ill now existing—in faith that the God of good will not permit such ill to exist always—in aspirations to become His instruments for its removal. We borrow this holiday from England. We know not that she could lend us another such. Her career has been one of selfish aggrandizement. To carry her flag every where where the waters flow, to leave a strong mark of her foot-print on every shore that she might return and claim its spoils, to maintain in every way her own advantage, is and has been her object as much as that of any nation on earth. The plundered Hindoo, the wronged Irish—for ourselves we must add the outraged Chinese (for we look on all that has been written as to the right of that war as mere sophistry2), no less than Napoleon, walking up and down in his ‘tarred green coat’ in the unwholesome lodge at St. Helena3—all can tell whether she be righteous or generous in her conquests. Nay! let myriads of her own children say whether she will abstain from sacrificing, mercilessly, human freedom, happiness, and the education of immortal souls, for the sake of gains in money! We speak of Napoleon, for we must ever despise, with most profound contempt, the paltry use she made of her power on that occasion.—She had been the chief means of liberating Europe from his tyranny,

1. Britain had abolished slavery at home and in all her colonies effective 1 August 1834. 2. As a result of the Opium War (1840–42), the losing Chinese signed the Treaty of Nanking, which ceded Hong Kong to the British, opened five Chinese treaty ports for British residence and trade, gave British nationals accused of violating Chinese law the right to be tried in British courts, and limited duties on trade goods. 3. Napoleon Bonaparte was banished for life to St. Helena after his defeat at Waterloo during his attempt to regain his rule.

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and, though it was for her own sake, we must commend and admire her conduct and resolution thus far. But the unhandsome, base treatment of her captive has never been enough contemned. Any private gentleman, in chaining up the foe that had put himself in his power, would at least have given him lodging, food and clothes to his liking, and a civil turnkey—and a great nation could fail in this! Oh, it was shameful, if only for the vulgarity of feeling evinced! All this we say because we are sometimes impatient of England’s brag on the subject of Slavery. Freedom! Because she has done one good act, is she entitled to the angelic privilege of being the Champion of Freedom? And yet it is true that once, once she nobly awoke to a sense of what was right and wise. It is true that she also acted out that sense; acted fully, decidedly. She was willing to make sacrifices even of the loved money. She has not let go the truth she then laid to heart, and continues the resolute foe of man’s traffic in men. We must bend low to her as we borrow this holy day, the anniversary of the Emancipation of Slaves in the West Indies. We do not feel that the extent of her practice justifies the extent of her preaching, yet we must feel her to be, in this matter, an elder sister, entitled to cry Shame to us. And, if her feelings be those of a sister indeed, how must she mourn to see her next of kin pushing back as far as in her lies the advance of this good cause, binding those whom the old world had awakened from its sins enough to loose! But courage, sister. All is not yet lost. There is here a faithful band determined to expiate the crimes that have been committed in the name of Liberty. On this day they meet and vow themselves to the service, and, as they look in one another’s glowing eyes, they read there assurance that the end is not yet, and that they, forced as they are “To keep in company with Pain And Fear and Falsehood, miserable train,”4

may “Turn that necessity to glorious gain,”5

may “Transmute them and subdue.”6

4. “Character of the Happy Warrior,” ll. 12–13, by William Wordsworth. 5. “Character of the Happy Warrior,” l. 14. 6. “Character of the Happy Warrior,” l. 17.

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Indeed we do not see that they bate a jot of heart or hope, and it is because they feel that the power of the Great Spirit and its peculiar workings in the spirit of this age are with them. There is action and reaction all the time, and though the main current is obvious, there are many little eddies and counter currents. Mrs. Norton writes a poem on the sufferings of the poor, and in it she, as episode, tunefully laments the sufferings of the Emperor of all the Russias for the death of a beloved daughter. And it was a deep grief, yet it did not soften his heart, or make it feel for man. The first signs of his recovered spirits are in new efforts to crush out the heart of Poland, and to make the Jews lay aside the hereditary marks of their national existence, to them a sacrifice far worse than death. But then—Count Apraxin is burnt alive by his infuriate serfs, and the life of a serf is far more dog-like or rather machine-like than that of our slaves.7 Still the serf can rise in vengeance, can admonish the Autocrat that humanity will yet turn again and rend him. So with us. The most shameful deed has been done that ever disgraced a nation; because the most contrary to consciousness of right. Other nations have done wickedly, but we have surpassed them all in trampling under foot the principles that had been assumed as the basis of our national existence and our willingness to forfeit our honor in the face of the world. The following stanzas, written by a friend some time since, on the Fourth of July, exhibit these contrasts so forcibly, that we cannot do better than insert them here: Loud peal of bells and beat of drums Salute approaching dawn, And the deep cannons’ fearful bursts Announce a Nation’s Morn. Imposing ranks of freemen stand And claim their proud birthright, Impostors! rather, thus to brand A name they hold so bright. Let the day see the pageant show! Float, banners, to the breeze! Shout Liberty’s great name throughout Columbia’s lands and seas!

7. Fyodor Matveyevich Apraksin (or Apraxin) (1671–1728), founder of the Russian navy.

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Give open sunlight to the Free! But for Truth’s equal sake, When Night sinks down upon the land, Proclaim dead Freedom’s Wake! Beat, muffled drums—toll, funeral bell! Nail every half-mast! For, though we fought the battle well, We’re traitors at the last. Let the whole nation join in one Procession to appear, We and our sons lead on the front, Our slave bring up the rear. America is rocked within Thy cradle, Liberty, By Africa’s poor palsied hand, Strange inconsistency! We’ve dug one grave, as deep as Death, For Tyranny’s black sin, And dug another at its side To thrust our brother in. We challenge all the world aloud, “Lo! Tyranny’s deep grave!” And all the world points back and cries— “Then, fool!—behold thy Slave!” “Yes, rally, brave America, Thy noble hearts and free, Around the Eagle, as he soars Upward in majesty. “One half thy emblem is the bird, Out-facing thus the day; But, wouldst thou make him wholly thine, Give him a helpless prey.”

This should be sung in Charleston at 9 o’clock in the evening, when the drums are heard proclaiming “dead Freedom’s Wake,” as they summon to their homes, or to the custody of the police, every human being with a black skin who is found walking without a pass from the white. Or it might have been

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sung to advantage the night after Charleston had shown her independence and care of domestic institutions by expulsion of the venerable envoy of Massachusetts!8 Its expression would seem even more forcible than now, when sung so near the facts, when the eagle soars so close above his prey. How deep the shadow, yet cleft by light! There is a counter-current that sets toward the deep. We are inclined to weigh as of almost equal weight with all we have had to trouble us as to the prolongation of slavery, the hopes that may be gathered from the course taken by such a man as Cassius Clay.9 A man open to none of the accusations brought to diminish the influence of Abolitionists in general, for he has eaten the bread wrought from slavery, and has shared the education that excuses the blindness of the slaveholder. He speaks as one having authority; no one can deny that he knows where he is. In the prime of manhood, of talent, and the energy of a fine enthusiasm, he comes forward with deed and word to do his devoir in this cause, never to leave the field till he can take with him the wronged wretches rescued by his devotion. Now he has made this last sacrifice of the prejudices of “Southern chivalry,” more than ever will be ready to join the herald’s cry, “God speed the right.” And we cannot but believe his noble example will be followed by many young men in the slave-holding ranks, brothers in a new sacred band vowed to the duty not merely of defending, but far more sacred, of purifying their homes. The event of which this day is the anniversary, affords a sufficient guaranty of the safety and practicability of strong measures for this purification. Various accounts are given to the public of the state of the British West Indies, and the foes of emancipation are of course constantly on the alert to detect any unfavorable result which may aid them in opposing the good work elsewhere. But through all statements these facts shine clear as the Sun at noonday, that the measure was there carried into effect with an ease and success, and has shown in the African race a degree of goodness, docility, capacity for industry and self-culture, entirely beyond or opposed to the predictions which darkened so many minds with fears. Those fears can never again be entertained or uttered with the same excuse. One great example of the safety of doing right exists; true, there is but one of the sort, but volumes may be preached from such a text. We, however, preach not; there are too many preachers already in the field, abler, more deeply devoted to the cause. Endless are the sermons of these mod-

8. A reference to Samuel Hoar. 9. Cassius Marcellus Clay (1810–1903), well-known antislavery advocate and speaker; Fuller considered him a “man of heroic blood” (Letters, 4:190).

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ern crusaders, those ardent “sons of thunder,” who have pledged themselves never to stop or falter till this one black spot be purged away from the land which gave them birth. They cry aloud and spare not; they spare not others, but then, neither do they spare themselves, and such are ever the harbingers of a new advent of the Holy Spirit. Our venerated friend, Dr. Channing, sainted in more memories than any man who has left us in this nineteenth century, uttered the last of his tones of soft, solemn, persuasive, convincing eloquence on this day and on this occasion.10 The hills of Lenox laughed and were glad as they heard him who showed in that last address, an address not only to the men of Lenox, but to all men, for he was in the highest sense the Friend of Man, the unsullied purity of infancy, the indignation of youth at vice and wrong, informed and tempered by the mild wisdom of age. It is a beautiful fact, that this should have been the last public occasion of his life. Last year a noble address was delivered by R. W. Emerson, in which he broadly showed the juste milieu views upon this subject in the holy light of a high ideal day.11 The truest man grew more true as he listened, for the speech, though it had the force of fact and the lustre of thought, was chiefly remarkable as sharing the penetrating quality of the “still, small voice,” most often heard when no man speaks. Now it spoke through a man, and no personalities, or prejudices, or passions, could be perceived to veil or disturb its silver sound. These speeches are on record, little can be said that is not contained in them. But we can add evermore our aspirations for thee, O our Country, that thou mayest not long need to borrow a holy day, not long have all thy festivals blackened by falsehood, tyranny, and a crime for which neither man below nor God above can much longer pardon thee. For ignorance may excuse error, but thine, it is vain to deny it, is conscious wrong and vows thee to the Mammon whose wages are endless torment or final death.  New-York Daily Tribune, 1 August 1845, p. 1; reprinted, New-York Weekly Tribune, 2 August 1845, p. 1.

10. William Ellery Channing, An Address Delivered at Lenox, on the First of August, 1842, the Anniversary of Emancipation, in the British West Indies (1842). 11. Ralph Waldo Emerson, An Address Delivered in the Court-House in Concord, Massachusetts, on 1st August, 1844, on the Anniversary of the Emancipation of the Negroes in the British West Indies (1844).

Thomas Hood


This volume contains many charming and amusing pieces from Hood. We need say no more after our late remarks on the subject in general.1 The “Literary Reminiscences,” which will be found in this selection, have a new and double interest at the present moment. The reminiscences of Lamb, are the most pleasing and characteristic of any that have been given to the world. How funny and pretty the note of Lamb after Hood had written “The Widow,” in imitation of his manner.2 And then those walks!—“Scott,” says Cunningham, “was a stout walker.3n Lamb was a porter one.4 He calculated distances, not by Long Measure, but by Ale and Beer Measure. ‘Now I have walked a pint.’n Many a time I have accompanied him in these matches against Meux, not without sharing in the stake, and then, what cheerful and profitable talk!” Coleridge, while he was in ignorance of the real author of the Odes and Addresses, ascribed them to Lamb and writes the following remarks, not only just to their subject, but valuable as showing the opinion of the finest modern master of the English lyre as to the music of Hood’s verse. “The puns are nine in ten good—many excellent—the Newgatory transcendent.5 And then the exemplum sine exemplo of a volume of personalities and contemporaneities, without a single line that could inflict the infinitesimal of an unpleasance on any man in his senses. * * * Then, besides, to speak with becoming modesty, 1. Fuller had reviewed Hood in the 18 July 1845 New-York Daily Tribune. 2. “Dear Lamb,—You are an imprudent varlet, but I will keep your secret. We dine at Ayrton’s on Thursday, and shall try to find Sarah and her two spare beds for that night only. Miss M. and her Tragedy may be dished, so may not you and your rib. Health attend you. | Yours, | T. Hood, Esq.” is in Hood’s Prose and Verse (New York: Putnam, 1850), p. 94. 3. Allan Cunningham (1784–1842), Scottish poet. walker.” [ walker. 4. The pun is on two types of British beers, stout and porter. “Now . . . pint.” [ ‘Now . . . pint.’ 5. Samuel Taylor Coleridge notes the pun on “Newgate,” the notorious London prison.

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excepting my own self who is there but you who could write the musical lines and stanzas that are intermixed.” The following pleasant page will be welcome to distant readers. It describes Hood’s unexpected introduction to literary life as a sub-editor of the London Magazine: “It would be affectation to say that engraving was resigned with regret. There is always something mechanical about the art—moreover it is as unwholesome as wearisome to sit copper-fastened to board, with a cantle scooped out to accommodate your stomach, if you have one, painfully ruling, ruling, and still ruling lines straight or crooked by the long hundred to the square inch, at the doubly hazardous risk which Wordsworth so deprecated of ‘growing double.’ So farewell Woolett! Strange! Bartolozzi! I have said my vanity did not rashly plunge me into authorship; but no sooner was there a legitimate opening than I jumped at it, à la Grimaldi, head foremost, and was speedily behind the scenes. To judge by my zeal and delight in my new pursuit, the bowl had at last found its due bias. He adds in a note: “There was a dash of ink in my blood. My father wrote two novels, and my brother was decidedly of a literary turn, to the great disquietude for a time of an anxious parent. She suspected himn on the strength of several amatory poems of a very desponding cast, of being the victim of a hopeless attachment; so he was caught,n closeted, catechised, and after a deal of delicate and tender sounding, he confessed, not with the anticipated sighs and tears, but a very unexpected burst of laughter, that he had been guilty of translating some sonnets of Petrarch. Not content with taking articles, like candidates for holy orders, with rejecting articles, like the Belgians, I dreamt articles, thought articles, wrote articles which were all inserted by the editor, of course with the concurrence of his deputy. The more irksome parts of authorship, such as the correction of the press, were to me labors of love. I received a revise from Mr. Baldwin’s Mr. Parker, as if it had been a proof of his regard; forgave him all his slips, and really thought that printers’ devils were not so black as they are painted. But my top-gallant glory was in “our Contributors.” How I used to look forward to Elia, and backward for Hazlitt, and all round for Edward Herbert, and how I used to look up to Allan Cunningham, for at that time the London had a goodly list of writers—a rare company. It is now defunct, and perhaps no ex-periodical might so appropriately be apostrophized with the Irish funeral question—‘Arrah, honey, why did you die?’ Had you not an editor, and elegant prose writers, and beautiful poets, and

him. [ him caught [ caught,

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broths of boys for criticism and classics, and wits and humorists—Eliza, Cary, Proctor, Cunningham, Bowring, Barton, Hazlitt, Elton, Hartley, Coleridge, Talfourd; Soane, Horace Smith, Reynolds, Poole, Clare, and Thomas Benyon, with a power besides? Had n’t you Lions’ Heads with Traditional Tales? Had n’t you an Opium-Eater, and a Dwarf, and a Giant, and a Learned Lamb, and a Green Man? Had not you a regular Drama, and a Musical Report, and a Report of Agriculture, and an Obituary and Price Current, and a current price, of only half a crown. Arrah, why did you die? Why, somehow the contributors fell away—the concern went into other hands—worst of all—a new editor tried to put the Belles letters into Utilitarian envelopes; whereupon the circulation of the Miscellany, like that of poor Le Fevre, got slower, slower, slower—and slower still—and then stopped for ever!”

All his portraits are good, but better, even best, this of the Opium-Eater: “In opposition to the extra man’s size of Cunningham the party in question looks almost boyish, partly from being in bulk somewhat beneath Monsieur Quetelet’s ‘Average Man,’ but still more so from a peculiar delicacy of complexion and smallness of features, which look all the smaller from his wearing in compliment, probably to the Sampsons of Teutonic literature, his locks unshorn.—Nevertheless, whoever looks again Sees more than marks the herd of common men. There is speculation in the eyes, a curl of the lip, and a general character in the outline, that reminds one of some portraits of Voltaire. And a Philosopher he is every inch. He looks, thinks, writes, talks and walks, eats and drinks, and, no doubt, sleeps philosophically, i.e., deliberately. There is nothing abrupt about his motions—he goes and comes calmly and quickly—like the phantom of Hamlet, he is here—he is there—he is gone. So it is with his discourse. He speaks slowly, clearly, and with very marked emphasis—the tide of talk flows like Denham’s river ‘strong without rage, without o’erflowing full.’ When it was my frequent and agreeable duty to call on Mr. De Quincey (being an uncommon name to remember the servant associated it, on the Memoria Technica principle with a sore throat, and always pronounced it Quinsy) I have found him at home, quite at home, in the midst of a German Ocean of literature, in a storm—flooding all the floor, the table and the chairs, billows of books tossing, tumbling, surging open—on such occasions I have willingly listened by the hour whilst the Philosopher, standing, with his eyes fixed on one side of the room, seemed to be less speaking than reading from a ‘handwriting on the wall.’ Now and then he would diverge for a Scotch mile or two, to the right or left, but he always came safely back to the point where he had left, not lost, the scent, and thence hunted his topic to the end.—But look! we

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are in the small hours, and a change comes o’er the spirit of that ‘old familiar face.’ A faint hectic tint leaves the cheek, the eyes are a degree dimmer, and each is surrounded by a growing shadow—signs of the waning influence of that potent Drug whose stupendous pleasures and enormous pains have been so eloquently described by the English Opium Eater. Marry, I have one of his Confessions with his own name and mark to it: an apology for a certain stain on his M. S., the said stain being a large purplish ring. ‘Within that circle none durst drink but he’—in fact the impression, colored, of ‘a tumbler of laudanum negus warm without sugar.’”

Those were the Champagne and sparkling Hock times of London life. We are fallen on dull days now. Hood would never have been the wit he was, if born thirty years later; the greater part of his thick-coming fancies would have withered for want of a congenial atmosphere. Now it is pleasant to think that amid many pains he yet knew those highest joys of equal friendship, and that, when sitting sick and sad in his bed-room, racked with rheumatism and racked with care, he might hope when the door opened to be delighted by the smile of Lamb, or exalted by the eyes of Coleridge. Some judicious and feeling remarks made in the preface to this selection chime with hopes we meant to express. We cannot but hope that some effort will be made on our side the water in behalf of the widow and children of Hood.6 It is known that they are left without any provision, except the hundred pounds which has been given them by Sir Robert Peel.7 A subscription is now on foot in England for the purpose of such aid. ’T is pity that such aid is not more frequently rendered to men of genius in their lifetime, when it might reanimate their sinking spirits and set them free in mind and time to benefit the world. ’T is pity; but so it is, the sluggish sensibilities of most mortals seem to require the stroke of Death to wake them to a tender reverence for merit. “Thou takest not away—O, Death; Thou strikest,—Absence perisheth; Indifference is no more.”8

6. Hood died in debt and his friends eventually raised some fourteen hundred pounds for his widow and children. 7. Robert Peel (1788–1850), English Tory leader and statesman. 8. “Elegiac Stanzas (Addressed to Sir G. H. B. Upon the Death of His Sister-in-Law,” ll. 49–51, by William Wordsworth.

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Yes! the highest eyes will weep the loss, the dullest eyes perceive the beauty and goodness of those dead whom they were never weary of carping and caviling at, or slighting, when alive and near them. It is no longer “Why has he not this or that?”—but “How much he had to delight and to bless his fellow men—what great merits to atone for trifling faults!” This late justice avails somewhat, at least to those who render it,—nay, more: if departed spirits still, as so many of us hope and believe, look back with interest into the valley from which they have ascended, it must give them pleasure, and most of all when it takes the form of benefit to those who were in life the dearest objects of their love. And, in the present disjointed state of the world, it is so rarely the case that a man of genius can do much for his earthly children, that the world, to whom he has freely given up his spiritual children, should adopt the others too. The children of the man of genius should know little of the sufferings of orphanage. This Country, which takes so freely of the product of English minds, should, at least, pay interest on this rich capital. It is vain to say they take our books too; of course the advantage is at present all on our side, and must long be so. We would earnestly wish that in cases where we have received much mental, and the publishers much pecuniary, profit from an author, some tribute, if not his due, should be rendered back. The publisher who took the benefit in another State of Goethe’s great work at least sent him a present, though it was only a service of China. Kings send medals and ribbons for what has delighted them; a great Republic, utilitarian in all its ways, might, with a good grace, express its thanks in gold fresh minted with her own device. But, so far as we know, when English authors have received any benefit from the publication of their works here, it has been through the interposition of some private friend, as in the cases of Tennyson and Carlyle. The latter was able to buy “a little horse, named Yankee,” on which he could pace forth on sunny spring days, and shake off the bilious fits with which hot indignations against the falses of a false Modern Europe, and the constant preparation of spices for his writing, had darkened his originally so clear and bright spirit.9 Tennyson received a very small sum, but he took it, as our old friend Belisarius did his obolum—for not even the most ethereal are able to dispense with bread and

9. Carlyle commented about his putative horse “Yankee” in a letter to Emerson of 7 November 1838 (The Correspondence of Emerson and Carlyle, ed. Joseph Slater [New York: Columbia University Press, 1964], 198–99).

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water in this world, which is quite sure they have too much native inspiration to need its rich and ruddy wines.10 It has been suggested that Hood’s Works, or a good selection from them, or perhaps his Poems only, should be published by subscription and the profits sent the widow and orphans. It would make us proud and happy to see our people do themselves that honor. Our Publishers, too, have a richer field before them than ever Publishers had before, since they are furnished with the products of two countries, paying only for one and getting those of the other almost for nothing for the same reason. We wish some of them, who feel that they can afford to act nobly, would take the lead in this act of kindness and justice.  Review of Thomas Hood, Prose and Verse, 2 vols. (New York: Wiley and Putnam, 1845). New-York Daily Tribune, 9 August 1845, p. 1; reprinted, New-York Weekly Tribune, 9 August 1845, p. 1. 10. Belisarius (505?–65), Byzantine soldier who is reputed to have been reduced to begging for food in his old age; obolos: a Greek coin.

Prince’s Poems


By signs too numerous to be counted, yet some of them made fruitful by specification, the Spirit of the Age announces that she is slowly, toilsomely, but surely, working that revolution, whose mighty deluge rolling back, shall leave a new aspect smiling on earth to greet the “most ancient heavens.” The wave rolls forward slowly, and may be as long in retreating, but when it has retired into the eternal deep, it will leave behind it a refreshed world, in which there may still be many low and mean men, but no lower classes; for it will be understood that it is the glory of a man to labor, and that all kinds of Labor have their poetry, and that there is really no more a lower and higher among the world of men with their various spheres, than in the world of stars. All kinds of Labor are equally honorable, if the mind of the laborer be only open so to understand them. But as “The glory ’tis of Man’s estate, For this his dower did he receive, That he in mind should contemplate What with his hands he doth achieve.” ***** “Observe we sharply, then, what vantage From conflux of weak efforts springs; He turns his craft to small advantage Who knows not what to light it brings.”

It is this that has made the difference of high and low, that certain occupations were supposed to have a better influence in liberalizing and refining the higher faculties than others. Now, the tables are turning. The inferences and impressions to be gained from the pursuits that have ranked highest are, for the present, exhausted. They have been written about, prated about, till they have had their day, and need to lie in the shadow and recruit their energies through silence. The mind of the time has detected the truth that as there is 195

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nothing, the least, effected in this universe, which does not somehow re-present the whole, which it is again the whole scope and effort of human Intelligence to do, no deed, no pursuit can fail, if the mind be ‘divinely intended’ upon it, to communicate divine knowledge. Thus it is seen that all a man needs for his education is to take whatsoever lies in his way to do, and do it with his might, and think about it with his might, too; for, “He turns his craft to small advantage, Who knows not what to light it brings.”

And, as a mark of this diffusion of the true, the poetic, the philosophic education, we greet the emergence more and more of poets from the Working Classes,—men who not only have poet hearts and eyes, but use them to write and print verses. Beranger, the man of the People, is the greatest poet, and, in fact, the greatest literary genius of modern France. In other nations if “the lower classes” have not such an one to boast, they at least have many buds and shoots of new talent. Not to speak of the patronized plow-boys and detected merits, she has now an order, constantly increasing, able to live by the day labor of that good right hand which wields the pen at night; with aims, thoughts, feelings of their own, neither borrowing from nor aspiring to the region of the Rich and Great. Elliott, Nicol, Prince, and Thom find enough in the hedge-rows that border their everyday path;—they need not steal an entrance to padlocked flowergardens, nor orchards guarded by man traps and spring-guns.1 Of three of these it may be said, they “Were cradled into Poesy by Wrong, And learn in Suffering what they taught in Song.”2

But of the fourth—Prince, we mean—though he indeed suffered enough of the severest hardships of work-day life, the extreme hardships of life when work could not be got, yet he was no flint that needed such hard blows to strike out the fire, but an easily bubbling naphtha-spring that would have burned much the same, through whatever soil it had reached the open air. 1. Ebenezer Elliott (1781–1849), English poet known as the Corn Law Rhymer because of his verses attacking that law and describing the poverty of the rural countryside; William Thom (1798?–1848), Scottish poet who had once been a weaver. 2. “Julian and Maddalo,” ll. 545–46, by Percy Bysshe Shelley.

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He was born of the poorest laboring people, taught to read and write imperfectly only by means of the Sunday Schools, discouraged in any taste for books by his father lest his time, if any portion were that way bestowed, should not suffice to win his bread;—with no friends of the mind, in youthful years, except a volume of Byron, and an old German who loved to tell stories of his native land;—married at nineteen, in the hope of mingling some solace with his cup; plunged by the birth of children into deeper want, going forth to foreign lands a beggar in search of employment, returning to his own country to be received as a pauper, having won nothing but mental treasures which no man wished to buy: he found his wife and children in the WorkHouse, and took them thence home to lie with him on straw in an unfurnished garret. Thus passed the first half of the span allotted on earth to one made in God’s image. And during those years Prince constantly wrote into verse how such things struck him. But we cannot say that his human experiences were deep; for all these things, that would have tortured other men, only pained him superficially. Into the soul of Elliott, the iron has entered; the lightest song of Beranger echoes to a melancholy sense of the defects of this world with its Tantalus destinies,3 a melancholy which touches it at times with celestial pathos. But life has made but little impression on Prince.— Endowed by Nature with great purity of instincts, a healthy vigor of feeling more than of thought, he sees, and expresses in all his works, the happiness natural to Man. He sees him growing, gently, gradually, with no more of struggle and labor than is wanted to develope his manly strength, learning his best self from the precious teachings of domestic affections, fully and intelligently the son, the lover, the husband, the father. He sees him walking amid the infinite fair shows of Nature, kingly, yet companionable, too. He sees him offering to his God no sacrifice of blood and tears, whether others’ or his own, but the incense of a grateful and obedient heart, ever ready for love and good works. It is this childishness, rather this virginity of soul, that makes Prince’s poems remarkable. He has no high poetic power, not even a marked individuality of expression. There are no lines, verses or images that strike by themselves; neither human nor external nature are described so as to make the mind of the Poet foster-father to its subject. The poems are only easy expres-

3. Tantalus, a Greek king whose punishment from the gods was to forever stand up to his chin in water near a fruit tree; he could never satisfy his thirst or hunger because whenever he moved toward the water or the fruit, they withdrew from him.

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sion of the common mood of a healthy mind and tender heart, which needs to vent itself in words and metres. Every body should be able to write as good verse—every body has the same simple, substantial things to put into it. On such a general basis the high constructive faculty, the Imagination, might rear her palaces, unafraid of ruin from war or time. This being the case with Prince, we shall not make detailed remarks upon his Poems, but merely substantiate what we have said by some extracts. 1st. We give the description of his Journey and Return. This, to us, presents a delightful picture: the man is so sufficient to himself and his own improvement; so unconquerably sweet and happy. 2d. The poem “Land and Sea,” as giving a true presentment of the riches of this poor man. 3d. A poem to his Child, showing how a pure and refined sense of the beauty and value of these relations, often unknown in palaces, may make a temple of an unfurnished garret. 4th. In an extract from ‘A Vision of the Future’; a presentation of the life fit for man, as seen by a ‘reed-maker for weavers’; as we doubt Mrs. Norton’s Child of the Islands would not have vigor and purity of mental sense even to sympathize with, when conceived, far less to conceive.4 These extracts speak for themselves; they show the stream of the Poet’s mind to be as clear as if it had flowed over the sands of Pactolus.5 But most waters show the color of the soil through which they had to force their passage; this is the case with Elliott, and with Thom, of whose writings we shall soon give some notice.6 Prince is an unique, as we sometimes find a noble Bayard,7 born of a worldly statesman—a sweet shepherdess or nun, of a heartless woman of fashion. Such characters are the direct gift of Heaven, and symbolize nothing in what is now called Society. * * * Things dragged on thus heavily until 1830, when his hopes were excited by the statements put forth of the want of English artisans in France, and 4. Prince was the son of a reed-maker. Fuller reviewed The Child of the Islands, by Caroline Sheridan Norton, in the 26 July 1845 New-York Daily Tribune. 5. Pactolus, a river in ancient Greece, was supposedly lined by sands filled with gold. 6. Fuller would later review Rhymes and Recollections of a Hand-Loom Weaver by Thom in the 22 August 1845 New-York Daily Tribune, 7. Possibly a reference to the legendary horse of Charlemagne (742?–814), conqueror of the Holy Roman Empire, a beast that possessed magical powers.

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those of his craft especially. He thereupon set off for St. Quentin, in Picardy, leaving his wife to provide, by her labor, for his three children and herself, until he should procure employment, and such a remuneration for it as he had been led to expect. When he arrived in London he heard of the Revolution in Paris, and the flight of Charles X. Not reflecting on the necessary stagnation which this must occasion in manufactures, he determined that, having proceeded so far, he would venture onwards. Arrived at Calais, he had to remain some days, until news was brought that Louis Philippe was elected King of the French. He now proceeded up the country to Quentin. Here he was doomed to disappointment: the revolution had paralyzed every thing;—business was at a stand-still, and no employment for him was to be had. He knew not what to do; whether to return home, his hopes frustrated and money wasted, or to proceed to the great seat of manufactures, Mulhausen, on the Upper Rhine. He chose the latter course, and accordingly wended his way thitherwards, by the way of Paris, where he staid eight days, during which time he visited the Theatres, the Church of Notre Dame, Pere la Chaise, the Gallery of the Louvre,—ascended the column in the Place Vendome, and viewed other “lions” of the French metropolis, till at length, finding his viaticum, so small at beginning, dwindling to a most diminutive bulk, he proceeded forward, through the province of Champagne, to his destination. On arriving at Mulhausen, he found trade little better than at St. Quentin. Many manufactories were shut up, and the people in great distress. His means were completely exhausted. In a land of strangers, ignorant of the language, with the exception of a few words he had picked up on the road, he was indeed forlorn. Without the means to survival, and in the hope of a revival in trade, he remained here five months in a state of comparative starvation; sometimes two entire days without food. During this time some trifling relief was afforded him by the generous kindness of Mr. Andrew Kechlin, a manufacturer, the Mayor of the town. Finding that his hopes were fruitless, and the desire of again seeing his wife and children becoming insupportable, he at length determined to undertake the task of walking home, through a stranger-land, for many hundred miles, without a guide, and without money. Accordingly, in the middle of a severe winter, (January, 1831,) with an ill-furnished knapsack on his back, and ten sous in his pocket, he set off from Mulhausen to return to Hyde, in Lancashire, with a heart light as the treasure in his exchequer. His wants, his privations damped not the ardor of his soul; his poetic enthusiasm, while it drove him into those difficulties which a more prudent and less sanguine temperament would have made him avoid, yet served to sustain the buoyancy of his spirits under the troubles which environed him, and which it had superinduced. For a few days he kept along the beautiful and romantic banks of the

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Rhine, exploring its ruined castles, and visiting every scene of legendary lore that came in his path, exclaiming, in the words of his favorite poet, Goldsmith— “Creation’s heir, the world, the world is mine!” He journeyed through Strasberg, and admired its splendid cathedral; through Nancy, Verdun, Rheims, Luneville, Chalons, and most of the principal cities, &c. that lay near his route, till he reached Calais once more; obtained from the British Consul a passage across the channel, and again set foot on his native soil. During this toilsome journey, he subsisted on the charity of the few English residents whom he found on his way. He lay in four different hospitals for the night, but not once in the open air, as he did afterwards in his own country. The first night after his arrival he applied for food and shelter at a workhouse in Kent, and was thrust into a miserable garret, with the roof sloping to the floor, where he was incarcerated along with twelve others—eight men and four women, chiefly Irish—the lame, the halt, and the blind. Some were in a high state of fever, and were raving for drink, which was denied to them; for the door was locked, and those outside, like the bare walls within, were deaf to their cries. Weary and way-worn, he lay down on the only vacant place amid this mass of misery, at the back of an old woman who appeared to be in a dying state; but he could get no rest for the groans of the wretched around him. Joyfully did he indeed hail the first beam of morning that broke through the crannies of this chamber of famine and disease; and when the keeper came to let him out, his bed-fellow was dead. Released from this lazar-house, he proceeded onward pennyless and shoeless, towards London, begging in the day-time and lying in the open fields at night. When he reached London he had been the whole day without food. To allay the dreadful—but to him then the familiar—cravings of his hunger, he went to Rag Fair, and taking off his waistcoat, sold it for eight pence. He then bought a penny loaf to mitigate his hunger, and four penny-worth of writing paper, with which he entered a tavern, and, calling for a pint of porter, proceeded to the writing of as much of his own poetry as his paper would contain, and this amid the riot and noise of a number of coal-heavers and others. As soon as he had done his task he went round to a number of booksellers, hoping to sell his manuscript for a shilling or two, but the hope was vain. The appearance and manners of the famishing bard to these mercantile men were against him—he could not succeed in finding a customer for his poetry, or sympathy for his sufferings. He stayed in London during two days, wandering by day, foodless, through its magnificent and wealth-fraught streets, and pacing about, or lying on the

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cold stones in gateways, or on the bare steps of the affluent, by night. In despair, on the third day, he left the metropolis of the land of his birth, where he was a greater stranger, and less cared for, than in a foreign land, and wended his way homeward, first applying for relief to the overseer of “merry Islington,” where, urged by the stings of famine, he was importunate when denied assistance, and was, therefore, for his temerity, thrust into the street to starve. A youthful and unabused constitution, however, saved him from what might have befallen a less healthful frame and a less buoyant heart. At length, by untiring perseverence, he reached Hyde, having slept by the way in barns, vagrant offices, under haystacks, and in miserable lodging-houses, with ballad singers, match-sellers, and mendicants, fully realising the adage of Shakspere, that “misery makes a man acquainted with strange bed-fellows.” On his route from London, he ground corn at Birmingham, sang ballads at Leicester, lay under the trees in Sherwood-forest, near Nottingham, lodged in a vagrant office at Derby, made his bivouac at Bakewell, in Derbyshire, in a “lockup,” and finally reached Hyde, but found, alas! it contained for him a home no longer. Whilst poverty had thus brought suffering upon him, when in quest of better means to provide for his family, it had also brought woe and privation upon his wife and babes. Unable to provide for her children by her labor, she had been compelled to apply for parish aid, and was, in consequence, removed to the poor-house of Wigan. After a night’s rest Prince hurried off to that town, and brought them back to Manchester, where he took a garret, without food and clothes, or furniture, of any description. On a bundle of straw this wretched family, consisting of a man and his wife and three children, lay for several months. During all this time Mr. Prince was unable, but at very long intervals, to obtain even very insufficiently rewarded employment; and had it not been for the labor of his wife, who is a power-loom weaver, and withal a more industrious and striving woman, they would have starved outright. At this period of severe privation, their youngest child died.

land and sea. The seaman may sing of his own vast sea, And the swain, of his own sweet land; But it boots not where the wanderer be, With a chainless heart and hand; In storm the sea hath a fearful power— A beauty in repose; And the land is rich in fruit and flower, Or bleak in winter’s snows.

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How free to bound o’er the waters wide, Swift as the rushing gale! How sweet to look from the mountain’s side On the calm and sequestered vale! There’s a charm in the green-wood’s summer sigh— There’s a spell in ocean’s roar;— I have loved, I have sought them both, as fly Spring birds from shore to shore. I was born on the verge of the ocean deep,— I have played with his locks of foam And watched his weltering billows leap, From the door of my cottage home; I would die on the breast of some lonely isle, Where no rude footsteps sound,— Where a southern heaven on my grave may smile, And the wild-wave boom around.

the poet to his child. Welcome! blossom fair! Affection’s dear reward; Oh! welcome to thy father’s sight. Whose heart o’erflows with new delight, And tenderest regard; While on thine eyes Soft slumber lies, And, bending o’er thy face I feel thy breath arise. Upon thy mother’s cheek Are trembling tears of joy: We have no thought of worldly pain,— Past hours of bliss are felt again, Unmingled with alloy; May Heaven hear The prayer sincere Which, for thy earthly weal, a father offers here! May death’s relentless hand Some kind protection spare, To guide thy steps through childhood’s day,— To turn thee in religion’s way, By teaching early prayer;

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In every hour Check evil’s power, And in thy guileless heart, plant virtue’s fadeless flower! Youth hath a thousand dreams, As false as they are fair; And womanhood’s sad season brings The stern reality of things— Too oft the blight of care; For man deceives, And woman grieves When passion plucks joy’s flower, and scatters all its leaves. May no such lot be thine, My loved and only child! Nor sin’s remorse, nor sorrow’s ruth, But weded love and holy truth Preserve thee undefiled! And when life’s sun Its course hath run. Be thy departing words—“My God! thy will be done!”

“A Father’s lament,” is also beautifully expressive of the same pure feelings with their sorrows and joys, In Fancy I behold the home of love, Bathed in the sunlight of an azure June, Where the rich mountains lift their forms above The crystal calmness of the bright lagoon; Where timid Peace, like some domestic dove, Broods in the lap of Joy, and every boon That harmonizing Liberty can give, Clings round a spot on which ’tis heaven to live! I see no splendid tyrant on a throne, Extorting homage with a bauble rod; No senate heedless of a people’s moan, Cursing the produce of the fertile sod; No sensual priest, with pampered pride o’erblown, Shielding oppression in the name of God; No pensioned concubine—no pauper peer, To scorn the widow’s or the orphan’s tear.

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I see no bondman at his brother’s feet, The weak one fearing what the strong one saith; No biased wealth upon the judgment seat; Urging its victims to disgrace or death; No venal pleaders, privileged to cheat, With truth and falsehood in the self-same breath; No dungeon glooms—no prisons for the poor— No partial laws to render power secure. I see no human prodigy of war, Borne on the wings of slaughter unto fame,— The special favorite of some evil star, Sent forth to gather curses on his name;— Like him whose grave is o’er the ocean far, At once his country’s idol and her shame, The bloody vulture of Imperial Gaul, Whose loftiest flight sustain a fatal fall. I see no honest toil unpaid, unfed— No idler reveling in lust and wine; No sweat and blood unprofitably shed, To answer every rash and dark design; No violation of the marriage-bed— The worst transgression of a law divine— No tempting devil in the shape of gold, For which men’s hearts and minds are bought and sold. Instead of these, I see a graceful hill, On whose green sides unnumbered flocks are leaping; I see the sparkling sheen of flood and rill, Through cultured vales their tuneful mazes keeping; And human habitations, too, that fill A pleasant space, from leafy coverts peeping; And blithesome swains upon their homeward way, Singing the burden of some moral lay. Beneath a lovely and unbounded sky, Which wears its evening livery the while, What scene of beauty captivate the eye! What spots of bloom—what fields of promise smile! And where yon calm and peopled dwellings lie, There breathes no slave, there beats no heart of guile;

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But all is freedom, happiness, and quiet, Far from the world, its restlessness and riot. To healthful, moderate, and mutual toil, Yon sons of Industry go forth at morn,— Take from indulgent earth a lawful spoil Of juicy fruitage, and nutritious corn. Thus all the children of the common soil Draw rich supplies from Plenty’s flowing horn; There is no bondage, no privation there, To heave the breast, and dim the eye with care. There Woman moves with beauty-moulded form, First inspiration of the Poet’s song, Her heart with fondest, purest feeling warm,— Soul in her eyes, and music on her tongue; Esteemed and taught, she lives above the storm Of social discord, poverty, and wrong; Graceful and good, intelligent and kind, The loveliest temple of the mighty mind! Her offspring, too, unfettered as the fawn, With elfin eyes, and cheeks that mock the rose, Chase the wild bees o’er many a flowery lawn, Or gather pebbles where the brooklet flows: A little world of purity is drawn Around their steps; a moral grandeur glows, Serene in majesty, before their eyes, Moulding their thoughts and feelings as they rise. Oh, blest! Community calm spot of earth! Where love encircles all in his embrace; Where generous deeds and sentiments have birth, Warming each heart and brightening every face; Where pure Philosophy, and temperate Mirth, The lore of Science, and the witching grace Of never dying Poesy, combine To feed the hungry soul with food divine! ****** My flight is finished, and my fitful muse Descends to cold reality again! Yet she hath dipped her garments in the hues Of hope and love, and she shall aid my pen,

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With firm though feeble labor to diffuse The lore of truth among the sons of men; And when her powers shall tremble and decay, May loftier harps sustain the hallowed lay! A thousand systems have been formed and wrought, Where man hath looked for good, but looked in vain; A thousand doctrines writ, diffused, and taught, Adding new links to Error’s tangled chain: But, oh! the Apostles of unfettered thought— Unwearied foes to falsehood and her train— Shall lift the veil of mystery at last, And future times atone for the past!  New-York Daily Tribune, 13 August 1845, p. 1; reprinted, New-York Weekly Tribune, 16 August 1845, p. 1; in “Poets of the People,” Papers on Literature and Art, 2:10–14.

The Great Britain


Notwithstanding the long preparation of our minds, we were struck with admiration and delight by a view of the vast steam-ship. Once again we envied him of whose thought this is the full-grown offspring, and when admitted to see the apparatus of heart and lungs, felt that if Man is no longer a giant, he is at least the creator of giants. It is a proud feeling to tread these decks from end to end; ought indeed to be proud for those who steer her mighty path upon the Ocean. As we looked on her, we longed for a Homer to describe her with that accuracy in detail and full glory of epithet by which he makes present to us the apparatus of the old heroic time. So the Greek described the Argo, earliest bud of a growth that has now towered so high.1 But that beautiful boat was more to him, than all the wonders of our waters are to us, for he contemplated it with deeper feeling and more intelligent appreciation. We have a letter written to us from New-York, when the Great Western first left her harbor, that is a true poem as good as one of Greece, and many thousands shared the enthusiasm of that hour. But now the magic spells evoke forms of wonder so thickly that the gazers have not time left to admire, but glance at them with the same nonchalance that they do at the glories of sunset and sunrise. There is no miracle that man will not soon learn to hold carelessly as one of the counters in his game of life. Yet let us pause now and then a moment and open the eyes to the grand, the poetic combinations of our time. Our point of view is so grand and commanding, if we will but command from it. We are not, ourselves, sufficiently used to New-York, not consciously to realize, as well as move with, the vast tides of life that flow through her. We still wish no poem beyond the sight of the wood of masts that embraces her. We still feel the life-blood rushing from an entire continent to swell her heart. We see that there have been just now made in Paris for the city of Boulogne a sword and vases of fine design. The designs for the sword are elegant, but we 1. The Argo, in Greek legend, was the ship the Argonauts sailed in to carry off the Golden Fleece.

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hope New-York will never again need a sword. But vases would be an appropriate utensil to a city where water is so abundant. She may be interested then to hear of the vases of Boulogne. These are modeled by Larue, in the Greek style, the top is embraced by two Tritons whose shoulders sustain the handles, while their large scaly tails are unrolled beneath the bas-relief which forms the centre of the vase. This has on one side Commerce and Peace sustaining the escutcheon of the arms of the City; on the other Boulogne sitting; on her left are seen the sea and the galleys of Caesar, the camp and pillar of Napoleon.2 On her right a locomotive bringing a train from Amiens, whose cathedral is traced at a distance. Thus this bas-relief reproduces the history of the three principal epochs of Boulogne, Caesar embarking to conquer England, Napoleon encamping there, and the era of Railroads which will augment her prosperity. What follows is whimsically illustrative of that ignorance and folly so often to be detected in designs for such purposes, since Art has ceased to be the growth of the natural mind and its products are, to the many, rather articles of expense and luxury than musical echoes to their thoughts. “A swan is placed upon the arms of Boulogne; in this the artist, no doubt, obeyed the directions of the Municipal Council. But it was not a swan the Boulogne has heretofore carried on her shield: it was a goose. The Municipal Council, in wishing to ennoble the blazon, has made a great mistake. The swan is a graceful and appropriate emblem for the escutcheon of a poet or singer, but for the purpose of these vases, the goose is much more noble. A symbol of vigilance, the goose cries out when the enemy appears. Let, then, the Municipal Council repent their puerile vanity and restore to Boulogne the civil emblem that belongs to her.” When artists are employed to make the vases for New-York, we hope they will know how to choose their emblems from thought not fancy, and they will surely choose the steam-ship for one of her ornaments. We are glad to see these new, and at first sight repulsive forms, subordinated to the purposes of art, as in the case of the locomotive on the Boulogne vase. Wordsworth had already welcomed them to Poetry in the following sonnet To Steamboats, Viaducts, and Railways. Motions and means, on land and sea at war With old poetic feeling, not for this,

2. Gaius Julius Caesar (100–44 b.c.), Roman general and statesman.

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Shall ye, by poets even be judged amiss! Nor shall your presence, howsoe’er it mar The loveliness of Nature, prove a bar To the mind’s gaining that prophetic sense Of future change, that point of vision whence May be discovered what in soul ye are, In spite of all that beauty may disown In your harsh features, Nature doth embrace Her lawful offspring in Man’s art; and Time, Pleased with your triumphs o’er his brother Space, Accepts from your bold hands the proffered crown Of hope, and smiles on you with cheer sublime.

Indeed, though these “motions and means” have not on first introduction that poetic grace which accompanies those which accommodated themselves more to the general condition of earth and sea, they soon exhibit one of their own. The rude breakn of the rail-road through the country is soon hid by the gentle fingers of Nature, and grasses and plants creep up to the very track and hide the scars of the blasted rock. By day both the sound and sight of the rushing train, with its smoke and flash become pleasing; if enjoyed at due distance they enhance the beauty of the surrounding scene. In a dark night the approach of the train with its fiery eyes is truly sublime; the thought of man seems piercing the kingdom of nature with the swiftness and force of demoniac power. (Take notice, reader, that demon does not necessarily mean devil, but only super or praeter human being!) It is the approach towering in might not to be impeded of the steamer most majestic and contrasts finely with the spirit-like motions of the sail-ships, the most beautiful of all the works of man. There is room upon the element for the whale as well as the sea gull. We admired the plain and solid style adopted in all parts of the Great Britain, so simple, so judicious, so easily kept clean, so truly English! far more elegant in such a place than much carving and gilding.  New-York Daily Tribune, 30 August 1845, p. 1; reprinted, New-York Weekly Tribune, 30 August 1845, p. 1. The Great Britain was the world’s largest ship at the time of its launching (1843); at 322 feet long, it had six masts and was the first liner built of iron with screw propulsion. Technical details and a large engraving of the ship appeared in the Tribune of 21 August 1845 breek [ break

[Review of Sylvester Judd, Margaret]


This book has been lying on our table two or three weeks. It seemed to us, at first, either a heap of rubbish or a long and tedious quiz. But, looking into it at leisure from time to time, we find deep meanings, beautiful pictures, and real wit. Probably we now apprehend the thought. But, if we do, the author will not expect from us a critical notice of the usual sort; and as to the public, we can only commend it to those who would know how to read a volume detected amid old-fashioned odds and ends in the family chest of a lonely farm-house. The rail-road-car readers would find nothing in it but a dull attempt at joke. But those who have patience to wade in the pond may reach water-lilies. Those who feel inclined to make the attempt had better begin p. 432 and read on as long as they feel interested. Should this prove to be the case through the two letters of Mr. Evelyn and Margaret, they can then begin at the beginning of this thick volume and go through, skipping more or less, according to their habits in the precisely similar volume of daily life. Sometimes they will “tarry a long spell;”—with Deacon Ramsdill, and Chilien’s violin. We think they may be inclined to do so. We should esteem it a favor if the author would acquaint us with his name; he is so fond of names, we see not why he should keep back his own.  Review of Sylvester Judd, Margaret. A Tale of the Real and Ideal, Blight and Bloom; Including Sketches of a Place Not before Described, Called Mons Christi (Boston: Jordan and Wiley, 1845). New-York Daily Tribune, 1 September 1845, p. 1; reprinted, New-York Weekly Tribune, 6 September 1845, p. 1. Title supplied. Sylvester Judd (1813–53), Unitarian minister and novelist. Fuller commented on this book again in the 10 January 1846 New-York Daily Tribune.

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[Review of Philip James Bailey, Festus]


We are right glad to see this beloved stranger domesticated among us. Yet there are queer little circumstances that herald the introduction. The Poet is a Barrister at Law!—well! it is always worthy ofn note when a man is not hindered by study of human law from knowledge of divine; which last is all that concerns the Poet. Then the Preface to the American edition closes with this discreet remark: “It is perfectly safe to pronounce it (the poem) one of the most powerful and splendid productions of the age.” Dear New-England! how purely that was worthy thee, region where the tyranny of public opinion is carried to a perfection of minute scrutiny beyond what it ever was before in any age or place, though the ostracism be administered with the mildness and refinement fit for this age. Dear New-England! yes! it is safe to say that the poem is good; whatever Mrs. Grundy may think, she will not have it burned by the hangman if it is not.1 But it may not be discreet, because she can, if she sees fit, exile its presence from book-stores, libraries, centre-tables, and all mention of its existence from lips polite, and of thine also, who hast dared to praise it, on peril of turning all surrounding eyes to lead by its utterance. This kind of gentle excommunication thou mayst not be prepared to endure, O Preface-writer! And we should greatly fear that thou wert deceived in thy fond security, for “Festus” is a bold book—in respect of freedom of words, a boldest book—also it reveals the solitudes of hearts with unexampled sincerity and remorselessly lays bare human nature in its naked truth—but for the theology of the book. That may save it, and none the less for all it shows of the depravity of human nature. It is through many pages and leaves what is technically praised as “a serious book.” A friend went into a book-store to select presents for persons with whom she was about to part, and among other things

worthy [ worthy of 1. “What will Mrs. Grundy say? What will our rivals or neighbours say?” is from Speed the Plough (produced in 1800) by Thomas Morton (1764–1838), English dramatist.

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requested the shopman to “show her some serious books in handsome binding.” He looked into several, and then, struck by passages here and there, offered her the “Letters of Lady M. W. Montagu”!!2n She assuring him that it would not be safe to make use of this work, he offered her a miniature edition of Shakespeare, as “a book containing many excellent things, though you had to wade through a great deal of rubbish to get at them.” We fear the reader will have to wade through a great deal of rubbish in “Festus” before he gets at the theology. However, there it is, in sufficient quantities to give dignity to any book. In seriousness, it may compete with Pollok’s “Course of Time.”3 In “splendor and power,” we feel ourselves safe in saying that, as sure as the sun shines, it cannot be outdone in the English tongue thus far, short of Milton. So there is something for all classes of readers, and we hope it will get to their eyes, albeit Boston books are not likely to be detected by all eyes to which they belong. The print and form of the book are not quite what we could wish; the volume is too thick, the margins too narrow. The inner margin is so narrow as to be no less inconvenient than ugly; this is a frequent fault; see, for instance, the lately published volume of Dr. Arnold’s Lectures.4 But we don’t care for Lectures; they are every-day affairs that may go about in coarse omnibus garb; but poetry that is poetry, deserves to be read in letters of gold and fire and, wanting that, in the largest fairest type, and on the best paper. The words hardly seem the same here as in the beautiful English edition of Pickering.5 With regard to the scope of the book, we cannot do better than by giving extracts from the Proem: “Without all fear, without presumptions, he Who wrote this work would speak respecting it A few brief words, and face his friend, the world; Revising, not reversing, what hath been. Poetry is itself a thing of God; He made His prophets poets; and the more We feel of poesie do we become Like God in love and power—under-makers.

2. Lady Mary Worthley Montagu (1689–1762), English poet and letter writer. Montague”!! [ Montagu”!! 3. Robert Pollok (1799–1827), Scottish poet. 4. Fuller reviewed Introductory Lectures on Modern History by Thomas Arnold (1795–1842), English historian and editor, in the 28 August 1845 New-York Daily Tribune. 5. The English edition was published in London by Pickering in 1839.

[Review of Festus]

All great lays, equals to the minds of men, Deal more or less with the Divine, and have For end some good of mind or soul of man. The mind is this world’s, but the soul is God’s; The wise man joins them here all in his power. The high and holy works, mid lesser lays, Stand up like churches among the village cots; And it is joy ton think that in every age, However much the world was wrong therein, The greatest works of mind and hand have been Done unto God. So may they ever be! It shows the strength of wish we have to be great, And the sublime humility of might. True fiction hath in it a higher end Than fact; it is the possible compared With what is merely positive, and gives To the conceptive soul an inner world, A higher, ampler Heaven than that wherein The nations sun themselves. In that bright state Are met the mental creatures of the men Whose names are writ highest on the rounded crown Of Fame’s triumphal arch; the shining shapes Which star the skies of that invisible land, Which, whosoe’er would enter, let him learn; ’T is not enough to draw forms fair and lovely, Their conduct likewise must be beautiful; A hearty holiness must crown the work, As a gold cross the minister dome, and show, Like that instonement of Divinity That the whole building doth belong to God. ******* Other bards draw men dressed In manners, customs, forms, appearances, Laws, places, times, and countless accidents Of peace or polity: to him these are not; He makes no mention, takes no count of them; * * * * The life-writ of a heart, Whose firmest prop and highest meaning was The hope of serving God as poet priest,

to to [ to

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And the belief that he would not put back Love-offerings, though brought to Him by hands Unclean and earthly, even as fallen man’s Must be; and most of all, the thankful show Of His high power and goodness in redeeming And blessing souls that love Him, spite of sin And their old earthy strain—these are the aims, The doctrines, truths, and staples of the story. ’T is the bard’s aim to show the mind-made world Without, within; how the soul stands with God, And the unseen realities about us. It is a view of life spiritual And earthly. Let all look upon it, then, In the same light it was drawn and colored in; In faith, in that the writer too hath faith, Albeit an effect, and not a cause. Faith is a higher faculty than reason, Though of the brightest power of revelation; As the snow-headed mountain rises o’er The lightening, and applies itself to Heaven, We know in day-time there are stars about us, Just as by night, and name them what and where By sight of science; so by faith we know, Although we may not see them till our night, That spirits are about us, and believe, That, to a spirit’s eye, all Heaven may be As full of angels as a beam of light Of motes. As spiritual, it shows all Classes of life, perhaps, above our kind, Known to tradition, reason, or God’s word— As earthly it embodies most the life Of youth, its powers, its aims, its deeds, its failings; And, as a sketch of world-life, it begins And ends, and rightly, in Heaven, and with God; While Heaven is also in the midst thereof. God, or all good, the evil of the world, And man, wherein are both, are each displayed. The mortal is the model of all men, The foibles, follies, trials, sufferings— And manifest and manifold are they— Of a young, hot unworld-schooled heart that has

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Had its own way in life, and wherein all May see some likeness of their own—’tis these Attract, unite, and sun-like, concentrate The ever-moving system of our feelings. The hero is the world-man, in whose heart One passion stands for all, the moss indulged, The scene wherein he plays his part are life, A sphere whose centre is co-heavenly With its divine original and end. Like life, too, as a whole, the story hath A moral, and each scene one, as in life— One universal and peculiar truth Shining upon it like the quiet moon, Illustrating the obscure, the unequal earth; And though these scenes may seem to careless eyes Irregular and rough and unconnected, Like to the stones at Stonehenge, though convolved, And in primeval mystery, still an use, A meaning, and a purpose may be marked Among them of a temple reared to God: The meaning alway dwelling in the word, In secret sanctity, like a golden toy ’Mid Beauty’s orbed bosom. Scenes of earth And Heaven are mixed, as flesh and soul in man. Thus much then for this book. It aims to mark The various beliefs as well as doubts Which hold or search by turns the mind of youth Unresting any where. Its heresies, If such they be, are charitable ones. ******* All rests with those who read. A work or thought Is what each makes it to himself, and may Be full of great dark meanings, like the sea, With shoals of life rushing; or like the air, Benighted with the wing of the wild dove, Sweeping miles broad o’er the far western woods, With mighty glimpses of the central light, Or may be nothing—bodiless, spiritless.”

These verses are no fair specimen of the poem. They are written since that great time of inspiration had passed, and seem indeed more like mere re-

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vision; the prose after-thought of the Poet. Yet they are true to the scope of the book, and hold to it the same relation that good criticism by another, but congenial mind, would. To ourselves the theology of this writer, and the conscious design of the poem have little interest.n—They seem to us, like the color of his skin and hair, the result of the circumstances under which he was born. Certain opinions came in his way early, and became part of the body of his thought. But what interests us is not these, but what is deepest, universal, the Soul of that body. To us the poem is * * “full of great dark meanings like the sea, * * shoals of life rushing,”6n

and it is these, the deep experiences and inspirations of the immortal Man that engage us. Even the Proem shows how large is his nature, its most careless utterance full of grandeur, its tamest, of bold nobleness. This that truly engages us, he spoke of more forcibly when the book first went forth to the world: “Read this World. He who writes is dead to thee, But still lives in these leaves. He spake inspired; Night and day, thought came unhelped, undesired, Like blood to his heart. The course of study he Went through was of the soul-rack. The degree He took was high: it was wise wretchedness. He suffered perfectly, and gained no less A prize than, in his own torn heart, to see A few bright seeds; he sowed them, hoped them truth. The autumn of that seed is in these pages.”

Such is, in our belief, the true theologian, the learner of God, who does not presumptuously expect at this period of growth to bind down all that is to be known of divine things in a system, a set of words, but considers that he is only spelling the first lines of a work, whose perusal shall last him through eternity. Such an one is not in a hurry to declare that the riddles of Fate and of Time are

interest—They [ interest.—They 6. Bailey, “Proem” to Festus, ll. 310–11. rushing, [ rushing,”

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solved; for he knows it is not calling them so that will make them so. His soul does not decline the great and persevering labors that are to develope its energies. He has faith to study day by day.—Such is the practice of the author of Festus, whenever he is truly great. When he shows to us the end and plan of all things, we feel that he only hides them from us. He speaks only his wishes. But when he tells us of what he does really know, the moods and aspirations of fiery youth to which all things are made present in foresight and foretaste— when he shows us the temptations of the lonely soul pining for knowledge, but unable to feel the love that alone can bestow it, then he is truly great, and the strings of life thrill oftentimes to their sublimest, sweetest music. We admire in this author the unsurpassed force and distinctness with which he casts out single thoughts and images. Each is thrown before us fresh, deep in its impress as if just snatched from the forge. We admire not less his vast flow, his sustained flight. His is a rich and spacious genius; it gives us room; it is a palace home: we need not economise our joys; blest be the royalty that welcomes us so freely. In simple transposition of the thought from the mind to the paper, that wonder even rarer than perfect, that is simple, expression through the motions of the body of the motions of the soul, we dare to say no writer excels him. Words are no veil between us and him, but a luminous cloud that upbears us bothn together. So in touches of nature, in the tones of passion; he is absolute. There is nothing better, where it is good; we have the very thing itself. We are told by the critics that he has no ear, and, indeed, when we listen for such, we perceive blemishes enough in the movement of his line. But we did not perceive it before, more than when the Æolian was telling the secrets of that most spirit-like minister of Nature that bloweth where it listeth,7 and no man can trace it, we should attempt to divide the tones and pauses into regular bars, and be disturbed when we could not make a tune. England has only two poets now that can be named near him, (with the exception of Wordsworth, who belongs to a past generation, for, though still upon this earth, his period of production has passed).—These two are Tennyson and the author of “Philip Van Artevelde.”8 Tennyson is all that Bailey is not in melody and voluntary finish, no less than a Greek moderation in

ns bort [ us both 7. Æolian harp, a stringed instrument that played tunes as it caught the wind. 8. “Philip Van Artevelde” is by Henry Taylor (1800–86), civil servant and dramatist.

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declining all undertakings he is not sure of completing: Taylor noble, an earnest seer, a faithful narrator of what he sees, firm and sure, sometimes deep and exquisite, but in energy and grandeur no more than Tennyson to be named beside the author of Festus. In inspiration, in prophecy, in those flashes of the sacred fire which reveal the secret places where Time is elaborating the marvels of Nature, he stands alone. It is just true what Ebenezer Elliott says, “that ‘Festus’ contains poetry enough to set up fifty poets”—ay! even such poets, so far as richness of thought and imagery are concerned, as the two noble bards we have named. But we need call none less to make him greater, whose liberal soul is alive to every shade of beauty, every token of greatness, and whose main stress is to seek a soul of goodness in things evil. The book is a precious, even a sacred book, and we could say more of it, had we not years ago vented our enthusiasm when it was in first full flow.9 The extract which we then gave, sold at once all the English copies then to be obtained. Now there are American copies, they need no wind of praise to swell their inevitable course wherever they begin to find the current. He will be read as he read those of the older time who in his own words, Brought an immortal to a mortal breast; And, like a rainbow clasping the sweet earth, And melting in the covenant of love. Left here a bright precipitate of soul, Which lives forever through the lives of men, Flashing, by fits, like fire from an enemy’s front— Whose thoughts, like bars of sunshine in shut rooms, ’Mid glory, all glory, win the world to light, Who make their very follies like their souls; And, like the young moon with a ragged edge, Still, in their imperfection, beautiful. Whose weaknesses are lovely as their strengths, Like the white nebulous matter between stars, Which, if not light, at least is likest light— ****** Men whose great thoughts possess us like a passion, Through every limb and the whole heart; whose words Haunt us as eagles haunt the mountain air; 9. Fuller had first reviewed “Festus” in the October 1841 Dial.

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Thoughts which command all coming times and minds, As from a tower a warden—fix themselves Deep in the heart as meteor stones in earth, Dropped from some higher sphere; * * * Men who walk up to fame as to a friend Or their own house, which from the wrongful heir They have wrested. * * * * * * * Who shed great thoughts As an oak looseneth its golden leaves In a kindly largess to the soil it grew on, Whose rich dark ivy thoughts, sunned o’er with love, Flourish around the deathless stems of their names— Whose names are ever on the world’s broad tongue Like sound upon the falling of a source, Whose words, if winged are with angelsn with wings, Who play upon the heart as a harp, And make our eyes bright as we speak of them— Whose hearts have a look southwards, and are open To the whole noon of nature—these I have waked And wept o’er, night by night, oft pondering thus: Homer is gone; and where is Jove? and where The rival cities seven? His song outlives, Time, tower, and god—all that then was save heaven.

In the second English edition from which the American is taken, the Proem, two scenes, and many passages have been added to the first.  Review of Philip James Bailey, Festus: A Poem (Boston: Benjamin B. Mussey, 1845). NewYork Daily Tribune, 8 September 1845, p. 1; reprinted, New-York Weekly Tribune, 13 September 1845, p. 1. Title supplied. Philip James Bailey (1816-1902), founder of the “Spasmodic School” of English poetry, produced his version of the Faust legend in Festus, first published in 1839. Fuller’s favorable comments on this work are also printed in Letters, 4:91. angels’ [ angels

The Tailor


We know not why the Tailor should have been so long the theme of jest and scorn on the score of his profession. It was not merely that his profession was sedentary and kept him from manly, athletic exercises, neither that his art was devoted to furnishing raimentn for the body alone. The hatter, the hosier, the shoemaker, shared with him these difficulties, yet they might, if entitled to them by character, receive the honors due to whole men, or whole-souled men, while the Tailor must in no case be regarded as better than a fraction of a man. No matter what he himself was, his profession cast over him a shade of ridicule; nobody could believe that tragedy or heroism might be associated with the goose; and the heading of a page “The Melancholy of Tailors” prepared not for tears but laughter. Yet that men bore the title of sufficient energy and providence to be the founders of innumerable families, almost of a separate race, is manifest by the extent to which their posterity have retained the name. The Clan Taylor is only less numerous that the Clan Smith, and boasts a still larger proportion of distinguished members. Among these Jeremy alone is sufficient to atone for all sins of the race, whether committed by way of cabbage or otherwise.1 But we rejoice to see that in the march of mind which is scrambling clumsily but surely over the old walls of prejudice, the tailors keep pace with the best. The needle is non longer a weapon void of offence, nor wadding an ineffectual shield against the darts of satire. They hold their heads high and hold their full purses in a firm hand. Among other signs of the times, which shows that they take at last their fair place in the Circle of Industry, may be mentioned that a distinguished novelist has assigned a most honorable place in

rainment [ raiment 1. Jeremy Taylor (1613–67), English religious writer. is [ is no

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one of his works to a Tailor,2 and that, not only Prince Albert, but also the Duke of Wellington,3 Prince of Victoria and all-victorious Prince, has enrolled himself in the Tailors’ Guild. We fear, indeed, that they cannot make as just pretensions to the honors of an useful art as the Oriental Caliphs did to be good watchmakers. Apropos to this subject—we find in the last Courrier des Etats-Unis the following amusing sketch of the famous Stultz, and see, with pleasure, both that he might have assumed the title and rank of a noble in the country which lays most stress on such distinctions, but that he had the good sense to refuse it, and devote the winnings of his needle and shears to a better use. This is the true Democracy, and we are glad to find a spark of it in the breast of so Machiavellian a Tailor.4 Not to woman alone, it seems, does it belong to touch the true centre, with the point of that sharp implement which, if considered with reference to its benefits to man, should be venerated above the sceptre, to say nothing of the sword. And yet, as we write these words, a thought strikes us. But for the fault which first obliged Adam to ply the needle, neither sceptres nor swords, with their long train of attendant miseries, would have been wanted. And, perhaps, this remembrance is the very cause of the prejudice against the Tailor’s trade. Well! if it be so, it is still time for it to cease in common with all unjust prejudices, which you said, did you not, O Optimist! were almost weeded now from this garden of the world. Meantime let us read this page from the annals of the Dandy King and his Premier Stultz. It is from one of the amusing letters of Pierre Durand, then on his way to the Beethoven Festival, of which, by the next arrival, we may expect an account from his and a hundred other pens. “Alighting at Offenberg, I looked up to admire the beauty of the heavens, and found myself beneath a triumphal arch. With the best will in the world so to do, it was impossible for me to suppose that this monument of verdure was erected in my honor. There are, indeed, at Paris three or four visitors who might have had such an idea. I need not name them; you know who they are. But I was told that this arch was in honor of the Grand Duke of Baden, who

2. Thomas Carlyle titled one of his books Sartor Resartus (“The Tailor Repatched”); after appearing in Fraser’s Magazine in England in 1833–34, Ralph Waldo Emerson helped to arrange for its publication in America in 1836. 3. Prince Albert (1819–61) married Queen Victoria in 1840; Arthur Wellesley, First Duke of Wellington (1769–1852), English soldier and statesman. 4. Niccoló di Bernardo dei Machiavelli (1469–1527), Italian statesman and political strategist.

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was coming to open a new railroad track between Offenberg and Fribourg: not Fribourg in Switzerland, but Fribourg in Brisgan, famous for its magnificent Cathedral. I determined also to make the inaugural trip. The Grand Duke appeared presently. He is a man in the prime of life, with an open, smiling physiognomy, the affable air and simplicity common to the German princes; he was accompanied by his son, a young man of eighteen or twenty, who is not yet General, nor even Colonel, but wears modestly the epaulette of Sub-Lieutenant. The people received the Grand Duke very warmly; he received the compliments of the authorities and then set off with his escort. I was obliged to await the second train. “Each side of the route was bordered by a hedge of various people. There were the peasants, rustic inhabitants of the Black Forest, who came to admire a spectacle so new, so strange to them; the iron track, the locomotive in the exercise of its functions, the train passing with the rapidity of lightening. Nothing could be more charmingly picturesque than the costumes of these astonished villagers. Here ancient habits have been religiously kept up. The men wear the dress of Louis XIV’s time—the broad-brimmed felt hat, the red worked about waistcoat, velvet breeches with high and large boots, the women vests covered with handsome embroidery, a petticoat of two very decided colors, charming head-dresses of gold or silver stuff with wide, black ribbons, and hanging down upon their shoulders, sometimes even to the ground, their long fair hair. But the railroad will dispel all this, and soon the men will be in blouses, the women like the grisettes of Paris. “In this region and throughout Germany there is now a passion for rebuilding old castles. This aristocratic passion fever has been raging ever since the King of Prussia renovated the castle of Stolzenfels, where he is, at this moment, receiving the Queen of England. With the ruins disappear the old chivalric legends which are replaced by very prosaic modern chronicles, like this which I gleaned on the railroad, passing by the lately re-built castle of Ortenberg. “About forty years ago a young workman, named Stultz, born in the village of Lahr, near Ortenberg, left his country to seek his fortune in England. Stultz was a youth of good gifts; he joined to German patience and sagacity a finesse and ingenuity very rare in the land of his birth. The wily German is like a cold Southerner; he has a great chance in succeeding in what he undertakes. Fortune ought thus to smile on the young Stultz who chose a profession of which his compatriots are fond—that of tailor; he learnt of the best masters, then took for himself a little establishment in which he succeeded well. He was soon in good circumstances, as to money, but this did not suffice his ambitious mind; he dreamed of wealth and glory, and wanted to be the first tailor in London. His employers were citizens, merchants, and attorneys’ clerks, while

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doing justice to these good people who paid him well, he felt himself worthy to clothe those of another quality. His shears trembled in his fingers as he thought of the brilliant gentlemen who set the fashions in Hyde Park and Regent-street. ‘That,’ thought he, ‘is the custom to make a tailor illustrious and rich. But how can I ever obtain it?’ “At that time the famous Brummel was the king of fashion, master and model of the gilded youth of Leiden. His tailor was the only one employed by men who had pretensions to elegance. Stultz turned the whole force of his mind to the work of surpassing this fortunate tailor, who was named, I believe, Thomas Gibson. To dispossess Gibson and assume the same position was the aim to which he directed all his patience, sagacity, and finesse. “Brummel was his hero; his object of attentive and laborious idolatry. Stultz followed him in the streets; went to the public places to watch him. His justness of eye and memory served him well in this study. If he had been a painter or sculptor he would have made from memory the portrait of his great man, being a tailor, he made exactly to his measure a delightful coat, on which he exhausted all the resources of his talent and the graces of his imagination. “When this master-piece was finished, Stultz waited one morning on Brummel, and after waiting three hours in the ante-chamber obtained the honor of an audience on which he entered, coat in hand. “Ah! ah!” said Brummel, “a new coat which appears charming. You are, then, one of the men of that rascal, Gibson.” “Not so, my lord, I am a tailor, little known as yet, who expects from you his reputation and offers you, this sample of his talent.” “I am in despair, my good fellow, that I can do nothing for you. If I were to wear a coat of which Gibson is not the author, it would cause a rupture between us.” “But observe, my lord, what a perfect fit it is.” “It is so, and I am astonished at it, as you have never taken my measure.” “I took it on the statue of Antinous.” “Oh! oh! flattery! that suits me very well. I receive well a deserved compliment and am willing to repay it. The coat is delightful; it has originality in the cut; grace in the details. But I cannot wear it on account of Gibson.” “Gibson would not do the same. He is growing old, falling into routine, but, my lord, I am young; I have the sacred fire, and, with a hero like you, could go far on the path of innovations.” “I believe it, but honor forbids my breaking with Gibson. Think that he has dressed me gratis for ten years.” “It was for his own advantage; the merit is not great.” “He does not, however, fail to give himself airs upon it when I receive him to audience.”

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“What impertinence! it is in fact he who is in your debt. I should act more conscientiously. Please, my lord, to keep my coat and examine it with care. I will return to-morrow for your definite answer.” “It is not well known that the delicacy of Brummel was not excessive. Wholly without fortune, he lived on his position. All kinds of trades-people furnished whatever he wanted for the honor of his patronage. Stultz, knowing this, had ventured a step farther and left in one of the pockets a hundred pound bank note. “Next day he returned boldly. Brummel received him graciously, observing, with a perfect a plomb, “I have examined the coat, and it cannot be excelled; especially the trimming pleases me.” “I am enchanted to meet your approbation, my Lord.” “Decidedly, as you said yesterday, Gibson grows old; he has no new ideas now; he never would have thought of that trimming. But, tell me, Mr. Stultz, do you intend to make the same addition to all your coats?” “Only to those I have the honor to make for you.” “Truly, but do you know that I require many suits?” “I will furnish you every month a coat like this in every respect. As to other clothes, you will order them at your pleasure on the same terms as with my predecessor.”— “Very well; I accept your offer. From this moment you are my tailor, and I promise you the custom of all my subjects.” “In fine, Gibson was dethroned. Stultz set up a splendid establishment at the West End; lords and gentlemen rushed to his shop; his fortune grew with the greatest rapidity; and he never failed to send Brummel every month a coat furnished with the promised bank note, thus paying him in money thirty thousand francs a year, besides his clothes, which came to at least as much. “This was not the only ingenious trait that signalized the career of Stultz. The monarchy of Fashion is, no less than others, subject to revolutions.— Brummel, ruined by his excesses, was forced to leave England. Stultz, with the tact of a statesman, knew how to bend to circumstances so as to conciliate the favor of the new dynasty. The monarch who succeeded Brummel was a young lord of one of the first families of England. He would not have endured having bank notes put into the pockets of his dresses; nothing in the world would have induced him to make with his tailor an arrangement not to pay his bills; he merely omitted to pay them, which, as far as convenience was concerned, amounted to the same thing. “Unluckily his disciples imitated him in this also, and Stultz found himself creditor to the young aristocracy for large sums, whose recovery seemed lost in the shades of a doubtful future. This difficulty became alarming; it was

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necessary to put an end to it. Stultz found in his fertile imagination his expedient. “One morning the reader found in one of the most respectable newspapers of London this notice: “At the moment of setting out for Bath, Lord C. (the name of the reigning king of fashion was here printed in full) has ordered coats in the newest taste and paid the tailor’s bill. It is the fashion now among our most elegant men to settle their accounts before setting out for the watering-places.” “This notice excited to the highest degree the surprise of Lord C. He sent for Stultz. “What does this notice mean?” said he, showing it to the tailor. “It means that I am paid,” replied Stultz, with his admirable German sangfroid. “Paid? Has my steward taken upon himself to pay you without consulting me?” “No, my lord, your steward is incapable of betraying to such a degree the confidence which you deign to bestow upon him.” “Explain to me, then, this riddle.” “I know not how to reply, my lord unless, that, as the authority of such a journal cannot be disputed, the notice is the same as a receipt in full to you.” “How do you mean, sir? I will, if I choose, remain your debtor all my life, but to take a receipt without having paid—! Do you take me for a Brummel?” “Heaven forbid, my lord. I had no thought of wounding your delicacy; it is simply an innocent ruse which will do you no harm and me great good. People will believe you have paid me; what harm can that do you? This piece of originality will, without hurting you, lead all men of fashion to do the same, and I shall be paid. Thus I have ventured to use your magic name to call in my funds, and I hope you will excuse it.” “The successor of Brummel was a good Prince; he pardoned. The stratagem succeeded admirably. It was, afterward, the fashion to pay Stultz’s bill on setting off for Bath. “After having realized a fortune of twelve millions, Stultz withdrew from commerce and gave up his establishment to one of his nephews who bears his name. He wished to see once more his birth-place, and returned seven or eight years ago to the village of Laha. The Grand Duke of Baden, who wished to keep this great fortune in his dominions, proposed to Stultz to buy the estate of Ortenberg, rebuild the Castle, and assume its lordship with the title of Baron. The tailor would thus have found himself in the first rank of the nobility of Baden. His vanity urged him to accept, his wisdom said no, and while he hesitated, Ortenberg was bought by a Russian, M. de Berkholz, who has restored it to its magnificence of the times of the Crusades, when it belonged

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to the sovereigns of the country. Stultz, more modest, built a hospital; he died shortly after its completion, and his countrymen have raised a monument in his memory. His nephew, continuing his work, has already made a fortune equal to that of the uncle; he, too, has founded, they say, a hospital for the old and poor tailors of London. The people of Lahr hope he, too, will finish his days among them; there are many old castles in the neighborhood to rebuild, and the Grand Duke keeps the title of Baron in readiness for him.”  New-York Daily Tribune, 17 September 1845, p. 1; reprinted, New-York Weekly Tribune, 20 September 1845, p. 1.

Jenny Lind . . . The Consuelo of George Sand


Jenny Lind, the prima donna of Stockholm, is among the most distinguished of those geniuses who have been invited to welcome the Queen of England to Germany. Her name has been unknown among us, as she is still young and has not wandered much from the scene of her first triumphs; but many may have seen, last Winter, in the foreign papers an account of her entrance into Stockholm after an absence of some length. The people received her with loud cries of homage, took the horses from her carriage and drew her home; a tribute of respect often paid to Conquerors and Statesmen, but seldom, or, as far as we know, never, to the priesthood of the Muses, who have conferred the higher benefit of refining, raising and exhilarating the popular mind. An accomplished Swede, now in this country, communicated to a friend particulars of Jenny Lind’s career, which suggested the thought that she might have given the hint for the principal figure in Sand’s late famous novel, “Consuelo.” This work is at present in process of translation in “The Harbinger,” a periodical published at Brook Farm, Mass.,n but as this translation has proceeded but little way, and the book in its native tongue is not generally, though it has been extensively, circulated here, we will give a slight sketch of its plan.1 It has been a work of deepest interest to those who have looked upon Sand, for some years back, as one of the best exponents of the difficulties, the errors, and the aspirations, the weaknesses and the regenerative powers of the present epoch. The struggle in her mind and the experiments of her life have been laid bare to the eye of her fellow creatures, with fearless openness, fearless, not shameless; let no man confound the bold unreserve of Sand with that of those who have lost the feeling of beauty and the love of good. With a bleeding

Mass, [ Mass., 1. Consuelo was translated in fifty issues of the Brook Farm paper, the Harbinger, in 1845–47 by Francis George Shaw (1809–82), reformer and translator.

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heart and bewildered feet she sought the Truth, and if she lost the way returned as soon as convinced she had done so, but she would never hide the fact that she had lost it. “What God knows I dare avow to man,” seems to be her motto. It is impossible not to see in her, not only the distress and doubts of the intellect, but the temptations of a sensual nature; but we see too the courage of a hero, and a deep capacity for religion. This mixed nature, too, fits her peculiarly to speak to men so diseased as men are at present. They feel she knows their ailment, and, if she finds a cure, it will really be by a specific remedy. An upward tendency and growing light are observable in all her works for several years past, till now, in the present, she has expressed such conclusions as forty years of the most varied experience have brought to one who has shrunk from no kind, yet still cried to God amid it all; one who, whatever else you may say against her, you must feel has never accepted a word for a thing, or worn one moment the veil of hypocrisy; and this person one of a most powerful nature, both as to passion and to action, and of an ardent, glowing genius. These conclusions are sadly incomplete; there is an amazing alloy in the last product of her crucible, but there is also so much of pure gold that the book is truly a cordial, as its name promises, of Consuelo. (Consolation.) The young Consuelo lives as a child the life of a beggar; her youth is passed in the lowest circumstances of the streets of Venice. She brings the more pertinacious and religious fire of Spanish blood to be fostered by the cheerful airs of Italy. A vague sense of the benefits to be derived from such mingling of various influences in the formation of a character is to be discerned in several works of art now, when men are really wishing to become citizens of the world, though old habits still interfere on every side with so noble a development. Nothing can be more charming than the first volume, which describes the young girl amid the common life of Venice. It is sunny, open and romantic as the place. The beauty of her voice, when singing,n a little girl in the streets, arrested the attention of a really great and severe master, Porpora, who educated her to music. In this she finds the vent and the echo for her higher self. Her affectations are fixed on a young companion, an unworthy object, but she does not know him to be so; she judges from her own candid soul, that all must be good, and derives from the tie for awhile the fostering and inspiring influences which love alone has for genius. Undeception follows quickly upon her

singing [ singing,

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first triumphs in her art: they have given her a rival and a mean rival in her betrothed, whose talent, though great, is of an inferior grade to hers, who is vain, and every way impure. Her master, Porpora, tries to avail himself of this disappointment to convince her that the artist ought to devote himself to art alone, that private ties must interfere with his perfection, and his glory. But the nature of Consuelo revolts against this doctrine, as it would against the seclusion of the convent; she feels that genius requires manifold experience for its development, and that the mind, concentrated on a single object, is likely to pay by a loss of vital energy for the economy of thoughts and time. Driven by these circumstances into Germany, she is brought into contact with the old noblesse, a very different but far less charming atmosphere than that of the gondoliers of Venice. But here, too, the strong, simple character of our Consuelo is unconstrained, if not at home, and when her heart swells, and needs expansion, she can sing. Here the Count de Rudolstadt, Albert, loves Consuelo, which seems in the conduct of the relation, a type of a religious democracy in love with the spirit of Art. We do not mean that any such cold abstraction is consciously intended, but all that is said means this. It shadows forth one of the great desires which convulse our age. A most noble meaning is couched in the history of Albert, and though the writer breaks down under such great attempts, and the religion and philosophy of the book are clumsily embodied, compared with its poesy and rhetoric, yet great and still growing thoughts are expressed with sufficient force to make the book a companion of rare value to one in the same phase of mind. Albert is the aristocratic democrat such as Alfieri was, one who in his keen perception of beauty shares the good of that culture which ages have bestowed on the more fortunate classes, but in his large heart loves and longs for the good of all men as if he had himself suffered in the lowest pits of human misery. He is all this and more, in his transmigration, real or fancied, of soul through many forms of heroic effort and bloody error, in his incompetency to act at the present time, his need of long silences, of the company of the dead and of fools, and eventually of a separation from all habitual ties, expresses a great Idea which is still only in the throes of birth, yet the nature of whose life we begin to prognosticate with some clearness. Consuelo’s escape from the castle, and even from Albert, her admiration of him and her incapacity to love him till her own character be more advanced, are told with great naturalness. Her travels with Joseph Hayden are again as charmingly told as the Venetian life. Here the author speaks from her habitual

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existence, and far more masterly than of those deep places of thought where she is less at home. She has lived much, discerned much, felt great need of great thoughts, but not been able to think a great way for herself. She fearlessly accompanies the Spirit of the Age, but she never surpasses it: that is the office of the great thinker. At Vienna Consuelo is brought fully into connection with the great world as an Artist. She finds that its realities so far from being less, are even more, harsh and sordid for the Artist than for any other, and that with avarice, envy and falsehood she must prepare for the fearful combat which awaits noble souls in any kind of arena, with the pain of disgust when they cannot raise themselves to patience, with the almost equal pain, when they can, of pity for those who know not what they do. Albert is on the verge of the grave, and Consuelo who, not being able to feel for him sufficient love to find in it compensation for loss of that artist life to which she feels Nature had destined her, had hitherto resisted the entreaties of his aged father and the pleadings of her own reverential and tender sympathy with the wants of his soul, becomes his wife just before he dies. The sequel, therefore, of this history is given under the title of “Countess of Rudolstadt.”2 Consuelo is still on the stage: she is at the Prussian Court. The well-known features of this society, as given in the memoirs of the time, are put together with much grace and wit. The sketch of Frederic is excellent. The rest of the book is devoted to expression of the author’s ideas on the subject of reform, and especially of Association as a means thereto. As her thoughts are as yet in a very crude state, the execution of this part is equally bungling and clumsy.—Worse, she falsifies the characters both of Consuelo and Albert (who is revived again by subterfuge of trance) and stains her best arrangements by the mixture of falsehood and intrigue. Yet she proceeds toward, if she walk not by the light of, a great Idea, and sincere democracy, universal religion, scatter from afar many seeds upon the page for a future time. The book should be and will be universally read. Those especially who have witnessed all Sand’s doubts and sorrows on the subject of marriage, will rejoice in the clearer, purer ray which dawns upon her now. The most natural and deep part of the book, though not her main object, is what relates to the struggle between the claims of Art and Life, as to whether it be better for the world and oneself to develop to perfection a talent which Heaven seemed to have assigned as a special gift and vocation, or sacrifice it 2. Sand published La Comtesse de Rudolstadt in 1845.

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whenever the character seems to require this for its general development. The character of Consuelo is, throughout the first part, strong, delicate, simple, bold and pure. The fair lines of this picture are a good deal broken in the second part, but we must remain true to the impression originally made upon us by this charming and noble creature of the soul of Sand. It is in reference to our Consuelo that a correspondent writes as to Jenny Lind, and we are rejoiced to find that so many hints were or might have been furnished for the picture from real life. If Jenny Lind did not suggest it, yet she must also be, in her own sphere, a Consuelo. “Jenny Lind must have been born about 1822 or ’23. When a young child she was observed playing about and singing in the streets of Stockholm, by Mr. Berg, Master of Singing for the Royal Opera. Pleased and astonished by the purity and suavity of her voice, he inquired instantly for her family, and found her father, a poor inn-keeper, willing and glad to give up his daughter to his care on the promise to protect her and give her an excellent musical education. He was always very careful of her, never permitting her to sing except in his presence, and never letting her appear on the stage, unless as a mute figure in some ballet, such for instance as ‘Cupid and the Graces,’ till she was sixteen, when she at once executed her part in ‘Der Freyschutz’ to the full satisfaction and surprise of the public of Stockholm.—From that time she gradually became the favorite of every one. Without beauty, she seems from her innocent and gracious manners, beautiful on the stage and charming in society. She is one of the few actresses that no evil tongue can ever injure, and is respected and welcome in any and all societies. “The circumstances that reminded me of Consuelo were these, that she was a poor child, taken up by this singing master and educated thoroughly and severely by him, that she loved his son, who was a good-for-nothing fellow, like Anzoleto, and, at last, discarded him, that she refused the son of an English Earl, and, when he fell sick, his father condescended to entreat for him just as the Count of Rudolstadt did for his son. That, though plain and low in stature, when singing her best parts she appears beautiful and awakens enthusiastic admiration. That she is rigidly correct in her demeanor toward her numerous admirers, having even returned a present sent her by the Crown Prince Oscar in a manner that she considered equivocal. This last circumstance being noised abroad, the next time she appeared on the stage she was greeted with more enthusiastic plaudits than ever, and thicker showers of flowers fell upon her from the hands of her true friends, the Public. She was more fortunate than Consuelo in not being compelled to sing to a public of Prussian Corporals.”

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Indeed the picture of Frederic’s Opera audience, with the pit full of his tall grenadiers with their wives on their shoulders, never daring to applaud except when he gave the order, as if by tap of drum, opposed to the tender and expansive nature of the Artist, is one of the best tragi-comedies extant. In Russia too, all is military; as soon as a new musician arrives he is invested with a rank in the army; even in the church Nicholas has lately done the same; it seems as if he could not believe a man to be alive, unless in the army—could not believe the human heart could beat, unless by beat of drum.—But we believe in Russia there is at least a mask of gaiety thrown over the chilling truth. The great Frederic wished no disguise; every where he was chief Corporal; and trampled with his everlasting boots the fair flowers of Poesy into the dust. The North has been generous to us of late. She has sent us Ole Bull: she is about to send Fredrika Bremer —may she add Jenny Lind!3  New-York Daily Tribune, 19 September 1845, p. 2; reprinted, New-York Weekly Tribune, 27 September 1845, p. 1. Jenny Lind (1820–87), singer known as the Swedish Nightingale. 3. Ole Bornemann Bull (1810–80), Norwegian composer and violinist, who made four tours of America, the first in 1843.

The Wrongs of American Women. The Duty of American Women.


The same day brought us a copy of Mr. Burdett’s little book, in which the sufferings and difficulties that beset the large class of women who must earn their subsistence in a city like New-York are delineated with so much simplicity, feeling and exact adherence to the facts—and a printed circular containing proposals for immediate practical adoption of the plan more fully described in a book published some weeks since under the title “The Duty of American Women to their Country,” which was ascribed alternately to Mrs. Stone and Miss Catherine Beecher, but of which we understand both those ladies decline the responsibility.1 The two matters seemed linked with one another by natural piety. Full acquaintance with the wrong must call forth all manner of inventions for its redress. The Circular, in showing the vast want that already exists of good means for instructing the children of this nation, especially in the West, states also the belief that among women, as being less immersed in other cares and toils, from the preparation it gives for their task as mothers, and from the necessity in which a great proportion stand of earning a subsistence somehow, at least during the years which precede marriage, if they do marry, must the number of teachers wanted be found, which is estimated already at sixty thousand. We cordially sympathize with these views. Much has been written about Woman’s keeping within her sphere, which is defined as the domestic sphere. As a little girl she is to learn the lighter family duties, while she acquires that limited acquaintance with the realm of literature and science that will enable her to superintend the instruction of children in their earliest years. It is not generally proposed that she should be sufficiently instructed and developed to understand the pursuits or aims of her future husband; she is not to be a helpmeet to him, in the way of companionship or counsel, except in the care of his house and children. Her youth is to 1. Mrs. Lucy Stone (1818–93), woman suffrage advocate and antislavery reformer.

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be passed partly in learning to keep house and the use of the needle, partly in the social circle where her manners may be formed, ornamental accomplishments perfected and displayed, and the husband found who shall give her the domestic sphere for which exclusively she is to be prepared. Were the destiny of Woman thus exactly marked out, did she invariably retain the shelter of a parent’s or a guardian’s roof till she married, did marriage give her a sure home and protector, were she never liable to be made a widow, or, if so, sure of finding immediate protection from a brother or new husband, so that she might never be forced to stand alone one moment, and were her mind given for this world only, with no faculties capable of eternal growth and infinite improvement, we would still demand for her a far wider and more generous culture than is proposed by those who so anxiously define her sphere. We would demand it that she might not ignorantly or frivolously thwart the designs of her husband, that she might be the respected friend of her sons no less than her daughters, that she might give more refinement, elevation and attraction to the society which is needed to give the characters of men polish and plasticity—no less so than to save them from vicious and sensual habits. But the most fastidious critic on the departure of Woman from her sphere, can scarcely fail to see at present that a vast proportion of the sex, if not the better half, do not, cannot, have this domestic sphere. Thousands and scores of thousands in this country no less than in Europe are obliged to maintain themselves alone. Far greater numbers divide with their husbands the care of earning a support for the family. In England, now, the progress of society has reached so admirable a pitch that the position of the sexes is frequently reversed, and the husband is obliged to stay at home and “mind the house and bairns” while the wife goes forth to the employment she alone can secure. We readily admit that the picture of this is most painful—that Nature made entirely an opposite distribution of functions between the sexes. We believe the natural order to be the best, and that, if it could be followed in an enlightened spirit, it would bring to Woman all she wants, no less for her immortal than her mortal destiny. We are not surprised that men, who do not look deeply or carefully at causes or tendencies, should be led by disgust at the hardened, hackneyed characters which the present state of things too often produces in women to such conclusions as they are. We, no more than they, delight in the picture of the poor woman digging in the mines in her husband’s clothes. We, no more than they, delight to hear their voices shrilly raised in the market-place, whether of apples or celebrity. But we see that at present they must do as they do for bread. Hundreds and thousands must step out of

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that hallowed domestic sphere, with no choice but to work or steal, or belong to men, not as wives, but as the wretched slaves of sensuality. And this transition state, with all its revolting features, indicates, we do believe, the approach of a nobler era than the world has yet known. We trust that by the stress and emergencies of the present and coming time, the minds of women will be formed to more reflection and higher purposes than heretofore—their latent powers developed, their characters strengthened and eventually beautified and harmonized. Should the state of society then be such that each may remain, as Naturen seems to have intended, the tutelary genius of a home, while men manage the out-door business of life, both may be done with a wisdom, a mutual understanding and respect unknown at present. Men will be no less the gainers by this than women, finding in pure and more religious marriages the joys of friendship and love combined—in their mothers and daughters better instruction, sweeter and nobler companionship, and in society at large an excitement to their finer powers and feelings unknown at present except in the region of the fine arts. Blest be the generous, the wise among them who seek to forward hopes like these, instead of struggling against the fiat of Providence and the march of Fate to bind down rushing Life to the standard of the Past. Such efforts are vain, but those who make them are unhappy and unwise. It is not, however, to such that we address ourselves, but to those who seek to make the best of things as they are, while they also strive to make them better. Such persons will have seen enough of the state of things in London, Paris, New-York, and manufacturing regions every where, to feel that there is an imperative necessity, for opening more avenues of employment to women, and fitting them better to enter them, rather than keeping them back. Women have invaded many of the trades and some of the professions. Sewing, to the present killing extent, they cannot long bear. Factories seem likely to afford them permanent employment. In the culture of fruit, flowers and vegetables, even in the sale of them, we rejoice to see them engaged. In domestic service they will be aided, but can never be supplanted, by machinery. As much room as there is here for woman’s mind and woman’s labor will always be filled. A few have usurped the martial province, but these must always be few; the nature of woman is opposed to war. It is natural enough to see “Female Physicians,” and we believe that the lace cap and work-bag are as much at home here as the wig and gold-beaded cane. In the priesthood they have from all a Nsature [ as Nature

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time shared more or less—in many eras more than at the present. We believe there has been no female lawyer, and probably will be none. The pen, many of the fine arts they have made their own, and, in the more refined countries of the world, as writers, as musicians, as painters, as actors, women occupy as advantageous ground as men. Writing and music may be esteemed professions for them more than any other. But there are two others where the demand must invariably be immense, and for which they are naturally better fitted than men, for which we should like to see them better prepared and better rewarded than they are. These are the professionsn of nurse to the sick and of teacher. The first of these professions we have warmly desired to see dignified. It is a noble one, now most unjustly regarded in the light of menial service. It is one which no menial, no servile nature can fitly occupy. We were rejoiced when an intelligent lady of Massachusetts made the refined heroine of a little romance select that calling. This lady (Mrs. George Lee) has looked on society with unusual largeness of spirit and healthiness of temper. She is well acquainted with the world of conventions, but sees beneath it the world of nature.n She is a generous writer and unpretending, as the generous are wont to be. We do not recall the name of the tale, but the circumstance above mentioned marks its temper. We hope to see the time when the refined and cultivated will choose this profession and learn it, not only through experience under the direction of the doctor,n but by acquainting themselves with the laws of matter and of mind, so that all they do shall be intelligently done, and afford them the means of developing intelligence as well as the nobler, tenderer feelings of humanity; for even the last part of the benefit they cannot receive if their work be done in a selfish or mercenary spirit. The other profession is that of teacher, for which women are peculiarly adapted by their nature, superiority in tact, quickness of sympathy, gentleness, patience, and a clear and animated manner in narration or description. To form a good teacher should be added to this sincere modesty combined with firmness, liberal views with a power and will to liberalize them still further, a good method and habits of exact and thorough investigation. In the two last requisites women are generally deficient, but there are now many shining examples to prove that if they are immethodical and superficial as teachers it

profession [ professions nature, [ nature. doctor; [ doctor,

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is because it is the custom so to teach them, and that when aware of these faults they can and will correct them. The profession is of itself an excellent one for the improvement of the teacher during that interim between youth and maturity when the mind needs testing, tempering, and to review and rearrange the knowledge it has acquired. The natural method of doing this for one’s self is to attempt teaching others; those years also are the best of the practical teacher. The teacher should be near the pupil both in years and feelings—no oracle, but the elder brother or sister of the pupil. More experience and years form the lecturer and the director of studies, but injure the powers as to familiar teaching. These are just the years of leisure in the lives even of those women who are to enter the domestic sphere, and this calling most of all compatible with a constant progress as to qualifications for that. Viewing the matter thus it may well be seen that we should hail with joy the assurance that sixty thousand female teachers are wanted, and more likely to be, and that a plan is projected which looks wise, liberal and generous, to afford the means of those whose hearts answer to this high calling obeying their dictates. The plan is to have Cincinnati for a central point, where teachers shall be for a short time received, examined and prepared for their duties. By mutual agreement and cooperation of the various sects funds are to be raised and teachers provided according to the wants and tendencies of the various locations now destitute. What is to be done for them centrally, is for suitable persons to examine into their various kinds of fitness, communicate some general views whose value has been tested, and counsel adapted to the difficulties and advantages of their new positions. The Central Committee are to have the charge of raising funds and finding teachers and places where teachers are wanted. The passage of thoughts, teachers and funds will be from East to West, the course of sunlight upon this earth. The plan is offered as the most extensive and pliant means of doing a good, and preventing ill to this nation, by means of a national education, whose normal school shall have an invariable object in the search after truth and the diffusion of the means of knowledge, while its form shall be plastic according to the wants of the time. This normal school promises to have good effects, for it proposes worthy aims through simple means, and the motive for its formation and support seems to be disinterested philanthropy. It promises to eschew the bitter spirit of sectarianism and proselytism, else we, for one party, could have nothing to do with it. Men, no doubt, have been

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oftentimes kept from absolute famine by the wheat with which such tares are mingled; but we believe the time is come when a purer and more generous food is to be offered to the people at large. We believe the aim of all education to be to rouse the mind to action, show it the means of discipline and of information; then leave it free, with God, Conscience, and the love of Truth for its guardians and teachers. Wo be to those who sacrifice these aims of universal and eternal valuen to the propagation of a set of opinions. But on this subject we can accept such doctrine as is offered by Rev. Calvin Stowe, one of the committee,2 in the following passage: “In judicious practice, I am persuaded there will seldom be any very great difficulty, especially if there be excited in the community anything like a wholehearted honesty and enlightened sincerity in the cause of public instruction. “It is all right for people to suit their own taste and convictions in respect to sect; and fair means and at proper time to teach their children and those under their influence to prefer the denominations which they prefer; but farther than this no one has any right to go. It is all wrong to hazard the well being of the soul, to jeopardize great public interests for the sake of advancing the interests of a sect. People must learn to practice some self-denial, on Christian principles, in respect to their denominational preferences, as well as in respect to other things, before pure Religion can ever gain a complete victory over every form of human selfishness.”

The persons who propose themselves to the examination and instruction of the teachers at Cincinnati, till the plan shall be sufficiently under weigh to provide regularly for the office, are Mrs. Stowe and Miss Catherine Beecher, ladies well known to fame, as possessing unusual qualifications for the task.3 As to finding abundance of teachers, who that reads this little book of Mr. Burdett’s, or the account of the compensation of female labor in New-York, and the hopeless, comfortless, useless, pernicious lives those who have even the advantage of getting work must live with the sufferings and almost inevitable degradation to which those who cannot are exposed, but must long to match such as are capable of this better profession, and among the multitude there must be many who are or could be made so, from their present toils and make them free and the means of freedom and growth to others. valne [ value 2. The Reverend Calvin Stowe (1802–66), then professor of biblical literature at Cincinnati. 3. Harriet Beecher Stowe had married Calvin Stowe in 1836.

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To many books on such subjects, among others to “Woman in the Nineteenth Century,”4 the objection has been made that they exhibit ills without specifying any practical means for their remedy. The writer of the last named essay does indeed think that it contains one great rule which, if laid to heart, would prove a practical remedy for many ills, and of such daily and hourly efficacy in the conduct of life that any extensive observance of it for a single year would perceptibly raise the tone of thought, feeling and conduct throughout the civilized world. But to those who ask not only suchn a principle, but an external method for immediate use, we say, here is one proposed that looks noble and promising, the proposers offer themselves to the work with heart and hand, with time and purse: Go ye and do likewise. Those who wish details as to this plan, will find them in the “Duty of American Womenn to their Country,” published by Harper & Brothers, Cliff-st. The publishers may, probably, be able to furnish also the Circular to which we have referred. At a leisure day we shall offer some suggestions and remarks as to the methods and objects there proposed.  Review of Charles Burdett, Wrongs of American Women. First Series. The Elliott Family; or the Trials of New York Seamstresses (New York: E. Winchester, 1845), and [Catharine Beecher], The Duty of American Women to Their Country (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1845). NewYork Daily Tribune, 30 September 1845, p. 1; reprinted, New-York Weekly Tribune, 4 October 1845, p. 1. Title supplied. Charles Burdett (b. 1815), New York journalist; Catharine Esther Beecher (1800–78), educator, reformer, and the sister of the novelist Harriet Beecher Stowe (1811–96), the author of Uncle Tom’s Cabin (1852). Her name often appeared as “Catherine” in Fuller’s time. 4. Fuller’s Woman in the Nineteenth Century had been published in early February 1845. sueh [ such Americen Woman [ American Women

Ole Bull


Europe is about to resume the jewel she has lent us for a season, and we trust the last moments of its radiance upon ourselves will be duly valued by all who are fitted to view from the true point, which we take to be that of one’s own heart. Christopher North said in the Noctes Ambrosianæ that the world could never want a subject for discussion, since, when all others were exhausted, still would remain the question “Whether or no is Pope a poet.”1 For the present a similar dispute as to the claims of Ole Bull to the honors of genius has superseded that in the old world, and been continued among ourselves. The two parties engaged in the former controversy still maintain their places in this, those who decided that Pope was not a poet being quite sure that Ole Bull is and vice versa. The dispute is the old one between Intellect and Feeling. With the highest geniuses these are sometimes so in harmony that all kinds of minds, all states of character are satisfied, all kinds of spirits obey one magician. But, even with genius so undeniable as those of Dante and Milton, this is not the case. Many souls meet them unmoved. In the case of such geniuses as Petrarch and Spenser, it requires an unspoiled nature, unspoiled by vice or the pedantry, either of learning or practical duty, and tenderness of heart to receive the influence. The genius of Ole Bull is sweet, brilliant, romantic and tender, not grand, severe and commanding. He may fail thoroughly to satisfy the requisitions of science, he may, at times, dally with his art and do things with the light freedom of a child, rather than the grave earnestness of a man. We do not know enough to say that it is so, but it would not surprise us from what we have felt of the nature of his mind that it should be so. But we shall ask no

1. John Wilson (1785–1854), English critic and poet, often wrote as “Christopher North” for Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine, in which he also contributed to a series of imaginary conversations, “Noctes Ambrosiana”; Alexander Pope (1688–1744), English poet who championed the heroic couplet.

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pedant’s leave to say that he has genius and great genius; our own souls have decided that such must eventually be the verdict of the world at large.—And, if he fail to please some really noble and accomplished priests of the Muses, we entertain no doubt that the Muses themselves would bend a willing ear to his lay and treat him as a darling child. We admit, however, that his mind is rather subjective than universal, and can understand why many, even, who are neither pedantic nor prejudiced should fail to answer to his call. He is not made to develope the spirit to new consciousness so much as to awaken sympathetic chords ready for his touch. He might sometimes do the former, but it would only be when the mind was waiting for some such influence. To his sweet influence we ourselves are indebted for pure delight at the time of hearing, rather than thoughts called forth, nor should we attempt, but at the wish of others, to analyze what we have received, but content ourselves vaguely, as often in the enjoyment of Nature, with the memory of beautiful hours. In our first impressions of Ole Bull, we could not at all separate himself from his music. His manners charmed us; they were those of a princely child, used to the world and to crowds, but who has never been much affected by them. He was at ease, but he had no worldly manner; what was called awkwardness in him was charming to us: his little ways were the faithful expressions of his nature; would that every one were thus awkward! had we free play of an individual nature, (restrained only by a knowledge how to avoid habits that interfere with the comfort of others) instead of automaton or merely conventional manners, social intercourse would not be the weariness it now generally is to those who are not tainted with vanity and have no thirst for gossip. Did we see men as we do children, it would be entertaining, and just so do we see Ole Bull in face of his strange and curious audience. Like the child, he looks shy, but like the child what he does at all must be done freely. And, happier than the child, he can always speak freely—through the violin. His violin seems, indeed, a living companion, the counterpart of himself. When we read the objection of a critic to the “Niagara,” that Ole Bull expressed the feminine feeling of the scene, we thought this answered to much we have felt about his companionship with his violin. The spirit of his lyre answers him like a female friend—a bride! It is himself, but a second self, as Milton’s Eve came to Adam; and his gestures seem, oftentimes, to express that he listens for it, and that, if awakened by himself, he knows not, except in hope, what he shall awaken. In our first hearings of him, “The Mountains of Norway” seemed to express

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what was congenial with him, yet not especially his. The “Adagio Religioso” is just what its name promises. It will ever be to us a recollection of a sacred interest; and if any deny genius to the mind to whom we own this, we reply, we have at least heard from him the pure voice of the soul. If it was not genius, it was something higher. The “Polacca Guerriera” is a noble composition. There is a fullness and compass of feeling in it, which raise a glow in all the frame as we remember it. We have heard this composition was the work of a few still night-hours, though it had long lain in the mind of the artist, seeking to be born. We should think so from its concentrated yet soaring character. The “Recollections of Havana” gave us much pleasure. In this, as since in the “Niagara” and “Solitude of the Prairies,” we have been delighted with the perfect naturalness with which the effect is given of one wandering, sometimes sunk in the spirit of the scene, sometimes startled back into individual consciousness, and even to special memories. In this view we heard, with sensations of peculiar pleasure, the uprise of the notes “On the lake where droops the willow,” amid the rush and roar of Niagara. Such special memories, especially of snatches of song, where there is an ear and a heart for song come— “We know not whence they come, we know they must come”

to break the absorbtion of the deepest reverie, casting into the present an arrow from the past. It was not the least charming part of these evenings to us, when Ole Bull, being encored, would come forward with his sweet shy smile, whose mild electricity at once pervaded the assembly, and play those familiar airs “Auld Robin Gray,” “The Last Rose of Summer,” “On the lake where droops the Willow.” We were happy to see how much their simple tenderness was to him; happier to hear it endowed with its highest character, for those airs without losing anything of the simple humanity of their tenderness, seemed to be transfigured, made celestial, by the pure tone of his instrument and his exquisite playing of them. But, of all we heard from him, nothing impressed us so much as the piece called “Sicilian e Tarantella.” That seemed something unique, the type of a class of things of which we were vaguely conscious but had never seen or heard any full or even distinct expression. His manner in playing it; the hair jerked over his forehead and the entranced look of his eyes in the wild, full part, gave us an idea of the excitements of gambling; the redoubling and tripling of force

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upon this part produce indescribable sensations; here was electricity again, but no longer mild;—fiery, rapid, intense; his electricity and ours arrested, spent, lavished on the stroke of the bow. We know not the original meaning of this composition, but it awakened throngs of emotions and shadows of thoughts, dissimilar in form, but homogenous in nature. Some of these are expressed in the following lines, where the writer was thrown into a particular frame of mind and led to understand peculiar crises in life by this piece. They were written the night after hearing it and, being suggested by it, should express its nature, if not its precise meaning. It came,—the first, the high, heaven-seeking strain! I knew those monumental thoughts again, When o’er the buried hopes of early days Pure marble tablets I had hoped to raise, With cherub forms to promise from my pain, With ashes urned,—that nought could e’er profane. It came,—the second, sad, impassioned strain! The heart that could not hear a life-long pain, Not heeding all the warning of its fate, Yielding the only solace of its state,— —Yielded itself to fond delusions’s tide, Laid by the breast plate of a noble pride; Waking to know itself the light one’s scorn, Cursing the hour that ever it was born. But where is the third?—O artist sad and wild, O where the strain, thou dear and ardent child, That shows me how to rise from the abyss To which the downward way so easy is? “Love, Hope, and Self-Esteem” all “to depart,” O God! at least the barren third restore Without that one help I can bear no more.2

Two friends asked one another what had been their thoughts during a performance of one of Meyerbeer’s compositions.3 One had thought of the flight of eagles; the other of Summer lightning; and, whatever was really the meaning of the composition, it must have been correspondent with such images. So 2. According to Jeffrey Steele, who is editing Fuller’s poems, this verse is probably by Fuller (letter to Myerson, 22 March 1999). 3. Giaccomo Meyerbeer (1791–1864), German operatic composer.

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of the “Sicilian and Tarantella,” whatever be its thought, it must express that concentration of life of which one view is rapture, the reverse despair. Last Autumn we heard the compositions which may be claimed as American, in so far as they have this country for their birth-place, and owe their existence to the action of its scenes on the mind of the Artist. We esteem them grand and beautiful compositions. The “Solitude of the Prairie” was far the most satisfactory to us, as to others, or, if not so at the time, it certainly is in recollection. Those who deny the honors of genius to the composer of these, must do so on the same ground that the critic would, those of the lyric poet to the writer of the most exquisite song, on the plea that he had never attempted the grand Pindaric ode. The fame of Ole Bull will not indeed rest on his compositions. These, probably, require his peculiar manner of playing, and leading the orchestra to give them due effect, and they will never be really heard except from himself. Had he never written any thing, the enchanting and animating power of his mind as a performer entitles him to rank, not only as a most accomplished violinist, and a person of great magnetic force, but as an original genius of a high order. But it is not just to undervalue his compositions, rich and beautiful poems which contain the experiences of one so delicately organized to apprehend the beautiful, capable of profound and wide reception of it, and of highly individual reproduction in forms flexible, graceful and transporting to other minds. The “March in honor of Washington” we are now to hear. We hope it may be worthy his best genius! And let the audiences who wait on him in these last hours discard that cold, carping, or, at least, doubtful, temper in which men are too apt to regard beautiful beings till it is too late, till death or separation has hid them from our eyes, and a tardy justice can no more avail them. Ole Bull, like all true artists, is of an affectionate and delicate nature; he trusts himself, but needs a cordial reception to call forth his powers in perfection for the enjoyment of others. We hope that it will not be as it was last autumn, when the dull or stolid silence of the house checked the vibrations of his finest strains. May we welcome him, as we must part with him, in love and honor, for he is now ours especially as well as the world’s, and “Niagara and the Prairie,” no less than the Mountains of Norway may cry, All hail to our Ole Bull!  New-York Daily Tribune, 1 October 1845, p. 1; reprinted, New-York Weekly Tribune, 4 October 1845, p. 1.

[Review of The Prose Works of John Milton]


The noble lines of Wordsworth, quoted by Mr. Griswold on his title-page, would be the best and a sufficient advertisement of each reprint: “Milton! thou shouldst be living at this hour. Return to us again, And give us manners, virtue, freedom, power. Thy soul was like a Star, and dwelt apart; Thou hadst a voice whose sound was like the Sea: Pure as the naked Heavens, majestic, free: So didst thou travel on Life’s common way In cheerful Godliness, and yet thy heart The lowliest duties on herself did lay.”1

One should have climbed to as high a point as Wordsworth to be able to review Milton, or even to view in part his high places. From the hill-top we still strain our eyes looking up to the mountain-peak— “Itself Earth’s Rosy Star.”

We rejoice to see that there is again a call for an edition of Milton’s Prose Works. There could not be a surer sign that there is still pure blood in the nation than a call for these. The print and paper are tolerably good; if not worthy of the matter, yet they are, we suppose, as good as can be afforded and make the book cheap enough for general circulation. We wish there had been three volumes, instead of two clumsy ones, with that detestably narrow inner margin of which we have heretofore complained. But we trust the work is in such a shape that it will lie on the table of all poor students who are ever to be

1. “Milton! thou should’st be living at this hour,” ll. 7–14, by William Wordsworth.

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scholars, and be the good angel, the Ithuriel warner of many a youth at the parting of the ways.2 Who chooses that way which the feet of Milton never forsook, will find in him a never failing authority for the indissoluble union between permanent strength and purity. May many, born and bred amid the corruptions of a false world till the heart is on the verge of a desolate scepticism and the good genius preparing to fly, be led to recall him and make him at home forever by such passages as we have read this beautiful, bright September morning, in the ‘Apology for Smectymnuus.’n We chanced happily upon them, as we were pondering some sad narrations of daily life, and others who need the same consolation, will no doubt detect them in a short intercourse with the volumes. Mr. Griswold thus closes his “Biographical Introduction:”— “On Sunday, the eighth day of November, 1674, one month before completing his sixty-sixth year John Milton died. He was the greatest of all human beings: the noblest and the ennobler of mankind. He has steadily grown in the world’s reverence, and his fame will still increase with the lapse of ages.”

The absolute of this superlative pleases us, even if we do believe that there are four or five names on the scroll of history which may be placed beside that of Milton. We love hero-worship, where the hero is, indeed, worthy the honors of a demi-god. And, if Milton be not absolutely the greatest of human beings, it is hard to name one who combines so many features of God’s own image, ideal grandeur, a life of spotless virtue, heroic endeavor and constancy, with such richness of gifts. We cannot speak worthily of the books before us. They have been, as they will be, our friends and teachers, but to express with any justice what they are to us, or our idea of what they are to the world at large—to make any estimate of the vast fund of pure gold they contain and allow for the residuum of local and partial judgment and human frailty—to examine the bearings of various essays on the past and present with even that degree of thought and justice of which we are capable, would be a work of months. It would be to us a careful, a solemn, a sacred task, and not in anywise to be undertaken in the columns of a daily paper. Beside, who can think of Milton without the feeling which he himself expresses?— 2. Ithuriel, an angel sent to find Satan in Milton’s Paradise Lost; it was thought that the slightest touch of his spear exposed deceit. Sweetymnuus.’ [ Smectymnuus.’

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“He who would not be frustrate of his hope to write well hereafter in laudable things, ought himself to be a true poem; that is, a composition and pattern of the best and honorablest things; not presuming to sing high praises of heroic men, or famous cities, unless he have in himself the experience and the practice of all that which is praiseworthy.”

We shall, then, content ourselves with stating three reasons which at this moment occur to us why these Essays of Milton deserve to be sought and studied beyond any other volumes of English prose: 1st. He draws us to a central point whither converge the rays of sacred and profane, ancient and modern Literature. Those who sit at his feet obtain every hour glimpses in all directions. The constant perception of principles, richness in illustrations and fullness of knowledge, make him the greatest Master we have in the way of giving clues and impulses. His plan tempts even very timid students to hope they may thread the mighty maze of the Past. This fullness of knowledge only a genius masculine and divine like his could animate. He says, in a letter to Diodaté, written as late as his thirtieth year, “It is well known, and you well know, that I am naturally slow in writing and adverse to write.” Indeed his passion for acquisition preceded long and far outwent, in the first part of his prime, the need of creation or expression, and, probably, no era less grand and fervent than his own could have made him still more the genius than the scholar. But he was fortunate in an epoch fitted to develop him to his full stature—an epoch rich alike in thought, action and passion, in great results and still greater beginnings. There was fire enough to bring the immense materials he had collected into a state of fusion. Still his original bias infects the pupil, and this Master makes us thirst for Learning no less than for Life. 2d. He affords the highest exercise at once to the poetic and reflective faculties. Before us move sublime presences, the types of whole regions of creation: God, man, and elementary spirits in multitudinous glory are present to our consciousness.—But meanwhile every detail is grasped and examined, and strong daily interests mark out for us a wide and plain path on the earth—a wide and plain path, but one in which it requires the most varied and strenuous application of our energies to follow the rapid and vigorous course of our guide. No one can read the Essays without feeling that the glow which follows is no mere nervous exaltation, no result of electricity from another mind under which he could remain passive, but a thorough and wholesome animation of his own powers. We seek to know, to act, and to be what is possible to Man.

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3d. Mr. Griswold justly and wisely observes:—“Milton is more emphatically American than any author who has lived in the United States.” He is so because in him is expressed so much of the primitive vitality of that thought from which America is born, though at present disposed to forswear her lineage in so many ways. He is the purity of Puritanism. He understood the nature of liberty, of justice—what is required for the unimpeded action of conscience—what constitutes true marriage, and the scope of a manly education. He is one of the Fathers of this Age, of that new Idea which agitates the sleep of Europe, and of which America, if awake to the design of Heaven and her own duty, would become the principal exponent. But the Father is still far beyond the understanding of his child. His ideas of marriage, as expressed in the treatises on Divorce, are high and pure. He aims at a marriage of souls. If he incline too much to the prerogative of his own sex, it was from that mannishness, almost the same with boorishness, that is evident in men of the greatest and richest natures, who have never known the refining influence of happy, mutual love, as the best women evince narrowness and poverty under the same privation. In every line we see how much Milton required the benefit of “the thousand decencies that daily flow” from such a relation, and how greatly he would have been the gainer by it, both as man and as genius. In his mind lay originally the fairest ideal of woman; to see it realized would have “finished his education.” His commonwealth could only have grown from the perfecting of individual men. The private means to such an end he rather hints than states in the short essay to Education. They are such as we are gradually learning to prize. Healthful diet, varied bodily exercises, to which we no longer need give the martial aim he proposed, fit the mind for studies which are by him arranged in a large, plastic and natural method. Among the prophetic features of his system we may mention the place given to Agriculture and Music: “The next step would be to the authors on agriculture—Cato, Varro and Columella—for the matter is most easy; and if the language be difficult, so much the better; it is not a difficulty above their years. And here will be an occasion of inciting, and enabling them hereafter to improve the tillage of their country, to recover their bad soil, and to remedy the waste that is made of good; for this was one of Hercules’ praises.”

How wise, too, his directions as to interspersing the study with travel and personal observation of important objects. We must have methods of our

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own, but the hints we might borrow from this short essay of Milton’s are endless. Then of music— “The interim may, both with profit and delight, be taken up in recreating and composing their travailed spirits with the solemn and divine harmonies of music heard or learned; either whilst the skillful organist plies his grave and fancied descant in lofty fugues, or the whole symphony with artful and unimaginable touches adorn and grace the well-studied chords of some choice composer; sometimes the lute or soft organ-stop waiting on elegant voices, either to religious, martial, or civil ditties; which, if wise men and prophets be not extremely out, have a great power over disposition and manners to smoothe and make them gentle from rustic harshness and distempered passions.”

He does not mention here the higher offices of music, but that they had been fulfilled to him is evident in the whole texture of his mind and his page. The organ was his instrument, and there is not a strain of its peculiar music that may not somewhere be traced in his verse or prose. Here, too, he was prophetical of our age of which Music is the great and growing art, making deeper revelations than any other mode of expression now adopted by the soul. After these scanty remarks upon the glories of this sun-like mind, let us look for a moment on the clouds which hung about its earthly course. Let us take some hints from his letters:— “It is often a subject of sorrowful reflection to me, that those with whom I have been either fortuitously or legally associated by contiguity of place or some tie of little moment, are continually at hand to infest my home, to stun me with their noise and waste me with vexation, while those who are endeared to me by the closest sympathy of manners, of tastes and pursuits, are almost all withheld from my embrace either by death or an insuperable distance of place; and have for the most part been so rapidly hurried from my sight, that my prospects seem continually solitary, and my heart perpetually desolate.”

The last letter in the volume ends thus: “What you term policy, and which I wish that you had rather called patriotic piety, has, if I may so say, almost left me, who was charmed with so sweet a sound, without a country. * * * I will conclude after first begging you, if there

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be any errors in the diction or the punctuation, to impute it to the boy who wrote this, who is quite ignorant of Latin, and to whom I was, with no little vexation, obliged to dictate not the words, but, one by one, the letters of which they were composed.”

The account of the gradual increase of his blindness is interesting, physiologically as well as otherwise:— “It is now, I think, about ten years (1654) since I perceived my vision to grow weak and dull; and, at the same time, I was troubled with pain in my kidneys and bowels, accompanied with flatulency. In the morning, if I began to read, as was my custom, my eyes instantly ached intensely, but were refreshed after a little corporeal exercise. The candle which I looked at seemed as if it were encircled by a rainbow. Not long after the sight in the left part of the left eye (which I lost some years before the other) became quite obscured, and prevented me from discerning any object on that side. The sight in my other eye has now been gradually and sensibly vanishing away for about three years; some months before it had entirely perished, though I stood motionless, every thing which I looked at seemed in motion to and fro. A stiff cloudy vapor seemed to have settled on my forehead and temples, which usually occasions a sort of somnolent pressure upon my eyes, and particularly from dinner till the evening. So that I often recollect what is said of the poet Phineas in the Argonautics: “ ‘A stupor deep his cloudy temples bound, And when he waked he seemed as whirling round, Or in a feeble trance he speechless lay.’ ” “I ought not to omit that, while I had any sight left, as soon as I lay down on my bed and turned on either side, a flood of light used to gush from my closed eyelids. Then, as my sight became daily more impaired, the colors became more faint, and were emitted with a certain crackling sound; but, at present, every species of illumination being, as it were, extinguished, there is diffused around me nothing but darkness, or darkness mingled and streaked with an ashy brown. Yet the darkness in which I am perpetually immersed seems always, both by night and day, to approach nearer to a white than black; and when the eye is rolling in its socket, it admits a little particle of light as through a chink. And though your physician many kindle a small ray of hope, yet I make up my mind to the malady as quite incurable; and I often reflect, that as the wise man admonishes, days of darkness are destined to each of us.

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The darkness which I experience, less oppressive than that of the tomb, is, owing to the singular goodness of the Deity, passed amid the pursuits of literature and the cheering salutations of friendship. But if, as it is written, man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth from the mouth of God, why may not any one acquiescen in the privation of his sight, when God has so amply furnished his mind and his conscience with eyes? While He so tenderly provides for me, while He so graciously leads me by the hand and conducts me on the way, I will, since it is His pleasure, rather rejoice than repine at being blind. And my dear Philura, whatever may be the event, I wish you adieu with no less courage and composure than if I had the eyes of a lynx.”

Though the organist was wrapped in utter darkness, ‘only mingled and streaked with an ashy brown,’ still the organ pealed forth its perpetual, sublime Te Deum! Shall we, sitting in the open sun-light, dare tune our humble pipes to any other strain? Thou may’st thank Him, Milton, for, but for this misfortune, thou hadst been a benefactor to the great and strong only, but now to the multitude and suffering also thy voice comes, bidding them ‘bate no jot of heart or hope,’ with archangelic power and melody.  Review of The Prose Works of John Milton. With a Biographical Introduction by Rufus Wilmot Griswold (Philadelphia: Herman Hooker, 1845). New-York Daily Tribune, 7 October 1845, p. 1; reprinted, New-York Weekly Tribune, 11 October 1845, p. 1; as “The Prose Works of Milton,” Papers on Literature and Art, 1:35–42. Title supplied. Rufus Wilmot Griswold (1815–57), editor and anthologist. acquiese [ acquiesce

Italy


These three publications have come to hand during the last month—a cheering gleam upon the winter of our discontent, as we saw the flood of bad translations of worse books which swelled upon the country. We love our country well. The many false deeds and low thoughts—the devotion to interest—the forgetfulness of principle—the indifference to high and noble sentiment which have, in so many ways, darkened her history for some years back, have not made us despair of her yet fulfilling the great destiny whose promise rose, like a star, only some half a century ago upon the hopes of the world. Should that star be forsaken by its angel, and those hopes set finally in clouds of shame, the church which we had built out of the ruins of the ancient time must fall to the ground. This church seemed a model of divine art. It contained a labyrinth which, when threaded by aid of the clue of Faith, presented, re-viewed from its centre, the most admirable harmony and depth of meaning in its design, and comprised in its decorations all the symbols of permanent interest of which the mind of man has made use for the benefit of man. Such was to be the church, a church not made with hands, catholic, universal, all whose stones should be living stones, its officials the cherubim of Love and Knowledge, its worship wiser and purer action than has before been known to men. To such a church men do indeed constitute the State, and men indeed we hoped from the American church and State, men so truly human that they could not live while those made in their own likeness were bound down to the condition of brutes. Should hopes be baffled, should such a church fall in the building, such a state find no realization except to the eye of the poet, God would still be in the world and surely guide each bird that can be patient on the wing to its home at last. But expectations so noble which find so broad a basis in the past, which link it so harmoniously with the future, cannot lightly be abandoned. The

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same Power leads by a pillar of cloud as by a pillar of fire—the Power that deemed even Moses worthy only of a distant view of the Promised Land. And to those who cherish such expectations rational education, considered in various ways and bearings, must be the one great topic of interest, an enterprise in which the humblest service is precious and honorable to any who can inspire its soul. Our thoughts anticipate with eager foresight the race that may grow up from this amalgamation of all races of the world which our situation induces. It was the pride and greatness of ancient nations to keep their blood unmixed, but it must be ours to be willing to mingle, to accept in a generous spirit what each clime and race has to offer us. It is indeed the case that much diseased substance is offered to form this new body, and if there be not in ourselves a nucleus, a heart of force and purity to assimilate these strange and various materials into a very high form of organic life; they must needs induce one distorted, corrupt and degraded beyond the example of other times and places. There will be no medium about it. Our grand scene of action demands grandeur and purity of action; declining these one must suffer from so base failure in proportion to the success that should have been. It would be the worthiest occupation of mind to ascertain the conditions propitious for this meeting of the Nations in their new home, and to provide preventions for obvious dangers that attend it. It would be occupation for which the broadest and deepest knowledge of human nature in its mental, moral and bodily relations; the noblest freedom from prejudice, with the finest discrimination as to differences and relations, directed and enlightened by a prophetic sense as to what Man is designed by God to become, would all be needed to fit the thinker. Yet some portion of these qualities, or of some of those qualities, if accompanied by earnestness and aspiration, may enable him to offer useful suggestions. The mass of ignorance and selfishness is such that no grain of leaven must be despised. And as the men of all countries come hither to find a home and become parts of a new life, so do the books of all countries gravitate towards the new centre. Copious infusions from all quarters mingle daily with the new thought which is to grow into American mind and develop American literature. As every ship brings us foreign teachers, a knowledge of living contemporary tongues must in the course of fifty years become the commonest attainment. There exists no doubt in the minds of those who can judge, that the German, French, Italian, Spanish and Portuguese tongues might by familiar

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instruction and an intelligent method, be taught with perfect ease during the years of childhood, so that the child would have as distinct a sense of their several natures, and nearly as much expertness in their use as in his own. The higher uses of such knowledge can, of course, be expected only in a more advanced state of the faculties, but it is a pity that the acquaintance with the medium of thought should be deferred to a period when the mind is sufficiently grown to bend its chief attention on the thoughts themselves. Much of the most precious part of short human lives is now wasted from an ignorance of what might easily be done for children, and without taking from them the time they need for common life, play, and bodily growth more than at present. Meanwhile English begins to vie with German and French literature in the number, though not in the goodness of the translations from other languages. The indefatigable Germans can translate and do other things too, so that geniuses often there apply themselves to the work as an amusement; even the all-employed Goethe has translated one of the books before us (Memoirs of Cellini).1—But in English, we know but ofn one, Coleridge’s Wallenstein, where the reader will feel the electric current undiminished by the medium through which it comes to him.2 And then the profligate abuse of the power of translation has been unparalleled, whether in the choice of books or the carelessness in disguising those that were good in a hideous mask. No falsehood can be worse than this of deforming the expression of a great man’s thoughts, of corrupting that form which he has watched and toiled and suffered to make beautiful and true. We know no falsehood that should call a more painful blush to the cheek of one engaged in it. We rejoice to see from Wiley & Putnam’s advertisement that attention has been drawn to this subject, and that they are anxious to offer none but good and well translated books for general reading.3 We have no narrowness in our view of the contents of such books. We are not afraid of new standards and new examples. Only give enough of them, variety enough, and from well-intentioned, generous minds. America can choose what she wants, if she has sufficient range of choice, and if there is any real reason, any deep root in the tastes and opinions she holds at present, she

1. Goethe first published his translation of Leben des Benvenuto Cellini in 1803. if [ of 2. The Death of Wallenstein, a play by Samuel Taylor Coleridge, was published in 1800. 3. An advertisement for Wiley and Putnam’s “Foreign Library,” which promised “accurate translations,” appeared in the 20 October 1845 New-York Daily Tribune, p. 1.

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will not lightly yield them. Only give her what is good of its kind. Her hope is not in ignorance, but in knowledge. We are, indeed, very fond of range, and that if there is check, there should be countercheck; and in this view we are delighted to see these great Italians domesticated here. We have had somewhat too much of the French and Germans of late. We value unchangeably our sparkling and rapid French friend; still more the searching, honest, and, in highest sense, visionary German genius. But there is not on earth, and, we dare to say it, will not be again genius like that of Italy, or that can compare with it, in its own way. Italy and Greece were alike in this; those sunny skies ripened their fruits perfectly. The oil and honey of Greece and the wine of Italy, not only suggest, but satisfy. There we find fulfillment, elsewhere great achievement only. Oh, acute, cautious, calculating Yankee, oh, graceful, witty, hot-blooded, flimsy Southron, and thou, man of the West, going ahead too fast to pick up a thought or leave a flower upon thy path, look at these men with their great fiery passions, but will and intellect still greater and stronger, perfectly sincere, from a contempt of falsehood, if they had acted wrong they said and felt that they had and that it wasn base and hateful in them, sagacious, as children are, not from calculation, but because the fine instincts of nature were unspoiled in them. I speak now of Alfieri and Cellini. Dante had all their instinctive greatness and deep-seated fire, with the reflective and creative faculties, beside, to an extent of which they never dreamed. He who reads these biographies may take them from several points of view, as pictures of manners, as sincere transcripts of the men and true times, they are not and could not be surpassed. That truth which Rousseau sought so painfully and vainly by self-brooding, subtle analysis, they attained without an effort. Why they felt they cared little, but what they felt they surely4n knew, and where a fly or worm has injured the peach, its passage is exactly marked, so that you are sure the rest is fair and sound. Both as physiological and psychical histories, they are full of instruction. In Alfieri, especially, the nervous disease generated in the frame by any uncongenial tension of the brain, the periodical crises in his health, the manner in which his excessesn of passion came upon him, afford infinite suggestion to one who has an eye for the cirwase [ was 4. Fuller states that in her original version of this essay, she wrote “surely”, rather than “scarcely”, which was printed in error, in the 18 November 1845 New-York Daily Tribune. scarcely [ surely see note four above accesses [ excesses

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cumstances which fashion the destiny of man. Let the physician compare the furies of Alfieri with the silent rages of Byron and give the mother and pedagogue the light in which they are now wholly wanting how to treat such noble plants in the early stages of growth.—We think the “hated cap” would not be put a second time on the head so easily diseased. The biography of Cellini, it is commonly said, is more interesting than any romance. It is a romance, with the character of the hero fully brought out.— Cellini lived in all the fullness of inward vigor, all the variety of outward adventure, and passed through all the signs of the Zodiac in his circling course, occasionally raising a little vapor from the art magic. He was really the Orlando Furioso turned Goldsmith, and Angelicas and all the Peers of France joined in the show.5 However, he never lived deeply; he had not time; the creative energy turned outward too easily, and took those forms that still enchant the mind of Europe. Alfieri was very different in this. He was like the root of some splendid Southern plant, engaged beneath a heap of rubbish. Above him was a glorious sky, fit to develop his form and excite his colors, but he was compelled to a long and terrible struggle to get up where he could be free to receive its influence. Institutions, language, family, modes of education—all were unfit for him; and perhaps no man was ever called to such efforts, after he had reached manly age, to unmake and re-make himself before he could become what his inward aspiration craved. All this deepened his nature, and it was deep. It is his great force of will and the compression of Nature within its iron grasp, where Nature was so powerful and impulsive, that constitutes the charm of his writings. It is the man Alfieri who moves, nay, overpowers us, and not his writings, which have no flow nor plastic beauty. But we feel the vital dynamics, and imagine it all. By us Americans, if really such we ever are to be, Alfieri should be held sacred as a godfather and holy light. He was a harbinger of what most gives this time its character and value. He was the friend of liberty, the friend of man, in the sense that Burns was—of the native nobleness of man. Soiled and degraded men he hated. He was, indeed, a man of pitiless hatred as of boundless love, and he had bitter prejudices too, but they were from antipathies too strongly intertwined with his sympathies for any hand less powerful than that of Death to rend them away. But space does not permit to do any justice to such a life as Alfieri’s. Let 5. Ludovico Ariosto (1474–1533), Italian poet whose metrical romance Orlando Furioso was first translated into English in 1591.

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others read it not from their habitual but an eternal point of view, and they cannot mistake its purport. Some will be most touched by the storms of his youth, others by the exploits and conquests of his later years, but all will find him, in the words of his friend Casella, “sculptured just as he was, lofty, strange and extreme, not only in his natural characteristics, but in every work that did not seem to him unworthy of his generous affections. And where he went too far, it is easy to perceive his excesses always flowed from some praiseworthy sentiment.” Among a crowd of remarks suggested to the mind by re-perusal of this book, to us a friend of many years standing, we hastily note the following: Alfieri knew how to be a friend, and had friends such as his masculine and uncompromising temper fitted him to endure and keep. He had even two or three of these noble friends. He was a perfect lover in delicacy of sentiment, in person, in devotion, in a desire for constancy, in a high ideal, growing always higher, and he was, at last, happy in love. Many geniuses have spoken worthily of women in their works, but he speaks of woman as she wishes to be spoken of and declares that he met the desire of his soul realized in life. This, almost alone, is an instance where a great nature was permanently satisfied, and the claims of man and woman equally met, where one of the parties had the impatient fire of genius. His testimony on this subject is of so rare a sort we must copy it: “My fourth and last passion, fortunately for me, showed itself by symptoms entirely different from the three first. In the former my intellect had little of the fires of passion, but now my heart and my genius were both equally kindled, and if my passion was less impetuous, it became more profound and lasting. Such was the flame, which, by degrees absorbed every affection and thought of my being, and it will never fade away except with my life. Two months satisfied me that I had now found the true woman, for, instead of encountering in her, as in all common women, an obstacle to literary glory, a hindrance to useful occupations, and a damper to thought, she proved a high stimulus, a pure solace, and an alluring example to every beautiful work. Prizing a treasure so rare, I gave myself away to her irrevocably. And I certainly erred not. More than twelve years have passed, and while I am writing this chitchat, having reached that calm season when passion loses its blandishments, I cherish her dearer than ever, and I love her just in proportion as flow by her in the lapse of time these esteemed toll-gatherers of departing beauty. In her my soul is exalted, softened, and made better day by day, and I will dare to say and believe she has found in me support and consolation.”

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We have spoken of the peculiarities in Alfieri’s physical condition. These naturally led him to seek solace in violent exercise, and as in the case of Beckford and Byron, horses were his best friends in the hour of danger. This sort of man is the modern Achilles, the “tamer of horses.”6 In what degree the health of Alfieri was improved and his sympathies awakened by the society and care of these noble animals is very evident. Almost all persons, perhaps all that are in a natural state, need to stand in patriarchal relations with the animals most correspondent with their character. We have the highest respect for this instinct and belief in the good it brings; if understood it would be cherished, not ridiculed. But these subjects are boundless. We must postpone what we had to say of Dante to the next occasion.  Review of The Autobiography of Vittorio Alfieri, the Tragic Poet, trans. C. E. Lester (New York: Paine and Burgess, 1845); Memoirs of Benvenuto Cellini, trans. Thomas Roscoe, 2 vols. (New York: Wiley and Putnam, 1845); and The Vision; or, Hell, Purgatory, and Paradise of Dante Alghieri, trans. Henry F. Cary, illus. John Flaxman (New York: D. Appleton, 1845). New-York Daily Tribune, 13 November 1845, p. 1; reprinted, New-York Weekly Tribune, 15 November 1845, p. 1. Benvenuto Cellini (1500–71), Italian sculptor and worker in gold and silver; Henry Francis Cary (1772–1844), English translator of all Dante’s Divine Comedy; John Flaxman (1755–1826), English artist. 6. Possibly a reference to the fact that Achilles, the chief Greek hero of the Trojan War, was educated by the half-horse, half-man centaur Chiron.

The Celestial Empire


During a late visit to Boston, I visited with great pleasure the Chinese Museum which has been opened there, and which will be seen to still greater advantage in New-York next Summer, because there will be more room to display to advantage its rich contents. There was great pleasure in surveying there, if merely on account of their splendor and elegance, which, though fantastic according to our tastes, presented an obvious standard of its own by which to prize it. The rich dresses of the imperial court, the magnificent jars, the largest worth three hundred dollars, and looking as if it was worth much more, the present-boxes and ivory work, the elegant interiors of the home and counting-room—all these gave pleasure by their perfection, each in its kind. But the chief impression was of that unity of existence, so opposite to the European, and, for a change, so pleasant from its repose and gilded lightness. Their imperial majesties do really seem so “perfectly serene” that we fancy we might become so, under their sway, if not “thoroughly virtuous,” as they profess to be. Entirely a new mood would be ours, as we should sup in one of those pleasure boats by the light of those fanciful lanterns, or listen to the tinkling of those Pagoda bells. The highest conventional refinement of a certain kind is apparent in all that belongs to the Chinese. The inviolability of custom has not made their life heavy but shaped it to the utmost adroitness for their own purposes. We are now somewhat familiar with their literature, and we see pervading it a poetry subtle and aromatic, like the odors of their appropriate beverage. Like that, too, it is all domestic—never wild. The social genius, fluttering on the wings of compliment, pervades every thing Chinese. Society has molded them body and soul, the youngest children are more social and Chinese than human, and we doubt not the infant, with its first cry, shows its capacity for self-command and obeisance to superiors. Their great man, Confucius, expresses this social genius in its most perfect 259

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state and highest form.1 His golden wisdom is the quintessence of social justice. He never forgets conditions and limits; he is admirably wise, pure and religious, but never towers above humanity—never soars into solitude. There is no token of the forest or cave in Confucius. Few men could understand him because his nature was so thoroughly balanced and his rectitude so pure; not because his thoughts were too deep or high for them. In him should be sought the best genius of the Chinese, with that perfect practical good sense whose uses are universal. At one time I used to change from reading Confucius to one of the great religious books of another Eastern nation, and it was always like leaving the street and the palace for the blossoming forest of the East, where in earlier times we are told the angels walked with men and talked, not of earth, but of Heaven. As we looked at the forms moving about in the Museum, we could not wonder that the Chinese consider us, who call ourselves the civilized world, barbarians, so deficient were those forms in the sort of refinement that the Chinese prize above all. And our people deserve it for their senselessness in viewing them as barbarians, instead of seeing how perfectly they represent their own idea. They are inferior to us in important developments, but on the whole, approach far nearer their own standard than we do to ours. And it is wonderful that an enlightened European can fail to prize the sort of beauty they do develop. Sets of engravings we have seen representing the culture of the tea plant have brought to us images of an entirely original idyllic loveliness. One long resident in the country has observed that nothing can be more enchanting than the smile of love on the regular but otherwise expressionless face of a Chinese woman. It has the simplicity and abandonment of infantine, with the fullness of mature feeling. It never varies, but it does not tire. The same sweetness and elegance, stereotyped now, but having originally a deep root in their life as a race, may be seen in their poetry and music.—The last we heard, both from the voice and several instruments, at this Museum for the first time, and were at first tempted to laugh, when something deeper forbade. Like their2n poetry, the music is of the narrowest monotony, a kind of

1. Confucius (550?–478 b.c.), Chinese philosopher. 2. Fuller states that in her original version of this essay, she wrote “Like their poetry,” rather than “Like true poetry,” which was printed in error, in the 18 November 1845 New-York Daily Tribune. true [ their see note 2 above

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rosary, a repetition of phrases, and, in its enthusiasm and conventional excitement, like nothing else in the heavens or on the earth. Yet both the poetry and music have in them an expression of birds, roses and moonlight; indeed they suggest that state “where music and moonlight and feeling are one,” though the soul seems to twitter, rather than sing of it. It is wonderful with how little practical insight travelers in China look on what they see. They seem to be struck by points of repulsion at once, and neither see nor tell us what could give us any real clue to their facts. I do not speak now of the recent lecturers in this city, for I have not heard them; but of the many, many books into which I have earlier looked with eager curiosity—in vain! I always found the same external facts, and the same prejudices which disabled the observer from piercing beneath them. I feel that I know something of the Chinese when I read Confucius, or look at the figures on their teacups, or drink a cup of genuine tea—rather an unusual felicity, it is said, in this ingenious city, which shares with the Chinese one trait at least. But the travelers rather take from than add to this knowledge, and a visit to this Museum would give more clear views than all the books I ever read yet. The juggling was well done, and so solemnly, with the same concentrated look as the music. I saw the juggler afterwards at Ole Bull’s concert, and he moved not a muscle while the nightingale was pouring forth its sweetest descant. Probably the avenues wanted for these strains to enter his heart, had been closed by Imperial Edict long ago. The resemblance borne by this juggler to our Indians is even greater than we have seen in any other case. His brotherhood does not, to us, seem surprising. Our Indians, too, are stereotyped, though in a different way; they are of a mold capable of retaining the impression through ages, and many of the traits of the two races, or two branches of a race, may be seen to be identical, though so widely modified by circumstances. They are all opposite to us, who have made ships and balloons, and magnetic telegraphs as symbolic expressions of our wants and the means of gratifying them. We must console ourselves with these and our organs and pianos for our want of perfect good breeding, serenity and “thorough virtue.”  New-York Daily Tribune, 13 November 1845, p. 2; reprinted, New-York Weekly Tribune, 22 November 1845, p. 6.

Italy


Translating Dante is indeed a labor of love. It is one in which even a moderate degree of success is impossible. No great poet can be well translated. The form of his thought is inseparable from his thought. The births of his genius are perfect beings; body and soul are in such perfect harmony, that you cannot at all alter one, without veiling the other. The variation in cadence and modulation, even where the words are exactly rendered, takes, not only from the form of the thought, but from the thought itself, its most delicate charm.— Translations come to us as a message to the lover from the lady of his love, through the lips of a confidant or menial—we are obliged to imagine what was most vital in the original utterance. These difficulties, always insuperable, are accumulated a hundred fold in the case of Dante, both by the extraordinary depth and subtlety of his thought and his no less extraordinary power of concentrating its expression, till every verse is like a blade of thoroughly tempered steel. You might as well attempt to translate a glance of fire from the human eye into any other language—even music cannot do that. We think, then, that the use of Cary’s translation or any other can never be to diffuse a knowledge of Dante. This is not in its nature diffusible; he is one of those to whom others must draw near; he cannot be brought to them. He has no superficial charm to cheat the reader into a belief that he knows him, without entrance into the same sphere. These translations can be of use only to the translators, as a means of deliberate study of the original, or to others who are studying the original and wish to compare their own version of doubtful passages with that of an older disciple, highly qualified, both by devotion and mental development, for the study. We must say a few words as to the pedantic folly with which this study has been prosecuted in this country, and, we believe, in England. Not only the tragedies of Alfieri and the Faust of Goethe but the Divine Comedy of

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Dante1—a work which it is not probable there are upon earth, at any one time, a hundred minds able to appreciate, are turned into school-books for little girls who have just left their hoops and dolls, and boys whose highest ambition it is to ride a horse that will run away, and brave the tutor in a college frolic. This is done from the idea, that in order to get acquainted with a foreign language, the student must read books that have attained the dignity of classics, and also which are ‘hard.’ Hard, indeed, it must be for the Muses to see their lyres thus turned into gridirons for preparation of a school-girl’s lunch; harder still for the younglings to be called to chew and digest thunderbolts in lieu of their natural bread and butter. Are there not “classics” enough which would not suffer by being put to such uses? In Greek, Homer is a book for a boy, must you give him Plato because it is harder? Is there no choice among the Latins? are all who wrote in the Latin tongue equally fit for the appreciation of sixteen Yankee years? In Italian have you not Tasso, Ariosto and other writers who have really a great deal that the immature mind can enjoy, without choking them with the stern politics of Alfieri, or piling upon a brain still soft, the mountainous meanings of Dante.2 Indeed, they are saved from suffering by the perfect ignorance of all meaning in which they leave these great authors, fancying, to their life-long misfortune, that they have read them. I have been reminded by the remarks of my young friends on these subjects, of the Irish peasant, who, having been educated on a book prepared for his use, called “Reading Made Easy,” blesses through life the kindness that taught him his “Radamadasy,” and of the child, who, hearing her father quote Horace, observed, “she thought Latin was even sillier than French.”3 No less pedantic is the style in which the grownup (in stature at least) undertakesn to become acquainted with Dante. They get the best Italian Dictionary, all the notes they can find, amounting in themselves to a library, for his countrymen have not been less external and benighted in their way of regarding him. Painfully they study through the book, seeking with anxious attention to know who Signor this is, and who was the cousin of Signora that, and whether any deep papal or anti-papal meaning was couched by Dante

1. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe published the two parts of Faust in 1808 and 1833. 2. Torquato Tasso (1544–95), Italian poet. 3. Horace (65–8 b.c.), Roman poet also known for his writings about poetry. undertake [ undertakes

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under the remark that such an one wore a great coat. A mind whose small chambers look yet smaller from being crowded with furniture from all parts of the world, bought by labor, not received from inheritance or won by love, asserts that he must understand Dante well, better than any other person probably, because he has studied him through in this way thirty or forty times. As well declare you have a better appreciation of Shakspeare than anyone else because you had identified the birth-place of Dame Quickly, or ascertained the church-yard where the ghost of the royal Dane hid from the sight of that far more celestial spirit, his son.4 Oh! pain-staking friends, shut your books, clear your minds from artificial nonsense, and feel that only by spirit can spirit be discerned. Dante, like each other great one, took the stuff that lay around him and wove it to a garment of light. It is not by raveling that you will best appreciate its tissue or design. It is not by studying out the petty strifes or external relations of his time that you can become acquainted with the thought of Dante. To him these things were only soil in which to plant himself—figures by which to dramatize and evolve his ideas. Would you learn him, go listen in the forest of human passions to all the terrible voices he heard with a tormented but never to be deafened ear; go down into the hells where each excess that mars the harmony of nature is punished by the sinner finding no food except from his own harvest; pass through the purgatories of speculation, of struggling hope, and faith, never quite quenched, but smoldering often and long beneath the ashes. Soar if thou canst, but if thou canst not, clear thine eye to see this great eagle soar into the higher region where forms arrange themselves for stellar dance and spheral melody, and thought, with constantly accelerated motion, raises itself in a spiral which can end only in the heart of the Supreme. He who finds in himself no fitness to study Dante in this way should regard himself as in the position of a candidate for the ancient Mysteries when rejected as unfit for initiation. He should seek in other ways to purify, expand, and strengthen his being, and, when he feels that he is nobler and stronger, return and try again whether he is “grown up to it,” as the Germans say. “The difficulty is in the thoughts,” and this cannot be obviated by the most minute acquaintance with the history of the times. Comparison of one edition with another is of use, as a guard against obstructions through mistake. Still

4. Mistress Quickly, a character in The Merry Wives of Windsor, both parts of King Henry IV, and King Henry V; the Dane is Hamlet.

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more useful will be the method recommended by Mr. Cary of comparing the Poet with himself; this belongs to the intellectual method, and is the way in which we study our intellectual friend. The versions of Cary and Lyell will be found of use to the student, if he wants to compare his ideas with those of accomplished fellow-students. The poems in the London book would aid much in a full appreciation of the Comedy; they ought to be read in the original, but copies are not easily to be met here, unless in the great libraries. The Vita Nuova is the noblest expression extant of the inward life of Love, the best preface and comment to every thing else that Dante did. ’T is pity that the designs of Flaxman are so poorly re-produced in this American book. It would have been far better to have had it a little dearer, and thus better done. The designs of Flaxman were a really noble comment upon Dante, and might help to interpret him; we are sorry that those who can see only a few of them should see them so imperfectly. But, in some, as in that upon the meeting with Farinata, the expression cannot be destroyed, while one line of the original remains. The “lost portrait” we do not like as preface to the Divine Comedy. To that belongs our accustomed object of reverence, the head of Dante, such as the Florentine women saw him, when they thought his hair and beard were still singed, his face dark and sublime, with what he had seen below. Prefixed to the other book is a head “from a cast taken after death at Ravenna, A.D. 1321.” It has the grandeur which death sometimes puts on; the fullness of past life is there, but made sacred in eternity. It is also the only front view of Dante we have seen. It is not unworthy to mark the point “When vigor failed the towering fantasy: But yet the will rolled onward, like a wheel In even motion by the love impelled That moves the sun in Heaven and all the stars.”

We ought to say in behalf of this publication that whosoever wants Cary’s version will rejoice, at last, to possess it in so fair and legible guise, as we do. Before leaving the Italians, we must mourn over the misprints of our homages to the great tragedian in Thursday’s paper.5 Our MS. being as illegi-

5. Fuller is referring to her article in the 13 November 1845 New-York Daily Tribune.

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ble as if we were a great genius, we never complain of these errata, except when we are made to reverse our meaning on some vital point. We did not say that Alfieri was a perfect man in person, nor sundry other things that are there; but we do mourn at seeming to say of our friends, “Why they felt they care little, but what they felt they scarcely knew,” when in fact we asserted, “what they felt they surely knew.” In the article on China we had made this assertion of the Chinese music: “Like their poetry, the music is of the narrowest monotony”; in place of which stands this assertion: “Like true poetry, the music is of the narrowest monotony.” But we trust the most careless reader would not think the merely human mind capable of so original a remark, and will put this blasphemy to account of that little demon, who has so much to answer for in the sufferings of poor writers before they can get their thoughts to the eyes of their fellow creatures in print, that there seems scarcely a chance of his being redeemed as long as there is one in existence to accuse him.  Review of The Vision; or, Hell, Purgatory, and Paradise of Dante Alighieri, trans. Henry F. Cary, illus. John Flaxman (New York: D. Appleton, 1845), and The Lyrical Poems of Dante Alighieri, trans. Charles Lyell (London: W. Smith, 1845). New-York Daily Tribune, 18 November 1845, p. 1; reprinted, New-York Weekly Tribune, 22 November 1845, p. 1. Charles Lyell (1767–1849), English translator of numerous works by Dante.

[Review of Caroline M. Kirkland, Western Clearings]


In this volume will be found all the excellences to which we are accustomed in this justly popular writer—a sweet and genial temper, able to sympathise with whatever is simple and healthful, balanced by a quick sense of folly, pretension, or morbid action in character; admirable good sense, ennobled by generous desires; a cultivated taste, and great comic power. When to these qualifications for observing men is added a familiar love of nature, with uncommon talents for description, it must be confessed that the combination of claims is rare. And Mrs. Kirkland has yet one more, that will not be less felt by the American reading public; and this is that, though she has received sufficient influence from the literature of the old world to refine and expand her powers, she belongs, both by her topics and the structure of her mind, to the new. She has represented a particular period in our social existence with so much success, that her works, though slight in their fabric, and familiar in their tone, are likely to have a permanent existence and enforce a permanent interest. She is only a sketcher, but with so clear an eye and vigorous a touch as to afford just views of the present and valuable suggestions for the future. As a specimen of the reflective portion of the book, take the following: Aristocracy.—The great ones of the earth might learn many a lesson from the little. What has a certain dignity on a comparatively large scale, is so simply laughable when it is seen in miniature, (and, unlike most other things, perhaps, its real features are better distinguished in the small,) that it must be wholesome to observe how what we love appears in those whom we do not admire. The monkey and the magpie are imitators; and when the one makes a thousand superfluous bows and grimaces, and the other hoards what can be of no possible use to him, we may, even in those, see a far off reflex of certain things prevalent among ourselves. Next in order come little children; and the boy will put a napkin about his neck for a cravat, and the girl supply her ideal of a veil, by pinning a pocket handkerchief to her bonnet, while we laugh at the self-deception, and fancy that we value only realities. But what affords us 267

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most amusement, is the awkward attempt of the rustic, to copy the airs and graces which have caught his fancy as he saw them exhibited in town; or, still more naturally, those which have been displayed on purpose to dazzle him, during the stay of some “mould of fashion” in the country. How exquisitely funny are his efforts and their failure! How the true hugs himself in full belief that the gulf between himself and the pseudo is impassable! Little dreams he that his own ill-directed longings after the distingué in air or in position seems to some more fortunate individual as far from being accomplished as those of the rustic to himself, while both, perhaps, owe more to the tailor and milliner than to any more dignified source. The country imitates the town, most sadly; and it is really melancholy, to one who loves his kind, to see how unfortunately people will throw away real comforts and advantages in the vain chase of what does not belong to solitude and freedom. The restraints necessary to city life are there compensated by many advantages resulting from close contact with others; while in the country those restraints are simply odious, curtailing the real advantages of the position, yet entirely incapable of substituting those which belong to the city. Real refinement is as possible in the one case as in the other. Would it were more heartily sought in both! In the palmyn days of alchemy, when the nature and powers of occult and intangible agents were deemed worthy the study of princes, the art of sealing hermetically was an essential one; since many a precious elixir would necessarily become unmanageable and useless if allowed to wander in the common air. This art seems now to be among the lost, in spite of the anxious efforts of sunning projectors; and at the present time a subtle essence, more volatile than the elixir of life—more valuable than the philosopher’s stone,— an invisible and imponderable but most real agent, long bottled up for the enjoyment of a privileged few, has burst its bounds and become part of our daily atmosphere. Some mighty sages still contrive to retain within their own keeping important portions of this treasure; but there are regions of the earth where it is open to all, and, in the opinion of the exclusive, sadly desecrated by having become an object of pursuit to the vulgar. Where it is still under a degree of control, the seal of Hermes is variously represented. In Russia, the supreme will of the Autocrat regulates the distribution of the “airy good:” in other parts of the Continent, ancient prescription still had the power to keep it within its due reservoirs. In France, its uses and advantages have been publically denied and repudiated; yet it is said that practically every body stands open-mouthed where it is known to be floating in the air, hoping to

paimy [ palmy

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inhale as much as possible without the odium of seeming to gasp at what has been decided to be worthless. In England we are told that the precious fluid is still kept with great solicitude in a dingy receptacle called Almack’s, watched ever by certain priestesses, who are self-consecrated to an attendance more onerous than that required for maintaining the Vestal fire, and who yet receive neither respect nor gratitude for their pains. Indeed, the fine spirit has become so much diffused in England that it reminds us of the riddle of Mother Goose— A house-full, a hole-full, But can’t catch a bowl-full. If such efforts in England amuse us, what shall we say of the agonized pursuit every where observable in our own country? We have denounced the fascinating gas as poisonous—we have staked our very existence upon excluding it from the land, yet it is the breath of our nostrils—the soul of our being—the one thing needful—for which we are willing to expend mind, body and estate. We exclaim against its operations in other lands, but in the purchaser descrying to others the treasure he would appropriate it to himself. We take much credit to ourselves for having renounced what all the rest of the world were pursuing, but our practice is like that of the toper who had forsworn drink, yet afterward perceiving the contents of a brother sinner’s bottle to be spilt, could not further falling on his knees to drink the liquor from the frozen hoof-prints in the road; or that other votary indulgence, who, having once had the courage to pass a tavern, afterward turned back that he might “treat resolution.” We have satisfied our consciences by theory; we feel no compunction in making our practice just like that of the rest of the world. This is true of the country generally; but it is nowhere so strikingly evident as in these remote regions which the noise of the great world reaches but at the rebound—as it were in faint echoes; and these very echoes changed from their original, as Paddy asserts of those of the Lake of Killarney. It would seem that our elixir vitæ—a strange anomaly—becomes stronger by dilution. Its power of fascination, at least, increases as it recedes from the fountain head. The Russian noble may refuse to let his daughter smile upon a suitor whose breast is not covered with orders; the German dignitary may insist on sixteen quarterings; the well-born Englishman may sigh to be admitted into a coterie not half as respectable or as elegant as the one to which he belongs—all this is consistent enough; but we must laugh when we see the managers of a clay ball admit the daughters of wholesale merchants who sell at retail; and still more when we come to the “new country” and observe that Mrs. Penniman, who takes in sewing, utterly refuses to associate withn her neighbor, Mrs. Clapp, because she goes out

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sewing by the day; and that our friend Mr. Diggins, being raised a step in the world by the last situation, signs all his letters of friendship, “D. Diggins, Sheriff.”

This is a specimen of the fun of a Western introduction. How happy it would make some of us who are not through a native love for gossip, forearmed with such particulars as to those to whom we are likely to be presented, if a similar full announcement was customary on “the sea-board.” It would save such a world of questioning and beating about the bush. “Miss Wiggins, let me make you acquainted with an uncle of his’n, just come down from Ionia county, the town of Freemantle, village of Breadalbane— come away up here to mill, (they ha’n’t no mills yet, up there). Uncle, this is Miss Wiggins, John Wiggins’s wife, up yonder on the hill, t’other side o’ the mash—you can see the house from here. Shes come down to meetin.’ ”

With regard to this same designation of His’n, we have seen it remarked by a celebrated French writer as a beautiful trait of the women of Brittany that, in speaking of their husbands, they always say He, or Him, only, thinking it unnecessary to name him, as if the other party must know there could be no other man in the world to them. Just so affectionately says the German woman, “My Man,” in speaking of her husband; and he, no less, “My Woman,” in speaking of her. The country women of New-England, as well as the Western States, share this trait of patriarchal tenderness with those of Brittany. What is to be inferred from adding the word Old to My Woman, and My Man, we do not know; one would not think “My Old Woman” a phrase of endearment, unless, indeed, it means that the parties are willing to grow old together. The essay on “Idle People” is one of the most graceful in the book. The mode of making religious marriages spoken of in “Chances and Changes,” was new to us.  Review of Caroline M. Kirkland, Western Clearings (New York: Wiley and Putnam, 1845). New-York Daily Tribune, 21 November 1845, p. 1; reprinted, New-York Weekly Tribune, 29 November 1845, p. 6. Title supplied. Caroline Matilda Stansbury Kirkland (1801–64), editor and travel writer. with with [ with

[Review of Edgar Allan Poe, The Raven and Other Poems]


Mr. Poe throws down the gauntlet in his preface, by what he says of “the paltry compensations or more paltry commendations of mankind.” Some champion might be expected to start up from the “somewhat sizeable” class embraced, or more properly speaking, boxed on the ear, by this defiance, who might try whether the sting of Criticism was as indifferent to this knight of the pen as he professes its honey to be. Were there such a champion, gifted with acumen to dissect, and a swift glancing wit to enliven the operation, he could find no more legitimate subject, no fairer game than Mr. Poe, who has wielded the weapons of criticism, without relenting, whether with the dagger he rent and tore the garment in which some favored Joseph had pranked himself,1 secure of honor in the sight of all men, or whether with uplifted tomahawk he rushed upon the newborn children of some hapless genius, who had fancied and persuaded his friends to fancy that they were beautiful and worthy a long and honored life.2 A large band of these offended dignitaries and aggrieved parents must be on the watch for a volume of “Poems by Edgar A. Poe,” ready to cut, rend and slash in turn, and hoping to see his own Raven left alone to prey upon the slaughter of which it is the herald. Such joust and tournament we look to see, and, indeed, have some stake in the matter so far as we have friends whose wrongs cry aloud for the avenger. Natheless we could not take part in the melée, except to join the crowd of lookers-on in the cry—Heaven speed the right!

1. In the Bible, Joseph’s coat of many colors set him off from his brothers and made them turn against him. 2. Fuller may have had in mind Poe’s review of the Poems of her brother-in-law, William Ellery Channing the Younger (1817–1901), which began by complaining, “Were we to quote specimens under the general head of ‘utter and irredeemable nonsense,’ we should quote nine tenths of the book.” Indeed, wrote Poe, the main mistake of Channing’s poems was “that of their having been printed at all” (Graham’s Magazine, 23 [August 1843]: 113–17).

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Early we read that fable of Apollo who rewarded the critic, who had painfully winnowed the wheat, with the chaff for his pains.3 We joined the gentle Affirmative School, and have confidence that if we indulge ourselves chiefly with the appreciation of the good qualities, Time will take care of the faults.—For Time holds a strainer like that used in the diamond mines;—have but patience and the water and gravel will all pass through and only the precious stones be left. Yet we are not blind to the uses of severe criticism, and of just censure, especiallyn in a time and place so degraded by venal and indiscriminate praise as the present. That unholy alliance, that shameless sham, whose motto is “Caw me And I’ll caw thee.”4

That system of mutual adulation and organized puff which was carried to such perfection in the time and may be seen drawn to the life in the correspondence of Miss Hannah More, is fully represented in our day and generation.5 We see that it meets a counter-agency, from the league of Truthtellers, few, but each of them mighty as Fingal or any other hero of the sort.6 Let such tell the whole truth, as well as nothing but the truth, but let their sternness be in the spirit of Love. Let them seek to understand the purpose and scope of an author, his capacity as well as his fulfilments, and how his faults are made to grow by the same sunshine that acts upon his virtues, for this is the case with talents no less than with character. The rich field requires frequent and careful weeding; frequent, lest the weeds exhaust the soil; careful, lest the flowers and grain be pulled up along with the weeds. Well! but to return to Mr. Poe; we are not unwilling that cavil should do her worst on his book, because both by act and word he has challenged it, but as this is no office for us, we shall merely indicate, in our usual slight way, what, naturally and unsought, has struck ourselves in the reading of these verses. 3. King Midas once judged Pan to be a better flute player than Apollo, who changed the king’s ears to those of an ass, as an indication of the king’s stupidity. expecially [ especially 4. In a book review in the May 1835 Southern Literary Messenger, Poe himself wrote: “ ‘Ca me; Ca thee,’ is the order of the day” (1:521). 5. Many of the letters between Hannah More (1745–1833), English philanthropist and prose writer, and her correspondents show the existence of an uncritical mutual admiration society. 6. Fingal, hero of The Poems of Ossian (1762, 1763), a spurious Gaelic myth created by James Macpherson (1736–96).

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It has often been our case to share the mistake of Gil Blas, with regard to the Archbishop.7 We have taken people at their word, and while rejoicing that women could bear neglect without feeling mean pique, and that authors, rising above self-love, could show candor about their works and magnanimously meet both justice and injustice, we have been rudely awakened from our dream, and found that Chanticleer, who crowed so bravely, showed himself at last but a dunghill fowl. Yet Heaven grant we never become too worldlywise thus to trust a generous word, and we surely are not so yet, for we believe Mr. Poe to be sincere when he says: “In defence of my own taste, it is incumbent upon me to say that I think nothing in this volume of much value to the public or very creditable to myself. Events not to be controlled have prevented me from making, at any time, any serious effort in what, under happier circumstances, would have been the field of my choice.”

We believe Mr. Poe to be sincere in this declaration; if he is, we respect him; if otherwise, we do not. Such things should never be said unless in hearty earnest. If in earnest, they are honorable pledges; if not, a pitiful fence and foil of vanity. Earnest or not, the words are thus far true: the productions in this volume indicate a power to do something far better. With the exception of The Raven, which seems intended chiefly to show the writer’s artistic skill, and is in its way a rare and finished specimen, they are all fragments—fyttes upon the lyre, almost all of which leave us something to desire or demand. This is not the case, however, with these lines: to one in paradise. Thou wast all that to me, love, For which my soul did pine— A green isle in the sea, love, A fountain and a shrine, All wreathed with fairy fruits and flowers, And all the flowers were mine.

7. In the novel Gil Blas of Santillane (1715–35) by Alain René Le Sage (1668–1747), French novelist and dramatist, the hero is discharged by his employer, the archbishop, for truthfully pointing out the lack of quality in the archbishop’s sermons.

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Ah, dream too bright to last! Ah, starry Hope! that didst arise But to be overcast! A voice from out the Future cries, “On! on!”—but o’er the Past (Dim gulf!) my spirit hovering lies Mute, motionless, aghast! For, alas! alas! with me The light of Life is o’er! No more—no more—no more— (Such language holds the solemn sea To the sands upon the shore) Shall bloom the thunder-blasted tree, Or the stricken eagle soar! And all my days are trances, And all my nightly dreams And where thy dark eye glances, And where thy footstep gleams— In what ethereal dances, By what eternal streams.

The poems breathe a passionate sadness, relieved sometimes by touches very lovely and tender: “Amid the earnest woes That crowd around my earthly path (Drear path, alas! where grows Not even one lonely rose.)” * * * ****** “For her, the fair and debonair, that now so lowly lies, The life upon her yellow hair, but not within her eyes— The life still there, upon her hair—the death upon her eyes.”8

This kind of beauty is especially conspicuous, then rising into dignity, in the poem called “The Haunted Palace.” The imagination of this writer rarely expresses itself in pronounced forms,

8. Poe, “To F – ,” ll. 1–4, and “Lenore,” ll. 17–19.

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but rather in a sweep of images, thronging and distant like a procession of moonlight clouds on the horizon, but like them characteristic and harmoniousn one with another, according to their office. The descriptive power is greatest when it takes a shape not unlike an incantation, as in the first part of “The Sleeper,” where “I stand beneath the mystic moon, An opiate vapor, dewy, dim, Exhales from out a golden rim, And, softly dripping, drop by drop, Upon the quiet mountain top, Steals drowsily and musically Into the Universal valley.” Why universal?—“resolve me that, Master Moth.”9 And farther on, “The lily lolls upon the wave.”10 This word lolls, often made use of in these Poems, presents a vulgar image to our thought; we know not how it is to that of others. The lines which follow about the open window are highly poetical.11 So is the “Bridal Ballad” in its power of suggesting a whole tribe and train of thoughts and pictures by few and simple touches. The Poems written in youth, written, indeed, we understand, in childhood, before the author was ten years old, are a great psychological curiosity. Is it the delirium of a prematurely excited brain that causes such a rapture of words? What is to be gathered from seeing the future so fully anticipated in the germ? The passions are not unfrequently felt in their full shock, if not in their intensity, at eight or nine years old, but here they are reflected upon, “Sweet was their death—with them to die was rife With the last ecstacy of satiate life.”12

The scenes from Politian are done with clear, sharp strokes; the power is rather metaphysical than dramatic. We must repeat what we have heretofore haamonious [ harmonious 9. See Love’s Labours Lost, act 1, scene 2, where Moth says “What shall some see?” and Costard replies “Nay, nothing, Master Moth, but what they look upon.” 10. Poe, “The Sleeper,” l. 10. 11. “The Sleeper” mentions “The window open to the night”; see ll. 18–29. 12. “Al Aaraaf.”

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said, that we could wish to see Mr. Poe engaged in a metaphysical romance. He needs a sustained flight and a fair range to show what his powers really are. Let us have from him the analysis of the Passions, with their appropriate Fates; let us have his speculations clarified; let him interspersen dialogue or poem, as the occasion prompts, and give us something really good and strong, firmly wrought, and fairly blazoned. Such would be better employment than detecting literary larcenies, not worth pointing out if they exist.13 Such employment is quite unworthy of one who dares vie with the Angel.14  Review of Edgar Allan Poe, The Raven and Other Poems (New York: Wiley and Putnam, 1845). New-York Daily Tribune, 26 November 1845, p. 1; reprinted, New-York Weekly Tribune, 29 November 1845, p. 1. Title supplied. instersperse [ intersperse 13. Poe was fond of pointing out what he considered cases of plagiarism by other authors; see Sydney P. Moss, Poe’s Literary Battles (Durham: Duke University Press, 1963). 14. “Israfel” is printed in full.

[Review of Frederick Von Raumer, America and the American People]


The list of titles, in whose place we read the &c. should be given to enable the reader to appreciate the degree of independence and candor shown by Von Raumer in speaking of the institutions of his native land and the influence of that government which has delighted to honor him. This is esteemed, abroad, to be very considerable, though it may not make much show beside the standard which easily rises so high in a country happy in the freedom of the press. If we appreciate this justly, we shall be more likely to be just to the motives and character of our critic, when he comes upon our own ground, for he who knows how to speak truth when it is hard and dangerous, will scarcely fail to do so where it is desirable and easy. We have read this book with some care, though not with what it claims to make a suitable notice of it. The ground it covers is so large that it would require weeks of studious examination and a detailed review of its several points, even from a person qualified by fairness of disposition, a strong desire to be impartial, and extensive and accurate information throughout the vast range of topics embraced. There are few or no persons fitted to survey Von Raumer’s book as ably and fairly, as he has surveyed this country, and from such, if such there are, it would require much time and care. It will get examined piecemeal by those who are competent or interested in its different topics; for ourselves we must be content with comments upon its sense and spirit as a whole. We must, in the first place, render unhesitating tribute to the excellent spirit and motives of Von Raumer. His desire has been to ascertain and tell the truth, not to sustain theories or satisfy prejudices. He has kept his mind open to new impressions, and has been desirous to ascertain a new standard, for a new form of life. He shows true modesty in his sense of how superficial and defective his scrutiny must be, under the circumstances, and does not overrate the importance of his inferences, either for himself or others. In short, he

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shows the spirit of the Biedermeier.1n That spirit which has made the German mind more catholic, and enriched it with treasures of knowledge more uncontaminate than belong to all the other nations of Europe put together. The following passage is full evidence of this: “All the conclusions formed respecting America from other Democracies and Confederated Republics mentioned in history, are insufficient and inapplicable. The United States are something essentially new and peculiar; and which, on a comparison with former phenomena of the kind, exhibits more differences than similarities.”

This is indeed the way to look at the subject, as something essentially new and peculiar, patiently to observe the operation of new laws and causes, patiently to await the results, without childish sanguineness, rash despair or premature and sweeping inferences. And Von Raumer keeps to this ground as none but a German would. The Frenchman hastens with his showy generalities. The Englishman cannot rise above comparisons of all other experiences with his own. The German alone is liberal enough to observe each growth by its own law and with reference to its peculiar purposes. The chief value of the book is for Europe, to give of us a better general account than is common. Notwithstanding Von Raumer’s industry and candor, and his uncommon preparation for collecting materials, yet the shortness of his stay obliged him to draw them mostly from books and hearsay; the amount of his personal observation is comparatively small, and it is only that which could have any great interest for us. But as a catalogue raisonnée of the American exhibition for European use, just to show where things are to be looked for and in what lights and ways to be looked at, it is and will be valuable. The author is so careful to point out the boundaries and sources of his information, that he will create few prejudices and no fierce ones, and,n where he has made mistakes, they may easily be detected. Had Von Raumer been here longer and possessed more ample opportunity of personal observation, his book would have been improved, but still its merit would not have risen above mediocrity, for his natural abilities do not rise above it. He is a man of respectable powers, honorably and industriously cultivated to the extent of which they are capable, of great information as to 1. Das Beidermeier, popular German literary style of the 1815–48 period. Biederman [ Biedermeier aud, [ and,

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external facts, but without depth of thought, piercing or searching sagacity.— His fairness of disposition and the wide horizon to which his thoughts are accustomed, are the only high requisites possessed by him for a task so difficult. There is no great lead in his mind, and he gives us no important clues to aid in our investigations. Where he has a lead, as, for instance, the effect that may be expected from so large a mixture of the Germanic race upon the growth of our nation, or the principles of Free Trade, he says nothing which has not been as well said elsewhere. He is very careful in weighing evidence and giving both sides of the argument; still, he cannot bring the state of things fully before us, for he is destitute of the fine instinctive tact which is the prerogative of genius, which teaches how to select, and how much, very much, to reject. He takes information wholesale; you can trace the marks upon the bales and tell exactly what his associations have been in this country. He shows his want of greatness of soul in the way he examines the Slavery question; we know his only aim was not to be unjust, but his want of sensibility to great principles is repulsive. It is just as if we had made up our mind thoroughly to like and esteem a person for civic and domestic virtues, and then, on seeing him placed opposite the Apollo Belvedere,2n could not resist being disgusted at finding that form of glory was to his mind only a man of good features, and so many feet and inches in hight. Before great persons or great subjects we know not how to pardon one who has not even a spark of the sacred fire. We are disappointed to receive no valuable suggestions from Von Raumer on the subject of Education especially, but indeed on all the subjects. All that his great culture does for him is to enable him to appreciate results and draw extensive comparisons. He does not pierce beneath the crust deep enough to sow any new seed. His sketches of persons are in the same style as all the rest—they are tolerable likenesses, rather flattered than otherwise, not only in the cases of Jefferson and Calhoun,3 where he indulges a degree of enthusiasm, but of various other great men with whom he sympathizes less. However, there are only the features, never the soul of the matter in any of these portraits. Time will bring an artist worthy to depict our leading men. Whenever I see a collection of their busts I feel more than ever the greatness of the past, the present and the future of this land. Such grave, strong heads, such a reserve of

2. The Apollo Belvedere, marble statue supposed to be by Calamis (fl. 6th century b.c.), is in the Vatican. Belvidere, [ Belvedere, 3. Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826), third President of the United States (1801–09).

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force in comparison with what is developed, how far more than Roman the greatness they prophesy! In the few letters subjoined, Von Raumer shows some vivacity, and had his survey been given in the form of journal, it would have made a more agreeable reading book, though it would not have answered his purpose of making a well arranged compend of all he could learn about America. His notice of Niagara is quite pleasing: NIAGARA, July 20th When the excellent Jefferson, before visiting Europe, said it was worth going to America merely to see Harper’s Ferry, he might have been told that there are many places as beautiful or more so in our Germany alone. Is it perhaps the same with Niagara? Do all the representations of it show any thing else but a monotonous mass of water tumbling between tiresome cliffs? Was I not told by many Americans—who are apt not to underrate what belongs to their country—that I should be much disappointed, and that I must stay at least a week (which was impossible) in order to discover and comprehend its varied beauties. “You will feel,” said another, “quite depressed and annihilated.” “The oppressed heart,” sighed a lady, “must be relieved by tears.” Of this, as the saying is, I could make neither head nor tail. I therefore established beforehand, in true German fashion, the following fundamental propositions: Among all categories, that of quantity prevails universally in America (witness the size of the country, its lakes and its rivers, the universal right of suffrage, the majorities of the whole, &c.) So it is with the cataract of Niagara. Its fame rests on quantity, while its quality is very imperfect. By virtue of this last category, a much less quantity may produce a greater impression; and if this want of quality be obscurely felt, or clearly perceived, one feels disappointed; and prefers much smaller waterfalls—such as those of Tivoli, Terni, Reichenbach, or Handek—to the great, broad, tasteless, and characterless Niagara. So much for American remarks, and German philosophic speculations. Both amount to nothing; they are all fudge! On casting the first look at only one of the falls, all this wisdom fell like a thick fog to the ground. When after a hot day I walked out into the open air of a cold night in Chamouni, and saw before me the glaciers of Mount Blanc and its neighbors stiffened in eternal snow, the thought seized me, What would become of this benumbed nature, if God should but for a moment withdraw His hand from it and from feeble man! When, standing on Etna, I beheld around me nothing but destruction and death, I collected myself, and compared this lawless, savage strength with the Heaven-imparted gift of the human soul, whose noble thoughts, in spite of all apparent weakness, have more of life and a longer duration, than grey

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lava and shapeless ashes! It was quite otherwise with Niagara. I could have shouted with exultation; and my excited spirit soared aloft, like the tones of an Eolian harp harmoniously blending with the thunders of this miracle of Nature. Immersion in this sea of beauty seemed to renew the vigor and vivacity of early years; it was a fountain of rejuvenescence—such as the presence of dry categories could never set flowing. There was nothing frightful, horrible, oppressive, annihilating, or repulsive—but the beauty of Nature in her noblest manifestation and the most amazing variety. No painter could represent this world of moving wonders in full truth and beauty; nor can any description be successful. For if I dwell on the wondrous unity and harmony of all these phenomena, their multiplicity is lost sight of; if this last is made prominent, the former disappears in the fragile mosaic of a dry enumeration. From the top of Niagara one sees in the distance the broad, smooth, mirror-like expanse of Lake Erie. By degrees its surface begins to be ruffled; projecting fragments of rock and trunks of trees lodged against them increase the agitation; until the entire mass of water is transformed into rapids of great extent and singular beauty. Through several islands the impetuous torrent forces an easy path; it then dashes against a rocky islet (Iris island) adorned with the most magnificent trees, and separates into two great arms;—but not forever; for the same fate awaits them both, and below the falls they are again united into one stream, which flows majestically onward, decked in every shade of green fantastically intermingled with streaks of silver. The rapids and this river—without any cataract—would form a scene justly entitled to the praise of rarest beauty. And then what accessories!—stupendous walls of perpendicular or projecting rocks, or receding cliffs covered and garlanded with trees, shrubs, and flowers! From this region of verdure and rocks the floods rush onwards, now of the brightest emerald hue, now crimson as the sunset sky, and again dissolved in snowy foam, and whirling upwards from the abyss in volumes of mist borne far-over stream and land. It is not one, nor two waterfalls; it is a whole series of wonders, renewing and changing at every step, and presenting a world of incomparable beauties. To him who is not caught up and enraptured in the first moment, time will prove of little avail. Nevertheless, three hours (how many, governed by the railroad, try it!) are not enough to satisfy one, and one day—in spite of our very limited time—is being lengthened into three; for I know of no place in the wide world, so fitted for the soul’s initiation into all the mysteries and revelations of Nature. Niagara, July 21st. We have seen the Falls from every side—from above and below, from the level of the ground, and from hills and towers; and today, the third of our stay, we are going to enjoy the sight once more.—From my window, in the Cataract

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Hotel on the American side, I see the rapids, and many mills and other establishments, scattered up and down, which make use of the water-power. Near the hotel two bridges lead over several small islands, and cross the rapids to Iris island. Turning to the right, you come upon the American falls, the very smallest of which has more than twice as much water as Tivoli. To the left, the path leads to the still greater falls, that divide the Canadian from the American shore. A flight of steps and a rough path bring you down to the bed of a river, and affords a near view of the raging abyss and the descending floods. Again, from a tower standing on a projecting rock, the whole extent of the upper falls can be seen; and from a second tower, lately erected in the so-called Pleasure Garden, you have a panoramic view of the lake, the rapids, the cataracts, the river, and the country round, such as the world besides cannot afford. We were taken in a light skiff over the foaming river to the Canadian shore, whence all the falls are seen—not sideways or foreshortened, but in their full breadth—and that too in an incredible variety of views, both near and remote, from below and from a first and a second range of hills. A museum of objects of natural history merits all praise, but could not long engage our attention beside these miracles of Nature; and I found still less satisfaction in peeping into a camera obscura. I had more pleasure in a drive to the Whirlpool, where the river makes a rapid turn, and then flows on to Lake Ontario. The falls, however, and their environs, are of such exuberant richness and splendor, that additional attractions like these, though of themselves deserving of all admiration, are not required. Though the scenery which I beheld throughout a large extent of the United States was very much inferior to that of Europe, it must be admitted that the old world can offer nothing to equal Niagara—Such an accumulation of splendors would certainly well repay a voyage across the ocean. Although, as I remarked, the painter’s art cannot fully depict the motion of the waters, there are yet a multitude of points and views, which might be represented with success, and would be well worthy of his labor. . . . . In the hotel six long tables were set, full of guests, and served by thirty-six black waiters, among whom the division of labor was carried so far, that each had his department—of bread, knives, and forks, spoons. & c.— assigned to him. These solo performers marched with regular steps to the villanous table-music, and did all their work in measured time. Thus they came, thus they went; and thus each brought in his hand two dishes, which he deposited on the table as directed by two grand musical fermate. Montreal, on the St. Lawrence. Canada, July 28th. We prolonged our stay at Niagara one day more, and again viewed the wonders of the earth, water and sky, on all sides and from all points. Although a

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visit to the United States can have attractions but for few, and least of all for women, who with reason prefer Paris, Italy, Switzerland, and our own Germany, so rich in natural beauty; yet I wish I could charm hither the true votaries of Nature, in order, after their many blanks, to show them this magnificent prize. I do not find fault with those whose love of nature enables them to be delighted with a simple meadow, a bed of flowers, a running brook, or a cloud; on the contrary, the true wisdom of life and its purest enjoyments are found in the use of this daily proffered food; and poor indeed is he who knows or values it not. But there are festal days for this kind of enjoyment, too; and those spent at Niagara belong to the brightest and most memorable among them.

These letters are touched by German vulgarity. We do not mean by this that the Germans are more vulgar than other nations, but each nation has a kind of vulgarity, as well as a kind of beauty, peculiar to itself, and that of the Germans consists in a willingness to bring forward ‘unpleasant’ physical circumstances, and the details which other people pass over as lightly as possible. In conclusion, we confess that we cordially hate this book, as we do all judicious, dull, gentlemanly, un-ideaed,n well-informed, kind, cool persons, and all that emanates from them. But, because they are not what we like, for ourselves, we do not forget that they are wanted in the universe, and in the civilized world especially are indispensable for its progress and enjoyment; thus, not doubting the great circulation of the book in Europe, we hope no less that “no gentleman’s library will be without” it here. We recommend it to Lyceums and College Exhibitions as a subject for discussion. We recommend it to all who read some one “solid work” every season to improve and form their minds. We recommend it to the North American Review for praise; that will be but fair requital for Von Raumer’s civility. Indeed, he has made polite bows to many standard men and works, and has earned golden opinions, and the expression of them from many points of the circle. We commend it to those who want a good thread to go round that circle by, and see what they think of what it comprises. We recommend it to well-informed and judicious persons generally, as a book that will command their sympathy, and we recommend it to the writers of crack articles, as affording them unlimited scope, whether to corroborate or deny. We also recommend it especially to the Editor of The Tribune, for its urbane challenge calls to his favorite field, and he will find

unidead, [ un-ideaed,

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there a respectable, a well disposed and courteous antagonist. And so, seeing already a more than Banquo’s length of line advance to receive the bequest, we gladly will them the thick volume.4 One word as to American sensitiveness. America cares for shallow blame, just or unjust, because she wants not only self-respect but faith. She has, as the foreigner thinks, the unmannerly tricks and disagreeable obtrusions of an overgrown child. Like children of a rich and energetic nature, prematurely brought forward, she is peculiarly likely to offend the decorum and even the good feelings of uncles and aunts. She makes dirt-pies, kills flies, and oversets the tea-pot. Still she is learning all the while, and, if she had simplicity enough to be willing the observer should see her faults, he would not deny that she showed great promise, too. But she is vain. Her pot-hooks and trammels are of giant size, Cyclopean promise, but she insists that they are also of as refined beauty as Raphael’s drawings. The more she does so the more she is laughed at, of course. Beside, she is often servile. She copies Europe and tries to hide it. She is afraid of Europe, and puts on airs of “independence.” Then she is sneered at of course. Did there come a great Poet, a great Philosopher, such would not be blinded by these trifles or even stop to think of them, enraptured by the vast prospect, for such an one sees not the child; but the horoscope that foreshows its destiny, and discerns in the clownish boy, the future prince. However, we want none such to cast too broad a light. Better grope and push on for ourselves; in that way the limbs will best be developed. This is the time for all men, rather than great men, and Von Raumer is a good enough cousin for the present to help us learn to spell. Where he is at fault, however, let the smart ones in the class correct him: there are many of them who know some parts of the lesson better than he. Waiting for such, we lay the book on the shelf for this day.  Review of Frederick Von Raumer, America and the American People, trans. William W. Turner (New York: J. and H. G. Langley, 1845). New-York Daily Tribune, 4 December 1845, p. 1; reprinted, New-York Weekly Tribune, 13 December 1845, p. 6. Title supplied. Friedrich von Raumer first published Die Vereinigten Staaten von Nordamerica in 1845. 4. In William Shakespeare’s Macbeth, Banquo is promised that his family would rule after Macbeth’s death. Fuller no doubt makes the connection because Von Raumer’s book is over five hundred pages long.

[Review of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Poems]


Poetry is not a superhuman or supernatural gift. It is, on the contrary, the fullest and therefore most completely natural expression of what is human.— It is that of which the rudiments lie in every human breast, but developed to a more complete existence than the obstructions of daily life permit, clothed in an adequate form, domesticated in nature by the use of apt images, the perception of grand analogies, and set to the music of the spheres for the delight of all who have ears to hear. We have uttered these remarks, which may, to many of our readers, seem truisms, for the sake of showing that our definition of poetry is large enough to include all kinds of excellence. It includes not only the great bards, but the humblest minstrels. The great bards bring to light the more concealed treasures, gems which centuries have been employed in forming and which it is their office to reveal, polish and set for the royal purposes of man; the wandering minstrel with his lighter but beautiful office calls the attention of men to the meaning of the flowers, which also is hidden from the careless eye, though they have grown and bloomed in full sight of all who chose to look. All the poets are the priests of Nature, though the greatest are also the prophets of the manhood of man.—For, when fully grown, the life of man must be all poetry; each of his thoughts will be a key to the treasures of the universe; each of his acts a revelation of beauty, his language will be music, and his habitual presence will overflow with more energy and inspire with a nobler rapture than do the fullest strains of lyric poetry now. Meantime we need poets; men more awakened to the wonders of life and gifted more or less with a power to express what they see, and to all who possess, in any degree, those requisites we offer and we owe welcome and tribute, whether the place of their song be in the Pantheon,1 from which issue the grand decrees of immortal thought, or by the fireside, where hearts need kindling and eyes need clarifying by occasional drops of nectar in their tea. 1. Pantheon, structure in Rome (completed 27 b.c.) in which the Italian painter Raphael is buried.

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But this—this alone we claim, and can welcome none who cannot present this title to our hearing; that the vision be genuine, the expression spontaneous. No imposition upon our young fellow citizens of pinchbeckn for gold! they must have the true article, and pay the due intellectual price, or they will wake from a lifelong dream of folly to find themselves beggars. And never was a time when satirists were more needed to scourge from Parnassus the magpies who are devouring the food scattered there for the singing birds.2 There will always be a good deal of mock poetry in the market with the genuine; it grows up naturally as tares among the wheat, and, while there is a fair proportion preserved,n we abstain from severe weeding lest the two come up together; but when the tares have almost usurped the field, it is time to begin and see if the field cannot be freed from them and made ready for a new seed-time. The rules of versification are now understood and used by those who have never entered into that soul from which metres grow as acorns from the oak, shapes are characteristic of the parent tree, containing in like manner germs of limitless life for the future.n And as to the substance of these jingling rhymes, and dragging, stumbling rhythms, we might tell of bombast, or still worse, an affected simplicity, sickly sentiment, or borrowed dignity; but it is sufficient to comprise all in this one censure. The writers did not write because they felt obliged to relieve themselves of the swelling thought within, but as an elegant exercise which may win them rank and reputation above the crowd. Their lamp is not lit by the sacred and inevitable lightning from above, but carefully fed by their own will to be seen of men. There are very few now rhyming in England, not obnoxious to this censure, still fewer in our America. For such no laurel blooms. May the friendly poppy soon crown them and grant us stillness to hear the silver tones of genuine music, for, if such there be, they are at present almost stifled by these fifes and gongs. Yet there is a middle class, composed of men of little original poetic power, but of much poeticn taste and sensibility, whom we would not wish to have silenced. They do no harm but much good, (if only their minds are not confounded with those of a higher class,) by educating in others the faculties dominant in themselves. In this class we place the writer at present before us. pinchback [ pinchbeck 2. Mount Parnassus, in ancient Greece, was sacred to Apollo and thus the seat of the arts. perserved, [ preserved, future, [ future. poetic, [ poetic

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We must confess to a coolness toward Mr. Longfellow, in consequence of the exaggerated praises that have been bestowed upon him. When we see a person of moderate powers receive honors which should be reserved for the highest, we feel somewhat like assailing him and taking from him the crown which should be reserved for grander brows. And yet this is, perhaps, ungenerous.n It may be that the management of publishers, the hyperbole of paid or undiscerning reviewers, or some accidental cause which gives a temporary interest to productions beyond what they would permanently command, have raised such an one to a place as much above his wishes as his claims, and which he would rejoice, with honorable modesty, to vacate at the approach of one worthier. We the more readily believe this of Mr. Longfellow, as one so sensible to the beauties of other writers and so largely indebted to them, must know his own comparative rank better than his readers have known it for him. And yet so much adulation is dangerous. Mr. Longfellow, so lauded on all hands—now able to collect his poems which have circulated so widely in previous editions, and been paid for so handsomely by the handsomest annuals, in this beautiful volume, illustrated by one of the most distinguished of our younger artists—has found a flatterer in that very artist. The portrait which adorns this volume is not merely flattered or idealized, but there is an attempt at adorning it by expression thrown into the eyes with just that which the original does not possess, whether in face or mind. We have often seen faces whose usually coarse and heavy lineaments were harmonized at times into beauty by the light that rises from the soul into the eyes. The intention Nature had with regard to the face and its wearer, usually eclipsed beneath bad habits or a bad education, is then disclosed and we see what hopes Death has in store for that soul. But here the enthusiasm thrown into the eyes only makes the rest of the face look more weak, and the idea suggested is the anomalous one of a Dandy Pindar. Such is not the case with Mr. Longfellow himself. He is never a Pindar, though he is sometimes a Dandy in the clean and elegantly ornamented streets and trim gardens of his verse. But he is still more a man of cultivated taste, delicate though not deep feeling, and some, though not much, poetic force. Mr. Longfellow has been accused of plagiarism.3 We have been surprised that any one should have been anxious to fasten special charges of this kind

ungenerous, [ ungenerous. 3. Many reviewers pointed out the similarities between Longfellow’s poetry and possible European sources for it, especially Poe; see Sydney P. Moss, Poe’s Literary Battles (Durham: Duke University Press, 1963).

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upon him, when we had supposed it so obvious that the greater part of his mental stores were derived from the works of others. He has no style of his own growing out of his own experiences and observations of nature. Nature with him, whether human or external, is always seen through the windows of literature. There are in his poems sweet and tender passages descriptive of his personal feelings, but very few showing him as an observer, at first hand, of the passions within, or the landscape without. This want of the free breath of nature, this perpetual borrowing of imagery, this excessive, because superficial, culture which he has derived from an acquaintance with the elegant literaturen of many nations and men out of proportion to the experience of life within himself, prevent Mr. Longfellow’s verses from ever being a true refreshment to ourselves. He says in one of his most graceful verses: From the cool cisterns of the midnight air My spirit drank repose; The fountain of perpetual peace flows there, From those deep cisterns flows.4

Now this is just what we cannot get from Mr. Longfellow. No solitude of the mind reveals to us the deep cisterns. Let us take, for example of what we do not like, one of his worst pieces, the Prelude to the Voices of the Night— Beneath some patriarchal tree I lay upon the ground; His hoary arms uplifted be, And all the broad leaves over me Clapped their little hands in glee With one continuous sound.

What an unpleasant mixture of images! Such never rose in a man’s mind, as he lay on the ground and looked up to the tree above him. The true poetry for this stanza would be to give us an image of what was in the writer’s mind as he lay there and looked up. But this idea of the leaves clapping their little literatue [ literature 4. “Hymn to the Night,” ll. 13–16.

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hands with glee is taken out of some book; or, at any rate, is a book thought and not one that came in the place, and jars entirely with what is said of the tree uplifting its hoary arms. Then take this other stanza from a man whose mind should have grown up in familiarity with the American genius loci. Therefore at Pentecost, which brings The Spring clothed like a bride, When nestling buds unfold their wings, And bishop’s caps have golden rings, Musing upon many things, I sought the woodlands wide.5

Musing upon many things—ay! and upon many books too or we should have nothing of Pentecost or bishop’s caps with their golden rings. For ourselves, we have not the least idea what bishop’s caps are;—are they flowers?— or what? Truly, the schoolmaster was abroad in the woodlands that day! As to the conceit of the wings of the buds, it is a false image, because one that cannot be carried out. Such will not be found in the poems of poets; with such the imagination is all compact, and their works are not dead mosaics, with substances inserted merely because pretty, but living growths, homogenous and satisfactory throughout. Such instances could be adduced every where throughout the poems, depriving us of any clear pleasure from any one piece, and placing his poems beside such as these of Bryant in the same light as that of the prettiest made shell,6 beside those whose every line and hue tells a history of the action of winds and waves and the secrets of one class of organizations. But, do we, therefore esteem Mr. Longfellow a wilful or conscious plagiarist? By no means. It is his misfortune that other men’s thoughts are so continually in his head as to overshadow his own. The order of fine development is for the mind the same as the body, to take in just so much food as will sustain it in its exercise and assimilate with its growth. If it is so assimilated—if it becomes part of the skin, hair and eyes of the man, it is his own, no matter whether he pick it up in the wood, or borrow from the dish of a fellow man, or receive it in the form of manna direct from Heaven. “Do you ask the genius”

5. “Prelude,” ll. 43–48. 6. William Cullen Bryant (1794–1878), poet and editor, associated with the New York Evening Post from 1826 until his death.

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said Goethe “to give an account of what he has taken from others. As well demand of the hero an account of the beeves and loaves which have nourished him to such martial stature.” But Mr. Longfellow presents us, not with a new product in which all the old varieties are melted into a fresh form, but rather with a tastefully arranged Museum, between whose glass cases are interspersed neatly potted rose trees, geraniums and hyacinths, grown by himself with aid of in-door heat. Still we must acquit him of being a willing or conscious plagiarist. Some objects in the collection are his own; as to the rest, he has the merit of appreciation, and a rearrangement, not always judicious, but the result of feeling on his part. Such works as Mr. Longfellow’s we consider injurious only if allowed to usurp the place of better things. The reason of his being overrated here, is because through his works breathes the air of other lands with whose products the public at large is but little acquainted. He will do his office, and a desirable one, of promoting a taste for the literature of these lands before his readers are aware of it. As a translator he shows the same qualities as in his own writings; what is forcible and compact he does not render adequately, grace and sentiment he appreciates and reproduces. Twenty years hence when he stands upon his own merits, he will rank as a writer of elegant, if not always accurate taste, of great imitative power, and occasional felicity in an original way, where his feelings are really stirred. He has touched no subject where he has not done somewhat that is pleasing, though also his poems are much marred by ambitious failings. As instances of his best manner we would mention “The Reaper and the Flowers,” “Lines to the Planet Mars,” “A Gleam of Sunshine,” and “The Village Blacksmith.” His two ballads are excellent imitations, yet in them is no spark of fire. In “Nuremberg” are charming passages. Indeed the whole poem is one of the happiest specimens of Mr. L.’s poetic feeling, taste and tact in making up a rosary of topics and images.—Thinking it may be less known than most of the poems we will quote it. The engraving which accompanies it of the rich old architecture is a fine gloss on its contents.7 This image of the thought gathered like a flower from the crevice of the pavement, is truly natural and poetical. Here is another image which came into the mind of the writer as he looked at the subject of his verse, and which pleases accordingly. It is from one of the new poems, addressed to Driving Cloud, “chief of the mighty Omahaws.”

7. “Nuremberg” is quoted in full here.

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Wrapt in thy scarlet blanket I see thee stalk through the city’s Narrow and populous streets, as once by the margin of rivers Stalked those birds unknown, that have left us only their foot-prints, What, in a few short years, will remain of thy race but the foot-prints?8

Here is another very graceful and natural simile: A feeling of sadness and longing, That is not akin to pain, And resembles sorrow only As the mist resembles rain.9

Another— I will forget her! All dear recollections, Pressed in my heart like flowers within a book, Shall be torn out and scattered in the winds.10

The Drama from which this is taken is an elegant exercise of the pen, after the fashion of the best models. Plan, figures, all are academical. It is a faint reflex of the actions and passions of men, tame in the conduct and lifeless in the characters, but not heavy, and containing good meditative passages. And now farewell to the handsome book, with its Preciosos and Preciosas, its Vikings and knights, and cavaliers, its flowers of all climes, and wild flowers of none. We have not wished to depreciate those writings below their current value more than truth absolutely demands. We have not forgotten that, if a man cannot himself sit at the feet of the Muse, it is much if he prizes those who may; it makes him a teacher to the people. Neither have we forgotten that Mr. Longfellow has genuine respect for his pen, never writes carelessly, nor when he does not wish to, nor for money alone. Nor are we intolerant to those who

8. “To the Driving Cloud,” ll. 3–6. 9. “The Day is Done,” ll. 9–12. 10. The Spanish Student, act 3, scene 1, ll. 36–38. Preciosa, mentioned in the next paragraph, is the heroine of the drama.

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prize hot-house bouquets beyond all the free beauty of nature; that helps the gardener and has its uses. But still let us not forget—Excelsior!!11  Review of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Poems, 3d ed., illustrations by D. Huntington (Philadelphia: Carey and Hart, 1846). New-York Daily Tribune, 10 December 1845, p. 1; reprinted, New-York Weekly Tribune, 13 December 1845, p. 1. Title supplied. Daniel Huntington (1816–1906), portrait painter. 11. Fuller is undoubtedly punning on the title of Longfellow’s poem “Excelsior” (1839).

Study of the German Language


We wish to call attention to a lecture on this subject which Mr. Ertheiler proposes to deliver preparatory to the forming of classes. We have read it in manuscript and found in it a clear and judicious exposition of the objects and methods of this study. Mr. Ertheiler gives good reasons, both as to mental culture and practical use, why the study is interesting and important to English and Americans, especially the latter. He alludes to some remarks by Professor Von Raumer as to the advantage of schools where the English and German languages shall be mutually taught, which may be read with advantage in this connection. He points out the fallacy of the prevalent idea, that a foreign tongue can ever be learnt thoroughly by imitation and practice alone, without understanding of its theory and structure. In this, no less than other matters, he who knows not how to render a reason for the faith that is in him, will be incompetent to teach others, and often at a loss in his own practice when new cases come up. Indeed, without intercourse with natives, and even in the scenes and climate where a language has grown up, neither thorough acquaintance with its idioms and fine meanings, nor full command of it in speech and writing can be attained. But study of it theoretically and in good authors should precede, confirm, and intellectualize this familiar acquaintance. Mr. Ertheiler points out different means which may be used according to the wants of different minds. We should infer from the lecture that he would be successful in practical teaching through patience, tact, and fixing the attention of the learner on leading points. This last is what most teachers fail in most, especially in the case of the German language, one with which it is easy to become acquainted if attention is directed to its roots, and the principles of its growth; very difficult, if taught by rote, and an accumulation of little rules, as it often is by teachers, either stupid and ignorant, or who, looking on this office merely as a stepping-stone to something better, a temporary means of earning a little money, pay no attention to thinking out a good method; and, 293

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by the unnecessary obstacles their carelessness leaves in the way, discourage and disgust the student and excite a prejudice against the study. This prejudice we greatly regret, knowing that many are thus deterred from learning what would most benefit them. Especially here in New-York, there is no reason why every person, of any pretensions to a liberal education, should not be conversant with French, German and Italian, though the latter is at this moment of less importance. To the acquisition of the two former, motives of practical convenience and of expanding and refining the mind, prompt with equal force. Let the young ladies take from dress and Broadway some mornings for this purpose, the young clerks some evenings from frivolous amusements, and that darling aim of approaching the social standard of Europe would find itself far better served than now. On those who here pause a moment to think Can I? Shall I? we would urge to listen to Mr. Ertheiler’s lecture, and see whether he does not offer powerful inducements, and make plain the way. To others of more earnest spirit we would say, In no way can you better refine and liberalize taste and fancy than by the comparisons to which you will be led between the gifts of the English and the German Muse. And the language itself, by its great pictorial power and closer representation of what is intimate and homely in life, will refresh you after intimacy with a literature and language where there is a far larger mixture of what is merely conventional, mere phrases, the barren civilities and tactics of literature. Of course this is not true of the productions of great minds any where; such steep anew the dry husk of words in Spirit till every one germinates and blossoms into fresh life. But the stock literature of England and America is amazingly conventional; so much so that you can predict paragraphs and chapters, if you but know the writer and the subject. The writer sleeps, and the reader yawns through the mechanical article or volume. The Phrase-Book of Mr. Ertheiler has secured a favorable reception, from which his success as a teacher may be inferred. In mentioning Tschulick, “the inventor of a successful type-composing machine,” he says that the name has heretofore been incorrectly printed in The Tribune.  New-York Daily Tribune, 11 December 1845, p. 1.

Peale’s Court of Death


This picture, famous in the annals of American art, may now be seen to very good advantage at the Society Library Rooms, either in the brighter hours of the day or by gas-light. Much stress is laid, in the advertisements, upon the moral purpose or influence of the picture.1—With regard to this we must observe that moral influence is not the legitimate object of works of art. It may naturally flow from them in so far as beauty is identical with health and virtue, but the object of the Fine Arts is simply to express thoughts in forms more perfect than the common course of nature furnishes. As all objects in a high way beautiful and perfect are intrinsically pure and noble, the mind of him who contemplates them is by that means elevated and expanded, but it is not their province directly to preach of vice or virtue—sin and its retributions. Where religion has afforded the best of all subjects, it has been because it presented types of what is universal. The Madonna represents a high and grand form of maternal tenderness, the sight of which may teach innumerable lessons, but it must be incidentally. Christ reproving Peter affords a subject for moral instruction, but when the true Artist takes hold of it, all petty details and inferences are subordinated to, or lost in, the sense of a being so raised above the region of doubt, speculation, and special precept by a thorough intelligence of the divine will that He and the Father are one. We have dwelt for a moment upon this, because the method of advertising Mr. Peale’s picture seems as if a work of Art needed some pretext or object beyond its natural one of representing what is most excellent in thought, most clear in imagination, and by so doing to confirm impressions already common

1. According to one advertisement, “the picture is designed to illustrate the propensities of man to good and evil, and thence to teach the necessity of a constant preparation to meet his uncertain, but inevitable end” (New-York Daily Tribune, 18 December 1845, p. 3).

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enough, which prevent our people from looking at such works from the true point of view. Let us take, then, the picture in our own way, and inquire, first, as to the object of the artist; second, his mode of treatment; third, the degree of his success. As to the first, we are informed the object of the artist is two-fold, the moral one of giving juster ideas of death, than are usual, and the other, which seems to us the true poetic or artistic object of the picture, to express in an original way, his own feelings about death. Death is represented, not in the usual forms of a skeleton, or an old man mowing down lives, as the reaper the ears of corn, but as a Power and a Fate. This conception, quite as open to objection, in a philosophical point of view, as the others, since Death is not positive but negative, being not, in fact, a power, but only the absence of power—that is, of life, is yet poetical, as corresponding to a set of feelings which rise in the mind when we see souls cease to sustain the bodies which had been their temporary abode, and is well expressed by a stately form of old Egyptian calmness and grandeur, which, seated with its foot upon the dead body of a man cut off in the fullness of his strength, makes the centre to the picture. The statuesque stillness of this figure and its drapery, the shadows that fall around it, the coldness and rigidity of the corpse, form a centre of cold and dark, which bring out into very bold relief the forms and colors of the groups on either side, thus giving to the picture great effect, but one calculated, in our opinion, to produce emotions of solemnity and awe, if not of deep sadness, rather than to give that more serene view of Death which Mr. Peale says was his object. We have never seen any pictures, such as the Descent from the Cross, or Allston’sn touching of the Dead Man’s Bones,2 where the centre was cold and dark in which this was not the case, while in such as the Nativity, where the light proceeds from the body of the child, or from a central group of warm, living figures, the emotions induced are those of peace, or hope, or joy. How can it be otherwise? The centre always is winning the eye to itself, and gives character to the whole picture.

Alston’s [ Allston’s 2. Washington Allston (1779–1843), artist and poet; his The Dead Man Restored to Life by Touching the Bones of the Prophet Elisha (1811–14) is reproduced in color in William H. Gerdts and Theodore E. Stebbins, Jr., “A Man of Genius”: The Art of Washington Allston (1779–1843) (Boston: Museum of Fine Arts, 1979), p. 48.

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The leading figures on either side the corpse, Virtue sustaining Old Age, and Pleasure alluring Youth with her charmed cup, are finely conceived and colored. Here the view of the artist seems to have been truly catholic, for he has so done that the gazer may attach an allegorical or a human interest to the figures, according to his turn of mind. Lesser fancies or concetti3 such as that of the smoke from Pleasure’s cup hiding the presence of Death from her victim, or of the head of the corpse resting in the stream of oblivion, with which the painter has pleased himself, are equally left optional to be seen or not according to the quality of mental sight. As is usually the case when the contrast is attempted, Pleasure is made far more beautiful than Virtue. But in her train are many shapes of woe, which fill one side of the picture with dark shadows of darker realities. The group on the other side, representing a warrior accompanied by fire, pestilence and famine, and passing over the dead and vanquished, is the most powerful part of the picture. The attitude and onward motion of the female figure which represents the fire are admirable; the light from the torches upborne by her fierce arms casts a stern light on the scene in high poetic contrast with the other parts of the picture. Famine and Pestilence are both expressed with great force, and we read with no little interest in this ghostly, soothsaying age, where we totter on the brink of finding the bridge betwixt our inward and our outward destinies, that “for the figure of Famine, following in the train of War, the artist could find no model, though he sought her in many a haunt of Misery, and therefore drew her from his brain; but, strange to say, two weeks after the picture was finished a woman passed his house, who might have been sworn to as the original.” In effective grouping, in the use of lights and shades and in uniting of expression worthy “those creative depths from which comes the fullness of forms” the picture claims honors that declare Rembrandt Peale a Patriarch of American Art, and we hope New-York will not let pass from her this most valued portion of the inheritance he wills to his country.  New-York Daily Tribune, 13 December 1845, p. 2; reprinted, New-York Weekly Tribune, 20 December 1845, p. 1. Rembrandt Peale (1778–1860), portrait painter. This 312-square-foot 1808 painting with twenty-three life-size figures was a traveling mural that toured America

3. concetti: conceits.

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for more than fifty years and was very popular as an engraving, making its artist wealthy and becoming “possibly the most over-exposed picture of the century” (Russell Lynes, The ArtMakers of Nineteenth-Century America [New York: Atheneum, 1970], pp. 22–25; the picture is now at the Detroit Institute of Arts).

Books of Travel


Innumerable as are the books of travel now into every region of the world, the proportion of good ones to the whole is still very small. For because traveling is the fashion, and almost every one who has a little money and time to spare makes use of the daily increasing facilities to extend the range of his experience, it does not follow that many of these shall have the elements of knowledge, the equipoise and discipline of faculties needful either to appreciate the known, or detect the unknown. Neither is the power of picturesque, concise and suggestive recital of what has been seen and heard commensurate with that of writing grammatically and in a legible hand. Indeed the requisites for a good observer and narrator are many, and their combination rare. 1st. The person should be in good health. We do not want the partial or exaggerated statements that come from a morbid state in the traveler. Beside, without vigor and elasticity he cannot have the necessary enterprise and persistence in striking out new paths. 2d. He must have a generally cultivated mind and just at the right point; knowing enough of the views and suggestions of others to be on the look-out for all they were seeking for, yet not too much burthened with theories and opinions to receive its own proper benefit from the hour and the occasion. But if there must be an excess, it is better to be too little than too much informed as to what has already been seen and known. 3d. The traveler should have some knowledge of science, and some notion of the scope of the fine arts, or the peculiar influences and the most expressive features of life in each land and nation will be likely to escape him. 4th. He must have a poetic sensibility to what is special and individual both in nations and men.—Fineness and largeness in perception and sympathy are strangely rare among men, so that not one in ten thousand is able to see his fellows as they are.—The rest of the ten thousand look upon their fellowman

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only in relation to their own personalities or objects; those who aid these are good, those who do not, bad; and if you glean from their comments any portion of pure truth, it is with more difficulty and at more peril of mistake than it is worth. This poetic sensibility ought to be common to every one, and we perceive distinctly that, at some periods of history, it has been far more so than at present; but now minds highly endowed in many respects, are often so deficient in this, that no observation of theirs will ever reproduce the reality. In the world of writers we find very few, among our daily companions almost none, that look through the veils which are hung over the realities of life—few or almost none that hold “the golden key, which, turned so softly, turning with so sweet a sound, unlocks the hearts of men.” And you can see nothing of the institutions and manners of a nation, unless you can look into the heart from which they grew. 5th. He must have the power of generalizing without that exceeding love for it which leads to so rapid a scrutiny of the particulars that they do not abide in the memory, and we have only an inference, when we want the facts also. The mind of the traveler should be in some degree philosophical or he can take no large views; but it must be still more poetical in its keen sense for those things which are the symptoms of life. 6th. The traveler should have no special object in traveling, beyond the delight of new and various impressions, or, if he has one, it should only absorb enough of his time and attention to give earnestness and spring to the rest. All these are requisites for him who shall see enough as he moves about to give us a full and lively account of what he has seen, even if the power of expression correspond with that of sight, and how few possess so much as two or three of them! Among those we have, the best as to observation of particulars and lively expression are by women. They are generally ill prepared as regards previous culture, and their scope is necessarily narrower than that of men; but their tact and quickness help them a great deal. You can see their minds grow by what they feed on, when they travel. There are many books of travel by women that are, at least, entertaining, and contain some penetrating and just observations. There has, however, been none since Lady M. W. Montagun with as much talent, liveliness and preparation to observe in various ways as she had.

Montague [ Montagu

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A good article appeared lately in one of the English periodicals, headed by a long list of travels by women. It was easy to observe that the personality of the writer was the most obvious thing in each and all of these books, and that, even in the best of them, you traveled with the writer as a charming or amusing companion rather than as an accomplished or instructive guide. Among the men this is scarce less the case in fact, though it is less obvious, because they have a larger stock of outward objects to describe; yet, in a great proportion of them, we have more of the writer than his subject, whether the impression of personality relatesn to the religious enthusiasms of Chateaubriand and La Martine or the lost pantaloons and cups of tea of our countryman, Stephens.1 This extreme personality makes a book, as often it does a person, amusing at first, at the expense of permanent interest. Flights of emotion and vivacious sallies are easily appreciated. A mere intellectual narrative wins us slowly, but by a thousand subtle charms, and sows seeds in our memory. In such the ground is judiciously plowed and watered by the discoverer, who thus becomes the proprietor and makes us his tenants; in the others it is petulantly trampled over by a hasty steed whose object lies beyond. Such travelers rob the desert of its untrodden sanctity without making it blossom like the rose in return. Opposed to these extremely personal narratives, are bare Daguerreotypes of the external features of the scene, such as those of Kohl, or intelligent gossip about the same like those of William Howitt.2—These are not without their use in showing better lookers than they where to look for many things, thus saving their time and their attention from unnecessary wear and tear. Most of those which possess any kind of interest have become current in this country, but there are three or four which, in the absence of a complete or general merit, possess so much in several kinds that we think they ought to be universally known, and would hope by this notice to awaken the attention of their proper readers. On the hackneyed ground of Italy there are two that could not fail to be of

relate [ relates 1. François René Chateaubriand (1768–1848), author and statesman known as an early Romantic; Alphonse Marie Louis de Prat de Lamartine (1790–1869), French poet, statesman, and orator; John Lloyd Stephens (1805–52), lawyer, archaeologist, and travel writer. 2. Johann Georg Kohl (1808–78), German travel writer; William Howitt (1792–1879), English poet, editor, and travel writer, who often collaborated with his wife Mary Botham Howitt (1799–1888), English journalist, editor, translator, reformer, and writer of literature for children.

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great use to the student who wishes really to see the Italy of Italy, and to take, not Italo-American, but Italian views of the garden of the world. One is Forsyth’s Italy.3 This is a collection of fragments. If we remember right, the author was one of the unhappy Detenus, who had as much reason to curse Bonaparte, as the Italian and Austrian prisoners have to curse the polished and serene Metternich;4 and these fragments were written down from memory, under the depression of exile, loneliness and hope deferred. Still their tone of high culture, refined taste and harmonious thought makes them very valuable. No one who seeks mere amusement need try the book, but one who wanted aid in forming taste, or to be stimulated to a higher point of view and more accuracy and delicacy in observation than contents the crowd will find a preceptor and a friend in Forsyth. The book, we see, is for sale at Wiley & Putnam’s. Goëthe’s “Journey into Italy” and “Second Residence at Rome” have never, we believe, been translated into English, and it is high time they should be. The presence of Goëthe excites instinctive antagonism in this country. He is one of those whose office it is to stem the tide that hurries us on so fast; he vindicates the individual against the mass, seeks for help to the world in private culture rather than public measures, and would educate the people indirectly through the influence of the Beautiful, refining and elevating the whole nature, rather than through direct legal or moral stress in any one or two directions. Little things are to him of vast importance, as the means of reflection on the whole; the least fragments are gathered up with infinite care. Much diving is not grudged for a single pearl, and the driest technics of practice are made to yield a precious harvest of thought. It is this patience, this depth, this serenity consequent on a great scope of vision, and clear discernment of the infrangible links between cause and effect, that are so opposed to our hasty, overemphatic, superficial mode of action; and it is just because he possesses what we need to balance our own mode till a harmony be attained, that antagonism against him rises up at first. When conquered, we realize the truth of the saying that “hate is love disguised.” Those who are indignant at Goëthe for pursuing his studies in Natural History while the cannon of Jena reverberated on his ear, will consider these books trifling. Those of deeper discernment, who are willing that a great man

3. Remarks on Antiquities, Arts, and Letters During an Excursion in Italy, in the Years 1802 and 1803 by Joseph Forsyth (1763–1815) was published in 1818. 4. Prince Metternich of Austria (1773–1859), foreign minister and statesman.

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should do as Nature intended and his soul dictates, even if it be not according to their pet model, will bestow enough attention on these trifles to see their importance, and draw with Goëthe world-wide inferences from the miniature details of special studies. But as he studied Italy, so must his books be studied,—no reading in the usual style of this country will acquaint with their contents; they must give much or nothing, but that much is of a sort not attainable elsewhere. England is scarce less hackneyed, and still more difficult ground. And of all the tourists who have tried it, who is so entertaining as Prince Pückler Muskau, commonly spoken of as “the German Prince?”5 Here again is a traveler whose personality is always apparent, but a personality how large and rich! He combines the manners and culture of the highest class with a taste for whatever is bold, poignant, subtle or dramatic in the life of the lowest and of all classes, a graceful persiflage, half sad, yet sparkling, keen sagacity and great descriptive powers. Laborious tourists, armed with spectacles and umbrella, distrust the observations of the gentleman in the dress coat and orders, who hides his little note-book beneath an embroidered vest, but with the Prince leather and prunella fulfil their proper office of clothing the body without impeding its agility or disguising its proportions. The best poetic descriptions we have ever seen of pictures and buildings are by “the German Prince.” He repaints and rebuilds them; he has an extraordinary power of investing words with the forms and colors of his subject. At the same time he represents the human and poetic interest. His own peculiarities of taste are obvious; they are such as to delight us, even while we make allowance for them in estimating his judgment of what he sees so as to get at the average of truth. This book will not easily wear out, and ought to be published here again. Dr. Waagen’s book on England has been translated into English, but we think not many copies have found their way across the water.6 The book is called “Works of Art and Artists in England.”n Dr. Waagen was director of one of the great galleries of Art which are the pride of Germany, and had letters to many persons of royal and noble blood, so that the treasures now accumulat-

5. Hermann Ludwig Heinrich, Prince de Pückler-Muskau (1785–1871), described his travels in Britain in Briefe eines Verstorbenen (1830–32). 6. Gustav Friedrich Von Waagen (1794–1868), German art historian, published Art and Artists in England and Paris in 1837–39. England. [ England.”

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ing and oftentimes hidden in the palaces of England were opened to him, not only for a hasty survey, but for deliberate study. The spirit of England is exactly opposite to that which made Greece of old the home of genius. There the wealth of purse and mind was expended on public edifices and works open to the instruction and enjoyment of all men. It was shame to a citizen if he decorated his home too richly, or kept precious things for himself, rather than consecrated them to the honor of religion or the State. But it is the pride of an English noble to keep things to himself. Many have fine collections at country seats which they scarcely visit, and which are only now and then seen by the traveler in haste and under the surveillance of a domestic, to whom he gives a handsome douceur.7 We can imagine the great men to whom we owe these works of beauty, if now they look back on the scenes of their labors, eying with mournful and indignant looks the damp solitudes where lie entombed those forms which would, they thought, daily minister through ages to the joy and inspiration of a throng of disciples. O! it is a deep wrong thus selfishly to keep back from men what might so greatly benefit and bless them. In consequence of this state of things we, who have read almost all books of this kind that exist about England, had not any conception, till Doctor Waagen’s visit, of the vast riches of this kind hoarded in England; how far beyond all that Aladdin’s lamp disclosed, as far as the magical realities of genius outgo the dreams of fancy. Here in New-York pictures are ordered, they say, as a necessary part of fashionable furniture. The English noble furnishes his walls with souls, the trophies of Titans climbing the heavens and bringing away their brethren in captivity. Dr. Waagen’s book is merely a list of these treasures, but a list made out and marked as only a virtuoso of diamond-pure virtue could do it. In him we see concentrated, refined and arranged, the best knowledge, the last analyses of taste, so that each word he says tells, and all his plain remarks are keys to regions of thought. In him is a water-mark to show how high mind rises in one direction. Such men are the best gifts of imperial and regal munificence; which can neither create nor reward genius, but may foster critics and connoisseurs to the perfection demanded by the museum of ages that opens before us now. This book, again, must be studied. To the careless reader it will seem merely dull—a somewhat bare descriptive catalogue; for there is in it no superfluous

7. “douceur”: a gratuity.

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word, nor embroidery of any kind. But he who examines it with care as a series of hints from a most able instructor, will find himself abundantly rewarded for much trouble and time, and will prize the memory of that day above millions given to the chit-chat of common travelers. Forsyth’s seed-corn left where storms did not permit a noble harvest to be gathered in at the right time; Goëthe’s, a guide-book through the studies of artists to the contemplation of the Universe; the Prince Pückler Muskau’s, an entertainment splendid with gold and silver, prodigal in hock and venison, where the guest may indeed need a stimulus to the palled appetite, but where there is enough for him who does hunger, and the minstrel and the beggar are both admitted to sing their song and tell their tale. Dr. Waagen’s is, on its chosen subject, a simple and concise Word to the Wise, and it is—sufficient.  New-York Daily Tribune, 18 December 1845, p. 1; reprinted, New-York Weekly Tribune, 20 December 1845, p. 1.

[Review of Thomas Carlyle, Oliver Cromwell’s Letters and Speeches]


A long expectation is awarded at last by the appearance of this book. We cannot wonder that it should have been long, when Mr. Carlyle shows us what a world of ill-arranged and almost worthless materials he has had to wade through before achieving any possibility of order and harmony for his narrative. The method which he has chosen of letting the letters and speeches of Cromwell tell the story when possible, only himself doing what is needful to throw light where it is most wanted and fill up gaps, is an excellent one. Mr. Carlyle, indeed, is a most peremptory showman, and with each slide of his magic lantern informs us not only of what is necessary to enable us to understand it, but how we must look at it, under peril of being ranked as Imbeciles, Canting sceptics, disgusting Rose-water Philanthropists, and the like. And aware of his power of tacking a nickname or ludicrous picture to any one who refuses to obey, we might perhaps feel ourselves, if in his neighborhood, under such constraint and fear of deadly laughter, as to lose the benefit of having under our eye to form our judgment upon the same materials on which he formed his. But the ocean separates us, and the showman has his own audience of despised victims or scarce less despised pupils, and we need not fear to be handed down to posterity as “a little gentleman in a gray coat” “shrieking” unutterable “imbecilities” or with the like damnatory affixes, when we profess that, having read the book, and read the letters and speeches thus far, we cannot submit to the showman’s explanation of the lantern, but must more than ever stick to the old “Philistine” “Dilettant” “Imbecile” and what not view of the character of Cromwell. We all know that to Mr. Carlyle Greatness is well nigh synonymous with Virtue, and that he has shown himself a firm believer in Providence by receiving the men of Destiny as always entitled to reverence. Sometimes a great success has followed the portraits painted by him in the light of such faith, as with 306

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Mahomet, for instance.1 The natural autocrat is his delight, and in such pictures as that of the Monk in “Past and Present,” where the genius of artist and subject coincide, the result is no less delightful for us. But Mr. Carlyle reminds us of the man in a certain parish who had always looked up to one of its squires as a secure and blameless idol, and one day in church when the minister asked “all who felt in concern for their souls to rise,” looked to the idol and seeing him retain his seat (asleep perchance!) sat still also. One of his friends asking him afterward how he could refuse to answer such an appeal, he replied, “he thought it safest to stay with the Squire.” Mr. Carlyle’s Squires are all Heaven’s Justices of Peace or War (usually the latter); they are beings of true energy and genius, and so far as he describes them, “genuine men.” But in doubtful cases, where the doubt is between them and principles, he will insist that the men must be in the right. On such occasions he favors us with such doctrine as the following, which we confess we had the weakness to read with “sibylline execration” and extreme disgust. Speaking of Cromwell’s course in Ireland: “Oliver’s proceedings here have been the theme of much loud criticism, sibylline execration; into which it is not our plan to enter at present. We shall give these Fifteen Letters of his in a mass, and without any commentary whatever. To those who think that a land overrun with Sanguinary Quacks can be healed by sprinkling it with rose-water, these Letters must be very horrible. Terrible Surgery this; but is it Surgery and Judgment, or atrocious Murder merely? This is a question which should be asked: and answered. Oliver Cromwell did believe in God’s judgments; and did not believe in the rosewater plan of Surgery;—which, in fact, is this Editor’s case too! Every idle lie and piece of empty bluster this Editor hears, he too, like Oliver, has to shudder at it; has to think: “Thou, idle bluster, not true, thou also art shutting men’s minds against the God’s Fact; thou wilt issue as a cleft crown to some poor man some day; thou also wilt have to take shelter in bogs whither cavalry cannot follow!”—But in Oliver’s time, as I say, there was still belief in the Judgments of God; in Oliver’s time, there was yet no distracted jargon of ‘abolishing Capital Punishments,’ of Jean-Jacques Philanthropy, and universal rose-water in this world still so full of sin. Men’s notion was, not for abolishing punishments, but for making laws just: God the Maker’s Laws, they considered, had not yet got the Punishment abolished from them! Men had a notion that the difference between Good and Evil was still considerable;—

1. Mahomet or Mohammed (570–632), founder of the Muslim religion.

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equal to the difference between Heaven and Hell. It was a true notion. Which all men yet saw, and felt, in all fibres of their existence, to be true. Only in late decadent generations, fast hastening toward radical change or final perdition, can such indiscriminate mashing-up of Good and Evil into one universal patent-treacle, and most unmedical electuary, of Rousseau Sentimentalism, universal Pardon and Benevolence with dinner and drink and one cheer more, take effect in our Earth. Electuary very poisonous, as sweet as it is, and very nauseous; of which Oliver, happier than we, had not yet heard the slightest intimation even in dreams. The reader of these Letters, who has swept all that very ominous twaddle out of his head and heart, and still looks with a recognizing eye on the ways of the Supreme Powers with this world, will find here, in the rude Practical state, a Phenomenon which he will account noteworthy. An armed Soldier, solemnly conscious to himself that he is the Soldier of God the Just—a consciousness which it well beseems all soldiers and all men to have always;— armed Soldier, terrible as Death, relentless as Doom; doing God’s Judgments on the Enemies of God! It is a Phenomenon not of joyful nature; no, but of awful, to be looked at with pious terror and awe. Not a Phenomenon which you are called to recognize with bright smiles, and fall in love with at sight:— thou, art thou worthy to love such a thing; worthy to do other than hate it, and shriek over it? Darest thou wed the Heaven’s lightning, then; and say to it, Godlike One? Is thy own life beautiful and terrible to thee; steeped in the eternal depths, in the eternal splendors? Thou also, art thou in thy sphere the minister of God’s Justice; feeling that thou art here to do it, and to see it done, at thy soul’s peril? Thou wilt then judge Oliver with increasing clearness; otherwise, with increasing darkness, misjudge him. In fact, Oliver’s dialect is rude and obsolete; the phrases of Oliver, to him solemn on the perilous battle-field as voices of God, have become to us most mournful when spouted as frothy cant from Exeter Hall. The reader has, all along, to make steady allowance for that. And on the whole, clear recognition will be difficult for him. To a poor slumberous Canting Age, mumbling to itself everywhere, Peace, Peace, where there is no Peace—such a Phenomenon as Oliver, in Ireland or elsewhere, is not the most recognizable in all its meanings. But it waits there for recognition: and can wait an age or two. The Memory of Oliver Cromwell, as I count, has a good many centuries in it yet; and Ages of very varied complexion to apply to, before all end. My reader, in this passage and others, shall make of it what he can. But certainly, at lowest, here is a set of Military Despatches of the most unexampled nature! Most rough, unkempt; shaggy as the Numidian lion. A style rugged as crags; coarse, drossy: yet with a meaning in it, an energy, a depth; pouring on like a fire-torrent; perennial fire of it visible athwart all drosses and

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defacements; not uninteresting to see! This man has come into distracted Ireland with a God’s Truth in the heart of him, though an unexpected one; the first such man they have seen for a great while indeed. He carries Acts of Parliament, Laws of Earth and Heaven, in one hand; drawn sword in the other. He addresses the bewildered Irish populations, the black ravening coil of sanguinary blustering individuals at Tredah and elsewhere: “Sanguinary blustering individuals, whose word is grown worthless as the barking of dogs; whose very thought is false, representing no fact but the contrary of fact—behold, I am come to speak and to do the truth among you. Here are acts of Parliament, methods of regulation and veracity, emblems the nearest we poor Puritans could make them of God’s Law-Book, to which it is and shall be our perpetual effort to make them correspond nearer and nearer. Obey them, help us to perfect them, be peaceable and true under them, it shall be well with you. Refuse to obey them, I will not let you continue living! As articulate speaking veracious orderly men, not as a blustering murderous kennel of dogs run rabid, shall you continue in this Earth. Choose!”—They chose to disbelieve him; could not understand that he, more than the others, meant any truth or justice to them. They rejected his summons and terms at Tredah: he stormed the place; and according to his promise, put every man of the Garrison to death. His own soldiers are forbidden to plunder, by paper Proclamation; and in ropes of authentic hemp they are hanged when they do it. To Wexford Garrison the like terms as at Tredah; and, failing these, the like storm. Here is a man whose word represents a thing! Not bluster this, and false jargon scattering itself to the winds; what this man speaks out of him comes to pass as a fact; speech with this man is accurately prophetic of deed. This is the first King’s face poor Ireland ever saw; the first Friend’s face, little as it recognizes him—poor Ireland!”n

The whole doctrine of which glowing morceau of eloquence lies in this trait of the revered Oliver. Not bluster this, and false jargon scattering itself to the winds; what this man speaks out of him comes to pass as a fact; speech with this man is accurately prophetic of deed.n Yes! Cromwell had force and sagacity to get that done which he had resolved to get done, and this is the whole truth about your admiration, Mr. Carlyle. Accordingly at Drogheda quoth Cromwell: “I believe we put to sword the whole number of the defendants.” * * “Indeed, being in the heat of action, I forbade them to spare any that were in arms in

Ireland! [ Ireland!” deed.” [ deed.

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the Town, and I think that night they put to the sword about 2,000 men, divers of the officers and soldiers being fled over the Bridge into the other part of the Town; and where about 100 of them possessed St. Peter’s Church Steeple, &c. These, being summoned to yield to mercy, refused. Whereupon I ordered the Steeple of St. Peter’s Church to be fired, when one of them was heard to say in the midst of the flames: God confound me; I burn, I burn.” “I am persuaded that this is a righteous judgment of God upon these barbarous wretches who have imbrued their hands in so much innocent blood; and that it will tend to prevent the effusion of blood for the future. Which are the satisfactory grounds to such actions, which otherwise cannot but work remorse and regret.” * * “This hath been an exceeding great mercy.”

Certainly one not of the rose-water or treacle kind. Mr. Carlyle says such measures “cut to the heart of the war” and brought peace. Was there then no crying of Peace, Peace, when there was no peace! Ask the Irish peasantry why they mark that period with the solemn phrase of Cromwell’s Curse. For ourselves, though aware of the mistakes and errors in particulars that must occur, we believe the summing up of a man’s character in the verdict of his time is likely to be correct. We believe that Cromwell was “a curse” as much as a blessing in these acts of his. We believe him ruthless, ambitious, half a hypocrite, (few men have courage or want of soul to bear being wholly so,) and we think it is rather too bad to rave at us in our time for canting, and then hold up the Prince of Canters for our reverence in his “dimly seen nobleness.” Dimly, indeed, despite the rhetoric and satire of Mr. Carlyle! In previous instances where Mr. Carlyle has acted out his predeterminations as to the study of a character, we have seen circumstances favor him at least sometimes. There were fine moments, fine lights upon the character that he would seize upon. But here the facts look just as they always have. He indeed ascertains that the Cromwell family were not mere brewers or plebeians, but “substantial gentry,” and that there is not the least ground for the common notion that Cromwell lived at any time a dissolute life. But with the exception of these emendations, still the history looks as of old. We see a man of strong and wise mind, educated by the pressure of great occasions to station of command; we see him wearing the religious garb which was the custom of the times, and even preaching to himself as well as to others—for well can we imagine that his courage and his pride would have fallen without keeping up the illusion; but we never see Heaven answering his invocations in any way that can interfere with the rise of his fortunes or the accomplishment of his plans. To ourselves the tone of these religious holdings-forth is of stuff suffi-

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ciently expressive; they all ring hollow; we have never read any thing of the sort more repulsive to us than the letter to Mr. Hammond, which Mr. Carlyle thinks such a noble contrast to the impiety of the present time. Indeed, we cannot recover from our surprise at Mr. Carlyle’s liking these letters; his predetermination must have been strong indeed. Again, we see Cromwell ruling with the strong arm, and carrying the spirit of monarchy to an excess which no Stuart could surpass. Cromwell, indeed, is wise, and the king he had punished with death is foolish; Charles is faithless, and Cromwell crafty; we see no other difference. Cromwell does not, in power, abide by the principles that led him to it; and we can’t help—so rose-water imbecile are we!—admiring those who do: one Lafayette, for instance—poor chevalier so despised by Mr. Carlyle— for abiding by his principles, though impracticable, more than Louis Phillippe, who laid them aside so far as necessary “to secure peace to the kingdom;” and to us it looks black for one who kills kings to grow to be more kingly than a king.2 The death of Charles I. was a boon to the world, for it marked the dawn of a new era, when Kings, in common with other men, are to be held accountable by God and Mankind for what they do.3 Many who took part in this act which did require a courage and faith almost unparalleled, were, no doubt, moved by the noblest sense of duty. We doubt not this had its share in the bosom councils of Cromwell. But we cannot sympathize with the apparent satisfaction of Mr. Carlyle in seeing him engaged, two days after the execution, in marriage treaty for his son. This seems more ruthlessness than calmness. One who devoted so many days to public fasting and prayer on less occasions, might well make solemn pause on this. Mr. Carlyle thinks much of some pleasant domestic letters from Cromwell. What brigand, what pirate fails to have some such soft and light feelings? In short we have not time to say all we think, but we stick to the received notions of Old Noll, with his great red nose, hard heart, long head and crafty ambiguities.4 Nobody ever doubted his great abilities and force of will, neither doubt we that he was made an “Instrument” just as he professeth. But as to looking on him through Mr. Carlyle’s glasses we shall not be sneered or

2. The Marquise de Lafayette (1757–1834), a French hero of the American Revolution; Louis Philippe (1773–1850), King of France (1830–48). 3. Charles I (1600–49), King of England (1625–1649), engaged Parliament in a Civil War (1639–46), which resulted in his being executed. 4. “Old Noll” is Oliver Cromwell.

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stormed into it, unless he has other proof to offer than is shown yet. And we resent the violence he offers both to our prejudices and our perceptions. If he has become interested in Oliver or any other pet hyena, by studying his habits, is that any reason we should admit him to our Pantheon? No! our imbecility shall keep fast the door against anything short of proofs that in the Hyena a God is incarnated. Mr. Carlyle declares that he sees it, but we really cannot. The Hyena is surely not out of the kingdom of God, but as to being the finest emblem of what is divine—no! no! In short, we can sympathize with the words of John Maidston:5 “He (Cromwell) was a strong man in the dark perils of war; in the high places of the field, hope shone in him like a pillar of fire, when it had gone out in the others.”

A poetic and sufficient account of the secret of his power. But Mr. Carlyle goes on to gild the refined gold thus: “A genuine King among men, Mr. Maidstone? The divinest sight this world sees, when it is privileged to see such, and not be sickened with the unholy apery of such.”

We know you do with all your soul love kings and heroes, Mr. Carlyle, but we are not sure you would always know the Sauls from the Davids.6 We fear, if you had the disposal of the holy oil, you would be tempted to pour it on the head of him who is taller by the head than all his brethren, without sufficient care as to purity of inward testimony. Such is the impression left on us by the book thus far as to the view of its hero, but as to what such a history should be, and especially how that of Cromwell is to be treated, the reader will like to see what Mr. Carlyle himself says: “Histories are as perfect as the Historian is wise, and is gifted with an eye and a soul! For the leafy blossoming Present Time springs from the whole Past, remembered and unrememberable, so confusedly as we say:—and truly the Art of History, the grand difference between a Dryasdust and a sacred Poet, is

5. John Maidston was Cromwell’s servant and valet. 6. Saul, the first king of the Hebrews, was jealous of his musician David, and David’s friendship with Saul’s son.

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very much even this:—To distinguish well what does still reach to the surface, and is alive and frondent for us; and what reaches no longer to the surface, but moulders safe underground, never to send forth leaves or fruit for mankind any more: of the former we shall rejoice to hear; to hear of the latter will be an affliction to us; of the latter only Pedants and Dullards, and disastrous malefactors to the world, will find good to speak. By wise memory and by wise oblivion: it lies all there!—Without oblivion, there is no remembrance possible. When both oblivion and memory are wise, when the general soul of man is clear, melodious, true, there may come a modern Iliad as memorial of the Past: when both are foolish, and the general soul is overclouded with confusions, with unveracities and discords, there is a ‘Rushworthian chaos.’ ******* “Ours is a very small enterprise, but seemingly a useful one; preparatory perhaps to greater and more useful, on this same matter:—The collecting of the Letters and Speeches of Oliver Cromwell, and presenting them in natural sequence, with the still possible elucidation, to ingenuous readers. This is a thing that can be done; and after some reflection, it has appeared worth doing. No great thing: one other dull Book added to the thousand, dull every one of them, which have been issued on this subject! But situated as we are, new Dulness is unhappily inevitable; readers do not reascend out of deep confusions without some trouble as they climb. “These authentic utterances of the man Oliver himself—I have gathered them from far and near; fished them up from the foul Lethean quagmires where they lay buried; I have washed, or endeavored to wash, them clean from foreign stupidities (such a job of buck-washing as I do not long to repeat); and the world shall now see them in their own shape. Working for long years in those unspeakable Historic Provinces, of which the reader has already had account, it becomes more and more apparent to one, That this man Oliver Cromwell was, as the popular fancy represents him, the soul of the Puritan Revolt, without whom it had never been a revolt transcendently memorable, and an Epoch in the World’s History; that in fact he, more than is common in such cases, does deserve to give his name to the Period in question, and have the Puritan Revolt considered as a Cromwelliad,n which issue is already very visible for it. And then farther, altogether contrary to the popular fancy, it becomes apparent that this Oliver was not a man of falsehoods, but a man of truths; whose words do carry a meaning with them, and above all others of that time, are worth considering. His words,—and still more his silences, and unconscious instincts, when you have spelt and lovingly deciphered these also

Cromwelliad. [Cromwelliad,

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out of his words,—will in several ways reward the study of an earnest man. An earnest man, I apprehend, may gather from these wordsn of Oliver’s, were there even no other evidence, that the character of Oliver and of the Affairs he worked in is much the reverse of that mad jumble of ‘hypocrisies,’ &c&c, which at present passes current as such.”

For the rest this book is of course entertaining, witty, dramatic, picturesque, all traits that are piquant, many that have profound interest are brought out better than new. The “letters and speeches” are put into readable state and this alone is a great benefit. They are a relief after Mr. Carlyle’s high-seasoned writing, and this again is a relief after their long-winded dimnesses. Most of the heroic anecdotes of the time had been used up before, but they lose nothing in the hands of Carlyle, and pictures of the scenes, such as of Naseby fight, for instance, it was left to him to give. We have passed over the hackneyed ground attended by a torch-bearer, who has given a new animation to the procession of events, and cast a ruddy glow on many a striking physiognomy. That any truth of high value has been brought to light, we do not perceive, certainly nothing has been added to our own sense of the greatness of the times, nor any new view presented that we can adopt as to the position and character of the agents. We close with the only one of Cromwell’s letters that we really like. Here his religious words and his temper seem quite sincere, for the occasion was one that touched him really and nearly: “To my loving Brother, Colonel Valentine Walton: These. “Leaguer before York, 5th July, 1644. “Dear Sir:—It’s our duty to sympathize in all mercies; and to praise the Lord together in chastisements or trials, so that we may sorrow together. “Truly England and the Church of God hath had a great favor from the Lord, in the great Victory given unto us, such as the like never was since this War began. It had all the evidence of an absolute Victory obtained by the Lord’s blessing upon the Godly Party principally. We never charged but we routed the enemy. The Left Wing, which I commanded, being our own horse, saving a few Scots in our rear, beat all the Prince’s horse.—God made them as stubble to our swords. We

word’s [ words

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charged their regiments of foot with our horse, and routed all we charged. The particulars I cannot relate now; but I believe, of twenty thousand the Prince hath not four thousand left. Give glory, all the glory, to God.— “Sir, God hath taken away your eldest Son by a cannon-shot. It brake his leg. We were necessitated to have it cut off, whereof he died. “Sir, you know my own trials this way:* but the Lord supported me with this, That the Lord took him into the happiness we all pant for and live for. There is your precious child, full of glory, never to know sin or sorrow any more. He was a gallant young man, exceedingly gracious. God give you His comfort. Before his death he was so full of comfort that to Frank Russel and myself he could not express it, ‘It was so great above his pain.’ This he said to us. Indeed it was admirable. A little after, he said, One thing lay upon his spirit. I asked him, What that was? he told me it was, That God had not suffered him to be any more the executioner of His enemies. At his fall, his horse being killed with the bullet, and as I am informed, three horses more, I am told he bid them, Open to the right and left, that he might see the rogues run. Truly he was exceedingly beloved in the Army, of all that knew him.—But few knew him; for he was a precious young man, fit for God. You have cause to bless the Lord. He is a glorious Saint in Heaven; wherein you ought exceedingly to rejoice. Let this drink up your sorrow; seeing these are not feigned words to comfort you, but the thing is so real and undoubted a truth. You may do all things by the strength of Christ. Seek that, and you shall easily bear your trial. Let this public mercy to the Church of God make you to forget your private sorrow. The Lord be your strength: so prays “Your truly faithful and loving Brother. “OLIVER CROMWELL.”

And add this noble passage in which Carlyle speaks of the morbid affection of Cromwell’s mind: “In those years it must be that Dr. Simcott, Physician in Huntingdon, had to do with Oliver’s hypochondriac maladies. He told Sir Philip Warwick, unluckily specifying no date, or none that has survived, ‘he had often been sent for at midnight;’ Mr. Cromwell for many years was very ‘splenetic’

* I conclude the poor Boy Oliver has already fallen in these Wars,—none of us knows where, though his Father well knew. [Carlyle’s note]

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(spleen-struck), often thought he was just about to die, and also ‘had fancies about the Town Cross.’† Brief intimation; of which the reflective reader may make a great deal. Samuel Johnson too had hypochondrias; all great souls are apt to have,—and to be in thick darkness generally, till the eternal ways and the celestial guiding-stars disclose themselves, and the vague Abyss of Life knit itself up into Firmaments for them. Temptations in the wilderness, Choices of Hercules, and the like, in succinct or loose form, are appointed for every man that will assert a soul in himself and be a man. Let Oliver take comfort in his dark sorrows and melancholies. The quantity of sorrow he has, does it not mean withal the quantity of sympathy he has, the quantity of faculty and victory he shall yet have? ‘Our sorrow is the inverted image of our nobleness.’ The depth of our despair measures what capability, and hight of claim we have, to hope. Black smoke as of Tophet filling all your universe, it can yet by true heart-energy become flame, and brilliancy of Heaven. Courage!”

Were the flame but a pure as well as a bright flame!! Sometimes we know the black phantoms change to white angel forms; the vulture is metamorphosed into a dove. Was it so in this instance? Unlike Mr. Carlyle, we are willing to let each reader judge for himself, but perhaps we should not be so generous if we had studied ourselves sick in wading through all that mass of papers, and had nothing to defend us against the bitterness of biliousness except a growing enthusiasm about our hero.  Review of Thomas Carlyle, Oliver Cromwell’s Letters and Speeches, 2 vols. (New York: Wiley and Putnam, 1845). New-York Daily Tribune, 19 December 1845, p. 1; reprinted, New-York Weekly Tribune, 27 December 1845, p. 6. Title supplied. Oliver Cromwell (1599–1658), English revolutionary who became Lord Protector of the Realm.

†Sir

Fulke Warwick’s Memoirs (London, 1701), p, 249. [Carlyle’s note]

[Review of The Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley]


We are very glad to see this handsome copy of Shelley ready for those who have long been vainly inquiring at all the book-stores for such an one. In Europe the fame of Shelley has risen superior to the clouds that darkened its earlier days, hiding this true image from his fellow men,—and from his own sad eyes oftentimes the common light of day. As a thinker, men have learnt to pardon what they consider errors in opinion for the sake of singular nobleness, purity and love in his main tendency or spirit. As a poet, the many faults of his works having been acknowledged, there is room and place to admire his far more numerous exquisite beauties. The heart of the man few, who have hearts of their own, refuse to reverence, and many, even of devoutest Christians would not refuse the book which contains Queen Mab as a Christmas gift.—For it has been recognized that the founder of the Christian Church would have suffered one to come unto him, who was in faith and love so truly what he sought in a disciple, without regard to the form his doctrine assumed. The qualities of his poetry have often been analyzed, and the severer critics, impatient of his exuberance, or unable to use their accustomed spectacles in the golden mist that broods over all he has done, deny him high honors, but the soul of aspiring youth, untrammeled by the canons of taste, and untamed by scholarly discipline, swells into rapture at his lyric sweetness, finds ambrosial refreshment from his plenteous fancies, catches fire at his daring thought, and melts into boundless weeping at his tender sadness,—the sadness of a soul betrothed to an Ideal unattainable in this present sphere. For ourselves we dispute not with the doctrinaires or the critics. We cannot speak dispassionately of an influence that has been so dear to us. Nearer than the nearest companions of life actual has Shelley been to us. Many other great ones have shone upon us, and all who ever did so shine are still resplendent in our firmament, for our mental life has not been broken and contradictory, but thus far we “see what we foresaw.” But Shelley seemed to us an incarnation of 317

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what was sought in the sympathies and desires of instinctive life, a light of dawn, and a foreshadowing of the weather of this day. When still in childish years fell in our way the “Hymn to Intellectual Beauty.” In a green meadow, skirted by a rich wood, watered by a lovely rivulet, made picturesque by a mill a little father down, sat a party of young persons gayer than and almost as inventive as those that told the tales recorded by Boccaccio. They were passing a few days in a scene of deep seclusion there uncared for by tutor or duenna, and with no bar of routine to check the pranks of their gay, childish fancies. Every day they assumed parts which through the waking hours must be acted out. One day it was the characters in one of Richardson’s novels, and most solemnly we “my deared” each other with richest brocade of affability, and interchanged in long stiff phrase our sentimental secrets and prim opinions.1 But to-day we sought relief in personating birds or insects, and now it was the Libellula who, tired of wild flitting and darting, rested on the grassy bank and read aloud the “Hymn to Intellectual Beauty” torn by chance from the leaf of a foreign magazine.2 It was one of these chances which we ever remember as the interposition of some good angel in our fate. Solemn tears marked the change of mood in our little party, and with the words “Have I not kept my vow?”3

began a chain of thoughts, whose golden links still bind the years together. Two or three years after, it was frosty Christmas as now;—the trees cracked with their splendid burden of ice, the old wooden country house was banked up with high drifts of the beautiful snow, when the Libellula became the owner of Shelley’s poems. It was her Christmas box, and for three days and three nights she ceased not to extract its sweets, and how familiar still in memory every object seen from the chair in which she sat enchanted there three days, memorable to her as those of July to the French nation.4 The fire, the position of the lamp, the variegated shadows of that alcoved room, the

1. Samuel Richardson (1689–1761), English printer and novelist, published Pamela in 1740, Clarissa in 1747–48, and Sir Charles Grandison in 1753–54. 2. Libellula: dragonfly; “Hymn to Intellectual Beauty” was first published by Shelley in the 19 January 1817 Examiner. 3. Shelley, “Hymn to Intellectual Beauty,” l. 62. 4. Charles X (1757–1836) of France was deposed during a revolution on 27–29 July 1830, after which he was replaced by Louis Philippe.

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stars winter bright, up to which she looked with such a feeling of congeniality from the contemplation of this starry soul,—O could but a De Quinceyn describe those days in which the bridge between the real and ideal rose unbroken!5 He would not do it, though, as Suspiria de Profundis,6 but as sighs of joy upon the mountain hight. The poems we read then are what every one still reads, the “Julian and Maddalo” with its profound revelations of the inward life,—“Alastor,” the soul sweeping like a breeze through nature,—and some of the minor poems, “Queen Mab,” the “Prometheus” and other more formal works we have not been able to read much. It was not when he tried to express opinions which the wrongs of the world had put into his head, but when he abandoned himself to the feelings which nature had implanted in his own breast that Shelley seemed to us so full of inspiration, and it is so still. In reply to all that can be urged against him by people whom we do not wish to abuse, for surely “they know not what they do,”7 we are wont simply to refer to the fact that he was the only man who redeemed the human race from suspicion to the embittered soul of Byron. “Why,” said Byron, “he is a man who would willingly die for others. I am sure of it.” Yes! balance that against all the ill you can think of him, that he was a man able to live wretched for the sake of speaking sincerely what he supposed to be truth, willing to die for the good of his fellows. Mr. Foster has spoken well of him as a man:8 “First, of the man, Shelley—of his sad experience of life—his fierce and bitter struggles with the storm which his own electric nature gathered about him— his weary battle, single handed, with a world in arms—there is little to be said in words; but that little is pregnant with deep meaning: it is the memoir of a hero and a prophet—a hero without outward and visible deeds of heroism—a prophet ‘without honor in his own country,’ or earnest audience any where on earth—who poured out the inspirations with which his soul was fraught, whether men would listen or no, and because he was impelled by a divine instinct, and could not forbear.

De Quincy [ De Quincey 5. Thomas De Quincey (1785–1859), English essayist. 6. Suspiria de Profundis (Sighs from the Depths) was published in 1845 by De Quincey. 7. “Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do” (Luke 23:34.8). 8. George G. Foster edited The Poetical Works of Percy Bssyhe Shelley in 1845 and contributed a twenty-four page biographical preface.

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“Of Shelley’s personal character, it is enough to say that it was wholly pervaded by the same unbounded and unquestioning love for his fellow men— the same holy and fervid hope in their ultimate virtue and happiness—the same scorn of baseness and hatred of oppression—which beam forth in all his writings with a pure and constant light. The theory which he wrote was the practice which his whole life exemplified. Noble, kind, generous, passionate, tender, with a courage greater than the courage of the chief of warriors, for it could endure—these were the qualities in which his life was embalmed.”

Believing the poems are not generally known as it has so long been difficult to obtain copies, we make more words of ours superfluous by copious extracts. Take first what came to us first, and is in truth the Credo of the poet:9 The following is happily expressive of his mild sweet grace:10 Here is one of his Æeolian Melodies:11 The Hymns to Apollo and to Pan are among the finest specimens of his genius, and form a beautiful contrast one to the other:12 The opening of “Lines written among the Euganean Hills” and “Stanzas” p. 635 are among the profoundest as expressive of his mental struggles, and the latter is almost overpowering from the tearful depths it discloses. The sufferings of Shelley were those of a body in which the brain had been prematurely developed, a seeming gain of life always atoned for by a dreadful price of frequent dejection and morbid suffering which slower and more healthy natures cannot understand, of a heart overflowing with love, persecuted by hate of those it longed to serve, of a soul whose sight outwent that of its Age, and was therefore continually grieved by the shortcomings of others and its own. Still,—after life’s fitful fever, he surely sleeps not, but transplanted to some congenial sphere grows and blooms free from canker, blight or frost. Even in his saddest hour he was sure of it. The crane o’er seas and forests seeks her home; No bird so wild but has its quiet nest, When it no more would roam;

9. “Hymn to Intellectual Beauty” is quoted in full. 10. “Lines to a Critic” is quoted in full. 11. “The Past” is quoted in full. 12. “Hymn of Apollo” and “Hymn of Pan” are quoted in full. After the poems, there is an asterisk, keyed to this note by Fuller: “This and the former poem were written at the request of a friend, to be inserted in a drama on the subject of Midas. Apollo and Pan contended before Timolus for the prize in music.”

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The sleepless billows on the ocean’s breast Burst like a bursting heart, and die in peace, And thus at length find rest, Doubtless there is a place of peace,—13

Such an one thou didst find, and now when thy life and its strivings lie before the world at sufficient distance for both motive and result to be seen, hard must be the heart indeed and Pharisaically seared the conscience of him who will dare to cast a stone at the monument of Shelley. As to intellectual appreciation of the poems, what is said by Shelley himself of the way of regarding the imaginary author of one of them may apply to the whole. “He had fitted up the ruins of an old building, where it was his hope to have realized a scheme of life suited perhaps to that happier and better world of which he is an inhabitant, but hardly practicable in this. His life was singular—less on account of the romantic vicissitudes which diversified it than the ideal tinge which it received from his own character and feelings. The present poem, like the “Vita Nuova” of Dante, is sufficiently intelligible to a certain class of readers without a matter-of-fact history of the circumstances to which it relates; and to a certain other class it must ever remain incomprehensible from a defect of a common organ of perception for the ideas of which it treats. Not but that gran vergogna sarebbe a colui, che rimasse cosa sotto veste di figura, o di colore rettorico: e domandato non sapesse denudare le sue parole da cotal veste, in guisa che avessero verace intendimento.” (Shame would it be indeed to the writer, if he took shelter under the garb of figures or the colors of rhetoric, and could not, on fitting occasion, lay bare the true meaning of his words.)14

No such shame rests on Shelley. The web of his imagination was sometimes spun out to such delicate and filmy tissue that common hands could not touch without tearing it, but its lightest thread is vital with the life-blood of immortal Ideas. On his monument might be placed this inscription, from his own verse: High, spirit-wingéd heart! who didst for ever Beat thine unfeeling bars with vain endeavor,

13. “To Edward Williams,” stanza 6. 14. “Epipsychidion.”

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Till those bright plumes of thought, in which arrayed, It over-soared this low and worldly shade, Lay shattered; and thy panting, wounded breast Stained with dear blood its unmaternal nest! We weep vain tears: blood would less bitter be, Yet poured forth gladlier, could it profit thee.15

 Review of The Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley . . . with Some Remarks on the Poetical Faculty and its Influence on Human Destiny; Embracing a Biographical and Critical Notice, by G. G. Foster (New York: J .S. Redfield, 1845). New-York Daily Tribune, 27 December 1845, p. 1; reprinted, New-York Weekly Tribune, 3 January 1846, p. 1. Title supplied. Fuller’s copy of this book, which made its way into Emerson’s library, is at the Houghton Library of Harvard University.

15. “Epipsychidion,” ll. 13–20.

1st January, 1846


The New Year dawns, and its appearance is hailed by a flutter of festivity. Men and women run from house to house, scattering gifts, smiles, and congratulations. It is a custom that seems borrowed from a better day, unless indeed it be a prophecy that such must come. For why so much congratulation? A year has passed; we are nearer by a twelvemonth to the term of this earthly probation. It is a solemn thought, and though the consciousness of having hallowed the days by our best endeavor, and of having much occasion to look to the Ruling Power of all with grateful benediction, must, in cases where such feelings are unalloyed, bring joy, one would think it must even then be a grave joy, and one that would disincline to this loud gayety in welcoming a new year; another year,—in which we may, indeed, strive forward in a good spirit, and find our strivings blest, but must surely expect trials, temptations and disappointments from without, frailty, short coming or convulsion in ourselves. If it be appropriate to a reflective habit of mind to ask with each night-fall the Pythagorean questions, how much more so at the close of the year! What hast thou done that’s worth the doing? And what pursued that’s worth pursuing? What sought thou knewest thou shouldst shun? What done thou shouldst have left undone?

The intellectual man will also ask, What new truths have been opened to me, or what facts presented that will lead to the discovery of truths?—The poet and the lover—What new forms of beauty have been presented for my delight, and as memorable illustrations of the Divine presence,—unceasing, but oftentimes unfelt by our sluggish natures. Are there many men who fail sometimes to ask themselves questions to this depth? who do not care to know whether they have done right or forborne to

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do wrong; whether their spirits have been enlightened by Truth or kindled by Beauty? Yes! strange to say, there are many who, despite the natural aspirations of the soul and the revelations showered upon the world, think only whether they have made money, whether the world thinks more highly of them than it did in bygone years—whether wife and children have been in good bodily health, and what those who call to pay their respects and drink the New Year’s coffee, will think of their carpets, new also. How often is it that the rich man thinks even of that proposed by Dickens as the noblest employment of the season, making the poor happy in the way he likes best for himself, by distribution of turkey and plum pudding. Some, indeed, adorn the day with much grace, though we doubt whether it be oftenest those who could each, with ease, make that one day a glimpse of comfort to a thousand who pass the other winter days in shivering poverty. But some such there are who go about to the dark and frosty dwellings, giving the “mite” where and when it is most needed. We knew a lady, all whose riches consisted in her good head and two hands, widow of an eminent lawyer, but keeping boarders for a livelihood, engaged in that hardest of occupations with her house full and hands full, she yet found time to make and bake for New Year’s day a hundred pies—and not the pie from which being eatenn issued the famous four-and-twenty blackbirds gave more cause for merriment or was a fitter “dish to set before the King.” God bless his Majesty, the good King, who on such a day cares for the least as much as the greatest, and like Henry IV. proposes it as a worthy aim of his endeavor that “every poor man shall have his chicken in the pot.”1 This does not seem, on superficial survey, such a wonderful boon to crave for creatures made in God’s own likeness, yet it is one that no King could ever yet bestow on his subjects, if we except the King of Cockaigne.2 Our maker of the hundred pies is the best prophet we have seen as yet of such a blissful state. But mostly to him who hath is given in material as well as in spiritual things, and we fear the pleasures of this day are arranged almost wholly in reference to the beautiful, the healthy, the wealthy, the witty, and that but few banquets are prepared for the halt, the blind, and the sorrowful. But where they are, of a surety water turns to wine by inevitable Christ-power; no aid of

eat [ eaten 1. Henry IV (1367–1413) became King of England in 1399. 2. Cockaigne, an imaginary country where idleness prevails in luxurious surroundings.

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miracle need be invoked. As for thoughts which should make an epoch of the period, we suppose the number of those to be in about the same proportion to the number of minds capable of thought that the pearls now existent bear to the oysters still subsistent. Can we make pearls from our oyster-bed? At least, let us open some of the shells and try. Dear Public and Friends! we wish you a happy New Year. We trust that the year past has given earnest of such an one in so far as having taught you somewhat how to deserve and to appreciate it. For ourselves the months have brought much, though, perhaps, superficial instruction. Its scope has been chiefly Love and Hope for all human beings, and among others for thyself. We have seen many fair poesies of human life, in which, however, the tragic thread has not been wanting. We have seen the exquisite developments of childhood and sunned the heart in its smiles. But also we have seen the evil star looming up that threatened cloud and wreck to its future years. We have seen beings of some precious gifts lost irrecoverably as regards this present life from inheritance of a bad organization and unfortunate circumstances of early years. We have seen the victims of vice lying in the gutter, companied by vermin, trampled upon by sensuality and ignorance. We have seen those who wished not to rise, and those who strove to do so, but fell back through weakness. Sadder and more ominous still, we have seen the good man—in many impulses and acts of most pure, most liberal, and undoubted goodness—we have seen a spot of base indulgence, a fibre of brutality, canker in a vital part ofn this fine plant, and, while we could not withdraw love and esteem for the good we could not doubt, have wept secretly in the corner for the ill we could not deny. We have seen two deaths; one of the sinner, early cut down—one of the just, full of years and honor—both were calm; both professed their reliance on the wisdom of a Heavenly Father. We have seen the beauteous shows of nature in undisturbed succession, holy moonlight on the snows, loving moonlight on the summer fields, the stars which disappoint never and bless ever,n the flowing waters which soothe and stimulate, a garden of roses calling for Queens among women, Poets and Heroes among men. We have seen a desire to answer to this call, and Genius brought rich wine, but spilt it on the way from its careless, fickle gait, and Virtue tainted with a touch of the peacock, Part [ part of never [ ever

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and Philosophy, never enjoying, always seeking, who had got together all the materials for crowning experiment, but there was no love to kindle the fire under the furnace, and the precious secret is not precipitated yet, for the pot will not boil to make the gold through your Double, double, Toil and trouble,3

if Love do not fan the fire. We have seen the decay of friendships unable to endure the light of an ideal hope—have seen, too, their resurrection in a faith and hope beyond the tomb where the form lies we once so fondly cherished. It is not dead, but sleepeth, and we watch, but must weep, too, sometimes, for the night is cold and lonely in the place of tombs. We have seen Nature drest in her veil of snowy flowers for the bridal. We have seen her brooding over her joys, a young mother in the pride and fullness of beauty. We have seen her bearing her offspring to their richly ornamented sepulchre, and lately as if kneeling with folded hands in the stillness of prayer, while the bare trees and frozen streams bore witness to her patience. O much, much have we seen, and a little learned. Such is the record of the private mind, and yet as the bright snake-skin is cast many sigh and cry “The wiser mind Mourns less for what Time takes away Than what he leaves behind.”4

But for ourselves, we find there is kernel in the nut, though its ripening be deferred till the late frosty weather, and it prove a hard nut to crack, even then. Looking at the individual, we see a degree of growth, or the promise of such. In the child there is a force which will outlast the wreck and reach at last the promised shore. The good man, once roused from his moral lethargy, shall make atonement for his fault, and endure a penance that will deepen and purify his whole nature. The poor lost ones claim a new trial in a new life, and will there, we trust, seize firmer hold on the good for the experience they have had of the bad. 3. The famous chant of the witches in Macbeth, act 4, scene 1. 4. “The Fountain: A Conversation,” ll. 34–36, by William Wordsworth.

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“We never see the Stars Till we can see naught else.”

The seeming losses are, in truth, but as pruning of the vine to make the grapes swell more richly. But how is it with those larger individuals, the Nations, and that Congress of such, the Worlds?—We must take a broad and superficial view of these, as we have of private life, and in neither case can more be done. The secrets of the confessional, or rather of the shrine, do not come on paper, unless in poetic form. So we will not try to search and mine, but only to look over the world from an ideal point of view. Here we find the same phenomena repeated; the good nation is yet somehow so sick at heart that you are not sure its goodness will ever produce a harmony of life; over the young nation, (our own,) rich in energy and full of glee, brood terrible omens; others, as Poland and Italy, seem irrecoverably lost.— They may revive, but we feel as if it must be under new forms. Forms come and go, but principles are developed and displayed more and more. The cauldron simmers, and so great is the fire that we expect it soon to boil over, and new Fates appear for Europe. Spain is dying by inches; England shows symptoms of having passed her meridian; Austria has taken opium, but she must awake ere long; France is in an uneasy dream—she knows she has been very sick, has had terrible remedies administered, and ought to be getting thoroughly well, which she is not. Louis Philippe watches by her pillow, doses and bleeds her, so that she cannot fairly try her strength and find whether something or nothing has been done. But Louis Philippe and Metternich must soon, in the course of Nature, leave this scene, and then there will be none to keep out air and light from the chamber, and the patients will be roused and ascertain their true condition. No power is in the ascending course except the Russian, and that has such a condensation of brute force, animated by despotic will, that it seems sometimes as if it might by and by stride over Europe and face us across the water. Then would be opposed to one another the two extremes of Autocracy and Democracy, and a trial of strength would ensue between the two principles more grand and full than any ever seen on this planet, and of which the result must be to bind mankind by one chain of convictions. Should indeed Despotism and Democracy meet as the two slave-holding powers of the world the result can hardly be predicted. But there is room in the intervening age for

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many changes, and the Czars profess to wish to free their serfs as our Planters do to free their slaves, and we suppose with an equal sincerity, but the need of sometimes professing such desires is a deference to the progress of Principles which bid fair to have their era yet. We hope forn such an era steadfastly, notwithstanding the deeds of darkness that have made this year forever remarkable in our annals. Our Nation has indeed shown that the lust of gain is at present her ruling passion. She is not only resolute but shameless about it, and has no doubt or scruple as to laying aside the glorious office, assigned her by Fate of Herald of Freedom, Light and Peace to the civilized world. Yet we must not despair! Even so the Jewish king, crowned with all gifts that Heaven could bestow, was intoxicated by their plenitude, and went astray after the most worthless idols. But he was not permitted to forfeit finally the office designed for him—he was drawn or dragged back to it; and so shall it be with this nation. There are trials in store which shall amend us. We must believe that the pure blood shown in the time of our Revolution still glows in the heart, but the body of our nation is full of foreign elements. A large portion of our citizens, or their parents, came here for worldly advantage, and have never raised their minds to any idea of destiny or duty. More money—more land! is all the watchword they know. They have received the inheritance earned by the Fathers of the Revolution, without their wisdom and virtue to use it. But this cannot last. The vision of those prophetic souls must be realized, else the nation could not exist; every Body must at least “have Soul enough to save the expense of salt,” or it cannot be preserved alive. What a year it has been with us! Texas annexed, and more annexations in store; Slavery perpetuated, as the most striking feature of these movements. Such are the fruits of American love of liberty! Mormons murdered and driven out, as an expression of American freedom of conscience. Cassius Clay’s paper expelled from Kentucky; that is American freedom of the press. And all these deeds defended on the true Russian grounds: “We (the stronger) know what you (the weaker) ought to do and be, and it shall be so.” Thus the Principles which it was supposed some ten years back had begun to regenerate the world, are left without a trophy for this past year, except in the spread of Ronge’s movement in Germany,5 and that of Associative and

hope [ hope for 5. Johannes Ronge (1813–87), German Catholic priest exiled because of his support for democracy. The Brook Farm Harbinger and the Boston liberal press followed his career of Ronge for a decade or more; indeed, Ronge probably influenced George Ripley in founding Brook Farm.

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Communist principles, both here and in Europe, which, let the worldling deem as he will about their practicability, he cannot deny to be animated by faith in God and a desire for the good of Man. We must add to these the important symptoms of the spread of Peace Principles. Meanwhile if the more valuable springs of action seem to lie dormant for a time, there is a constant invention and perfection of the means of action and communication which seems to say “Do but wait patiently; there is something of universal importance to be done by and by, and all is preparing for it to be universally known and used at once.” Else what avail magnetic telegraphs, steamers and rail cars traversing every road of land and ocean. Phonography and the mingling of all literatures till North embraces South and Denmark lays her head upon the lap of Italy. Surely there would not be all this pomp of preparation as to the means of communication, unless there were like to be something worthy to be communicated. Amid the signs of the breaking down of barriers, we may mention the Emperor Nicholas letting his daughter pass from the Greek to the Roman church for the sake of marrying her to the Austrian Prince.6 Again, similarity between him and us: he, too, is shameless; for while he signs this marriage contract with one hand, he holds the knout in the other to drive the Roman Catholic Poles into the Greek Church. But it is a fatal sign for his empire. ’T is but the first step that costs, and the Russians may look back to the marriage of the Grand Duchess Olga, as the Chinese will to the cannonading of the English, as the first sign of dissolution in the present form of national life. A similar token is given by the violation of etiquette of which Mr. Polk is accused in his Message.7 He, at the head of a Government, speaks of Governments and their doings straight forward as he would of persons, and the tower, stronghold of the Idea of a former age, now propped up by etiquettes and civilities only, trembles to its foundation. Another sign of the times is the general panic which the decay of the Potato causes.8 We doubt this is not without a providential meaning, and will call attention still more to the wants of the people at large. New and more provident regulations must be brought out, that they may not again be left with only a potato between them and starvation. By another of these whimsi-

6. The Grand Duchess Olga, daughter of Nicholas I, married Prince Charles of Austria in July 1846. 7. In his speech to Congress in December 1845, James K. Polk (1795–1849), eleventh president of the United States, admitted to many setbacks in both domestic and foreign policies. 8. A fungus had destroyed most of the Irish potato crop in 1845, causing disastrous consequences in a country where half the population depended on the potato for the greatest part of their diet.

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cal coincidences between the histories of Aristocracy and Democracy, the supply of truffles is also failing. The land is losing the “nice things” that the Queen (truly a young Queen) thought might be eaten in place of bread. Does not this indicate a period in which it will be felt that there must be provision for all—the rich shall not have their truffles if the poor are driven to eat nettles, as the French and Irish have in bygone ages? The poem of which this is a prose translation lately appeared in Germany. It is written by Moritz Hartmann and contains the gist of the matter. mistress potato. There was a great stately house full of people who have been running in and out of its lofty gates, ever since the gray times of Olympus. There they wept, laughed, shouted, mourned, and, like day and night, came the usual changes of joys with plagues and sorrows. Haunting that great house up and down, making, baking, and roasting, covering and waiting on the table, has there lived a vast number of years a loyal serving-maid of the olden time—her name was Mrs. Potato. She was a still little old mother, who wore no baubles or laces, but always had to be satisfied with her plain, every-day clothes, and unheeded, unhonored, oftentimes jeered at and forgotten, she served all day at the kitchen fire and slept at night in the worst room. When she brought the dishes to table she got rarely a thankful glance, only at times some very poor man would in secret shake kindly her hand. Generation after generation passed by; as the trees blossom, bear fruit and wither, but faithful remained the old housemaid, always the servant of the last heir. But one morning, hear what happened. All the people came to table and lo! there was nothing to eat, for our good old Mistress Potato had not been able to rise from her bed. She felt sharp pains creeping through her poor old bones. No wonder she was worn out at last! She had not in all her life dared take a day’s rest, lest so the poor should starve. Indeed it is wonderful that her good will should have kept her up so long. She must have had a great constitution to begin with. The guests had to go away without breakfast. They were a little troubled but hoped to make up for it at dinner time.n But dinner time came and the table was empty, and then, indeed, they began to inquire about the welfare of Cookmaid Potato. time time. [ time.

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And up into her dark chamber where she lay on her poor bed came Great and Little, Young and Old, to ask after the good creature. “What can be done for her?” “Bring warm clothes, medicine, a better bed.” Lay aside your work to help her. “If she dies we shall never again be able to fill the table,” and now, indeed, they sing her praises. O what a fuss now about the sick bed in that moist and mouldy chamber! and out doors it was just the same,—priests with their masses, processions, and prayers, and all the world ready to walk to penance, if Mistress Potato could but be saved. And the doctors in their wigs, and counselors in masks of gravity sat there to devise some remedy to avert this terrible ill. As when a Most Illustrious Dame is recovering from the birth of a son, bulletins inform the world of the health of Mistress Potato, and, not content with what they so learn, couriers and lacqueys besiege the door, nay, the king’s coach is stopping there. Yes! yes! the humble poor Maid, ’tis about her they are all so frightened! Who would ever have believed it in days when the table was nicely covered? The gentlemen of pens and books, priests, kings, lords and ministers, all have senses to scent out famine. Natheless Mistress Potato gets no better. May God help her for the sake, not of such people, but of the poor. For such, it is a proof they should prize that all must crumble and fall to ruin, if they will work and weary to death the poor maid who cooks in the kitchen. She lived for you in the dirt and ashes, provided daily for poor and rich; you ought to humble yourselves for her sake. Ah, could we hope that you would take a hint and next time pay some heed to the housemaid before she was worn and wearied to death.”!!

So sighs rather than hopes Moritz Hartmann.—The wise ministers of England indeed seem much more composed than he supposes them. They are like the old man who, when he saw the avalanche coming down upon his village, said, “It is coming, but I shall have time to fill my pipe once more.”—He went in to do so and was buried beneath the ruins. But Sir Robert Peel, who is so deliberate, has, doubtless, manna in store for those who have lost their customary food. Another sign of the times is, that there are left on the earth none of the last dynasty of geniuses, riches in so many imperial heads. The world is full of talent, but it flows downward to water the plain.—There are no towering lights, no Mont Blancs now. We cannot recall one great genius at this day living. The time of prophets is over, and the era they prophesied must be at hand; in its

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conduct a larger proportion of the human race shall take part than ever before. As Prime Ministers have succeeded Kings in the substantials of monarchy, so now shall a House of Representatives succeed Prime Ministers. Altogether, it looks as if a great time was coming, and that time one of Democracy. Our country will play a ruling part. Her Eagle will lead the van, but whether to soar upward to the sun or to stoop for helpless prey, who now dares promise? At present she has scarce achieved a Roman nobleness, a Roman liberty, and whether her Eagle is less like the Vulture and more like the Phoenix than was the fierce Roman bird, we dare not say. May the New Year give hopes of the latter, even if the bird need first to be purified by fire.  New-York Daily Tribune, 1 January 1846, p. 1; reprinted, New-York Weekly Tribune, 3 January 1846, p. 1.

[Review of Schoolcraft Jones, Ellen; or Forgive and Forget]


We notice this coarsely written little fiction, because it is one of a class which we see growing with pleasure. We see it with pleasure because, in its way, it is genuine. It is a transcript of the crimes, calumnies, excitements, half blind love of right, and honest indignation at the sort of wrong which it can discern, to be found in the class from which it emanates. That class is a large one in our country villages, and these books reflect its thoughts and manners as half-penny ballads do the life of the streets of London. The ballads are not more true to the facts, but they give us, in coarser form, far more of the spirit than we get from the same facts reflected in the intellect of a Dickens, for instance, or of any writer far enough above the scene to be, properly, its Artist. So in this book we find what Cooper, Miss Sedgwick, and Mrs. Kirkland might see, as the writer did, but could hardly believe in enough to speak of with such fidelity.1 It is a current superstition that country people are more pure and healthy in mind and body than those who live in cities. It may be so in countries of old established habits where a genuine peasantry have inherited some of the practical wisdom and loyalty of the past with most of its errors. We have our doubts, though, from the stamp upon literature, always the nearest evidence of truth we can get, whether, even there, the difference between town and country life is as much in favor of the latter as is generally supposed. But in our land where the country is at present filled with a mixed population who come seeking to be purified by a better life and culture from all the ills and diseases of the worst forms of civilization, things often look worse than in the city, perhaps because men have more time and room to let their faults grow and offend the light of day. 1. James Fenimore Cooper (1789–1851), novelist and social commentator; Catharine Maria Sedgwick (1789–1867), novelist.

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There are exceptions, and not a few; but in a very great proportion of country villages the habits of the people, as to food, air, and even exercise, are ignorant and unhealthy to the last degree. Their want of all pure faith and appetite for coarse excitement, is shown by continued intrigues, calumnies and crimes. We have lived in a beautiful village, where, more favorably placed than any other person in it, both as to withdrawal from bad associations and nearness to good, we heard, inevitably, from domestics, work-people, and school-children, more ill of human nature than we could possibly sift, were we to elect such a task, from all the newspapers in this city in the same space of time. We believe the amount of ill circulated by means of anonymous letters, as described in this book, to be as great as can be imported in all the French novels, (and that is a bold word.) We know, ourselves, of two or three cases of morbid wickedness, displayed by means of anonymous letters, that may vie with what puzzled the best wits of France in a famous lawsuit not long since. It is true there is, to balance all this, a healthy rebound, a surprise and a shame, and heartily good people, such as are described in this book, who, having taken a direction upward, keep it, and cannot be bent downward nor aside.— But then the reverse of the picture is of a blackness that would appal one who came to it with any idyllic ideas of the purity and peaceful loveliness of agricultural life. But what does this prove?—only the need of a dissemination of all that is best, intellectually and morally, through the whole people. Our groves and fields have no good fairies or genii who teach, by legend or gentle apparition, the truths, the principles that can alone preserve the village as the city from possession of the fiend. Their place must be taken by the school-master, and he must be one who knows not only readin’, ritin’ and ’rithmetic, but the service of God and the destiny of man. Our people require a thoroughly diffused intellectual life, a religious aim, such as no people at large ever possessed before, else must they sink till they become the dregs, rather than the cream of creation, which they are too apt to flatter themselves with the fancy of being already. The most interesting fiction we have ever read, in this coarse, homely, but genuine class, is one called “Metallak.”2 It may be in circulation in this 2. Metallak: The Lone Indian of the Magalloway, by the prolific novelist Osgood Bradbury, published anonymously in 1844.

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city, but we bought it in a country nook, and from a peddler, and it seemed to belong to the country. Had we met with it in any other way, it would, probably, have been to throw it aside again directly, for the author does not know how to write English, and the first chapters give no idea of his power of apprehending the poetry of life. But, happening to read on, we became fixed and charmed, and have retained from its perusal the sweetest picture of life lived in this Land, ever afforded us out of the pale of personal observation. That such things are, private observation has made us sure, but the writers of books rarely seem to have seen them; rarely to have walked alone in an untrodden path long enough to hold commune with the spirit of the scene. In this book you find the very life, the most vulgar prose and the most exquisite poetry. You follow the hunter in his path, walking through the noblest and fairest scenes only to shoot the poor animals that were happy there, winning from the pure atmosphere little benefit except a good appetite, sleeping at night in the dirty hovels, with people who burrow in them to lead a life but little above that of the squirrels and foxes. There is in all that air of room enough, and free, if low, forms of human nature which, at such times, makes bearable all that would otherwise be so repulsive. But when we come to the girl who is the presiding deity, or rather the tutelary angel of the scene, how are all discords harmonized, how all its latent music poured forth! It is a portrait from the life; it has the mystic charm of fulfilled reality, how far beyond the fairest ideals ever born of thought! Pure and brilliantly blooming as the flower of the wilderness, she, in like manner, shares, while she sublimes, its nature. She plays round the most vulgar and rude beings, gentle and caressing, yet unsullied; in her wildness there is nothing cold or savage; her elevation is soft and warm. Never have we seen natural religion more beautifully expressed, never so well discerned the influence of the natural Nun, who needs no veil or cloister to guard from profanation the beauty she has dedicated to God, and only attracts human love to hallow it into divine. The lonely life of the girl after the death of her parents—her fearlessness, her gay and sweet enjoyment of Nature around, her intercourse with the old people of the neighborhood, her sisterly conduct toward her “suitors”—all seem painted from the life, but the death-bed scene seems borrowed from some sermons and is not in harmony with the rest. In this connection we must try to make amends for the stupidity of an ear-

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lier notice of the novel called “Margaret, or the Real and Ideal,” &c.3 At the time of that notice we had only looked into it here and there, and did no justice to a work full of genius, profound in its meaning, and of admirable fidelity to Nature in its details. Since, we have really read it, and appreciated the sight and representation of “soul-realities,” we have lamented the long delay of so true a pleasure. A fine critic said “This is a Yankee novel, or rather let it be called the Yankee novel, as nowhere else are the thought and dialect of our villages really represented.” Another discovered that it must have been written in Maine by the perfection with which peculiar features of scenery there are described. A young girl could not sufficiently express her delight at the simple nature with which scenes of childhood are given, and especially at Margaret’s first going to meeting. She had never elsewhere found written down what she had felt. A mature reader, one of the most spiritualized and harmonious minds we have ever met, admires the depth and fullness in which the workings of the spirit through the maiden’s life are seen by the author and shown to us, but laments the great apparatus with which the consummation of the whole is bought about, and the formation of a new church and state, before the time is yet ripe, under the banner of Monsn Christi. But all these voices, all among those most worthy to be heard, find in the book a real presence, and draw from it auspicious omens, that an American literature is possible even in our day, because there are already in the mind here existent developments worthy to see the light—gold fishes amid the moss in the still waters. For ourselves we have been most charmed with the way the Real and Ideal are made to interweave and shoot rays through one another, in which Margaret bestows on external nature what she receives through books, and wins back like gifts in turn, till the Pond and the Mythology are alternate sections of the same chapter. We delight in the teachings she receives through Chilion and his violin, till on the grave of “one who tried to love his fellow men” grows up the full white rose flower of her life. The ease with which she assimilates the city life when in it, making it a part of her imaginative tapestry, is a sign of

3. Fuller had earlier reviewed Margaret: A Tale of the Real and Ideal, Blight and Bloom—Including Sketches of a Place Not before Described, Called Mons Christi by Sylvester Judd in the 1 September 1845 New-York Daily Tribune. Mons. [ Mons

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the power to which she has grown. We have much more to say and think of the book as a whole and in parts, and, should the mood and Summer leisure ever permit a familiar and intimate acquaintance with it, trust they will be both thought and said. For the present we will only add, that it exhibits the same state of things and strives to point out such remedies as we have hinted at in speaking of the little book which heads this notice; itself a rude charcoal sketch, but, if read as hieroglyphics are, pointing to important meanings and results.  Review of Schoolcraft Jones, Ellen; or Forgive and Forget (Boston: Abel Tompkins, 1846). New-York Daily Tribune, 10 January 1846, p. 1; reprinted, New-York Weekly Tribune, 17 January 1846, p. 6. Title supplied.

Cassius M. Clay


The meeting on Monday night at the Tabernacle was to us an occasion of deep and peculiar interest.1 It was deep, for the feelings there expressed and answered bore witness to the truth of our belief, that the sense of right is not dead, but only sleepeth in this nation. A man who is manly enough to appeal to it will be answered, in feeling, at least, if not in action, and while there is life there is hope. Those who so rapturously welcomed one who had sealed his faith by deeds of devotion, must yet acknowledge in their breasts the germs of like nobleness. It was an occasion of peculiar interest, such as we have not had occasion to feel since, in childish years, we saw Lafayette welcomed by a grateful people.2 Even childhood well understood that the gratitude then expressed was not so much for the aid which had been received as for the motives and feelings with which it was given. The nation rushed out as one man to thank Lafayette, that he had been able, amid the prejudices and indulgences of high rank in the old regime of society, to understand the great principles which were about to create a new form, and answer manlike with love, service, and contempt of selfish interests to the voice of Humanity, demanding its rights. Our freedom would have been achieved without Lafayette, but it was a happiness and a blessing to number the young French nobleman as the champion of American Independence, and to know that he had given the prime of his life to our cause, because it was the cause of justice. With similar feelings of joy, pride and hope we welcome Cassius M. Clay, a man who has, in like manner, freed himself from the prejudices of his position, disregarded selfish considerations, and quitting the easy path in which he might have walked to station in the sight

1. An announcement for Clay’s lecture is in the 12 January 1846 New-York Daily Tribune, p. 2, and the event itself is reported in “Cassius M. Clay in New-York,” 13 January 1846, p. 2. 2. Fuller had seen the Marquise de Lafayette when he visited Cambridge in 1824.

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of men, and such external distinctions as his State and Nation readily confer on men so born and bred, and with such abilities, chose rather an interest in their souls, and the honors history will not fail to award to the man who enrols his name and elevates his life for the cause of right and those universal principles, whose recognition can alone secure to man the destiny without which he cannot be happy, but which he is continually sacrificing for the impure worship of idols. Yea, in this country, more than in the old Palestine, do they give their children to the fire in honor of Moloch,3 and sell the ark confided to them by the Most High for shekels of gold and of silver. Partly it was the sense of this position which Mr. Clay holds, as a man who esteems his own individual convictions of right more than local interests or partial, political schemes, that gave him such an enthusiastic welcome on Monday night from the very hearts of the audience, but still more that his honor is at this moment identified with the liberty of the press, which has been insulted and infringed in him. About this there can be in fact but one opinion. In vain Kentucky calls meetings, states reasons, gives names of her own to what has been done. The rest of the world knows very well what has been done, and will call it by but one name. Regardless of this ostrich mode of defence the world has laughed and scoffed at the act of a people, professing to be free and defenders of freedom, and the recording Angel has written down the deed as a lawless act of violence and tyranny, from which the man is happy who can call himself pure. With the usual rhetoric of the wrong side, the apologists for this act of mob violence have wished to injure Mr. Clay by the epithets of “hot-headed,” “visionary,” “fanatical.” But, if any have believed that such could apply to a man so clear sighted as to his objects and the way of achieving them, the mistake must have been corrected on Monday night. Whoever saw Mr. Clay that night, saw in him a man of deep and strong nature, thoroughly in earnest, who had well considered his ground, and saw that though open, as the noble must be, to new views and convictions, yet his direction is taken, and the improvement to be made will not be to turn aside, but to expedite and widen his course in that direction.—Mr. Clay is young, thank Heaven! young enough to promise a long career of great thoughts and honorable deeds. But still, to those who esteem youth an unpardonable fault, and one that renders incapable of counsel, we would say that he is at the age when a man is capable of great thoughts

3. Moloch, a form of the devil worshiped by the Canaanites.

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and great deeds, if ever. His is not a character that will ever grow old; it is not capable of a petty and short-sighted prudence, but can only be guided by a large wisdom which is more young than old, for it has within itself the springs of perpetual youth, and which being far-sighted and prophetical, joins ever with the Progress party without waiting till it be obviously in the ascendant. Mr. Clay has eloquence, but only from the soul.—He does not possess the art of oratory, as an art.—Before he gets warmed he is too slow, and breaks his sentences too much. His transitions are not made with skill, nor is the structure of his speech as a whole, symmetrical; yet, throughout, his grasp is firm upon his subject, and all the words are laden with the electricity of a strong mind and generous nature. When he begins to glow, and his deep mellow eye fills with light, the speech melts and glows too, and he is able to impress upon the hearer the full effect of firm conviction, conceived with impassioned energy. His often rugged and harsh emphasis flashes and sparkles then, and we feel that there is in the furnace a stream of iron—iron!—fortress of the nations and victor of the seas, worth far more, in stress of storm than all the gold and gems of rhetoric. The great principle that he who wrongs one wrongs all, and that no part can be wounded withoutn endangering the whole, was the healthy root of Mr. Clay’s speech. The report does not do justice to the turn of expression in some parts which were most characteristic. These, indeed, depended much on the tones and looks of the speaker. We should speak of them as full of a robust and homely sincerity, dignified by the heart of the gentleman, a heart too secure of its respect for the rights of others to need any of the usual interpositions. His good-humored sarcasm on occasion of several vulgar interruptions was very pleasant, and easily at those times might be recognized in him the man of heroical nature, who can only show himself adequately in time of interruption and of obstacle. If that be all that is wanted, we shall surely see him wholly; there will be no lack of American occasions to call out the Greek fire—We want them all,—the Grecian men, who feel a god-like thirst for immortal glory, and to develop the peculiar powers with which the gods have gifted them. We want them all, the poet, the thinker, the hero. Whether our heroes need swords, is a more doubtful point, we think, than Mr. Clay believes. Neither do we believe in some of the means he proposes to further his aims. God uses all kinds of means, but men, his priests, must keep their hands pure.

with [line end] out [ without

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Nobody that needs a bribe shall be asked to further our schemes for emancipation. But there is room enough and time enough to think out these points till all is in harmony. For the good that has been done and the truth that has been spoken, for the love of such that has been seen in this great city struggling up through the love of money, we should today be thankful—and we are so.  New-York Daily Tribune, 14 January 1846, p. 1; reprinted, New-York Weekly Tribune, 17 January 1846, p. 1.

Methodism at the Fountain


This is a reprint of a London work, although it does not so appear on the title page.1 We have lately read it in connection with another very interesting book, Clarke’s “Memoirs of the Wesley Family,” and have been led to far deeper interest in this great stream of religious thought and feeling, by a nearer approach to its fountain-head.2 The world at large takes its impression of the Wesleys from Southey.3 A humbler historian has scarce a chance to be heard beside one so rich in learning and talent. Yet the Methodists themselves are not satisfied with this account of their revered Shepherds, which, though fair in the intention, and tolerably fair in the arrangement of facts, fails to convey the true spiritual sense, and does not, to the flock, present a picture of the fields where they were first satisfied with the food of immortals. A better likeness, if not so ably painted, may, indeed, be found in chronicles written by the disciples of these great and excellent men, who, as characters full of affection no less than intellect, need also to be affectionately, no less than intellectually, discerned, in order to a true representation of their deeds and their influence. The books we have named and others which relate to the Wesleys are extremely interesting, apart from a consideration of the men and what their lives were leading to, from the various and important documents they furnish illustrative of the symptoms and obscurer meanings of their times. In the account of the family life of the Rectory of Epworth, where John and Charles Wesley passed their boyish years, we find a great deal that is valuable

1. This book was first published in London by John Mason in 1841. 2. Adam Clarke (1760–1832), English cleric, religious critic, and anti-tobacco reformer, who published Memoirs of the Wesley Family in 1824. 3. Robert Southey (1774–1843), English poet, historian, and critic, who published Life of Wesley in 1820.

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condensed. And we look upon the picture of home and its government with tenfold interest because the founders of the Methodist church inherited in a straight line the gifts of the Spirit through their parentage, rather than were taught by angels that visited them now and then unawares, or received the mantle from some prophet who was passing by, as we more commonly find to have been the case in the histories of distinguished men. This is delightful, for we long to see parent and child linked to one another by natural piety—kindred in mind, no less than by blood. The father of the Wesleys was worthy so to be in this, that he was a fervent lover of the Right, though often narrow and hasty in his conceptions of it. He was scarce less, however, by nature, a lover of having his own will. The same strong will was tempered in the larger and deeper character of his son John, to that energy and steadfastness of purpose which enabled him to carry out a plan of operations so extensive and exhausting through so long a series of years and into extreme old age. This wilfulness, and the disposition to tyranny which attends it, the senior Mr. Wesley showed on the famous occasion when he abandoned his wife because her conscience forbade her to assent to his prayers for the then reigning monarch, and was only saved from the consequences of his rash resolve by the accident of King William happening to die shortly after. Still more cruel, and, this time, fatal, was the conduct it induced in marrying one of his daughters, against her will and judgment, to a man whom she did not love and who proved to be entirely unworthy of her. The sacrifice of this daughter, the fairest and brightest of his family, seems most strangely and wickedly wilful, and it is impossible to read the letter she addressed to him on the subject without great indignation against him, and sadness to see how not long ago the habit of authority and obedience could enable a man to dispense with the need and claim of genuine reverence. Yet he was, in the main, good, and his influence upon his children good, as he sincerely sought, and encouraged them to seek, the one thing needful.—He was a father who would never fail to give noble advice in cases of conscience; and his veneration for intellect and its culture was only inferior to that he cherished for piety. As has been generally the case, however, with superior men, the better part, both of inheritance and guidance, came from the mother. Mrs. Susannah Wesley was, as things go in our puny society, an extraordinary woman, though, we must believe, precisely what would be, in a healthy and natural order, the ordinary type of woman. She was endowed with a large understanding, the

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power of reasoning and the love of truth, animated by warm and generous affections. Her mental development began very early, so that, at the age of thirteen, she had made, and on well-considered grounds, a change in her form of theological faith. The progress so early begun, did not, on that account, stop early, but was continued, and with increasing energy, throughout her whole life. The manifold duties of a toilsome and difficult outward existence, (of which it is enough to say that she was the mother of nineteen children, many of whom lived to grow up, the wife of a poor man, and one whose temper drew round him many difficulties) only varied and furthered her improvement by the manifold occasions thus afforded for thought and action. In her prime she was the teacher and cheerful companion of her children, in declining years at once their revered monitor and willing pupil. Indeed, she was one that never ceased to grow while she stayed upon this earth, nor to foster and sustain the growth of all round her. Even the little pedantries of her educational discipline did more good than harm, as they were full of her own individuality. And it would seem, to be from the bias thus given that her sons acquired the tendency which, even in early years, drew to them the name of Methodists. How much too may not be inferred from the revival effected by her in her husband’s parish during his absence, in so beautiful and simple a manner! How must impressions of that period have been stamped on the minds of her children, sure to recur and aid them whenever on similar occasions the universal voice should summon them to deviate from the usual and prescribed course, and the pure sympathies awakened by their efforts be the sole confirmation of their wisdom! How wisely and temperately she defends herself to her husband, winning the assent even of the somewhat narrow and arbitrary end! With wisdom, even so tempered by a heart of charity and forbearance, did John and Charles Wesley maintain against the world of customs the bold and original methods which the deep emotions of their souls dictated to them, and won its assent; at least we think there is no sect on which the others collectively look with as little intolerance as on Methodism. (It may be remarked par parenthese that the biographer, Mr. Jackson, who shows himself, in many ways, to be a weak man, is rather shocked at Mrs. Wesley on those occasions where she shows so much character. His opinions, however, are of no consequence, as he fairly lays before the reader the letters and other original documents which enable him to judge of this remarkable woman, and of her children, several of them no less remarkable.—As we shall not again advert to Mr. Jackson, but only consider him as a cup in which we have received the juice of the Wesleyan grape, we will mention here his

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strange use of the word superior in ways such as these: “This book will be read with superior interest”; “Ladyn —met him with superior sympathy,” &c.) The children of the Epworth Rectory were, almost without exception, of more than usual dignity and richness of mind and character. They all were aspiring, and looked upon a human life chiefly as affording materials to fashion a temple for the service of God. But, though alike in the main purpose and tendency, their individualities were kept distinct in the most charming freshness. A noble sincerity and mutual respect marked all their intercourse, nor were the weaker characters unduly influenced by the stronger. In proportion to their mutual affection and reverence was their sincerity and decision in opposing one another, whenever necessary; so that they were friendly indeed. The same real love which made Charles Wesley write on a letter assailing John, “Left unanswered by John Wesley’s brother,” made himself the most earnest and direct of critics when he saw or thought he saw any need of criticism or monition. The children of this family shared, many of them, the lyric vein, though only in Charles did it exhibit itself with much beauty. It is very interesting to see the same gift taking another form in the genius for Music of his two sons. The record kept by him of the early stages of development in them is full of valuable suggestions, and we hope some time to make use of them in another connection. It is pleasant to see how the sympathies of the father melted away the crust of habitual opinions. It was far otherwise with the uncle, where the glow of sympathy was less warm. The life of the two brothers was full of poetic beauty in its incidents and conduct. The snatching of the child, destined to purposes so important, “as a brand from the burning;” their college life; Charles’s unwillingness to be “made a saint of all at once;” and his subsequent yielding to the fervor of his brother’s spirit,—John Wesley’s refusal to bind himself to what seemed at the time a good work, even for his mother’s sake, because the Spirit within, if it did not positively forbid, yet did not say “I am ready,” thus sacrificing the outward to the inward duty with a clear decision rare even in great minds,—their voyage to America, intercourse with the Moravians and Indians,—the trials to which their young simplicity and credulity there subjected them, but from which they were brought out safe by obeying the voice of Conscience,—their relations with Law, Böhler and Count Zinzendorf,—the manner of their mar-

Lady [ “Lady

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riages, their relations with one another and with Whitefield,n—all are narrated with candor and fullness, and all afford subjects for much and valuable thought.4 As the mind of John Wesley was of stronger mould and in advance of his brother’s, difference of opinion sometimes arose between them, and Charles, full of feeling, protested in a way calculated to grieve even a noble friend.—His conduct with regard to his brother’s marriage seems to have been perfectly unjustifiable, and his heart to have remained strangely untaught by what he had felt and borne at the time of his own. Even after death his prejudices acted to prevent his mortal remains from resting beside those of his brother. In all those cases where John Wesley found his judgment interfered with, his affections disappointed or even deeply wounded, as was certainly the case in the breaking off his first engagement, while he felt the superior largeness and clearness of his own view, as he did in exercising the power of ordination, and when he wrote on the disappointment of his wish that the body of his brother should be interred in his own cemetery, because it was not regularly “consecrated earth;” “That ground is as holy as any in England,” still the heart of John Wesley was always right and noble; still he looked at the motives of the friend, and could really say and wholly feel in the spirit of Christian love, “Be they forgiven, for they know not what they do.”5 This same heart of Christian love as was shown in the division that arose between the brothers and Whitefield;n and owing to this it was that division of opinion did not destroy unity of spirit, design and influence in the efforts of these good men to make their fellows good also. “The threefold cord,” as they loved to call it, remained firm through life, and the world saw in them one of the best fruits of the religious spirit, mutual reverence in conscientious difference. This rarest sight alone would have given them a claim to instruct the souls of men. We wish indeed that this spirit had been still better understood by them, and that, in ceasing to be the pupils of William Law, they had not felt obliged to denounce his mode of viewing religious truth as “poisonous mysticism.” It

Whitfield, [ Whitefield, 4. William Law (1686–1761), English controversialist and devotional writer who influenced John Wesley; Peter Böhler (1712–75), German cleric; Count Nicholas Ludwig von Zinzendorf (1700–60), German religious reformer who revived the Moravian church; George Whitefield (1714–70), English cleric and founder of Methodism who broke with John Wesley in 1741 on doctrinal issues. 5. “Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do” (Luke 23:34.8). Whitfield; [ Whitefield;

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is human frailty that requires usn to react, thus violently, against that we have left behind. The divine spirit teaches better, shows that the child was father of the man, and that which we were before has prepared us to be what we now are. One of the deepest thinkers of our time believes that the exaggerated importance which each man and each party attaches to the aims and ways which engage him or it, and the far more odious depreciation of all others, are needed to give sufficient impetus and steadiness to their action. He finds grand correspondence in the laws of matter with this view of the laws of mind to illustrate and sustain his belief. Yet the soul craves and feels herself fit for something better, a wisdom that shall look upon the myriad ways in which men seek their common end—the development and elevation of their natures,—with calmness, as the Eternal does. For ourselves, in an age where it is still the current fallacy that he who does not attach this exaggerated importance to some doctrinal way of viewing spiritual infinities, and the peculiar methods of some sect of enforcing them in practice, has no religion, we see dawning here and there a light that predicts a better day.— A day when sects and parties shall be regarded only as schools of thought and life, and while a man prefers one for his own instruction, he may yet believe it is more profitable for his brethren differently constituted to be in others. It will then be seen that God takes too good care of his children to suffer all truth to be confined to any one church establishment, age, or constellation of minds, and it will be not only assented to in words, but believed in soul, that the Laws and Prophets may be condensed, as Jesus said, into this simple law, “Love God with all thy soul, thy fellow-man as thyself;” and that he who is filled with this spirit and strives to express it in life, however narrow cut be his clerical coat, or distorting to outward objects, no less than disfiguring to himself, his theological spectacles, has not failed both to learn and to do some good in this earthly section of existence. When this much has once been granted; when it is seen that the only true, the only Catholic Church, the Church whose communion, invisible to the outward eye, is shared by all spirits that seek earnestly to love God and serve Man, has its members in every land, in every Church, in every sect, and that they who have not this, in whatever tone and form they cry out, “Lord, Lord,” have in truth never known Him; then may we hope for less narrowness and ignorance in the several sects,

requires [ requires us

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also, for all and each will learn of one another, and dwelling together in unity still preserve and unfold their life in individual distinctness. Such a platform we hope to see ascended by the men of this earth, of this or the coming age. At any rate, disengagement from present bonds, must lead to it, and thus we trust, the Wesleysn have embraced William Law and found that his “poisonous mysticism” had its truth and its meaning also, while he rejoices that their minds, severing from his, took a different bias and reached a different class for which his teachings were not adapted. And thus, passing from section to section of the truth, the circle shall be filled at last, and it shall be seen that each had need of the other and of all. Charles and John Wesley seemed to fulfil toward their great family of disciples the offices commonly assigned to Woman and Man. Charles had a narrower, tamer, less reasoning mind, but great sweetness, tenderness, facility and lyric flow, “When successful in effecting the spiritual good of the most abject, his feelings rose to rapture.” Soft pity filled his heart, and none seemed so near to him as the felon and the malefactor, because for none else was so much to be done. His habitual flow of sacred verse was like the course of a full fed stream. In extreme old age, his habits of composition are thus pleasingly described: “He rode every day (clothed for Winter, even in Summer,) a little horse, grey with age. When he mounted, if a subject struck him, he proceeded to expand and put it in order. He would write a hymn thus given him on a card (kept for that purpose) with his pencil in short hand. Not unfrequently he has come to the house on the City road, and having left the pony in the garden in front, he would enter, crying our ‘Pen and ink! pen and ink!’ These being supplied, he wrote the hymn he had been composing, When this was done, he would look round on those present, and salute them with much kindness, ask after their health, give out a short hymn, and thus put all in mind of eternity. He was fond of that stanza upon these occasions, “There all the ship’s company meet,” &c.”n

His benign spirit is, we believe, gratified now by finding that company larger than he had dared to hope. The mind of John Wesley was more masculine; he was more of a thinker and leader. He is spoken of as credulous, as hoping good of men naturally, and Wesley’s [ Wesleys &c. [ &c.”

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able to hope it again from those that had deceived him. This last is weakness unless allied with wise decision and force, generosity when it is thus tempered. To the character of John Wesley it imparted a persuasive nobleness, and hallowed his earnestness with mercy. He has in a striking degree another of those balances between opposite forces which mark the great man. He kept himself open to new inspirations, was bold in apprehending and quick in carrying them out. Yet with a resolve once taken he showed a steadiness of purpose beyond what the timid scholars of tradition can conceive. In looking at the character of the two men, and the nature of their doctrine we well understand why their spirit has exercised so vast a sway, especially with the poor, the unlearned and those who had none else to help them. They had truth enough and force enough to uplift the burdens of an army of poor pilgrims and send them on their way rejoicing. We should delight to string together, in our own fashion, a rosary of thoughts and anecdotes illustrative of their career and its consequences,—but, since time and our limits in newspaper space forbid, cannot end better than by quoting their own verse, for they are of that select corps, “the forlorn hope of humanity,” to whom shortcoming in deeds has given no occasion to blush for the lofty scope of their words. “Who but the Holy Ghost can make A genuine gospel minister, A bishop bold to undertake Of precious souls the awful cure? The Holy Ghost alone can move A sinner sinners to convert, Infuse the apostolic love And bless him with a pastor’s heart.”6  Review of Thomas Jackson, The Life of the Rev. Charles Wesley . . . Comprising a Review of His Poetry, and Sketches of the Rise and Progress of Methodism; with Notices of Contemporary Events and Characters (New York: G. Lane and P. P. Sandford, for the Methodist Episcopal Church, 1844). New-York Daily Tribune, 21 January 1846, p. 1; reprinted, New-York Weekly Tribune, 24 January 1846, p. 1. Charles Wesley (1708–88), clergyman and hymn writer, assisted his brother John (1703–91), who was one of the major founders of Methodism; both had visited Georgia in the mid-1830s; Thomas Jackson (1783–1873) spent many years editing John Wesley’s writings 6. “The Holy Ghost hath made you overseers,” ll. 1–8, by Charles and John Wesley.

Publishers and Authors. Dolores by Harro Harring.


We see in the Evening Mirror of Friday, 30th January, a short notice of Harro Harring, and of the work he has written since his arrival among us.—This book was announced, some time ago, as to be published next Spring, and not a few readers looked forward with the strongest interest to its appearance. We see the writer in the Mirror supposes it to be in the press. But we were informed a few days since that the Publishers have refused to fulfil their contract with regard to the work on the ground that “it is not duly orthodox.” This rumor struck us as of the most singular character. Can it be that there is a foundation for it? Should we admit that this is a legitimate position for a publisher, that, to wit, of a censor of doctrines and opinions; in other words, a censor of the Press, silencing not words and sentences only, as is the case with the hireling official of a despotic monarch, but whole works in which other men have expressed such views of life and religion as to their consciences seem orthodox; still such a position would be inappropriate indeed to the eager venders of “The Wandering Jew.”1 Sue, whatever his pretensions to influence as a man of genius and a seeker for truth, certainly derives none from what is technically styled orthodoxy, by those classes which assume to themselves the right of limitation, and as of all his works “The Wandering Jew” is the one which is especially the exponent of what by the same classes are considered the most pernicious of heresies, it is impossible to suppose that the same Publishers would desire a proprietorship in that and decline it in any other work on the score of want of orthodoxy. That would be literally straining at a gnat to swallow a camel. Were we in wicked Europe with its finesse and strategy we might suppose that the Publishers declined in this way their contract to create a sensation and would afterward publish the work under some other name, availing them1. Eugène Sue published The Wandering Jew in 1844–45.

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selves of the notoriety thus attained to secure for the work an even larger sale than its own great and original merits would have commanded. But in our own simple republican state of society such stratagems are not to be supposed, and as it is impossible on the grounds we have stated that the reason assigned can be the true one, we can only infer that it covers some mystery not yet ripe for disclosure, and wish joy to the publishers who will now take charge of the book, of the éclat caused by this breach of contract and the law-suit which we understand is to follow, as nothing could be more favorable to securing the book a warm reception while curiosity is so strong a passion in this world of ours. All will run to read the book which was too heterodox to be permitted light and air in the free United States of North America. What makes the conduct of the Publishers of a more striking singularity is the impossibility that they could have remained in ignorance that the writer of Dolores naturally belongs to the advanced guard in all liberal opinions and would be as unlikely to write an ‘orthodox’ book as a ‘sharp’ tradesman would to have dared the reproofs of the Hebrew prophets against a backsliding nation.—Not only is Harro Harring a distinguished man in Europe, and his history and scope so familiar to foreigners here, that a Publisher had only to ask any one of them to ascertain what the spirit of his work was likely to be; but the memoir of him published by Alexander Everett in the Democratic Review, Nos. of October, November and December, 1844, had acquainted all the cultivated class in this city with the same.2 The literary counselor of the Publishers must have been remiss indeed if he did not acquaint them that the merits of a book by Harro Harring were likely to consist in genius, nobility, the religion of the soul and the varied experience afforded by his life of heroic endeavor and romantic vicissitude, rather than conformity to any local standard of orthodoxy. We deplore the mistake, whatever it was, which has given rise to this breach of promise, on account of the rude check it must present to the feelings ofn one whom all here should have delighted to honor. Harro Harring, one of the men of Destiny, who, inflamed with an Idea, count not their life more precious than the Christian martyrs did when balanced with its service—a man who, in his

2. Alexander Hill Everett (1790–1847), editor and diplomat, published a biographical article, “Harro Harring,” in the United States Magazine and Democratic Review, 15 (October–December 1844): 337–47, 462–75, 561–79, which details Harring’s European adventures as an activist devoted to the cause of liberty in post-Napoleonic Europe. of of [ of

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desire to redeem mankind from suffering and slavery, has cast aside all the bright prospects which royal favor and his own great powers have repeatedly opened to him for the sake of truth, honor and humanity—whose life has been one struggle against tyranny, leaves at last the countries which no longer afford him any thing but prisons and proscriptions, comes to that land where Europeans dream or have dreamed that mental freedom not only exists but is held sacred as the one precious jewel by the State and the individual. He comes, a champion of the same cause, with the scars upon him of the many battles he has ventured for its sake. Of course he does not meet a welcome. Yes, my fellow citizens, you know and some among you will still have the heart to blush with me that it is so; you know that the noble sentiment which would once have given such a man a brotherly welcome, is stifled now, though, please Heaven, not extinct, beneath the accursed lust of gain. The lowest Irish bog-trotter who comes here without an idea beyond that of satisfying his physical wants is as welcome on these shores as the champion of freedom, or the poet who seeks a free atmosphere that he may grow to his proper stature, and make the land a paradise with the seed of his thought. Selfishness has clouded our eyes. Harro Harring, then, like others of our more legitimate visitants, who come to us not laden with riches or the titles conferred by conformity to the institutions we have abjured, but rich in the gifts of the spirit which gave national independence to this nation, rich in the culture she so deeply needs in order to prize and use it,—Harro Harring found no welcome. He was not met by the flow of brotherly feeling and by the beam of intelligent eyes, saying: Hail to our friend, our brother in the spirit: Find with us a home and hearts which will bless the free expression of your generous thoughts as they have prized the principles that have caused the sorrows, the renunciations and the struggles of your life hitherto. Not so was he received. Not only his principles, but his talents remained unhonored. Mr. Everett and a few friends endeavored to set them in the true light, but such was the insensibility that, in this country so indigent in knowledge, so dry and scorched for want of intellectual dews, a man eagerly cherished by the connoisseur King of Bavaria, who filled the place of Metastasio and Körner at Vienna,3 who elicited even from the Russian Sovereigns admi-

3. Ludwig I (1786–1868), King of Bavaria (1825–48), greatly supported the arts; Metastasio (1698–1782), Italian poet; Christian Gottfried Körner (1756–1831), German lawyer, public official, and man of letters.

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ration of his powers, the author of forty volumes containing works on the most various and important subjects, a man intimately conversant with what we most want to know in the life of Europe, acquainted in theory and practice with the Arts and several languages and their literatures,—this man has been seriously advised to open a cigar shop in this city, this New-York, which thinks itself such a center of knowledge and life. The effect of such a reception, the temporary effect upon the mind of the exiles who come hither to find their dreams of what Civil Freedom has as yet effected for this country so rudely marred, can be but one; it need not be specified in words. Let us hope that, having recovered from the first shock, the deeply observant man will see causes that excuse, powers at work that will yet reform, this state of things. But Harro Harring, who had borne the loss of all—happy prospects, home, love, and a free career for his genius in his native land and tongue—who had seen his dearest friends strangled and starved to death in Austrian dungeons, his works suppressed by the censor—who had been denied even a momentary glimpse which home-sicknesses craved of native land and home, who had seen himself disappointed in the course of the patron who seemed so noble in his youth, and of the countries for which he ventured all, and never lost his courage, lost it not now. He no longer asked for love and welcome here. But with the indomitable spirit that has been helm and sail to a course weary and tempest-tossed as that of Ulysses,4 he planted himself here resolved to fashion a life of his own, and begin a career such as the times permitted. To illustrate the ideas and express the experience that had guided and filled his life hitherto in a series of literary works presented hopes and achievements for the future not unworthy of the past. To be sure his works must be written in his own tongue and translated into English, a process whose difficulties and disappointments might have discouraged a common man, but not one from the “invincible North,” whose youth its keen airs had tempered to the Berserker power of conquest over obstacles. He has been here two years, fourteen months of which have been engaged in the composition of “Dolores.” Were it according to nature for publishers to feel for authors, those who had contracted with him might feel some pain and remorse that the work which had consumed so many days and nights and seemed the white stone that marked the opening of a new epoch, the career of

4. Ulysses (or Odysseus) spent ten years wandering at sea after the Trojan War.

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a free and original mind in a free and new world, should, when finished and translated, be refused permission to see the light by those whose promises had fostered it to birth, and the author find the moment of truce from the pleasing painful labors of composition, give the signal to engage in difficulties of another kind. We hope, however, that these annoyances will prove temporary. We have examined a part of this work, and find in it a loftiness of sentiment, an ideal greatness, combined with a richness, variety and force in talent and knowledge, that cannot fail to make its publication an era to a large circle of minds. It is a work calculated inevitably to stimulate thought and will rouse many from inertness and dreams of peace where there is no peace. Apart from all this, the scene is laid in South America, where the author has twice sojourned, and describes with great accuracy and vigor some of the scenes and events about which our people are most ignorant and most desirous to be informed. An interest will be aroused by the mysterious prohibition of the work which will call to it an extensive attention, and this is all that is needed. Our guest will yet find that there are scattered here and there in this land minds in whose sympathies he will find a home—minds who will welcome and profit by his thoughts, whether they agree with them or not, since they are the product of a living mind guided by a noble aim. Previous to the publication of the book we may present some extracts, but at present have not room to give them at such length as to afford any adequate notion of the spirit of the whole. And at present we wish to say a few words farther on the subject in general of publishers and authors. We have been acquainted with various individualsn in both those hostile tribes, scarcely oftener in amity than the Zegris and Abencerrages of fair Grenada,5 the Authors and Publishers, and should through this, if in no other way, have been fully impressed with that grand truth so incessantly and wearisomely repeated in life’s primer, that there are two sides to every question. We had, in the beginning, like others, an ideal publisher in our head, a Mæcenas of the noblest, most substantial kind,6 since he paid for the good he was enabled to do by his own labor and his own intelligence. A man of the world and of practical talent, he knew how to do for genius what it seldom

individuels [ individuals 5. Zegris and Abencerrages, warring Moorish families who were brought down near the end of the Moslem rule of Spain. 6. Mæcenas (d. 8th century b.c.), Roman statesman and patron of literature.

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knows how to do for itself—clothe its offspring and usher them into the world under favorable auspices. This was to him a profession, a business, something that he pursued for his own advantage and in use of his peculiar powers. But not for himself alone. A man of sufficient culture and fineness of instincts to appreciate what he could not create; the work was not a mere article of trade to him, nor the author the animal who brought the grist to his mill. He loved and honored genius, and it was his pride to be its friend; his pride that nature had fitted him to be prime minister to her royal order. Thus he felt as a Man. As a man of business he felt that generous way of transacting their mutual affairs was the best for him as well as the other party; that in proportion to hope and success might be the productive powers, and that costly plants required good treatment and favoring airs to ripen much fruit. With such a man in the mind we listened with dismay to the disgust expressed by authors at the narrow, ignorant and mercenary conduct they found in publishers. With amazement we found that in most cases ninety-nine hundredths of the profit accruing from a work were esteemed the share of the persons who printed, bound and passed it over counters, and one of the producer. We heard with pain that publishers were seldom men who appreciated literature at all, too often mere tradesmen incapable even of that large sagacity that would induce them to foster high talents or give new minds a chance for their own sakes. They had no motive of action beyond a large temporary sale; they were as shy of works not prepared by celebrated names as if all persons had not been obliged to become celebrated gradually, and did not even know enough to choose well their literary counselors or forbear a hard bargain whenever they dealt with those whom fame did not yet enable to command them. Sad, sad! we thought: must the poor author go forth with his aching head and face all this meanness and stupidity? Ah! Heaven lies too far off from mortal men. But when we knew the publishers, they showed us yet another side. They sometimes found themselves ignorant and lamented it, but what was to be done? They had come into this trade, naturally, as a trade; they were not aware at first of the range of powers it demanded. They chose their literary advisers as well as they could, but many faults found in their conduct were due to the prejudices of the latter. They showed the impediments which beset their trade, especially in this country, the great risks to which they were exposed, and the great losses they had to allow for. In fine, they made out a list of difficulties which writers in

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general are as little fitted to understand as those that attend the vocation of the writer. In hope of an amiable understanding, it is proposed that a Congress or Convention shall take place some time in the next ten years [the day is not yet fixed]7 to which the tribe of authors and publishers shall mutually send Delegates, and by a full and candid discussion, settle their relations on a better, or, at least, better understood footing than at present. Meanwhile there should be present to the minds of authors the truths stated by the Editor of The Tribune apropos to the case of Laman Blanchard.8 Let them not trust to the pen for pecuniary profit, but acquiring in some other way a frugal subsistence—pursue their noble calling for its own sake, independent of the world. This, when it is possible—but it must be added that in a vast number of cases it will not be—a man does not plan out his life from the beginning and know whether or not he shall have something to write. If good for any thing, he finds himself called upon in the fullness of time to express his mind because it is full. This call of the Muse may come upon him in any position; it may snatch him from his customary business, and make him neglect and lose it. It may drive and burn him night and day till it be fulfilled. From such causes and many others, the writer may absolutely need the pecuniary profit of a work to ransom the time and pay for the bread he has consumed while creating it. There are harsh fates upon the world of men. To such authors we can only say, in this condition of the world, struggle on and rise upon your cross to Heaven. For the consideration of publishers we would suggest: Make in the first place as fair a bargain with the author as you can, which you will be likely to do, if you try to imagine yourself in his place. Should a success unexpected to yourself put thousands of dollars in your pocket when you have given the author ten, feel some bond of honor toward him. Do not rejoice selfishly in your gains alone, but make him to some extent a sharer in them.—Even the pirate publishers of foreign lands have shown a gleam of loyalty toward authors and sent them a tithe of what they had made from their works. That is not too much, is it? a tithe to him to whom the gods gave the whole.

7. The brackets are in the Tribune. 8. A review of Sketches from Life by Samuel Laman Blanchard (1804–45), English poet, editor, and journalist, appeared in the 21 January 1846 New-York Daily Tribune, p. 1.

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One word more as to this matter of censorship of the press. You do not seem, in general, well qualified for such a position; though some of you may be, and at this moment honored names do rise in memory well qualified to judge and choose what is good. But if you assume such a responsibility be consistent in it. If it is a matter of pride to you to see your name on the cover of what you esteem a good book and shame to see it on a bad one, then you feel an intellectual partnership with the author, you do aspire to be the business Mëcenas we have delineated, you are the friend of the author and should, to be consistent, treat him nobly. But, if you are conscious of acting the mere tradesman, of treating all the books you publish as mere articles of trade, and having no standard in fact about them except the pecuniary profit they are likely to bring, do not assume another character. Your name on the cover means nothing, in truth, but that you think it will sell freely, and you should not affect any other view of the work. And having rode thus far on our high horse, we pause, and eyeing the publishing world with a farewell glance not unlike to that cast by Charles 1st on his executioner at Whitehall, pronounce like him the mystic injunction, Remember.9  Review of Harro Harring, Dolores; A Novel of South America (New York: The Author; Montevideo: Libreria Hernandez, 1846). New-York Daily Tribune, 3 February 1846, p. 1; reprinted, New-York Weekly Tribune, 7 February 1846, p. 1. Harro Harring (1798–1870), German-born revolutionary, political writer, poet, and novelist. He may have been with Fuller at a freedom meeting in December 1845 as translator of a speech given in Polish (see her report of it in the 1 December 1845 New-York Daily Tribune). She may have known of the book he published in Boston on Poland Under the Domination of Russia (1834). Of Harring, Fuller wrote he possessed “a stormy nature, but full and rich and with a childlike sweetness in him at times when the vexed waves recede” (Letters, 4:190). Although England had adopted a copyright law in 1842, the United States refused to do so; pirated editions were a mainstay of some publishers, including the largest publisher in the country, Harper and Brothers, which had contracted with Harring to publish his book. Robert Hudspeth has noted that (according to Emerson) Harring had a contract with the Harpers, but when “some foreign or some religious influence” intervened, the company backed out, claiming the book was “irreligious.” Harring sued for $8,000 in damages, but the jury was deadlocked and was discharged (see reports in the New York Tribune, Herald, and

9. Charles I was executed in 1649 after engaging parliament in a civil war. The meaning of Charles’s statement “Remember” to a friend, as Charles prepared for death, has remained enigmatic.

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Post of 24–27 June 1846). Fuller was called to the trial, but it is unclear from her letters whether she did testify; she wrote that she was detained there “to little purpose” (Letters, 4:211–12). Fuller assisted Harring in finding another publisher, appeared in court as a potential witness in Harring’s suit against Harper and Brothers, subsidized the publication of Dolores, and greeted it with another review containing lengthy extracts from the book in the 25 April 1846 New-York Daily Tribune, p. 1.

The Rich Man—An Ideal Sketch


In my walks through this City, the sight of spacious and expensive dwelling houses now in process of building, has called up the following reverie. All benevolent persons, whether deeply thinking on, or only deeply feeling, the woes, difficulties and dangers of our present social system, are agreed either that great improvements are needed, or a thorough reform. Those who desire the latter, include the majority of thinkers. And we ourselves, both from personal observation and the testimony of others, are convinced that a radical reform is needed. Not a reform that rejects the instruction of the past, or asserts that God and man have made mistakes till now. We believe that all past developments have taken place under natural and necessary laws, and that the Paternal Spirit has at no period forgot his children, but granted to all ages and generations their chances of good to balance inevitable ills.—We prize the Past; we recognize it as our parent, our nurse and our teacher, and we know that for a time the new wine required the old bottles to prevent its being spilled upon the ground. Still we feel that the time is come which not only permits, but demands, a wider statement, and a nobler action. The aspect of society presents mighty problems, which must be solved by the soul of Man “divinely intending” itself to the task, or all will become worse instead of better, and ere long the social fabric totter to decay. Yet while the new measures are ripening and the new men educating, there is yet room on the old platform for some worthy action. It is possible for a man of piety, resolution and good sense, to lead a life which, if not expansive, generous, graceful, and pure from suspicion and contempt, is yet not entirely unworthy of his position as the child of God and ruler of a planet. Let us take then some men just where they find themselves, in a mixed state of society where, in quantity, we are free to say the bad preponderates, though the good, from its superior energy in quality, may finally redeem and efface its plague-spots. Our society is ostensibly under the rule of the precepts of Jesus. 359

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We will then suppose a youth sufficiently imbued with these to understand what is conveyed under the parables of the unjust steward and the prodigal son, as well as the denunciations of the opulent Jews. He understands that is needful to preserve purity and teachableness, since of those most like little children is the kingdom of Heaven’s mercy for the sinner, since there is peculiar joy in Heaven at the salvation of such, perpetual care for the unfortunate, since only to the just steward shall his possessions be pardoned. Imbued with such lore the young man joins the active—we will say, in choosing an instance, joins the commercial world. His views of his profession are not those which make of the many a herd, not superior, except in the far reach of their selfish instincts, to the animals, mere calculating, money-making machines. He sees in commerce a representation of most important interests, a grand school that may teach the heart and soul of the civilized world to a willing, thinking mind. He plays his part in the game, but not for himself alone; he sees the interests of all mankind engaged with his, and remembers them while he furthers his own. His intellectual discernment, no less than his moral, thus teaching the undesirableness of lying and stealing, he does not practice or connive at the falsities and meannesses so frequent among his fellows; he suffers many turns of the wheel of Fortune to pass unused, since he cannot avail himself of them and keep clean his hands. What he gains is by superior assiduity, skill in combination and calculation, and quickness of sight. His gains are legitimate so far as the present state of things permits any gains to be. Nor is this honorable man denied his due rank in the most corrupt state of society. Here, happily, we draw from life, and speak of what we know.—Honesty is, indeed, the best policy, only it is so in the long run, and therefore a policy which a selfish man has not faith and patience to pursue. The influence of the honest man is in the end predominant, and the rogues who sneer because he will not shuffle the cards in their way, are forced to bow to it at last. But, while thus conscientious and mentally progressive, he does not forget to live. The sharp and care-worn faces, the joyless lives that throng his busy street, do not make him forget his need of tender affections, of the practices of bounty and love. His family, his acquaintance, especially those who are struggling with the difficulties of life, are not obliged to wait till he has accumulated a certain sum. He is sunlight and dew to them now, day by day. No less do all in his employment prize and bless the just, the brotherly man. He dares not, would not climb to power upon their necks. He requites their toil handsomely always: if his success be unusual, they share the benefit.—Their comfort is

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cared for in all the arrangements for their work. He takes care, too, to be personally acquainted with those he employs, regarding them, not as mere tools of his purpose, but as human beings also; he keeps them in his eye, and if it be in his power to supply their need of consolation, instruction, or even pleasure, they find they have a friend. “Nonsense!” exclaims our sharp-eyed, thin-lipped antagonist. “Such a man would never get rich, or even get along.” You are mistaken, Mr. Stock-jobber. Thus far many lines are drawn from real life, though for the second part which follows, we want, as yet, a worthy model. We must imagine, then, our ideal merchant to have grown rich in some forty years of toil passed in the way we have indicated. His hair is touched with white, but his form is vigorous yet. Neither gormandise nor the fever of gain have destroyed his complexion, quenched the light of his eye, or substituted sneers for smiles. He is an upright, strong, sagacious, generous looking man, and if his movements be abrupt and his language concise somewhat beyond the standard of beauty, he is still the gentleman mercantile, but a mercantile nobleman. Our nation is not silly in striving for an aristocracy. Humanity longs for its upper classes. But the silliness consists in making them out of clothes, equipage, and a servile imitation of foreign manners, instead of the genuine elegance and distinction that can only be produced by genuine culture. Shame upon the stupidity which, when all circumstances leave us free for the introduction of a real aristocracy, such as the world never saw, bases its pretensions on, or makes its bow to, the footman behind the coach, instead of the person within it. But our merchant shall be a real nobleman, whose noble manners spring from a noble mind, whose fashions from a sincere and intelligent love of the Beautiful. We will also indulge the fancy of giving him a wife and children congenial with himself. Having lived in sympathy with him, they have acquired no taste for luxury; they do not think that the best use of wealth and power is in self indulgence, but, on the contrary, that it is more blessed to give than to receive. He is now having one of these fine houses built, and, as in other things, proceeds on a few simple principles. It is substantial, for he wishes to give no countenance to the paper buildings that correspond with other worthless paper currency of a credit system. It is thoroughly finished and furnished, for he has a conscience about his house, as about the neatness of his person. All

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must be of a piece—harmony and a wise utility are consulted without regard to show. Still, as he is a rich man, we allow him reception rooms, lofty, large, adorned with good copies of ancient works of art, and fine specimens of modern. n.b.—I admit, in this instance, the propriety of my nobleman, often choosing by advice of friends who may have had more leisure and opportunity to acquire a sure appreciation of merit in these walks. His character being simple, he will, no doubt, appreciate a great part of what is truly grand and beautiful. But, also, from imperfect culture, he might often reject what in the end he would have found most valuable to himself and others. For he has not done learning, but only acquired the privilege of helping to open a domestic school in which he will find himself a pupil as well as master. So he may well make use, in furnishing himself with the school apparatus, of the best counsel. The same applies to making his library a good one. Only there must be no sham; no pluming himself on possessions that represent his wealth, but the taste of others. Our nobleman is incapable of pretension, or the airs of connoisseurship; his object is to furnish a home with those testimonies of a higher life in man that may best aid to cultivate the same in himself and those assembled round him. He shall also have a fine garden and green-houses. But the flowers shall not be used only to decorate his apartments or the hair of his daughters, but shall often bless, by their soft and exquisite eloquence, the poor invalid, or others whose sorrowful hearts find in their society a consolation and a hope which nothing else bestows. For flowers, the highest expression of the bounty of Nature, declare that for all men not merely labor or luxury but gentle, buoyant, ever energetic joy was intended, and bid us hope that we shall not forever be kept back from our inheritance. All the persons who have aided in building up this domestic temple, from the artist who painted the ceilings to the poorest hodman, shall be well paid and cared for during its erection, for it is a necessary part of the happiness of our nobleman to feel that all concerned in creating his home are the happier for it. We have said nothing about the architecture of the house, and yet this is only for want of room. We do consider it one grand duty of every person able to build a good house, also to aim at building a beautiful one. We do not want imitations of what was used in other ages, nations and climates, but what is simple, noble and in conformity with the wants of our own. Room enough, simplicity of design, and judicious adjustment of the parts to their uses and to

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the whole, are the first requisites, the ornaments are merely the finish on these. We hope to see a good style of civic architecture long before any material improvement in the country edifices, for reasons that would be tedious to enumerate here. Suffice it to say that we are far more anxious to see an American architecture, than an American literature,n for we are here sure there is already something individual to express. Well, suppose the house built and equipped with man and horse. You may be sure my nobleman gives his “hired help” good accommodations, both for their sleeping and waking hours,—baths, books, and some leisure to use them. Nay! I assure you, and this assurance also is drawn from life, that it is possible, even in our present social relations, for the man who does common justice in these respects to his fellows, and shows a friendly heart that thoroughly feels service no degradation, but an honor, “A man’s a man for a’ that.” Honor in the king the wisdom of his service. Honor in the serf the fidelity of his service.1

can have around him those who do their work in serenity of mind, neither deceiving nor envying those whom circumstances have enabled to command their service. As to the carriage,n that is used for the purpose of going to and fro in bad weather, or ill health, or haste, or for drives to enjoy the country. But my nobleman and his family are too well born and bred not to prefer using their own feet when possible. And their carriage is much appropriated to the use of poor invalids, even among the abhorred class of poor relations, so that they often have not room in it for themselves, much less for flaunting dames and lazy dandies. We need hardly add that their attendants wear no liveries. They are aware that, in a society where none of the causes exist that justify this habit abroad, the practice would have no other result than to call up a sneer to the lips of the most complaisant and needy foreign “mi lor” when Mrs. Higginbottom’s carriage stops the way with its tawdry, ill-fancied accompaniments. Will none of

literatare [ literature 1. “A Man’s a Man For a’ That,” ll. 7–8, by Robert Burns was also used by Fuller in the 15 July 1845 New-York Daily Tribune; the last two lines are attributed to Johann Christoph Friedrich von Schiller by Fuller in the 21 May 1846 New-York Daily Tribune. carriage [ carriage,

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their “governors” tell our citizensn the Æsopean fable of the donkey that tried to imitate the gambols of the little dog?2 The wife of my nobleman is so well matched with him that she has no need to be the better half. She is his almoner, his counselor, and the priestess who keeps burning on the domestic hearth a fire from the fuel he collects in his out door work, whose genial heat and aspiring flame comfort and animate all who come within its range. His children are his ministers, whose leisure and various qualifications enable them to carry out his good thoughts. They hold all that they possess— time, money, talents, acquirements—on the principle of stewardship. They wake up the seeds of virtue and genius in all the young persons of their acquaintance, but the poorer classes are especially their care. There they seek for those who are threatened with lying mute, inglorious Hampdens and Miltons, but for their scrutiny and care.3 Of these they become the teachers and patrons to the extent of their power. Such knowledge of the arts, sciences and just principles of action as they have been favored with, they communicate and thereby form novices worthy to fill up the ranks of the true American aristocracy. And the house—it is a large one, a single family does not fill its chambers. Some of them are devoted to the use of men of genius, who need a serene home, free from care, while they pursue their labors for the good of the world. Thus, as in the palaces of the little princes of Italy in a better day, these chambers become hallowed by the nativities of great thoughts, and the horoscopes of the human births that may take place there are likely to read the better for it. Suffering virtue sometimes finds herself taken home here, instead of being sent to the almshouse or presented with a half dollar and a ticket for coal, and finds upon my nobleman’s mattresses (for the wealth of Croesus would not lure him or his to sleep on down4) dreams of angelic protection which enable her to rise refreshed for the struggle of the morrow.

cits [ citizens 2. Æsop (fl. 6th century b.c.), Greek fabulist, wrote of the ass that tried to imitate a dog, even to the point of jumping into his owner’s lap, to show that one should be satisfied with one’s lot rather than to desire something to which one is not fitted to receive. 3. John Hampden (1594–1643), English statesman who supported parliament against the attempts of Charles I to abolish it; John Milton wrote Areopagitica (1644) in favor of freedom of the press. 4. Croesus (fl. 6th century b.c.), Greek king known for his treasures.

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The uses of hospitality are very little understood among us, so that we fear generally there is small chance of entertaining Gods and Angels unawares, as the Greeks and Hebrews did in the generous time of hospitality when every man had a claim on the roof of fellow man. Now, none is received to a bed and breakfast unless he comes as “bearer of despatches” from his Excellency So and So. But, let us not be supposed to advocate the system of all work and no play, or to delight exclusively in the pedagoguish and Goody Two Shoes vein. Reader, if any such accompany me to this scene of my vision, cheer up, I hear the sound of music in full band, and see the banquet prepared. Perhaps even they are dancing the Polka and Redowa in some of those airy, well lighted rooms. In another they find in the acting of extempore dramas, arrangement of tableaux, little concerts or recitations, intermingled with beautiful national or fancy dances, some portion of the enchanting, refining and ennobling influences of the arts. The finest engravings on all subjects attend such as like to employ themselves more quietly, while those who can find a companion or congenial group to converse with, find also plenty of recesses and still rooms with softer light provided for their pleasure. There is not this side of the Atlantic, we dare our glove upon it, a more devout believer than ourselves in the worship of the Muses and Graces, both for itself and its importance no less to the moral than the intellectual life of a nation. Perhaps there is not one who has so deep a feeling or so many suggestions ready, in the fulness of time to be hazarded on the subject. But in order to such worship what standard is there as to admission to the service? Talents of gold or Delphian talents?5 fashion or elegance? “standing” or the power to move gracefully from one “position” to any other? Our nobleman did not hesitate; the handle to his door-bell was not of gold, but mother-of-pearl, pure and prismatic. If he did not go into the alleys to pick up the poor, they were not excluded, if qualified by intrinsic qualities to adorn the scene. Neither were wealth or fashion a cause of exclusion more than of admission. All depended on the person; yet he did not seek his guests among the slaves of Fashion, for he knew that persons highly endowed rarely had patience with the frivolities of that class, but retired and left it to be peopled mostly by weak and plebeian natures. Yet all depended on the person. Was the person fair, noble, wise, brilliant, or

5. The oracle at Delphi, in Greece near Mount Parnassus, could, people believed, foretell the future.

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even only youthfully innocent and gay, or venerable in a good old age, he or she was welcome. Still, as simplicity of character and some qualification positively good, healthy and natural was requisite for admission, we must say the company was select. Our nobleman and his family had weeded their ‘circle’ faithfully year by year. Some valued acquaintances they had made in ball-rooms and boudoirs, and kept; but far more had been made through the daily wants of life, and shoemakers, sempstresses and graziers mingled happily with artists and statesmen, to the benefit of both. (n.b.—None used the poisonous weed in or out of our domestic temple.) I cannot tell you what infinite good our nobleman and his family were doing by creation of this true social center where the legitimate aristocracy of the land assembled, not to be dazzled by expensive furniture (our nobleman bought what was good in texture and beautiful in form but not because it was expensive,) not to be feasted on rare wines and high seasoned dainties, though they found simple refreshments well prepared, (as indeed it was a matter of duty and conscience in that house that the least office should be well fulfilled,) but to enjoy the generous confluence of mind with mind and heart with heart, the pastimes that are not waste-times of taste and inventive fancy, the cordial union of beings from all points and places in noble human sympathy.—NewYork was beginning to be truly American or rather Columbian, and money stood for something in the records of history. It had brought opportunity to genius and aid to virtue. But just this moment the jostling showed me that I had reached the corner of Wall-st. I looked earnestly at the omnibuses discharging their eager freight, as if I hoped to see my merchant. Perhaps he has gone to the Post Office to take out letters from his friends in Utopia, thought I. “Please ye give me a penny,” screamed a ragged, half-starved little street sweep, and the fancied cradle of the American Utopia receded or rather proceeded fifty years at least into the Future.  New-York Daily Tribune, 6 February 1846, p. 1; reprinted, New-York Weekly Tribune, 14 February 1846, p. 6.

[Review of Leigh Hunt, Italian Poets]


These volumes were new to us, and taken up with that feeling of distaste which an attempt so seemingly, at first blush, absurd as that of writing poetry into prose, and above all, Italian poetry into English prose, must naturally induce. We find it, however, a very entertaining book, and its vivacity and general fidelity make it no valueless representation of Italian literature to those who have never entered that most beautiful, grand and fertile region. The book is, beyond measure, Leigh Huntish; none of his writings have so fully expressed the great talent, good feeling, and pervasive vulgarity of the author’s mind. In boldest relief these attributes are seen in the critical and biographical sketch of Dante. Suppose a Medea to have an acute and lively English Abigail,1 who described her exploits, magical and tragical, for the edification of the kitchen, with perfect accuracy as to facts and a kind of frightened, strutting admiration at the greatness of her subject, interlarded with such remarks as a reference of Medean conduct to the Abigail standard might call forth, and you will have an idea of this commentary of the author of “Nimini Pimini” upon him whom he aptlyn characterizes as “that lonely lion of a man.”2 Never was a more complete illustration of the way talent naturally looks at genius, admiring the results, unable to appreciate the conditions under which they must be produced. The great mixture of truth in all the criticisms of Mr. Leigh Hunt, his fineness of perception and sympathy in details, only make more palpable his entire want of spiritual insight, poetic dignity and that holiness of heart without which there can be no full description, far less mathematic measurement, of the works of great souls. 1. Medea, Greek sorceress who gained immortality for refusing the advances of Zeus; Abigail, a term meaning “lady’s maid,” after the character of that name in the play The Scornful Lady (1613?), by the English dramatists Francis Beaumont (1584–1616) and John Fletcher (1579–1625). aply [ aptly 2. A reference to Byron’s title for Hunt’s The Story of Rimini (1812–16).

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Hunt’s attempts to take measure of Dante and to enforce blame where he thinks the moral well-being of the world calls for his guardian care, are simply ludicrous. It is the fly buzzing round the lion and blaming him for eating up the great “wild beastesses” and other atrocities, for which his flyship has no taste, as not being in his line. The truer what he says, is the more funny in him to say it, as he does, and his patronizing limitations of the influence and prerogatives of Dante only serve to show more inevitably the pettiness of his own proportions and mincing gait. With what face shall the pupil of Dante listen to the sapient Cockney who informs him that “the Vita Nuova is a most engaging history of a boyish passion, evidently as real and true on his own side as love and truth can be, whatever might be its mistake as to its object,” or the grave tea-drinking censure passed upon the Florentine for his bad temper and probable carelessness of his duties as “a family man.” Verily, the reason why no man is a hero to his valet de chambre is likely to be the opposite of what is commonly supposed by the sneering quoters of the saying. In the same style is the following passage, one of the most glaring instances of the follies consequent upon want of spiritual development in any proportion to mere taste and talent that will be found throughout Hunt’s statement: “As to our Florentine’s heaven, it is full of beauties also, though sometimes of a more questionable and pantomimical sort than is to be found in either of the other books. The general impression of the place is that it is no Heaven at all. He says it is, and talks much of its smiles and its beatitude; but always excepting the poetry, especially the smiles brought from the more heavenly earth. We realize little but an assemblage of doctors and doubtful characters, far more angry and theological than celestial; giddy raptures of monks and inquisitors dancing in circles, and saints denouncing popes and Florentines; in short, a Heaven libeling itself with invectives against earth, and terminating in a great presumption.”

The following extract gives a fair idea of what is good and what is miserable in Hunt’s buzzing representation of Dante. Let the simple-minded reader who is not straining after self consequence, read it and see whether he can spare time to think of the critic’s objections in face of the poetic magnificence and ineffable loveliness revealed to him in these passages, even though the divine forms be veiled in slipshod prose:

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“His angels, however, are another matter. Belief was prepared for those winged human forms, and they furnished him with some of the most beautiful combinations of the natural with the supernatural. Ginguéné has remarked the singular variety as well as beauty of Dante’s angels. Milton’s, indeed, are commonplace in the comparison. In the eighth canto of the Inferno, the devils insolently refuse the poet and his guide an entrance into the city of Dis: an angel comes sweeping over the Stygian lake to enforce it as the noise of his wings makes shores tremble, and it is like a crashing whirlwind such as beats down trees and sends the peasants and their herds flying before it. The heavenly messenger, after rebuking the devils, touches the portals of the city with his wand; they fly open; and he returns the way he came, without uttering a word to the two companions. His face was that of one occupied with other thoughts. This angel is announced by a tempest. Another, who brings the souls of the departed to Purgatory, is first discovered at a distance, gradually disclosing white splendors, which are his wings and garments. He comes in a boat, of which his wings are the sails; and as he approaches, it is impossible to look him in the face for his brightness. Two other angels have green wings and green garments, and the drapery is kept in motion like a flag by the vehement action of the wings. A fifth has a face like the morning star, casting forth quivering beams. A sixth is of a lustre so oppressive, that the poet feels a weight on his eyes before he knows what is coming. Another’s presence affects the senses like the fragrance of a May-morning; and another is in garments dark as cinders, but has a sword in his hand too sparkling to be gazed at. Dante’s occasional pictures of the beauties of external nature are worthy of these angelic creations, and to the last degree fresh and lovely. You long to bathe your eyes, smarting with the fumes of hell, in his dews. You are enchanted on his green fields and his celestial blue skies, the more so from the pain and sorrow in the midst of which the visions are created. Dante’s grandeur of every kind is proportionate to that of his angels, almost to his ferocity; and that is saying every thing. It is not always the spiritual grandeur of Milton, the subjection of the material impression to the moral; but it equally such when he chooses, and far more abundant. His infernal precipices—his black whirlwinds—his innumerable cries and claspings of hands—his very odors of huge loathsomeness—his ghosts at twilight standing up to the middle in pits, like towers, and causing earthquakes when they move—earthquake of the mountain in Purgatory, when a spirit is not free for Heaven—his dignified Mantuan Sordello, silently regarding him and his guide as they go by “like a lion on his watch”—his blasphemer, Capaneus, lying in unconquered rage and sullenness under an eternal rain of flakes of fire (human precursor of Milton’s Satan)—his aspect of Paradise, “as if the universe had smiled”—his inhabitants of the whole planet Saturn crying out as

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loud, in accordance with the anti-Papal indignation of St. Pietro Damiano, that the poet, though among them, could not hear what they said —and the blushing eclipse, like red clouds at sunset, which takes place at the apostle Peter’s denunciation of the sanguinary filth of the court of Rome—all those sublimities, and many more, make us not know whether to be more astonished at the greatness of the poet or the raging littleness of the man.”

Hunt’s prose is even more slovenly than usual in these books. He talks of “heaps of wine” and other liquids, and uses other such huddling “cuddling” expressions in profusion. The strictures on Tasso are even more offensive than those on Dante, because it seems as if they might do harm and grieve and disgust the poet if he knew them, while we feel that Dante would crush him at once as Tieck represents him to do with the modern critic in the “Garden of Poetry.”3 He did not address him directly, but only turned his head at the sharp, flippant sounds that jarred his mood with, “What says the Worm?”

But it seems as if the sensitive and tender Tasso might shrink behind the bars of his prison at the want of poetic sympathy and beautiful reverence with which he is approached. In treating of Boiardo and Ariosto, Hunt is more happy.4 They are minds less remote from his orbit, and his free ungloved personalities seem less inappropriate. His manner of writing out the episodes in their poems is oftentimes charming. We had forgotten that Ariosto was chained in early youth to the care and nurture of a family of brothers amidst the difficulties of poverty, and a great part of his after life doomed to service of a rude and stupid master. His mind, as one so rich and buoyant will, preserved its elasticity and play uninjured, and like generous wine, gained only brilliancy and richness from the passage of years and the detentions of long stormy voyages. And so farewell, thou piece of shining and variegated halfness, friend scarce worthy the celestial love of Shelley, inevitable butt of Byron and all others of the Dantesque, Beethovensque race. Shut thy beak, sprightly mocking-bird, and strive not to imitate the thunder—neither let thy civic educa-

3. Ludwig Tieck (1773–1853), German poet and critic. 4. Matteo Maria Boiardo (1441–94), Italian poet.

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tion lure thee into fancying thou canst measure lightning with the yard-stick. After all, thou are very brilliant, very entertaining, canst do little harm and some good which a nobler man might not remember to do.—Even in the case of Dante, “the Italian Pilgrim’s Progress”5 will be found not without use to the student. Hunt gives a good account of the mechanism of the “Divine Comedy” and shows acuteness and ingenuity in the examination of details.  Review of Leigh Hunt, Stories from the Italian Poets (New York: Wiley and Putnam, 1846). New-York Daily Tribune, 18 February 1846, p. 1; reprinted, New-York Weekly Tribune, 21 February 1846, p. 1. Title supplied. Leigh Hunt (1784–1859), English poet, critic, and journalist.

5. Dante completed The Divine Comedy in about 1320; its three parts were the Purgatorio, Inferno, and Paradiso.

Consecration of Grace Church


Whoever passes up Broadway finds his attention arrested by three fine structures, Trinity Church, that of the Messiah, and Grace Church.1 His impressions are, probably, at first of a pleasant character. He looks upon these edifices as expressions, which, however inferior in grandeur to the poems in stone which adorn the older world, surely indicate that man cannot rest content with his short earthly span, but prizes relations to eternity. The house, in which he pays deference to claims which death will not cancel, seems to be no less important in his eyes than those in which the affairs which press nearest are attended to. So far, so good! That is expressed which gives man his superiority over the other orders of the natural world, that consciousness of spiritual affinities of which we see no unequivocal signs elsewhere. But, if this be something great when compared with the rest of the animal creation, yet how little seems it when compared with the ideal that has been offered to him, as to the means of signifying such feelings. These temples! how far do they correspond with the idea of that religious sentiment from which they originally sprung? In the old world the history of such edifices, though not without its shadow, had many bright lines.—Kings and Emperors paid oftentimes for the materials and labor a price of blood and plunder, and many a wretched sinner sought by contributions of stone for their wallsn to roll off that he had laid on his conscience. Still the community amid which they rose, knew little of these drawbacks. Pious legends attest the purity of feeling associated with each circumstance of their building. Mysterious orders, of which we know only that they were consecrated to brotherly love and the development of mind, produced the genius which animated the architecture, but the casting of the bells and 1. Grace Church in New York had been consecrated on 7 March 1846. walls! [ walls

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suspending them in the tower was an act in which all orders of the community took part; for when those cathedrals were consecrated it was for the use of all. Rich and poor knelt together upon their marble pavements, and the imperial altar welcomed the obscurest artisan. This grace our Churches want, the grace which belongs to all religions, but is peculiarly and solemnly enforced upon the followers of Jesus. The poor to whom he came to preach can have no share in the grace of Grace Church. In St. Peter’s, if only as an empty form, the soiled feet of travel-worn disciples are washed, but such feet can never intrude on the fane of the holy trinity here in republican America, and the Messiah may be supposed still to give as excuse for delay “The poor you always have with you.”2 We must confess this circumstance is to us quite destructive of reverence and value for these buildings. We are told that at the late consecration the claims of the poor were eloquently urged, and that an effort is to be made, by giving a side chapel, to atone for the luxury which shuts them out from the reflection of sunshine through those brilliant windows. It is certainly better that they should be offered the crumbs from the rich man’s table than nothing at all. Yet it is surely not the way that Jesus would have taught to provide for the poor. Would you not then have these splendid edifices erected? We certainly feel that the educational influence of good specimens of architecture, (and we know no other argument in their favor,)n is far from being a counterpoise to the abstraction of so much money from purposes that would be more in fulfilment of that Christian idea which these assume to represent. Were the rich to build such a church, and, dispensing with pews and all exclusive advantages, invite all who would to come in to the banquet, that were, indeed, noble and Christian. And, though we believe more, for our nation and time, in intellectual monuments than those of wood and stone, and, in opposition even to our admired Powers,3 think that Michael Angelo himself could have advised no more suitable monument to Washington than a house devoted to the instruction of the people, and believe that that great master and the Greeks no less would agree with us if they lived now to survey all the bearings of the subject; yet we would not object to these splendid

2. Variations of this phrase are in Matthew 26:11, Mark 14:7, and John 12:8. favor [ favor, 3. Hiram Powers (1805–73), American sculptor who lived in Florence, completed a marble bust of George Washington in 1844.

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churches, if the idea of Him they call Master were represented in them. But till it is, they can do no good, for the means are not in harmony with the end. The rich man sits in state while ‘near two hundred thousand’ Lazaruses linger, unprovided for, without the gate. While this is so, they must not talk much, within, of Jesus of Nazareth, who called to him fishermen, laborers and artisans, for his companions and disciples. We find some excellent remarks on this subject from Rev. Stephen Olin, President of the Wesleyan University.4 They are appended as a note to a discourse addressed to Young Men, on the text: “Put ye on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make not provision for the flesh, to fulfil the lusts thereof.”5

This discourse, though it discloses formal and external views of religious ties and obligations, is dignified by a fervent, generous love for men, and a more than commonly catholic liberality, and though these remarks are made and meant to bear upon the interests of his own sect, yet they are anti-sectarian in their tendency and worthy the consideration of all anxious to understand the call of duty in these matters. Earnest attention of this sort will better avail than fifteen hundred dollars, or more, paid for a post of exhibition in a fashionable Church, where, if piety be provided with one chance, worldliness has twenty to stare it out of countenance.  New-York Daily Tribune, 11 March 1846, p. 1; reprinted, New-York Weekly Tribune, 14 March 1846, p. 1. 4. Resources and Duties of Christian Young Men (1846) was delivered by Stephen Olin (1797–1851) to the graduating class at Wesleyan University in August 1845. 5. Romans 13:14.

The Poor Man—An Ideal Sketch


The sketch of the Rich Man, made some three or four weeks since, seems to require this companion-piece, and we shall make the attempt, though the subject is far more difficult than the former was.1 In the first place, we must state what we mean by a poor man, for it is a term of wide range in its relative applications. A pains-taking artisan, trained to self-denial and a strict adaptation, not of his means to his wants, but of his wants to his means, finds himself rich and grateful, if some unexpected fortune enables him to give his wife a new gown, his children cheap holiday joys, and to his starving neighbor a decent meal; while George IV, when heir apparent to the throne of Great Britain, considered himself driven by the pressure of poverty to become a debtor, a beggar, a swindler, and, by the aid of perjury, the husband of two wives at the same time, neither of whom he treated well.2 Since poverty is made an excuse for such depravity in conduct, it would be well to mark the limits within which self-control and resistance to temptation may be expected. When he of the olden time prayed “Give me neither poverty nor riches,”3 we presume he meant that proportion of means to the average wants of a human being which secures freedom from eating cares, freedom of motion, and a moderate enjoyment of the common blessings offered by earth, air, water, the natural relations, and the subjects for thought which every day presents. We shall certainly not look above this point for our poor man.—A Prince may be poor, if he has not means to relieve the sufferings of his subjects, or secure to them needed benefits. Or he may make himself so, just as a wellpaid laborer by drinking brings poverty to his roof. So may the Prince, by the

1. “The Rich Man—An Ideal Sketch,” New-York Daily Tribune, 6 February 1846. 2. George IV (1762–1830), King of England (1820–30), whose first marriage was not recognized because it lacked his father the King’s permission, was known for his extravagance and dissolute habits. 3. Proverbs 30:8.

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mental gin of horse-racing or gambling, grow a beggar. But we shall not consider these cases. Our subject will be taken between the medium we have spoken of as answer to the wise man’s prayer, and that destitution which we must style infamous, either to the individual or to the society whose vices have caused that stage of poverty in which there is no certainty, and often no probability, of work or bread from day to day,—in which cleanness and all the decencies of life are impossible, and the natural human feelings are turned to gall because the man finds himself on this earth in a far worse situation than the brute. In this stage there is no Ideal, and from its abyss, if the unfortunates look up to Heaven, or the state of things as they ought to be, it is with suffocating gasps which demand relief or death. This degree of poverty is common, as we all know, but we who do not share it have no right to address those who do from our own standard, till we have placed their feet on our own level. Accursed is he who does not long to have this so,—to take out at least the physical Hell from this world! Unblest is he who is not seeking either by thought or act to effect this poor degree of amelioration in the circumstances of his race. We take the subject of our sketch, then, somewhere between the abjectly poor and those in moderate circumstances. What we have to say may apply to either sex and to any grade in this division of the human family, from the hodman and washerwoman up to the hard-working, poorly paid lawyer, clerk, schoolmaster or scribe. The advantages of such a position are many. In the first place, you belong, inevitably, to the active and suffering part of the world. You know the ills that try men’s souls and bodies. You cannot creep into a safe retreat, arrogantly to judge, or heartlessly to forget, the others. They are always before you; you see the path stained by their bleeding feet; stupid and flinty, indeed, must you be, if you can hastily wound or indolently forbear to aid them. Then as to yourself, you know what your resources are; what you can do, what bear; there is small chance for you to escape a well-tempered modesty. Then, again, if you find power in yourself to endure the trial, there is reason and reality in some degree of self reliance. The moral advantages of such training can scarcely fail to amount to something, and as to the mental, that most important chapter, how the lives of men are fashioned and transfused by the experience of passion and the development of thought, presents new sections at every turn, such as the distant dilettanti’sn opera-glasses will never detect,—to say nothing of the dilletanti’s [ dilettanti’s

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exercise of mere faculty, which, though insensible in its daily course, leads to results of immense importance. But the evils, the disadvantages, the dangers, how many, how imminent! True, indeed, they are so.—There is the early bending of the mind to the production of marketable results, which must hinder all this free play of intelligence and deaden the powers that craved instruction. There is the callousness produced by the sight of more misery than it is possible to relieve; the heart, at first so sensitive, taking refuge in a stolid indifference against the pangs of sympathetic pain, it had not force to bear. There is the perverting influence of uncongenial employments, undertaken without or against choice, continued at unfit hours and seasons, till the man loses his natural relations with summer and winter, day and night, and has no sense more for natural beauty and joy. There is the mean providence, the perpetual caution to guard against ill instead of the generous freedom of a mind which expects good to ensue from all good actions. There is the sad doubt whether it will do to indulge the kindly impulse, the calculation of dangerous chances and the cost between the loving impulse and its fulfillment. Yes: there is bitter chance of narrowness, meanness and dullness on this path, and it requires great natural force, a wise and large view of life taken at an early age, or fervent trust in God, to evade them. It is astonishing to see the poor, no less than the rich, the slaves of externals. One would think that, where the rich man once became aware of the worthlessness of the mere trappings of life from the weariness of a spirit that found itself entirely dissatisfied after pomp and self-indulgence, the poor man would learn this a hundred times from the experience how entirely independent of them is all that is intrinsically valuable in our life. But no! The poor man wants dignity, wants elevation of spirit. It is his own servility that forges the fetters that enslave him. Whether he cringe to, or rudely defy, the man in the coach and handsome coat, the cause and effect are the same. He is influenced by a costume and a position. He is not firmly rooted in the truth that, only in so far as outward beauty and grandeur are a representative of the mind of the possessor, can they count for anything at all. Oh poor man! you are poor indeed, if you feel yourself so; poor if you do not feel that a soul born of God, a mind capable of scanning the wondrous works of time and space, and a flexible body for its service, are the essential riches of a man, and all he needs to make him the equal of any other man. You are mean, if the possession of money or other external advantages can make you envy or shrink from a being mean enough to value himself upon such. Stand where you may, oh Man, you cannot be noble and rich, if your brow be not broad and steadfast, if your eye

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beam not with a consciousness of inward worth, of eternal claims and hopes which such trifles cannot at all affect. A man without this majesty is ridiculous amid the flourish and decorations procured by money, pitiable in the faded habiliments of poverty. But a man who is a man, a woman who is a woman, can never feel lessened or embarrassed because others look ignorantly on such matters. If they regret the want of these temporary means of power, it must be solely because it fetters their motions, deprives them of leisure and desired means of improvement, or of benefiting those they love or pity. I have heard those possessed of rhetoric and imaginative tendency declare that they should have been outwardly great and inwardly free, victorious poets and heroes, if Fate had allowed them a certain quantity of dollars. I have found it impossible to believe them. In early youth penury may have power to freeze the genial current of the soul and prevent it, during one short life, from becoming sensible of its true vocation and destiny. But if it has become conscious of these, and yet there is not advance in any and all circumstances, no change would avail. No! our poor man must begin higher. He must, in the first place, really believe there is a God who ruleth, a fact to which few men vitally bear witness, though most are ready to affirm it with the lips. 2d. He must sincerely believe that rank and wealth —are but the guinea’s stamp, The man’s the gold,4

take his stand on his claims as a human being, made in God’s own likeness, urge them when the occasion permits, but, at all times, never be so false to them as to feel put down or injured by the want of mere external advantages. 3d. He must accept his lot, while he is in it. If he can change it for the better, let his energies be exerted to do so. But if he cannot, there is none that will not yield an opening to Eden, to the glories of Zion and even to the subterranean enchantments of our strange estate. There is none that may not be used with nobleness. “Who sweeps a room, as for Thy sake Makes that and th’ action clean.”5 4. “Burns,” ll. 11–12, by Alice Cary (1820–71), novelist and poet. 5. “The Elixer,” ll. 19–20 (with “Thy sake” printed for the original’s “Thy laws”), by George Herbert (1593–1633), English metaphysical poet.

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4th. Let him examine the subject enough to be convinced that there is not that vast difference between the employments that is supposed, in the means of expansion and refinement. All depends on the spirit as to the use that is made of an occupation. Mahomet was not a wealthy merchant, and profound philosophers have ripened on the benches, not of the lawyers, but the shoemakers. It did not hurt Milton to be a poor school-master, nor Shakspeare to do the errands of a London play house. Yes, the mind is its own place, and if it will keep that place, all doors will be opened from it. Upon this subject we hope to offer some hints at a future day, in speaking of the different trades, professions and modes of labor. 5th. Let him remember that from no man can the chief wealth be kept. On all men the sun and stars shine; for all the oceans swell and rivers flow. All men may be brothers, lovers, fathers, friends; before all lie the mysteries of birth and death. If these wondrous means of wealth and blessing be likely to remain misused or unused, there are quite as many disadvantages in the way of the man of money as of the man who has none. Few who drain the choicest grape know the ecstacy of bliss and knowledge that follows a full draught of the wine of life. That has mostly been reserved for those on whose thoughts society, as a public, makes but a moderate claim. And if bitterness followed on the joy, if your fountain was frozen after its first gush by the cold winds of the world, yet, moneyless men, ye are at least not wholly ignorant of what a human being has force to know. You have not skimmed over surfaces, and been dozing on beds of down during the rare and stealthy visits of Love and the Muses. Remember this, and, looking round on the arrangements of the lottery, see if you did not draw a prize in your turn. It will be seen that our ideal poor man needs to be religious, wise, dignified and humble, grasping at nothing, claiming all; willing to wait, never willing to give up; servile to none, the servant of all, and esteeming it the glory of a man to serve. The character is rare, but not unattainable. We have, however, found an approach to it more frequent in woman than in man. Woman, even less than Man, is what she should be, as a whole. She is not that self-centered being, full of profound intuitions, angelic love, and flowing poesy, that she should be. Yet there are circumstances in which the native force and purity of her being teach her how to conquer where the restless impatience of man brings defeat and leaves him crushed and bleeding on the field. Images rise to mind of calm strength, of gentle wisdom learning from every turn of adverse fate, of youthful tenderness and faith undimmed to the close of

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life, which redeem humanity and make the heart glow with fresh courage as we write. They are mostly from obscure corners and very private walks; there was nothing shining, nothing of an obvious and sounding heroism to make their conduct doubtful, by tainting their motives with vanity. Unknown they lived, untrumpeted they died. Many hearts were warmed and fed by them, but, perhaps, no mind but our own ever consciously took account of their virtues. Had Art but the power adequately to tell their simple stories, and to cast upon them the light which, shining through those marked and faded faces, foretold the glories of a second Spring! The tears of holy emotion which fell from those eyes have seemed to us pearls beyond all price, or rather whose price will be paid only when beyond the grave they enter those better spheres in whose faith they felt and acted here. From this private gallery we will, for the present, bring forward only one picture. That of a Black Nun was wont to fetter the eyes of visitors in the Royal Galleries of France, and my Sister of Mercy too is of that complexion. The old woman was recommended as a laundress by my friend, who had long prized her. I was immediately struck with the dignity and propriety of her manner. In the depth of winter she brought herself the heavy baskets through the slippery streets, and when I asked why she did not employ some younger person to do what was so entirely disproportioned to her strength, simply said, “she lived alone and could not afford to hire an errand-boy.” “It was hard for her?” “No! she was fortunate in being able to get work at her age, when others could do it better. Her friends were very good to procure it for her.” “Had she a comfortable home?” “Tolerably so; she should not need one long.” “Was that a thought of joy to her?” “Yes; for she hoped to see again the husband and children from whom she had long been separated.” Thus much in answer to the questions; but at other times the little she said was on general topics. It was not from her that I learnt how “the great idea of Duty had held her upright”6 through a life of incessant toil, sorrow, and bereavement, and that not only had she remained upright, but that the character had been constantly progressive. Her latest act had been to take home a poor sick girl, who had no home of her own, and could not bear the idea of dying in a hospital, and maintain and nurse her through the last weeks of her life. “Her eye-sight was failing, and she should not be able to work much

6. Fuller had used (also without attribution) “the great idea of duty had held her upright” in Woman in the Nineteenth Century (1845, p. 118; reprinted in the text ed. Larry J. Reynolds [New York: W. W. Norton, 1998], p. 77).

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longer, but then God would provide. Somebody ought to see to the poor motherless girl.” It was not merely the greatness of the act, for one in such circumstances, but the quiet, matter-of-course way in which it was done, that showed the habitual tone of the mind, and made us feel that life could hardly do more for a human being than to make him or her the somebody that is daily so deeply needed to represent the right,—to do the plain right thing. “God will provide.” Ay, indeed, it is the poor who feel themselves near to the God of Love.—“Though he slay them, still do they trust him.” “I hope,” said I to a poor apple-woman who had been drawn on to disclose a tale of distress that almost, in the mere hearing, made me weary of life, “I hope I may yet see you in a happier condition.” “With God’s help,” she replied, with a smile that Raphael would have delighted to transfer to the canvas, a Mozart to his strains of angelic sweetness. All her life she had seemed an outcast child, still she leaned upon her Father’s love. The dignity of a state like this may vary its form in more or less richness and beauty of detail, but here is the focus of what makes life valuable. It is this spirit which makes Poverty the best servant to the Ideal of Human Nature. I am content with this type, and will only quote, in addition, a ballad I found in a foreign periodical translated from Chamisso,7 and which forcibly recalled my own laundress as an equally admirable sample of the same class, the Ideal Poor, which we need for our consolation so long as there must be real poverty: the old washerwoman Among yon lines her hands have laden, A laundress with white hair appears, Alert as many a youthful maiden, Spite of her five-and-seventy years. Bravely she won those white hairs, still Eating the bread hard toil obtained her, And laboring truly to fulfil The duties to which God ordained her. Once she was young and full of gladness, She loved and hoped, was wooed and won; Then came the matron’s cares, the sadness 7. Adelbert von Chamisso (1781–1838), German poet who created the hapless character of Peter Schlemihl.

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No loving heart on earth may shun. Three babes she bore her mate; she prayed Beside his sick-bed; he was taken; She saw him in the church-yard laid, Yet kept her faith and hope unshaken. The task her little ones of feeding She met unfaltering from that hour; She taught them thrift and honest breeding, Her virtues were their worldly dower. To seek employment, one by one, Forth with her blessing they departed, And she was in the world alone, Alone and old, but still high-hearted. With frugal forethought, self-denying, She gathered coin, and flax she bought, And many a night her spindle plying, Good store of fine-spun thread she wrought. The thread was fashioned in the loom; She brought it home, and calmly seated To work, with not a thought of gloom, Her decent grave clothes she completed. She looks on them with fond elation, They are her wealth, her treasure rare, Her age’s pride and consolation, Hoarded with all a miser’s care. She dons the sark each Sabbath day, To hear the Word that faileth never; Well pleased she lays it then away, Till she shall sleep in it for ever. Would that my spirit witness bore me That, like this woman, I had done The work my Maker put before me, Duly from morn till set of sun. Would that life’s cup had been by me Quaffed in such wise and happy measure, And that I too might finally Look on my shroud with such meek pleasure.

Such are the noble of the earth. They do not repine; they do not chafe, even in the inmost heart.—They feel that, whatever else may be denied or

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withdrawn, there remains the better part, which cannot be taken from them. This line exactly expresses the woman I knew: “Alone and old, but still high-hearted.”

Will any, Poor or Rich, fail to feel that the children of such a parent were rich, when “Her virtues were their worldly dower?”

Will any fail to bow the heart in assent to the aspiration— “Would that my spirit witness bore me That, like this woman, I had done The work my Maker put before me, Duly from morn till set of sun?”

May not that suffice to any man’s ambition?  New-York Daily Tribune, 25 March 1846, p. 1; reprinted, New-York Weekly Tribune, 25 March 1846, p. 1.

Instruction in the French Language


As every body, with any pretensions to culture, learns French here; the number of persons who offer themselves to teach that language is proportionately great. Still, among these, it must always be the fewest who can be of great value to the pupil. We are subject to such a throng of half-educated or uneducated foreigners, and, any one who speaks French, any how thinks it such an easy way of earning a few dollars, that the pupil is subject not only to learn of those who have no method or tact and thus make his acquaintance with the language unnecessarily slow and difficult, but to be infected with vulgarities and mauvais ton.1 It is well known what high value the French, in common with all polished nations, set upon a correct and graceful use of their tongue in speech. This was the branch, as we are told, in which the Roman matrons were the special instructors of their sons. From others they learned the arts and bodily exercises, but, from their mothers, to use their native tongue with eloquence, majesty, and persuasive eloquence. To this great art Americans are so indifferent; indeed often appearing to prefer slang, cant phrases, and abrupt or uncouth expressions and intonations; that is not so surprising they do not know, when studying a foreign tongue, whether they have for their master an accomplished litérateur or a barber. As, however, the French do not share this indifference, and want of culture both of ear and taste, they are subject, through their carelessness, to become ridiculous the moment they set foot in the city, which is, to the would-be elegants and lions of New York, the Zion of their hopes, the tabernacle of their faith. We have the honor of recommending to them a teacher, Prof. J. P. Edwards, who, we are assured by competent judges, will lead them into no such dangers, and has, beside, an excellent, simple method, “joined to extraordinary patience and courtesy as a teacher.” A letter of recommendation which he brings hither,

1. mauvais ton: “bad tone.”

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signed, among others, by Mr. E. G. Loring of Boston, W. W. Story, and James Russell Lowell, and which gives a more particular notice of his qualifications, may be seen at the counter of the Tribune office.2 Mr. Edwards is now at Lovejoy’s Hotel, where he will remain for a few days, with the purpose of forming classes in New-York.  New-York Daily Tribune, 30 March 1846, p. 2. 2. Ellis Gray Loring (1803–58), lawyer and abolitionist; William Wetmore Story (1819–95), sculptor, poet, and essayist.

What Fits a Man to be a Voter? Is it to be White Within, or White Without?


The country had been denuded of its forests, and men cried—“Come! we must plant anew, or there will be no shade for the homes of our children, or fuel for their hearths. Let us find the best kernels for a new growth.” And a basket of butternuts was offered. But the planters rejected it with disgust. “What a black, rough coat it has,” said they; “it is entirely unfit for the dishes on a nobleman’s table, nor have we ever seen it in such places. It must have a greasy, offensive kernel; nor can fine trees grow up from such a nut.” “Friends,” said one of the planters, “this decision may be rash. The chestnut has not a handsome outside; it is long encased in troublesome burrs, and, when disengaged, is almost as black as these nuts you despise. Yet from it grow trees of lofty stature, graceful form and long life. Its kernel is white and has furnished food to the most poetic and splendid nations of the older world.” “Do n’t tell me,” says another, “brown is entirely different from black. I like brown very well; there is Oriental precedent for its respectability. Perhaps we will use some of your chestnuts, if we can get fine samples. But for the present I think we should use only English walnuts, such as our forefathers delighted to honor. Here are many basketsfull of them, quite enough for the present. We will plant them with a sprinkling between of the chestnut and acorn.” “But,” rejoined the other, “many butternuts are beneath the sod, and you cannot help a mixture of them being in your wood at any rate.” “Well! we will grub them up and cut them down wherever we find them. We can use the young shrubs for kindlings.” At that moment entered the council two persons of a darker complexion than most of those present, as if born beneath the glow of a more scorching sun. First came a Woman, beautiful in the mild, pure grandeur of her look; in whose large dark eye a prophetic intelligence was mingled with infinite sweetness. She looked at the assembly with an air of surprise, as if its aspect was strange to her. She threw quite back her veil, and stepping aside made room 386

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for her companion. His form was youthful, about the age of one we have seen in many a picture, produced by the thought of eighteen centuries, as of one “instructing the Doctors.” I need not describe the features; all minds have their own impressions of such an image, “Severe in youthful beauty.”1

In his hand he bore a little white banner on which was embroidered Peace and Good Will to Men. And the words seemed to glitter and give out sparks, as he paused in the assembly. “I came hither,” said he, “an uninvited guest, because I read sculptured above the door—‘All men born Free and Equal,’ and in this dwelling hoped to find myself at home. What is the matter in dispute?” Then they whispered one to another, and murmurs were heard—“He is a mere boy; young people are always foolish and extravagant;” or “He looks like a fanatic.” But others said, “He looks like one whom we have been taught to honor. It will be best to tell him the matter in dispute.” When he heard it, he smiled and said, “It will be needful first to ascertain which of the nuts is soundest within.” And with a hammer he broke one, two, and more of the English walnuts, and they were mouldy. Then he tried the other nuts, but found most of them fresh within and white, for they were fresh from the bosom of the earth, while the others had been kept in a damp cellar. And he said, “You had better plant them together, lest none or few of the walnuts be sound. And why are you so reluctant? Has not Heaven permitted them both to grow on the same soil? and does not that show what is intended about it?” And they said, “But they are black and ugly to look upon.” He replied, “They do not seem so to me. What my Father has fashioned in such guise offends not mine eye.” And they said, “But from one of these trees flew a bird of prey who has done great wrong. We meant, therefore, to suffer no such tree among us.”n And he replied, “Amid the band of my countrymen and friends there was one guilty of the blackest crime, that of selling for a price the life of his dear-

1. Paradise Lost, book 4, l. 845, by John Milton. us. [ us.”

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est friend, yet all the others of his blood were not put under ban because of his guilt.” Then they said, “But in the Holy Book our teachers tell us, we are bid to keep in exile or distress whatsoever is black and unseemly in our eyes.” Then he put his hand to his brow and cried in a voice of the most penetrating pathos. “Have I been so long among ye and ye have not known me?”— And the Woman turned from them, the majestic hope of her glance, and both forms suddenly vanished, but the banner was left trailing in the dust. The men stood gazing at one another. After which one mounted on high and said: “Perhaps, my friends, we carry too far this aversion to objects merely because they are black. I heard, the other day, a wise man say that black was the color of evil—marked as such by God, and that whenever a white man struck a black man he did an act of worship to God.* I could not quite believe him. I hope, in what I am about to add, I shall not be misunderstood. I am no Abolitionist. I respect above all things, divine or human, the Constitution framed by our forefathers, and the peculiar institutions hallowed by the usage of their sons. I have no sympathy with the black race in this country. I wish it to be understood that I feel toward negroes the purest personal antipathy. It is a family trait with us. My little son, scarce able to speak, will cry out “Nigger! Nigger!” whenever he sees one, and try to throw things at them. He made a whole omnibus load laugh the other day by his cunning way of doing this.† The child of my political antagonist, on the other hand, says “he likes tullared children the best.”‡ You see he is tainted in his cradle by the loose principles of his parents, even before he can say nigger or pronounce the more refined appellation. But that is no matter. I merely mention this by the way: not to prejudice you against Mr. —, but that you may appreciate the very different state of things in my family, and not misinterpret what I have to say. I was lately in one of our prisons where a somewhat injudicious indulgence had extended to one of the condemned felons, a lost and wretched outcast from society, the use of materials for painting, that having been his profession. He had completed at his leisure, a picture of the Lord’s Supper. Most of the figures were well enough, but Judas he had represented as a black.§—Now, gentle-

*Fact, that this is affirmed. [Fuller’s note] † Fact. [Fuller’s note] ‡ Fact. [Fuller’s note] § Fact. [Fuller’s note]

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men, I am of opinion that this is an unwarrantable liberty taken with the Holy Scriptures and shows too much prejudice in the community. It is my wish to be moderate and fair, and preserve a medium, neither, on the one hand, yielding the wholesome antipathies planted in our breasts as a safeguard against degradation, and our constitutional obligations, which, as I have before observed, are, with me, more binding than any other; nor on the other hand forgetting that liberality and wisdom which are the prerogative of every citizen of this free Commonwealth. I agree then with our young visitor. I hardly know, indeed, why a stranger and one so young was permitted to mingle in this council, but it was certainly thoughtful in him to crack and examine the nuts. I agree that it may be well to plant some of the black nuts among the others, so that, if many of the walnuts fail, we may make use of this inferior tree.” At this moment arose a hubbub, and such a clamor of “dangerous innovation,” “political capital,” “low-minded demagogue,” “infidel who denies the Bible,” “lower link in the chain of creation,” &c. that it is impossible to say what was the decision.  New-York Daily Tribune, 31 March 1846, p. 1; reprinted, New-York Weekly Tribune, 11 April 1846, p. 3.

Browning’s Poems


Robert Browning is scarcely known in this country, as, indeed, in his own, his fame can spread but slowly, from the nature of his works. On this very account,—of the peculiarity of his genius,—we are to diffuse the knowledge that there is such a person, thinking and writing, so that those who, here and there, need just him, and not another, may know where to turn. Our first acquaintance with this subtle and radiant mind was through his “Paracelsus,” of which we cannot now obtain a copy, and must write from a distant memory.1 It is one of those attempts, that illustrate the self-consciousfness of this age, to represent the fever of the Soul pining to embrace the secret of the universe in a single trance. Men who are once seized with this fever, carry thought upon the heart as a cross, instead of finding themselves daily warmed and enlightened to more life and joy by the sacred fire to which their lives daily bring fresh fuel. Sometimes their martyrdoms greatly avail, as to positive achievements of knowledge for their own good and that of all men; but, oftener, they only enrich us by experience of the temporary limitations of the mind, and the inutility of seeking to transcend, instead of working within, them. Of this desire, to seize at once as a booty what it was intended we should legitimately win by gradual growth, alchemy and the elixir vitae were, in the middle ages, apt symbols. In seeking how to prolong life, men wasted its exquisite spring-time and splendid summer, lost the clues they might have gained by initiation to the mysteries of the present existence. They sought to make gold in crucibles, through study of the laws which govern the material world, while within them, was a crucible and a fire beneath it, which only needed watch-

1. Paracelsus was published in 1835. Fuller probably borrowed it from Ralph Waldo Emerson in 1842 (see Letters, 3:104).

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ing, in faith and purity, and they would have turned all substances to treasure, which neither moth nor rust could corrupt. Paracelsus had one of those soaring ambitions that sought the stars and built no nest amid the loves or lures of life. Incapable of sustaining himself in angelic force and purity, he tainted, after a while, his benefits, by administering them with the arts of a charlatan, seeking too ambitiously the mastery of life, he missed its best instructions. Yet he who means nobleness, though he misses his chosen aim, cannot fail to bring down a precious quarry from the clouds. Paracelsus won deep knowledge of himself and his God. Love followed, if it could not bless him, and the ecstasies of genius wove music into his painful dreams. The holy and domestic love of Michal, that Ave Maria Stella of his stormy life, the devotion of a friend, who living, for himself, in the humility of a genuine priest, yet is moved, by the pangs of sympathy, to take part against and “wrestle with” Heaven in his behalf, the birth and bud of the creative spirit which blesses through the fullness of forms, as expressed in Aprile,2 all are told with a beauty and, still more, a pregnancy, unsurpassed amid the works of contemporary minds. The following poem will give some idea of the scope and style of Paracelsus:3 ‘Sordello’ we have never seen, and have been much disappointed at not being able to obtain the loan of a copy now existent in New-England.4 It is spoken of as a work more thickly enveloped in refined obscurities than ever any other that really had a meaning; and no one acquainted with Browning’s mind can doubt his always having a valuable meaning, though sometimes we may not be willing to take the degree of trouble necessary to ferret it out. His writings have, till lately, been clouded by obscurities, his riches having seemed to accumulate beyond his mastery of them. So beautiful are the picture gleams, so full of meaning the little thoughts, that are always twisting their parasites over his main purpose, that we hardly can bear to wish them away, even when we know their excess to be a defect. They seem, each and all, too good to be lopped away, and we cannot wonder the mind from which they grew was at a loss which to reject. Yet, a higher mastery in the poetic art must give him skill

2. Fuller is referring to Paracelsus. 3. Paracelsus, ll. 450–527 is printed here. 4. Sordello was published in 1840.

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and resolution to reject them. Then, all true life being condensed into the main growth, instead of being so much scattered in tendrils, off-shoots and flower-branches, the effect would be more grand and simple; nor should we be any loser as to the spirit; it would all be there, only more concentrated as to the form, more full, if less subtle, in its emanations. The tendency to variety and delicacy, rather than to a grasp of the subject and concentration of interest, are not so obvious in Browning’s minor works as in Paracelsus, and his tragedy of ‘Strafford.’ This very difficult subject for tragedy engaged, at about the same time, the attention of Sterling.5n Both he and Browning seem to have had it brought before their attention by Forster’sn spirited biography of Strafford.6 We say it is difficult—though we see how it tempted the poets to dramatic enterprise. The main character is one of tragic force and majesty; the cotemporary agents all splendid figures, and of marked individuality; the march of action necessarily rapid and imposing; the events induced of universal interest. But the difficulty is, that the materials are even too rich and too familiar to every one. We cannot bear any violation of reality, any straining of the common version of this story. Then the character and position of Strafford want that moral interest which is needed to give full pathos to the catastrophe. We admire his greatness of mind and character, we loathe the weakness and treachery of the King; we dislike the stern hunters, notwithstanding their patriotic motives, for pursuing to the death the noble stag; and yet we feel he ought to die. We wish that he had been killed, not by the hands of men, with their spotted and doubtful feelings, but smitten direct by pure fire from heaven. Still we feel he ought to die, and our grief wants the true tragic element which hallows it in the Antigone, the Lear, and even Schiller’s ‘Mary Stuart,’ or ‘Wallenstein.’7 Still of the two, Sterling’sn conception of the character and conduct of the drama is far superior to that of Browning. Both dramas are less interesting and effective than the simple outline history gives, but Browning weakens the 5. Sir Thomas Wentworth, First Earl of Strafford (1593–1641), English statesman who was executed as a result of his opposition to parliament; John Sterling (1806–44), English poet. Stirling. [ Sterling. Foster’s [ Forster’s 6. Sterling published his poem Strafford in 1843 and Browning published his play Strafford in 1837; John Forster published a biography of Strafford in his Lives of Eminent British Statesmen (1836). 7. Antigone, a play by Sophocles (fl. 4th century b.c.), Greek tragedian; Shakespeare’s King Lear; Johann Christoph Friedrich von Schiller had his plays Maria Stuart and Wallenstein first performed in, respectively, 1800 and 1799. Stirling’s [ Sterling’s

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truth in his representation of it, while Sterlingn at least did not falsify the character of Strafford, bitter, ruthlessly ambitious, but strong and majestic throughout. Browning loses, too, his accustomed originality and grace in the details of this work, through a misplaced ambition. But believing that our Poet has not reached that epoch of mastery, when he can do himself full justice in a great work, we would turn rather to the consideration of a series of sketches, dramatic and lyric, which he has been publishing for several years under the title of “Bells and Pomegranates.”8 We do not know whether this seemingly affected title is assumed in conformity with the catch-penny temper of the present day, or whether these be really in the mind of Robert Browning no more than the glittering fringe of his priestly garment. If so, we shall cherish high hopes, indeed, as to the splendors that will wait upon the unfolding of the main vesture. The plan of these sketches is original, the execution, in many respects, admirable, and the range of talent and perception they display wider than that of any contemporary poet in England. “Pippa Passes” is the title of the first of these little two shilling volumes, which seem to contain just about as much as a man, who lives wisely, might, after a good summer of mingled work, business and pleasure, have to offer to the world, as the honey he could spare from his hive. Pippa is a little Italian girl who works in a silk mill. Once a year the workpeople in these mills have an entire day given them for their pleasure.— She is introduced at sunrise of such a day, singing her morning thoughts. She then goes forth to wander through the town singing her little songs of childish gayety and purity. She passes, not through but by, different scenes of life, passes by a scene of guilty pleasure, by the conspiracies of the malicious, by the cruel undeception of the young sculptor who had dared trust his own heart more fully than is the wont of the corrupt and cautious world. Every where the notes of her song pierce their walls and windows, awakening them to memories of innocence and checking the course of misdeed. The plan of this work is, it will be seen, at once rich and simple. It admits of an enchanting variety, and an unobtrusive unity. Browning has made the best use of its advantages. The slides in the magic lantern succeed one another with perfect distinctness, but, through them all shines the light of this one beautiful Italian day, and the little silk winder, its angel, discloses to us as fine gleams of garden, stream and sky Stirling [ Sterling 8. Bells and Pomegranates was published in eight parts between 1841 and 1846 by Moxon in London.

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as we have time to notice while passing such various and interesting groups of human beings. The finest sketch of these is that of Jules, the sculptor, and his young bride. Jules, like many persons of a lofty mould, in the uncompromising fervor of youth, makes all those among his companions whom he thinks weak, base, and vicious, his enviers and bitter enemies. A set of such among his fellow-students have devised this most wicked plan to break his heart and pride at once. They write letters as from a maiden who has distinguished him from the multitude and knows how to sympathize with all his tastes and aims. They buy of her mother a beautiful young girl who is to represent the character. The letters assume that she is of a family of rank who will not favor the alliance, and when Jules, enchanted by the union of the beauty of intellect in the letters and the beauty of person of which he has gained glimpses, presses his suit as a lover, marriage is consented to on condition that he shall not seek to converse with her till after the ceremony. This is the first talk of Jules after he has brought his silent bride to his studio: Thou by me And I by thee—this is thy hand in mine— And side by side we sit—all’s true. Thank God! I have spoken—speak thou! —O, my life to come! My Tydeus must be carved that’s there in clay, And how he carved with you about the chamber? Where must I place you? When I think that once This room-full of rough block-work seemed my heaven Without you! Shall I ever work again— Get fairly into my old ways again— Bid each conception stand while trait by trait My hand transfers its lineaments to stone? Will they, my fancies, live near you, my truth— The live truth-passing and repassing me— Sitting beside me? Now speak! Only, first, Your letters to me—was’t not well contrived? A hiding-place in Psyche’s robe—there lie Next to her skin your letters: which comes foremost? Good—this that swam down like a first moonbeam

“[Robert] Browning’s Poems”

Into my world. Those? Books I told you of. Let your first word to me rejoice them, too,— This minion of Coluthus, writ in red Bistre and azure by Bessarion’s scribe— Read this line . . no, shame—Homer’s be the Greek! My Odyssey in coarse black vivid type With faded yellow blossoms ’twixt page and page; “He said, and on Antinous directed A bitter shaft”—then blots a flower the rest! —Ah, do not mind that—better that will look When cast in bronze . . an Almaign Kaiser that, Swart-green and gold with truncheon based on hip— This rather, turn to . . but a check already— Or you had recognized that here you sit As I imagined you, Hippolyta Naked upon her bright Numidian horse! —Forgot you this then? “carve in bold relief ” . . . So you command me—“carve against I come A Greek, bay-filleted and thunder-free, Rising beneath the lifted myrtle-branch, Whose turn arrives to praise Harmodius.”—Praise him! Quite round, a cluster of mere hands and arms Thrust in all senses, all ways, from all sides, Only consenting at the branches’ end They strain towards, serves for frame to a sole face— (Place your own face)—the Praiser’s, who with eyes Sightless, so bend they back to light inside His brain where visionary forms throng up, (Gaze—I am your Harmodius dead and gone,) Sings, minding not the palpitating arch Of hands and arms, nor the quick drip of wine From the drenched leaves o’erhead, nor who cast off Their violet crowns for him to trample on— Sings, pausing as the patron-ghosts approve, Devoutly their unconquerable hymn— But you must say a “well” to that—say “well” Because you gaze—am I fantastic, sweet? Gaze like my very life’s-stuff, marble—marbly Even to the silence—and before I found The real flesh Phene, I inured myself

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To see throughout all nature varied stuff For better nature’s birth by means of art: With me, each substance ended to one form Of beauty—to the human Archetype— And every side occurred suggestive germs Of that—the tree, the flower—why, take the fruit, Some rosy shape, continuing the peach, Curved beewise o’er its bough, as rosy limbs Depending nestled in the leaves—and just From a cleft rose-peach the whole Dryad sprung! But of the stuffs one can be master of, How I divined their capabilities From the soft-rinded smoothening facile chalk That yields your outline to the air’s embrace, Down to the crisp imperious steel, so sure To cut its one confided thought clean out Of all the world: but marble!—’neath my tools More pliable than jelly—as it were Some clear primordial creature dug from deep In the Earth’s heart where itself breeds itself And whence all baser substance may be worked: Refine it off to air you may—condense it Down to the diamond;—is not metal there When o’er the sudden specks my chisel trips? —Not flesh—as flake off flake I scale, approach, Lay bare these bluish veins of blood asleep? Lurks flame in no strange windings there, surprised By the swift implement sent home at once, Flushes and glowings radiate and hover About its track?—

The girl, thus addressed, feels the wings budding within her, that shall upbear her from the birth place of pollution in whose mud her young feet have been imprisoned. Still, her first words reveal to the proud, passionate, confiding genius the horrible deception that has been practiced on him. After his first anguish, one of Pippa’s songs steals in to awaken consoling thoughts. He feels that only because his heart was capable of noble trust could it be so deceived; feels too that the beauty which had enchanted him could not be a mere mask, but yet might be vivified by a soul worthy of it, and finds the way to soar above his own pride and the opinions of an often purblind world.

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Another song, with which Pippa passes, contains, in its first stanza, this grand picture: A king lived long ago, In the morning of the world, When Earth was nigher Heaven than now: And the King’s locks curled Disparting o’er a forehead full As the milk-white space ’twixt horn and horn Of some sacrificial bull. Only calm as a babe new-born; For he was got to a sleepy mood, So safe from all decrepitude. Age with its bane so sure gone by, (The gods so loved him while he dreamed) That, having lived thus long, there seemed No need the King should ever die. Luigi—No need that sort of King should ever die. Among the rocks his city was; Before his palace, in the sun, He sat to see his people pass, And judge them every one. From its threshold of smooth stone.

This picture is as good as the Greeks. Next came a set of Dramatic Lyrics, all more or less good, from which we select two.9n To this volume succeeded “King Victor and King Charles,” “The Return of the Druses,”—“A Blot in the ’Scutcheon,” and “Colombe’s Birth Day.” The first we do not so much admire, but the other three have all the same originality of conception, delicate penetration into the mysteries of human feeling, atmospheric individuality, and skill in picturesque detail. All four exhibit very high and pure ideas of Woman, and a knowledge very rare in man of the ways in which what is peculiar in her office and nature works. Her loftiest elevation does not, in his eyes, lift her out of nature, She becomes, not a mere saint, but the goddess-queen of nature. Her purity is not cold like mar-

9. George Gordon, Lord Byron, quoted here from Sardanapalus (1821). select [ select two. see note 10 below.

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ble, but the healthy, gentle energy of the flower, instinctively rejecting what is not fit for it with no need of disdain to dig a gulf between it and the lower forms of creation. Her office to man is that of the Muse, inspiring him to all good thoughts and deeds. The passions that sometimes agitate these maidens of his verse are the surprises of noble hearts, unprepared for evil, and even their mistakes cannot cost bitter tears to their attendant angels. The girl in the “Return of the Druses” is the sort of nature Byron tried to paint in Myrrah.10 But Byron could only paint women as they were to him.— Browning can show what they are in themselves. In “A Blot in the ’Scutcheon” we see a lily, storm-struck, half broken, but still a lily. In “Colombe’s Birth Day” a queenly rose-bud which expands into the full glowing Rose before our eyes.—This is marvelous in this drama, how the characters are unfolded before us by the crisis, which not only exhibits, but calls to life, the higher passions and thoughts which were latent within them. We bless the poet for these pictures of women, which, however the common tone of society, by the grossness and levity of the remarks bandied from tongue to tongue, would seem to say the contrary, declare there is still in the breasts of men a capacity for pure and exalting passion,—for immortal tenderness. But we must hasten to conclude with some extracts from another number of “Dramatic Lyrics” lately received. These seem to show that Browning is attaining a more masterly clearness in expression, without seeking to popularize, or omitting to heed the faintest whisper of his genius. He gains without losing as he advances—a rare happiness. In the former number was a poem called “The Cloister,” and in this are two, “The Confessional” and the “Tomb at St. Praxed’s,” which are the keenest yet a wisely true satire on the forms that hypocrisy puts on in the Romish church. This hateful weed grows rank in all cultivated gardens, but it seems to hide itself, with great care and adroitness, beneath the unnumbered forms and purple gawds of that elaborate system. Accordingly the hypocrites do not seem so bad, individually, as in other churches, and the satire is continually softening into humor in the “Tomb at St. Praxed’s,” with its terrible naturalness as to a life-long deception. Tennyson has described the higher kind with a force that will not be surpassed in his Simeon Stylites,11 but in this piece of Browning’s, we find the Flemish school of the same vice. 10. “My Last Duchess” and “Christina” are printed in full. 11. The reference is to St. Simeon Stylites (1842) by Alfred, Lord Tennyson.

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The “Flight of the Duchess,” in its entrancing revelations of the human heart, is a boon to think of but too long to copy, and must not be taken apart. “Italy in England,” we shall publish by itself and for the present must content ourselves with three poems:12n Even Shakespeare never made a horse gallop better! These poems will afford some ideas of Browning’s compass. Of his delicate sheaths of meaning within meaning which must be opened slowly, petal by petal, as we seek the heart of a flower, and the spirit-like distant breathings of his lute, familiar with the secrets of shores distant and enchanted, a sense can only be gained by reading him a great deal, and we wish that the “Bells and Pomegranates,” at least, may be brought within the reach of those American readers who have time and soul to wait and listen for such.  New-York Daily Tribune, 1 April 1846, p. 1; reprinted, New-York Weekly Tribune, 4 April 1846, p. 1; Papers on Literature and Art, 2:31–42. 12. “Garden Fancies,” “The Lost Leader,” and “They Brought the Good News from Ghent to Aix” are printed in full. with [ with three poems: see note 12 above

Wiley & Putnam’s Library


Of late we have vainly tried to avail ourselves of the entertainments afforded by this series. Book after book flies off into the country before we have time to take note of them. Our judgment is forestalled before it can be offered. Yet the volumes above-named deserve that a mark should be made upon our annals to signify their value. The journey of Mr. “Titmarsh,” though amusing enough, is too flippant in its fun—too much in the Theodore Hook style, to suit our fancy.1 Always to show the vulgar side of things, and point out grease-spots on the robe of beauty, is a way of moving us to laughter, which, even when successful, half disgusts us with the cause of mirth, and more than half with ourselves. Few objects are so serenely pure, so solidly majestic, that they may not be made to look coarse, tawdry, and plebeian, if placed in a certain light and sickened by a certain atmosphere. We do not thank the imagination that cast this light on Constantinople, or invented the voyage of the Jewish Rabbis, with all the accompanying fever-dream of uncleanness. “Typee” would seem, also, to be the record of imaginary adventures by some one who had visited those regions. But it is a very entertaining and pleasing narrative, and the Happy Valley of the gentle cannibals compares very well with the best contrivances of the learned Dr. Johnson to produce similar impressions.2 Of the power of this writer to make pretty and spirited pictures as well of his quick and arch manner generally, a happy specimen may be seen in the account of the savage climbing the cocoa-tree, p. 273, vol. 2d.3 Many of the observations and narratives we suppose to be strictly correct. Is the

1. Theodore Edward Hook (1788–1841), English novelist, dramatist, and wit. 2. Samuel Johnson (1709–84), English lexicographer, scholar, critic, and poet, published A Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland in 1775. 3. This passage appears in Typee, ed. Harrison Hayford et al. (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1968), p. 214.

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account given of the result of the missionary enterprises in the Sandwich Islands of this number? We suppose so from what we have heard in other ways. With a view to ascertaining the truth, it would be well if the sewing societies, now engaged in providing funds for such enterprises, would read the particulars, they will find in this book beginning p. 249, vol. 2d,4 and make inquiries in consequence, before going on with their efforts. Generally, the sewing societies of the country villages will find this the very book they wish to have read while assembled at their work. Othello’s hairbreadth ’scapes were nothing to those by this hero in the descent of the cataracts, and many a Desdemona might seriously incline her ear to the descriptions of the lovely Fay-a-way.5 “Thiodolf ” has the usual charms of La Motte Fouque’s books. Who likes one in this noble, romantic style, likes all. The contrast between the Northern and Southern spirit is finely kept up.—“Aslauga’s Knight” we have heretofore mentioned as a truly beautiful poem on ideal love, and next to “Undine,” the finest of his fictions.  Review of Herman Melville, Typee: A Peep at Polynesian Life. During a Four Months’ Residence in a Valley of the Marquesas (New York: Wiley and Putnam, 1846), “M. A. Titmarsh” [William Makepeace Thackeray], Notes of a Journey from Cornhill to Grand Cairo, by Way of Lisbon, Athens, Constantinople and Jerusalem: Performed in the Steamers of the Peninsular and Oriental Company (New York: Wiley and Putnam, 1846), and La MotteFouque, Thiodolf, the Icelander; and Aslauga’s Knight (New York: Wiley and Putnam, 1845). New-York Daily Tribune, 4 April 1846, p. 1; reprinted, New-York Weekly Tribune, 11 April 1846, p. 1. The most well-known series published by Wiley and Putnam were the Library of Choice Reading (reprints of British and continental works) and the Library of American Books, which included works by Nathaniel Hawthorne, Herman Melville, Edgar Allan Poe, William Gilmore Simms, John Greenleaf Whittier, and Fuller herself (Papers on Literature and Art). Herman Melville (1819–91) began his career as a novelist with the publication of Typee; William Makepeace Thackeray (1811–63), prolific English author of multivolume novels; Friedrich Heinrich de la Motte-Fouque (1777–1843), German dramatist and novelist. 4. This passage appears in Ibid., p. 195. 5. Othello kills Desdemona in a fit of jealousy in Shakespeare’s Othello; Fayaway, a central native character in Melville’s book, often expresses her fondness for the narrator.

[“Age could not wither her . . .”]


“Age could not wither her nor custom stale Her infinite variety.”1

So was one person described by the pen which has made a clearer mark than any other on the history of man. But is it not surprising that such a description should apply to so few? Of two or three women we read histories that correspond with the hint given in these lines. They were women in whom there was intellect enough to temper and enrich, heart enough to soften and enliven, the entire being. There was soul enough to keep the body beautiful through the term of earthly existence; for while the roundness, the pure, delicate lineaments, the flowery bloom of youth were passing, the marks left in the course of those years were not merely of time and care, but also of exquisite emotions and noble thoughts. With such chisels Time works upon his statues tracery and fretwork well worth loss of the first virgin beauty of the alabaster, while the fire within, growing constantly brighter and brighter, shows all these changes in the material as rich and varied ornaments. The vase, at last, becomes a lamp of beauty; fit to animate the councils of the great, or the solitude of the altar. Two or three women there have been who have thus grown even more beautiful with age. We know of many more men of whom this is true.—These have been heroes, or still more frequently, poets and artists; with whom the habitual life tended to expand the soul, deepen and vary the experience, refine the perceptions and immortalize the hopes and dreams of youth. They were persons who never lost their originality of character, nor spontaneity of action. Their impulses proceeded from a fullness and certainty of character, that made it impossible they should doubt or repent, whatever the results of their actions might be. They could not repent, in matters little or 1. Antony and Cleopatra, act 2, scene 3.

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great, because they felt that their actions were a sincere exposition of the wants of their souls.—Their impulsiveness was not the restless fever of one that must change his place somehow and some-whither, but the waves of a tide which might be swelled to vehemence by the action of the winds or the influence of an attractive orb, but was none the less subject to fixed laws. A character which does not lose its freedom of motion and impulse by contact with the world, grows with its years more richly creative, more freshly individual. It is a character governed by a principle of its own, and not by rules taken from other men’s experience, and therefore it is that Age cannot wither them nor custom stale Their infinite variety.

Like violins, they gain by age and the spirit of him who discourseth through them most excellent music. Like wine— “Like wine well kept and long Heady nor harsh nor strong With each succeeding year is quaffed A richer, purer, mellower draught.”2

Our French neighbors have been the object of humorous satire for their new coinage of terms to describe the heroes of their modern romance. A hero is no hero unless he has “ravaged brows,” is “blasé” or “brisé” and “fatigued.” His eyes must be languid and his cheek hollow. Youth, health and strength charm no more—only the tree broken by the gust of passion is beautiful, only the lamp that has burnt out the better part of its oil precious, in their eyes. This, with them, assumes the air of caricature and grimace, yet it indicates a real want of this time, a feeling that the human being ought to grow more, rather than less, attractive with the passage of time, and that the decrease in physical charms would, in a fair and full life, be more than compensated by an increase of those which appeal to the imagination and higher feelings. A friend complains that, while most men are like music-boxes, which you can wind up to play their set of tunes and then they stop; in our society the set consists of only two or three tunes at most.—That is because no new melodies

2. “Youth Renewed,” ll. 27–30, by James Montgomery. Fuller used these lines earlier in the 5 February 1845 New-York Daily Tribune.

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are added after five and twenty at farthest. It is the topic of jest and amazement with foreigners that what is called society is given up so much into the hands of the boys and girls. Accordingly it wants spirit, variety and depth of tone, and we find there no historical presences, no charms infinite in variety of Cleopatra, no heads of Julius Caesar, overflowing with meanings as the sun with light.3 Sometimes we hear an educated Voice that shows us how these things might be altered. It has lost the fresh tone of youth, but it has gained unspeakably in depth, brilliancy and power of expression.—How exquisite its modulations, so finely shaded, showing that all the intervals are filled up with little keys of fairy delicacy and in perfect tune. Its deeper tones sound the depth of the past, its more thrilling notes express an awakening to the infinite and ask a thousand questions of the spirits that are to unfold our destinies, too far reaching to be clothed in words. Who does not feel the sway of such a voice? It makes the whole range of our capacities resound and tremble and, when there is positiveness enough to give an answer, calls forth the most melodious echoes. The human eye gains, in like manner, by time and experience. Its substance fades, but it is only the more filled with an ethereal lustre which penetrates the gazer till he feels as if “That eye were in itself a soul,” and realizes the range of its power “To rouse, to win, to fascinate, to melt And by its spell of undefined control Magnetic draw the secrets of the soul.”4

The eye that shone beneath the white locks of Thorwalden was such an one, the eye of immortal youth, the indicator of the man’s whole aspect in a future sphere. We have scanned such eyes closely; when near we saw that the lids were red, the corners defaced with ominous marks, the orb looked faded and tear-stained, but, when we retreated far enough for its ray to reach us, it seemed far younger than the clear and limpid gaze of infancy, more radiant

3. Cleopatra (69–30 b.c.), ruler of Egypt, and Gaius Julius Caesar formed both a political and personal union, having a son together. 4. “To the Eye,” ll. 8–10, by Felicia Dorothea Hemans (1793–1835), English poet.

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that the sweetest beam in that of early youth. The Future and the Past met in that glance. O for more such eyes! The vouchers of free, of full, and ever growing lives!  New-York Daily Tribune, 10 April 1846, p. 1; reprinted, New-York Weekly Tribune, 18 April 1846, p. 1. Title supplied.

“Mistress of herself, though china fall”


Women, in general, are indignant that the satirist should have made this the climax to praise of a woman.1 And yet, we fear, he saw only too truly.—What unexpected failures have we seen, literally, in this respect! How often did the Martha blur the Mary out of the face of a lovely woman at the sound of a crash amid glass and porcelain!2 What sad littleness in all the department thus represented! Obtrusion of the mop and duster on the tranquil meditations of a husband and brother. Impatience if the carpet be defaced by the feet even of cherished friends! There is a beautiful side and a good reason here; but why must the beauty degenerate and give place to meanness? To Woman the care of home is confided. It is the sanctuary of which she should be the guardian angel. To all elements that are introduced there she should be the “ordering mind.” She represents the spirit of beauty, and her influence should be spring-like, clothing all objects within her sphere with lively, fresh and tender hues, She represents purity, and all that appertains to her should be kept delicately pure. She is modesty, and draperies should soften all rude lineaments, and exclude glare and dust. She is harmony, and all objects should be in their places, ready for and matched to their uses. We all feel that there is substantial reason for the offence we feel at defect in any of these ways. A woman who wants purity, modesty, and harmony in her dress and manners is unsufferable—one who wants them in the arrangements of her house disagreeable, to every one. She neglects the most obvious ways of expressing what we desire to see in her, and the inference is ready that the inward sense is wanting.

1. “Epigram on the Chinese Treaty,” l. 4, by Thomas Hood. 2. Fuller is comparing Martha, goddess of the household and symbol of the active life, with the Virgin Mary, symbol of the contemplative life.

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It is with no merely gross and selfish feeling that all men commend the good housekeeper, the good nurse. Neither is it slight praise to say of a woman that she does well the honors of her house in the way of hospitality. The wisdom that can maintain serenity, cheerfulness and order in a little world of ten or twelve persons, and keep ready the resources that are needed for their sustenance and recovery in sickness and sorrow, is the same that holds the stars in their places and patiently prepares the precious metals in the most secret chambers of the earth. The art of exercising a refined hospitality is a fine art, and the music thus produced only differs from that of the orchestra in this, that in the former case, the overture or sonata can be played twice in the same manner. It requires that the hostess shall combine true self-respect and repose, “The simple art of not too much,”

with refined perception of individual traits and moods in character, with variety and vivacity, an ease, grace and gentleness that diffuse their sweetness insensibly through every nook of an assembly, and call out reciprocal sweetness wherever there is any to be found. The only danger in all this is the same that besets us in every walk of life, to wit: that of preferring the outward sign to the inward spirit, whenever there is cause to hesitate between the two. “I admire,” says Goethe, “the Chinese novels; they express so happily ease, peace, and a finish unknown to other nations in the interior arrangements of their homes. In one of them I came upon this line: ‘I heard the lovely maidens laughing, and found my way to the garden-house, where they were seated in their light cane chairs.’ To me this brings an immediate animation, by the images it suggests of lightness, brightness and elegance.” This is most true, but it is also true that the garden-house would not seem thus charming unless its “light cane chairs” had “lovely laughing maidens” seated in them. And the lady who values her porcelain, that most exquisite product of the peace and thorough breeding of China, so highly, should take the hint, and remember, that, unless the fragrant herb of wit, sweetened by kindness, and softened by the cream of affability also crown her board, the prettiest teacups in the world might as well lie in fragments in the gutter, as adorn her social show. The show loses its beauty when it ceases to represent a substance.

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Here, as elsewhere, it is only vanity, narrowness and self-seeking that spoil a good thing. Women would never be too good housekeepers for their own peace or that of others, if they considered housekeeping only as a means to an end. If their object was really the peace and joy of all concerned they could bear to have their cups and saucers broken easier than their tempers, and to have curtains and carpets soiled rather than their hearts by mean and small feelings. But they are brought up to think “it is a disgrace to be a bad housekeeper,” not because they must, by such defect, be a cause of suffering and loss of time to all within their sphere, but because other women will laugh at them if they are so. Here is the vice—for want of a high motive, there can be no truly good action. We have seen a woman otherwise noble and magnanimous in a high degree, so insane on this point as to weep bitterly because she found a little dust on her picture frames, and torment her guests all dinner time, with excuses for the way in which the dinner was cooked. We have known others join with their servants to backbite the best and noblest friends for trifling derelictions against the accustomed order of the house. The broom swept out the memory of much sweet counsel and loving kindness, and spots on the table cloth were more regarded than those they made on their own loyalty and honor in the most intimate relations. “The worst of furies is a woman scorned,”3

and the sex so lively, mobile, and impassioned, when passion is around at all, are in danger of frightful error under great temptation. The angel can give place to a mere subtle and treacherous demon, though one, generally, of less tantalizing influence, than in the breast of man. In great crises woman needs the highest reason to restrain her, but her besetting danger is that of littleness. Just because nature and society unite to call on her for such fineness and finish, she can be so petty, so fretful, so vain, so envious and base! O women! see your danger. See how much you need a great object in all your little actions. You cannot be fair, nor can your homes be fair, unless you are holy and noble. Will you sweep and garnish the house only that it may be ready for a legion of evil spirits to enter in? For imps and demons of gossip, frivolity,n detraction and a restless fever about small ills? What is the house good for, if good spirits 3. The Mourning Bride, act 3, scene 8, by William Congreve (1670–1729), English dramatist. frivality, [ frivolity,

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cannot peacefully abide there? Lo! they are asking for the bill in more than one well-garnished mansion. They sought a home, and found a work-house. Martha! it was thy fault!  New-York Daily Tribune, 15 April 1846, p. 4; reprinted, New-York Weekly Tribune, 18 April 1846, p. 1.

[Review of Harro Harring, Dolores: A Novel of South America]


To-day appears this Novel, for which the author has been able to find no publisher. It will have no artificial aid to its circulation, but must rest solely on its own merits. We think these will be found sufficient to ensure it many readers for the sake of the pleasure and entertainment they may derive from the reading—many more who think that free expression of thought is desirable in a free country, and who will listen with interest to the sincere words of a mind of deep experience, secure from such of valuable stimulus, perhaps of valuable instruction. We have not, ourselves, lost all feeling as to national pride and national honor, and it touches us in a vital point, that a foreigner who has lost his own home, friends and fortune for the sake of those principles blazoned on our national banner as the rule of our actions, should find it so difficult to get a hearing among us. Our own feeling is, Let this work which he has written among us be read. If then America find nothing in the mind of this author which can instruct or delight her, she can reject his works. But that they should be shut from the field by those who bring forward so many sickly and miserable fictions, by those who can never have enough of the novels of James, Lady Blessington and Mrs. Gore, is a little too bad.1 Perhaps the tentimes darned tapestry of the former, the twice-turned motley of the two letter writers may really be more congenial with the public taste, than a work written with an earnest purpose and full of noble sentiments. But let us, at least, have a chance to choose. As a specimen of the sentiment of a work, denounced or dreaded for its want of orthodoxy, we give the following poem from its pages:

1. George Payne Rainsford James (1799–1860), English author of over one hundred novels; Marguerite, Countess of Blessington (1789–1849), English editor and social commentator.

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[Review of Dolores: A Novel of South America]

It is no dream—it yet shall be fulfilled, The nations yet shall rise in all their might, And love on the earth its heavenly throne shall build, And life progressive soar in morning light. At last Man’s suffering shall diminished be, When to this world this truth is once made clear, That all must live in love, who fain would see The kingdom of the Lord established here. It is no dream, that in the human soul, Can raise forebodings of those better days, When sacred Charity shall each control To bear the errors of a brother’s ways; When Love shall steel the heart against the strife With Death—and Faith shall bid the soul arise, Above the shroud and grave, to endless life, Loosened from earth, to flourish in the skies. It is no dream—the purer spirit-life, The innate consciousness of inward strength, Whose prescience in the human heart is rife, And gives to weakness power to rise at length, And struggle onward toward its endless aim, E’en though the crowd to slavery will bend, And man may, by his words and deeds, proclaim Truth, by which nations may to life ascend. We hear a wond’rous music!—from the heart Of all the nations issues forth the sound; The mighty symphony of souls its part Of love assumes, and man to man is bound; The kingdom of our God on earth shall bloom, That nations’ hatred, scorn, and doubt’s deep gloom, Be lost in love—love that survives the tomb. All that is written, then shall be fulfilled— All that the Son of Man consoling spoke; The Eastern Satan is already killed; Men shall as brethren live, nor fear his yoke; And Mammon, poisonous serpent, be expelled From Eden, which her trail has soiled full long, And where as sovereign she the keys has held

411

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Of Love’s pure kingdom, which to Man belong. Satan has vanished from the glorious East, Men are no longer swayed by devilish fear; The hours draw nigh—and be their speed increased! The Nazarene’s pure doctrine all shall hear; The dungeon grave of men shall all be void; Love’s spirit, glittering in its own pure light, Appear—and fraud and lies shall take to flight; And then shall God be known and served aright.

We add the translation of Harro Harring’s letter to the King of Denmark, the friend and patron of his earlier years, written in London, 1842. Those who have read Mr. Everett’s biographical notice of the author will remember what is said of this letter. It was a last appeal to Europe; it received no reply and secured for him no justice and no asylum. He crosses the ocean and finds, thus far, republican America not more hospitable than monarchical Europe. At this moment the spirit of liberty rises again in the oppressed nations and unhappy Poland struggles once more against the iron heel that was crushing out her heart with a diabolical remorselessness which the world has never seen outdone. The selfish maxims of national policy forbid us to show any sympathy with a people struggling for those principles which are the life of our condition, for those common blessings which we abuse to hug ourselves in fat, contented ignorance of trials we do not share. But if you must forget such things, Americans, if nothing but gain in money or lands can make your heart beat more, at least be not churlish to the better spirits whom those circumstances exile to our shores. It is for your interest to welcome men of genius; we need them in the education of the country, need them in many, many ways. This epistle is translated as literally as possible.—Time did not permit any attempt at beauty of form, and our only design was to give a notion of the character, history, position, and way of thinking of the author.2 We see the poet, like Beethoven, is not inclined to take off his hat to a King, merely as King, but he shows a noble appreciation of the native nobleness of that King as a man which must have caused a painful throb to the heart of the Monarch who dared not reply. Those who read this poem may be led to follow out the clue in “Dolores” and see whether this mind does not claim a warm and reverent welcome from all good minds. 2. Fuller probably received this directly from Harring.

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epistle to his majesty christian vii, king of denmark. London, 19th March, 1842. Sire: He who has lost his Fatherland has no King. Permit then that I address you Simply as a man, without violation Of the royal dignity. Four months have passed since I presented myself At our Danish Embassy here in London, And presented the following declaration— I am the Dane Harro Harring, Born on the estate of Ibenhof, Formerly favored by your Majesty when you Were hereditary Prince, and I a youth. I may presume that my life and fate have not Remained wholly unknown to you. I have been condemned to death, as you know, By foreign powers, for the part I have taken In the affairs of various countries, And in the great strife of the nations in our time; Yet I do not believe that I have offended Against the laws of Denmark. If I have, I would willingly have pointed it out to me. At present I thus declare myself. I do not ask For grace or amnesty. I seek an asylum In my native land; and, if I am dangerous To foreign powers, would offer myself To pass my life in a Danish fortress as a prisoner, On condition that I might be humanely treated, And never be given up into the power of other Governments. But provided the King Confirms the sentence they have passed upon me, I still offer myself up; only I wish The execution of the sentence should take place In our own country—and soon.n soon.” [ soon.

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Sire: The above declaration I presented To the representative of your Majesty, in England For your consideration. He received it Like a Dane and a man, promising To send me the answer, if any came. The request concerns not merely my brief earthly life, But it does and must concern my honor. The sacred dignity of manhood, That in my eyes seems more important than life. Four months have passed and no answer comes. The King’s silence would be accepted as an answer But that justice in the State demands That each son of the land be judged According to the laws against which he has offended; And, if he have not offended, then he should enjoy the rights Which Nature has bestowed on every man, And which tyranny has dared to violate. Permit me then to cast my look back On my career to the point when in youth it was opened Through the favor of your Majesty. I was made poor In earliest boyhood, when paralyzed and suffering I followed the bier of my father. He, a man of the people, heavily burdened with offices, Conscientiously fulfilled every duty, When Great Britain robbed our nation. Resolute in danger, disinterested, He thought little of himself, devoted to his country, And grief and trouble brought him to his grave. Of my mother’s fortune only remained to me Some state-papers which have availed nothing. But to compensate for all these troubles and injuries The life of the soul was early unfolded within me; My mind awoke And could not be fettered by misfortune. Despite all obstacles I broke for myself A path to mental development.

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As I could not afford to study in our metropolis, I chose Kiel and afterward Dresden, Where Providence, in disguise of Chance, Led you, sire, to cast your eyes on me. I did not seek your princely favor But had the honor to be called by yourself, The fate of the still, timid youth Given up so early to storm and sorrow Deeply moved your great heart with human sympathy; Majestic and decisive you seized with A powerful hand the wheels of my destiny Gave me leisure and peace to form myself, Giving me into the charge of a man* Whose worth as a man I can never forget. O sire, you gave me what is most precious Of the external blessings of life—an open field To devote myself to Art and Science And in my mind the sacred joy Of gratitude towards you, as a man and a Dane. As if awakened by the touch of a magic wand, Arose from that hour the impulse of my spirit; The germ of poesy burst into flower, And my soul became a sanctuary of the great and beautiful. I awoke to the true life of a man; I felt myself No longer an orphan, no longer rejected From the society of men, who indeed Greeted not so much “the young poet” As the favorite of the Danish prince, now attended By horses and servants. The world lay before me: I traveled through it; Sometimes here, sometimes there, but diligent in my studies, My mind now preferred words as the medium of expression, Instead of the art it earlier chose. You left me free. The time was fateful—decisive: It was the epoch when the youth of Europe combined, Impelled by one manly desire. Among the young of all the nations, *Baron Von Irgens-Bergh, then Chargé d’Affaire in Dresden. [Harring’s note]

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At once in Germany, Greece, and Italy, Was stirred a national feeling that, founded on virtue, Recognized its noble aim. Ennobling of the nation within itself, The perfection of human nature was the aim. My inward impulse accorded with this spirit, And, even then, my songs announced The direction of my efforts. To harmonize my action with my words I went to Greece, thence sick and baffled passed to Rome Where anew I was most deeply moved By fresh marks of your goodness to me.† The strife for freedom in Greece Was then no crime in the eyes of the Danish Prince, Though the Greeks were called “Rebels,” like every people Which proudly lavishes its blood, until Policy takes possession of the advantage And a throne is built up on the corpses of the people. “Rebellion” then becomes “legitimate.” Recommended by you to your illustrious “friend,” The Crown Prince of Bavaria,‡ I passed Through Switzerland to Munich. At that time my mind seemed dead. Experience, And grief, and care, bowed me down. After my return from Greece I kept afar from Prince and Court Silent and unpretending, till another illness And the full cure that followed revived my powers, From the inner conflict rose victorious The power of song and all my thoughts took form. I offered my gifts to the theatre, And then, emboldened by applause, Made use of my credentials, As ambassador of friendship between Princes.

† Now

reigning Monarch. [Harring’s note] Sir Henry King, Governor of the Island Hellgeland in 1838; afterward dismissed from his post. [Harring’s note]

‡

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The “Poet King’s” favor was not denied me, And many a courtier envied me place and name. So was I formed more by life than by the schools. My innate powers defied outward obstacles— Obstacle only made them rise to higher energy, So soon as freedom was attained By the warfare of mind against matter; Still down to the foundation of being Reached the chasm between me and the earthly world, Which kept me a stranger, distrustful Of false maxims in Church and State, On which the Social System is built up, The more clearly I understoodn myself, the more I drew back, Unable to serve under the rule that now sways the world, To scorn alike of nature and of reason. And more powerful than my spirit, my feelings Bore me on through life. In harmony with myself, my look directed Toward a star in the bright world of souls I pursued, partly through knowledge and partly through presentiment, “An aim that stands higher than this earthly life; And the mysterious depths of my being Embraced the faith and the impulse to action: And as the deed springs from the feeling And the destiny of man unfolds, step by step, So became I the maker of my own lot, While I shared the conflict of my great age Continuing in the path which had led me to Greece, True to myself and true to the way of thinking Which had become my settled conviction, I followed with devotion the higher duty of man. So became I what I am, and became so, sire, On the way which, under your own eye, The youth took to ripen to manhood, If, as a man, I took part with four nations For Greece, Germany, Poland and Italy, I saw in each struggle the same principle

undrstood [ understood

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They were struggles of the people for sacred rights, For the progress of humanity to its full developments, I saw the spirit which, from century to century, Makes its way only by shedding blood. I saw in all these efforts The exhibition of the idea through martyrdom; Which, unfolding, finds constantly new forms— Divinely as the idea of power on Earth. Sire!—If I did not deserve punishment for the part I took in Greece, And it seems I did not in your eyes, Neither, could I for the same course pursued in other countries. The striving in all of them was for the same objects, And only in name the tyrants differed. If I sang as Philhellene, full of inspiration, And you took pleasure in the lay of the young Scald No less than his course, when impeded by obstacles. O sire, might I not then, far more, expect Your applause when I offered up my whole fortune and my life; When the spirit which no fetters can ever tame Still rose again and again, arming the nations. Despotism conquered yet once again, Bathed in blood, tyranny triumphed Over the desert graves of Poland, And the prisons of Europe were full. But not on their scaffolds can perish The spirit which, ever upwards striving, Animates the glance of the martyr as he looks On chains and prisons and the rage of blinded men, Opposed to the prayers of humanity. Over me too, the staff was broken; I was banished, put under ban, and ill used Because I in this glowing heart cherished Sympathy with the lot of man, And because my mind, enlightened by an idea, Transcended the limits of our era; I was regarded as a criminal Because I had faith in God and human nature, In reconcilement and justice on earth, So was the man persecuted in me,—in the man The idea of human nature.

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And now, a price being set upon my head, From the duty of self preservation, I became a fugitive And sought asylum in “a free country.” But Burthened by the anathema of Tyranny, I was often sent back from the frontiers, Or found repose only behind prison bars; Yet in my twenty prisons I became better know to myself my faith grew clearer. At last I reached England, that Botany Bay Of the Princes, where they send those Whom they have condemned to die by starvation. The fruits of my whole life are lost to me. My works, even those which have no relation to polities, Are severely prohibited in Germany as well as in my own country, My intellectual property is confiscated; The curse of despotism is fallen On my name and on whatever my hand has touched. Beset by treachery often, I escaped My foes only through guardianship of the higher Power. Even a Briton was willing to sell me. From the hands of the bailiff I rushed Into the waves, seeking a grave. But even Death Refused me an asylum. I went to Brazil, but notwithstanding the charms Of outward life, there home-sickness Drew me back to Europe, I hoped to be received in my own country Which I had not seen for twenty years; Yet, before I could set my foot on the land, My old destiny came over me. I was taken prisoner In contempt of an imperial passport.* Against my will I was obliged to take passage For England, once more, at my own expense. Can it surprise you That, after having thus suffered ten years,

* At Ostend, 25th Nov. 1841. Later the Brazillian Embassy in London insisted that my passport should be respected and an interview with my friends granted me. [Harring’s note]

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I should find myself in distress here in London Where the worth of a man is measured by money, And misfortune, in itself, is despised? Can you be surprised that I had rather Live in a fortress of my native land Than free in England, that I think it better To yield my head up to the enemy Than to madness here,—to a despair As to human nature which threatens to sever me From my true self and my God? Can it surprise you That I still seek in the King the man Whom I found in the Prince and who showed himself So great to me in early life? You are silent— Must your silence be to me the assurance That a monarch cannot be a man, or that you, Obedient to a foreign power, Are not sovereign in your own States? Where then is the royal dignity, Where is the safety of monarchical government Of which they seek to convince me? They make a present to the Emperor Of my head which cannot understand That thinking can be a crime on earth. Your present silence hurts me more Than death on the scaffold could, For it silences my friends and relations A home, through fear “of exposing themselves To the danger’s of the King’s displeasure.” For me, friendship and love are dead; It seems to be prohibited to utter there my name. He who knows me, or has even read my books, trembles. Is such a system of terror a fit prop of monarchy? Is it legal? Is it a necessary result of those principles That I am told I ought to reverence? ******* So have I lost all in Europe Except my honor: I return to the South, Not hoping to escape the curse

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Of despotism which, if not publicly, In secret there too undermines my life, And works through its creeping Creatures; But I would turn toward the South Pole to find a grave As far as possible from my loved country; That no breath of the wind may bear back the dust Of him so tyrannically exiled “As contraband, to the displeasure of justice” Back to my native soil. I go and now can hope no more Even to bid farewell to my home, Still, before all the world I would repeat my thanks To the man, who, as man, must remain holy to me, Though destiny now made him King. And, as King, he dares no longer be a man. Two reasons, sire, have moved me to this address To express my thanks and vindicate my honor; And now, in closing, one word of Scandinavia. Sire, high in the North blooms a race Whose rights of old, expressed in maxims, Formed a constitution suited to the wants of the people. For the confirmation of this That race have you to thank, sire, You are the creator of their glorious democratic constitution. What felt I, when first I had the happiness. To meet your look which so consolingly encouraged me, As if consecrating me to the sacred combat Of humanity in vindication of its rights. I saw in you the fortune of our North: I saw in you the possibility That the nations infatuated, divided By blind hate to their own injury, Might now be reconciled. I saw in you How might be realized the natural idea Of union among the Scandinavian races, I saw reason victorious in the North, Saw the absurd hate extinguished, Which has kept heart afar from heart. I saw human love victorious, And minds, estranged

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Through miserable misunderstandings, United and enriched by union. Those who had hated one another stood abashed At their past weakness, and with united effort Sought the ennobling of the now united race. And a great people, combined in brotherly love, Became the bulwark of the North Against the encroachments of foreign commercial selfishness. Scandinavia, in the bonds fixed by nature, Lived as one and as a whole; All the races, in whose hearts glowed one national life, I saw united as one State. And you, sire—did I see you there as a king? No— You stood before my mind in a far higher place: I saw you as the Washington of the North, Clearly recognizing the bright future of that race, In the aim for which humanity is striving; Magnanimously laying down your own claims— Choosing to be the greatest man of Scandinavia, Rather than one of the little princes, Doomed to obey the beck of the Emperor, And serve tyranny instead of human nature. Does this picture surprise you? Surely not; I only paint from nature You as you first appeared to me; Never can you efface that image. You meant me to be a painter;—take then This grand picture from me as remembrancer; It is in the province of “historical painting,” And not the worst of my works. Rather it is not mine, but your own work, For you gave me the idea. After which my mind has ever been striving, Keep the great picture for yourself, It suits not the limits of a “cabinet.” But, as true as God’s breath inspires me, There will come a second “Ragna rock,” A second “sunset of Sods” in the north, And, as before, Odins’s power and splendor

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Sank in night, so shall vanish From our North, the power of tyranny. A Star will rise like the Pole Star, Mysteriously drawing man to itself; Its ray will strike a new spirit into the breast Of faith, devotion, and power; The people will awaken from sleep, And then be seen our Scandinavia! And now, God be with you and with me! Your name stands written in the “Book of Kings;” Mine, if it be recognized by posterity, Belongs in that of the “Prophets,” And “the prophet has no honor in his own country.” The Future will decide for us, And God the Lord will judge us both; And if you are my foe—may He bless you! Kings appear not before him as kings! The crown is left on the sarcophagus, The man will be weighed according to his deeds, And there will be one measure for all: Whether a man, as man, has served humanity, What, in that relation, were his thoughts, feelings, deeds, How far he has sinned against this duty, How far been willing to do and suffer for it Upon his earthly course, And I am ready, from conflict and sorrow, To be summoned that I may appear before my Judge.  Review of Harro Harring, Dolores: A Novel of South America (New York: The Author; Montevideo: Libreria Hernandez, 1846). New-York Daily Tribune, 25 April 1846, p. 1. Title supplied.

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Victory


“It was a famous victory,” sighs the songster after abashing and affrighting the unsophisticated mind of his hearer with details of the horrors of a battle.1 We, too, are called to rejoice over bloodshed and burning, and these in vindication of a most unrighteous act.2 Vain have been the hopes that the victories of this nation would be over wrong and ignorance, not mere conquest of the bodies of other men to obtain their possessions or guard our own. Our Stars have lighted us only to the ancient heathen—the vulgar path of national aggrandizement; and our Eagle, like the Roman, loves better to snatch its prey from the field than to soar to the purer regions near the source of light. The ode performed last night—Schiller’s “Ode to Joy”—where occur the grand lines (misprinted in yesterday’s Tribune,)3 “Be embraced Millions, This kiss to the whole world,”

and his other poem where he says— “Honor in the king the service of a king, Honor in the subject the service of a subject,”

seemed prophecies of what might so easily be effected in this country, which all omens marked out as the dominion where the hopes of the Prince of Peace might be realized. But aversion to his precepts and disbelief in his mission died not with the contemporaries of Pilate. A Church is to be dedicated to-day.4

1. “The Battle of Blenheim,” l. 60, by Robert Southey. 2. Fuller refers to the Mexican War. 3. In Fuller’s piece on 20 May, only “Be embraced, Millions” was quoted (with the comma added). 4. Trinity Church was dedicated on this date (New-York Daily Tribune, 20 May, p. 2).

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“Victory”

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But the flames of burning towns rise higher than those of the altar and tell to the departed Friend of Man, that at the end of eighteen centuries, his simple precepts “Love one another,” and “Feed my lambs,” are as far as ever from being obeyed.5 If the lion lies down with the lamb for an hour of slumber, it is only to get an appetite for breakfast, and the wolves of war rage abroad without the slightest excuse from hunger.  New-York Daily Tribune, 21 May 1846, p. 2; reprinted, New-York Weekly Tribune, 30 May 1846, p. 3. 5. “Feed my lambs” (John 21:15); the other saying seems generic.

The Grand Festival Concert at Castle Garden


The evening was fair; the apartment at Castle Garden, full of light, wore the most joyous air; the orchestral platform, when full, had the appearance of a small, but crowded Mount Parnassus; and the nondescript deities, or whatever they were, on the curtain that overhung it, seemed ready to skip and jump with pleasure. All was right, except the audience, which, though good-looking, well-behaved, and quite large enough to make the atmosphere oppressive in the latter part of the evening, was not, alas! satisfactory, viewed in regard to dollars. We fear not more than three or four thousand of those little ‘almighties’ could have been added to the fund. We suppose the calculation was injudicious and that, in taking so large a hall, the tickets should have been put at a lower rate, for it is well known that the economies of our people lead them to prefer paying eight quarters of a dollar eight times for eight bad books, rather than two whole dollars, all at once, for one good book; and it follows they would prefer paying four half dollars for four ordinary entertainments, rather than two dollars for an excellent one. As for expecting them to act in reference to the future, that can be looked for only from the smallest minority. The size of the room was a benefit to those who were well seated. Music cannot be equally heard in it, and the more delicate parts are much swallowed up and wasted by its construction. But the grand bursts of sound, the full passages, had, this time, sufficient perspective to give them effect. The first overture was well performed. Miss Northall followed, but either she was agitated, or did not know how to proportion her voice to the building.1 Her singing was inefficient, and she fell into her old lachrymose style, from which we hoped she had finally emerged. Perhaps it was straining her voice that destroyed its firmness of tone. We regretted this, as she is becoming, justly, a favorite with the public. An overture of Mozart followed, to which due effect was not given. Then came Madame Otto. She showed skill and 1. Julia Northall, a talented but poor singer, was a protégée of Lydia Maria Child.

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“The Grand Festival Concert at Castle Garden”

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practice in making use of her position. We never heard her sing so well, and she was much applauded. But her total want of fire and spontaneity makes her always wearisome to ourselves. We cannot do without the presence of the electric spark of soul in music; mere words do not suffice us. Then came Mendelssohn’s concerto, Mr. Timm at the piano, a truly delightful performance.2 Mr. Timm’s calm elegance and purity of tone are always refreshing. “He is,” said one present, “like a rill of pure water,” and he was well sustained. Then came Pico,—dear, honest, generous soul as she seems, in her singing at least; that is all we know of her.3 She is one of Nature’s good ones, and her voice flows forth as the true breath of her being; there is no taught twittering there. Her song was encored, and we were willing, long as the evening necessarily was. Beethoven’s Symphony then came to entrance us. At this first time of hearing, it overshadowed like a tower the wandering mind; we could only feel it, and should need long acquaintance to disentangle our impression. We understood it sufficiently to feel the want in the musicians of a similar apprenticeship to a true and thorough comprehension and rendering of its sense; we felt all along inadequacy, a want of the proper light and shade. This is no disparagement to them; profound study and devotion, no less than capacity, being requisite both for leader and auxiliaries with such a great work. As it was, the impression was almost overpowering, at least to some—not, indeed, to the ladies and gentlemen, who thought that the best time to secure their omnibuses, and who, we do believe, if admitted to the heavenly courts, could not be beguiled from ringing the bell in the midst of Hallelujah to ask if luncheon was ready. Never, never shall we forget one night when Braham was giving forth the sublime remains of his great voice, such tones as none of us will hear again, in Luther’s judgment Hymn,4 while he was calling upon the trumpets to answer and the dead to arise, the ladies and gentlemen arose instead and began shawling and cloaking lest they should lose the best moment for going out. That was in Boston. Might but such people go out for a permanence, and bear in mind that they have no sense for such things. The illbreeding that disturbs others is bad enough, but oh the unutterable stupidity!

2. Felix Mendelssohn (1809–47), German musician and composer; Henry Christian Timms (1811–92), German-born pianist, composer, and conductor. 3. For more on Rosina Pico, see Letters, 5:50n. 4. John Braham (1774–1856), ballad writer and tenor.

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“The Grand Festival Concert at Castle Garden”

But to return to the symphony. The Ode to Joy was an entire failure owing to the want of voices fitted to sustain such words and such music; still it was very obvious what it must be when adequately given. It was, indeed, a pity to hear such a screeching, shrilling, and jarring, when a world-wide gush of soul, equally magnificent in the post and the musician, demanded the noblest tones, in the most perfect unison of which human nature is capable, still we are glad to have heard it, even so. We mourned to see the weak translation affixed, giving to those who could not read German such a distorted image of the great original where every word is fraught with the inmost fires of the heart. If any were endurable, it would be one verbally exact; it is wicked for common rhymsters to meddle with such things. We departed at a late hour, fatigued, but grateful for much and high pleasure, and in the opinion that, considering the defects of the apartment and the great number of performers who had to be moulded to a common object with slight and hasty preparation, the success was surprising and the result a great boon.  New-York Daily Tribune, 22 May 1846, p. 2; reprinted, New-York Weekly Tribune, 30 May 1846, p. 6.

[Review of Eliza W. Farnham, Life in Prairie Land]


Here is another good book about the great West.—It is written by the lady so favorably and extensively made known to the public by the wisdom and firmness she has evinced in her care of the female department of the Sing Sing Prison—wisdom and firmness which have enabled her to rise above the obstacles which envy and selfishness put in her way outside the Prison, as well as accomplish an admirable reformation within its walls. This work shows strong good sense, enlarged views of life, and a great deal of experience in the paths of action and feeling. The writer is a correct and animated observer, and the descriptions, though too much in detail, and made with too heavy a hand to suit our own taste, are good in their kind. The sketch of her sister and the relation between them, is affecting. It is rarely that any thing so personal could be addressed to the public and not displease; but it does not, the manner is so simple, strong, and in harmony with the whole character of the writer. Narratives from the domestic life of others are given with the same power of depicting realities without loss of their living force; the story of the tomb on the Prairie, p. 268, is a fine specimen of this. It is the power of the historian as contradistinguished from that of the artist. We must observe in the dialogue a disagreeable and coarse style of repartee ascribed by the writer to herself; we know not whether as descriptive of her actual habit of answering, or merely as a way of expressing what came into her mind at the time. A specimen we may take from an early page: Captain—“You are going up the Illinois, miss?” “I am delighted with your sagacity, sir,” I replied; “that forms a part of my present expectation.” “Have you ever been up?” “Never, sir.” “I admire your taste,” &c.

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Some trifles of this sort jar unpleasantly with the image we wish to form of the person who thus expresses herself in the preface: “Setting a high value upon these resources, I rejoice to hear of emigration to the country possessing them—not alone because those who go will find there abundance for the supply of their natural wants, but because the influences with which it will address their spiritual natures are purifying, ennobling and elevating. If Nature ever taught a lesson which the endwarfed, debased mind of man could study with profit, it is in these regions of her benignant dispensations. The burden of her teaching here, is too palpable to be wholly rejected by any. Even vulgar minds do not altogether escape its influence. Their perceptions become more vivid, their desires more exalted, their feelings purer, and all their intellectual action more expanded. “The magnificence, freedom and beauty of the country form, as it were, a common element, in which all varieties of character, education and prejudice are resolved into simple and harmonious relation. Living near to Nature, artificial distinctions lose much of their force. Humanity is valued mainly for its intrinsic worth—not for its appurtenances or outward belongings.”

We need not give many extracts, as the book is secure of a general circulation. Though very inferior in humor, variety and lively grace to those of Mrs. Kirkland on the same subjects,1 it shows the same good eye and judgment, and, will in like manner, be useful as a guide, no less than pleasant as a companion, to the many whose hopes turn Westward either for themselves or their children.  Review of Eliza W. Farnham, Life in Prairie Land (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1846). New-York Daily Tribune, 30 May 1846, supplement, p. 1; reprinted, New-York Weekly Tribune, 6 June 1846, p. 3. Title supplied. Eliza Woodson Burhans Farnham (1815–64), travel writer and reformer, served as matron of women prisoners at Sing Sing (1844–48), where Fuller visited and spoke to the women prisoners during her tenure. 1. Fuller had reviewed Western Clearings by Caroline Kirkland in the 21 November 1845 New-York Daily Tribune.

[Review of Waddy Thompson, Recollections of Mexico]


This book, as containing recent information as to the state of affairs in Mexico, and personal observations upon her leading men, cannot fail, at this moment, to be read with avidity. The author says that, not expecting to write an account of what he saw and thought, he did not keep notes for the purpose, and that the book is necessarily desultory. However, it seems to give a fair account of his experience. He is not a man capable of penetrating below the surface to detect the hidden springs of action, nor must valuable prescience or intimations be expected from him. As we smile at some wholesale remarks on the state of things in our own nation, we learn how to allow for the same absence of penetration and ready credence as to the seemings of things abroad. Still, in fairness and candor, in desire to be free from prejudice and passion, in unsophisticated good feeling, and what is called common sense, he is above the average of men, and his account, if not received as gospel, but merely taken for examination, is worth a good deal. The very absence of any great leading views in his own mind often leads to his giving us contradictory statements without perceiving it, and affords opportunity to find the truth that lies between.—There is something very sweet and generous in his love for heroic traits of character, and the gleams of light thus shed over a history of dark, weary and inconclusive struggle are truly refreshing. Among these we reckon as prominent all that is told of Victoria, and the anecdote of Santa Ana’s answer to the manly indignation of Mr. Hargoos, p.80.1 It is always very pleasant to see the bright side of a man’s character whom the popular imagination has delighted to portray as a monster. For there are few monsters in the history of the human race, only the vices, cruelties and inconsistencies of the Bonapartes and Santa Anas are better seen than those 1. Antonio Lopez de Santa Ana (or Anna) (1795–1876), four-time president of Mexico, was the victor at the Battle of the Alamo (1836) during the Mexican War.

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of others because they stand upon an eminence with clouds of witnesses around. Not a less ruthless selfishness than at Jaffa and in the murder of Fannin’sn men is daily displayed, nor does it, in the sight of God, less remove a man below the standard of humanity because the death and anguish that ensue are not immediate and the horror less glaring.2 But when, Mr. Thompson congratulates himself on the nobleness of his countrymen that “while considering Santa Ana as a murderer and assassin” they treated him with “marked respect” in the stage coaches and steamboats, we think he shows as little clearness of eye and soundness of the moral sense as in the following passage: “The President has a splendid barouche, drawn by four American horses, and, I am ashamed to say, driven by an American. I can never become reconciled to seeing a native American (?) performing the offices of a menial servant, but I felt this the more on seeing a foreigner and in a foreign land thus waited on by one of my countrymen. I was more than ever thankful that I lived in that portion of our country where no man is theoretically called a freeman, who is not so in fact, in feelings, and in sentiments; no decent Southern American could be induced to drive any body’s coach or clean his shoes. I have no doubt that if the liberties of this country are ever destroyed that they will perish at the ballot-box; men whose menial occupations degrade them in their own selfesteem and deprive them of the proud consciousness of equality, have no right to vote.”

Observe, these remarks are by a gentleman who is continually congratulating himself on the simplicity of manners and the purity of religion in his native land! The accounts given of Mexico and California and the remarks as to their present position are throughout calculated to stimulate covetousness and dissipate scruples as to their “annexation,” though Mr. Thompson professes to have no wish of the sort, and we believe is not conscious of the influence that would naturally result from all he says. The following passage is of some interest, showing the certainty of instinct in Santa Ana which marks the leading man:

Fanning’s [ Fannin’s 2. The Muslims slaughtered the defenders of Jaffa after they were defeated on 27 June 1192 during the Third Crusade; James Walker Fannin (1804–36) surrendered to Santa Ana after the Battle of Goliad, after which he and over three hundred men were executed.

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“A member of the Mexican Cabinet once said to me that he believed that the tendency of things was toward the annexation of Texas to the United States, and that he greatly preferred that result either to the separate independence of Texas or any connection or dependence of Texas upon England; that if Texas was an independent power, other departments of Mexico would unite with it, either voluntarily or by conquest, and that if there was any connection between Texas and England, that English manufactures would be smuggled into Mexico through Texas to the utter ruin of the Mexican manufactures and revenue. “In one of my last interviews with Santa Ana, I mentioned this conversation. He said with great vehemence, that he ‘would war forever for the re-conquest of Texas, and that if he died in his senses, his last words should be an exhortation to his countrymen never to abandon the effort to re-conquer the country;’ and added, ‘You, sir, know very well, that to sign a treaty for the alienation of Texas, would be the same thing as signing the death-warrant of Mexico;’ and went on to say that ‘by the same process we would take one after the other of the Mexican Provinces, until we had them all.’ I could not, in sincerity, say that I thought otherwise; but I do not know that the annexation of Texas will hasten that event. That our language and laws are destined to pervade this Continent, I regard as more than certain than any other event which is in the future. Our race has never yet put its foot upon a soil which it has not only kept, but has advanced.—(A mysterious sentence, that last, in point of English.)—I mean not our English ancestors only, but that great Teuton race from which we have both descended.”

Mr. Thompson remarks that the soldiery are almost all of Indian blood, and scarce stronger than the women of the United States: I do not hesitate to say that if I was in command of an army of ten thousand disciplined troops, and was going into battle, and was offered ten thousand more Mexican troops, that I would not take them. Napier, in his history of the Peninsular War, describing some battle, uses this expression: “The British army was strengthened or rather weakened by twenty thousand undisciplined Spanish troops.” The inequality between disciplined and undisciplined troops is estimated by military men as one to five. This inequality is much greater with large masses, and I do not think that any commander could perform a tactical evolution with five thousand Mexican troops. I do not believe that such an one—a maneuver in the face of an enemy—ever was attempted in any Mexican battle; they have all been mere melees or mob fights, and generally terminated by a charge of cavalry, which is, therefore, the favorite corps

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with all Mexican officers. I should regard it, from the diminutive size of their horses and the equally diminutive stature and feebleness of their riders, as utterly inefficient against any common infantry. I said so in conversation with Colonel B—n, an officer who had seen some service, and had some reputation. I was not a little amused at his reply. He admitted that squares of infantry were generally impregnable to calvary—that they had one resource by which they never had any difficulty in breaking the square. I was curious to know what this new and important discovery in the art of war was, and waited impatiently the “push of his one thing,” when to my infinite amusement he replied—the Lasso; that the calvary armed with lassos rode up and threw them over the men forming the squares, and pulled them out, and thus made the breach.—I remembered that my old nurse had often got me to sleep when a child by promising to catch me some birds the next day, by putting salt on their tails, which I thought was about as easy an operation as this new discovery of the Mexican Colonel. I had read of “kneeling ranks and changing squadrons,” but this idea of lassoing squadrons was altogether new to me. ***** The Mexican army, and more particularly their cavalry, may do very well to fight each other, but in any conflict with our own or European troops, it would not be a battle but a massacre. Frederick the Great, who was the author, in a great degree, of the modern system of tactics, had three maxims as to calvary. First, that a calvary corps should never be charged, but should always make the charge. Second, that, in a charge of calvary, they were not going fast enough unless when halted the froth from the mouth of the horse struck the rider in the face; and third, which was rather the summing up of the first two, that the spur was more important that the sword. In other words, that the impulse and the momentum of the horse was of more consequence than the arms and blows of the rider. What then must be the murderous inequality between a corps of American calvary and an equal number of Mexicans? The American corps, from the superior size of their horses, would cover twice as much ground, and the obstruction offered by the Mexicans on their small and scrawny ponies would scarcely cause their horses to stumble in riding over them; to say nothing of the greater inequality of the men themselves, five to one at least in individual combats, and more than twice that in a battle.—The infantry would be found even more impotent. ******** The soldiers of the Mexican army are generally collected by sending out recruiting detachments into the mountains, where they hunt the Indians in their dens and caverns, and bring them in chains to Mexico; there is scarcely a day that droves of these miserable and more than half naked wretches are not seen thus chained together and marching through the streets to the bar-

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racks, where they are scoured and then dressed in a uniform made of linen cloth or of serge and are occasionally drilled—which drilling consists mainly in teaching them to march in column through the streets. The military tactics are good, and the men learn to march indifferently well—but only indifferently well—they put their feet down as if they were feeling for the place, and do not step with that jaunty, erect and graceful air which is so beautiful in well drilled troops. As to the wheeling, of well trained troops, like the opening and shutting of a gate, or the prompt and exact execution of other evolutions, they know nothing about them. There is not one in ten of these soldiers who has ever seen a gun, nor one in a hundred who has ever fired one before he was brought into the barracks.—It is in this way that the ranks of the army are generally filled up—in particular emergencies the prisons are thrown open, which always contain more prisoners that the army numbers, and these felons become soldiers and some of them officers. Their arms, too, are generally worthless English muskets which have been condemned and thrown aside, and are purchased for almost nothing and sold to the Mexican government. Their powder, too, is equally bad; in the last battle between Santa Ana and Bustamente, which lasted the whole day, not one cannon ball in a thousand reached the enemy—they generally fell about half-way between the opposing armies. What would they think of such fights as we had on the Northern lines, when Miller stormed the English battery, or when, in the language of General Brown, “General Jessup showed himself to his friends in a sheet of fire.” I do not think that the Mexicans are deficient in courage; or it might be more properly said that they are indifferent to danger or the preservation of a life which is really so worthless to the most of them. But with the disadvantages to which I have adverted, the reader will not be surprised that in all the conflicts with our people, in which they have been more or less engaged for the last thirty years, they have always been defeated.

The following passage contains some interesting statements: I confess that in taking the high ground which I did upon the order expelling our people from California, that I felt some compunctious visitings, for which I had been informed that a plot had been arranged and was about being developed by the Americans and other foreigners in that departmentn to reënact the scene of Texas. I had been consulted whether in the event of a revolution in California, and its successful result in a separate revolution from Mexico, our Government would consent to surrender their claims to Oregon, and that

departmen [ department

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Oregon and California should constitute an independent Republic. I of course had no authority to answer the question, and I would not have done so if I could. The inhabitants of California are for the most part Indians, a large proportion naked savages, who not only have no sympathies with Mexico, but the most decided antipathy. Mexico has no troops there, and the distance of the department prevents any being sent. Captain Suter, who was one of Bonaparte’s officers, and, I believe, is a Swiss, has for many years had an establishment there, and is the real sovereign of the country if any one is, certainly so de facto if not de jure. The Government of Mexico has done none of these things, such as settlement, extending her laws, and affording protection, which alone give to a civilized people a right to the country of a savage one. As to all these, the natives of California are as much indebted to any other nation as to Mexico; they only know the Government of Mexico by the exactions and tribute which are levied upon them—it is literally a waif, and belongs to the first occupant. Captain Suter has two forts in California, and about two thousand persons, natives and Europeans, in his employment, all of them armed and regularly drilled. I have no doubt that his force would be more than a match for any Mexican force which will ever be sent against them. He has once or twice been ordered to deliver up his forts, and his laconic reply has been, “Come and take them.” From all the information which I have received—and I have been inquisitive upon the subject—I am well satisfied that there is not on this Continent any country of the same extent as little desirable as Oregon, nor any in the world which combines as many advantages as California. With the exception of the valley of the Wallamette, there is scarcely any portion of Oregon which is inhabitable except for that most worthless of all, a hunting populationn— and the valley of the Wallamette is of very small extent.—In the South the only port is at the Columbia river, and that is no port at all, as the loss of the Peacock and others of our vessels, has proven. To say nothing of other harbors in California, that of San Francisco is capacious enough for the navies of the world, and its shores are covered with enough timber (a species of the live oak) to build those navies. If man were to ask of God a climate, he would ask just such an one as that of California, if he had ever been there. There is no portion of our Western country which produces all the grains as well; I have been told by more than one person on whom I entirely relied, that they had known whole fields to produce—a quantity so incredible that I will not state

poulation [ population

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it. The whole face of the country is covered with the finest oats growing wild; sugar, rice and cotton find there their own congenial climates. Besides all these, the richest mines of gold and silver have been discovered there, and the pearl fisheries have always been sources of the largest profits; and more than these, there are the markets of India and China with nothing intervening but the calm and stormless Pacific Ocean. The distance from the head of navigation on the Arkansas and Red Rivers to a navigable point of the waters of the Gulf of California is not more than five or six hundred miles; let that distance be overcome by a Railroad, and what a vista is opened to the prosperity and power of our country. I have no doubt that the time will come when New-Orleans will be the greatest city in the world. That period would be incalculably hastened by the measures which I have indicated, which would throw into her lap the vast commerce of China and India. Great Britain, with that wise and far-seeing policy for which she is more remarkable than any other Government, has already the practical possession of most of the ports of the Pacific Ocean—New-Zealand and the Sandwich Islands, and very soon the Society Islands also. We have a commerce in that ocean of more than fifty millions of dollars, and not a single place of refuge for our ships. I will not say what is our policy in regard to California. Perhaps it is that it remain in the hands of a weak power like Mexico, and that all the maritime powers may have the advantage of its ports. But one thing I will say, that it will be worth a war of twenty years to prevent England acquiring it, which I have the best reasons for believing she desires to do, and just as good reasons for believing that she will not do if it costs a war with this country. It is, perhaps, too remote from us to become a member of the Union. It is yet doubtful whether the increase of our territory will have a federal or a centralizing tendency. If latter, we have too much territory; and I am by no means sure that another sister Republic there, with the same language, liberty and laws, will not, upon the whole, be the best for us. If united in one Government, the extremities may be so remote as not to receive a proper heat from the centre— so, at least, thought Mr. Jefferson, who was inspired on political questions if mortal man ever was. I am not one of those who have a rabid craving for more territory; on the contrary, I believe that we have enough. I know of no great people—the Egyptians, the Romans, the Greeks, and another people who have exercised a greater influence upon man and his destiny than all others, the Jews; and, in our own time, the English. I want no more territory, for we have already too much. If I were to make an exception to this remark, it would be to acquire California.—But I should grieve to see that country pass into the hands of England, or any other of the great powers. Whenever the foreigners in California make the movement of separation,

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it must succeed. The department of Sonora, not half the distance from Mexico, has been in a state of revolt for the last four years, and the Government has not been able to suppress it. The civil war there has been marked by acts of horrible atrocity, which are almost without precedent in any country. It is true that they do not eat the flesh of their enemies, but they leave them hanging on the trees to feast the birds of prey. There is scarcely a road in the whole department where such spectacles are not daily exhibited.

This passage shows well enough how sincere, and at the same time vacillating and far from clear to himself Mr. Thompson is. He has a way, probably acquired in diplomatic life, of saying in relation to the intentions of foreign powers, and other doubtful subjects, “I have the best reason for knowing that it is or will be” so and so, without letting us know what those reasons are. We will copy this plenipotentiary style, which would be found, above all others, convenient for newspaper critics, and say:n We have the best reasons for knowing that, while a large portion of the statement in this volume is correct, yet on some matters, most interesting, because not yet so fully examined into, it is doubtful, because the observer was too easily satisfied with what first met the eye and ear, and was not earnest in examination and comparison of testimony. Still there is a great deal of information not yet familiar to the people and thrown into a popular form, and the book will be very useful if the reader takes it with the proviso that new items, though likely to be in the main correct, yet need examination before they are finally nailed up amid his mental furniture.  Review of Waddy Thompson, Recollections of Mexico (New York: Wiley and Putnam, 1846). New-York Daily Tribune, 2 June 1846, p. 1; reprinted, New-York Weekly Tribune, 6 June 1846, p. 1. Title supplied. Waddy Thompson (1798–1868), politician and ambassador to Mexico (1842–44). Prior to Fuller’s review, the editor of the Tribune, Horace Greeley (1811–72), announced the publication of this book as the “observations of a statesman—frank, shrewd, and generous” (16 May, p. 2). say; [ say:

Critics and Essayists


We have here a list of critical essays which have exercised or will exercise a considerable influence on public taste. Of very unequal excellence as to cultivation, refinement and discriminating judgment, all these books show vital energy. They are not mere made books, but the work of men who spoke of Literature because they loved it, and it had played an important part in the development of their lives. Such books are interesting companions, and at intervals, guides—not that the critic should ever be allowed to guide our judgment, but he may show us where to look, and warn us not to overlook in learning to judge for ourselves. The motto chosen by Mr. Horne— “It is an easy thing to praise or blame; The hard task and the virtue to do both.”—

is the true one, and, by its light, we will make a few marks in our calendar upon his own critical essays, which have been much read, but which we have never heard spoken of in a way quite to our mind. We demand from the critic that imagination, refined perceptions, and a manly judgment should have been tempered, through his studies and examinations, to make a weapon of so keen and delicate a power that, like the Damascus blade, it will cast but a single and sufficient gleam of light, whether in severing the mail breast-plate or the silken curtain. This we find not in Mr. Horne. The coarse engravings from good pictures which accompany his critiques are a fit emblem of the mental portraits. Always we find in these some lineaments of the original; also, there is a good deal of energetic and tender sympathy in the individualities considered, but there is a want of the spiritual sense by which alone the spiritual, or perfected, physiognomy can be discovered, and a want of power in the artist to envelop his work with the atmosphere of beauty. 439

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The same want we discern in “Orion,” the so eulogized poem of Mr. Horne, which we have lately read with great pleasure, but with dissatisfaction. There is in it nobility of feeling and a large outlook, with a true account of many of the phenomena of mental growth, but things are never searched into or clearly seized as we want to have them, and we rise from these books enlivened, both by pleasure and displeasure, but not enriched. The total abstinence of Mr. Horne from communicating one particular about his subjects that is not generally known to the public, is truly wonderful. On seeing the list of contemporary celebrities we seized the book, thinking we were to receive light much wanted for a fair appreciation upon the history of their productions. But not a ray is granted; nothing new to us whatever, except Mr. Horne’s personal judgment of these phenomena. That is not all we have a right to expect from a book that calls itself “Spirit of the Age.” But Mr. Horne, with all his imperfections, is a carefully cut diamond, and one of purest water by the side of Gilfillan, who is related to the critic only as the burning charcoal is to the diamond. Such hot books we never saw; we cannot read them at all without a glass of iced water beside us. Never, we believe, was that most unhappy word “intense” used with equal liberality—a word only to be endured on the most inevitable occasions. And intense and exaggerated, and ludicrously emphatic throughout, is the style of the author. Literature knows no coarser daubs than these pictures in his gallery. And yet he too has been read, and will be, because, with all his credulity and undue intensity, he has a glow of genuine feeling, and there is some oil to feed the blaze. His books, valueless from want of proportion and harmony as literary criticisms, and even offensive to those who have a matured and refined appreciation of the writers he admires, may please the young and afford good subjects for chat to those who still enjoy breakfasts of strong coffee with pistols. He has a great deal of talent as well as ardor; what he says is often true, and though his way of saying it is exaggerated and overloaded, yet he will, by and by, we suppose, leave off painting the lily and gilding the refined gold, and there is enough of him to leave a considerable residuum after the purifying action of the crucible has been fairly exerted. We must also mention that he has magnetic attraction for new particulars, and, unlike Mr. Horne, does really supply us with some salient and illustrative traits unknown before, so that we become ungrateful debtors to his book.—Would he but have left out in some of his sentences the coarse, ill-chosen epithets that mar every image. As thus: “Cunningham’s mind was essentially lyrical; but the airy strings of his lyre were set in a strong, rough, oaken frame.”

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“His language is not rich, fluent, refined or copious, but knotty, direct, and with a marrowy race and strength about it.” “Byron had all the activity of a scalded fiend.”

If this last be original, who will thank Mr. Gilfillan for so disgusting an originality? He is, after all, rather better than we have said, but we cannot help feeling and expressing dislike to a person of so unshrinking an indelicacy, that you are never safe with him from the intrusion of some vulgar word or image on the most interesting theme, which he thinks strong because it does violence. Sometimes he pleases, as in speaking of the sister of Tasso: “How delicately contrasted is the wayward irritability of the poet, and the more than motherly tenderness of the sister. It is ‘love watching madness with unalterable mien.’ Glide where the wild river of his mind may, she follows it like a soft green bank, at once restraining and beautifying its course.” “He,” [the true alchemist]1 “valued not the golden key, except that by it he hoped to open the vast folding-doors, and to stand in the central halls of Nature’s inmost temple—halls flaming with diamond and with gold.”

This sentence stands in the midst of an essay as imperfect as any, and on one of the most desirable subjects, Godwin. It is followed by one of his bad mixed images, where “intensity” vies with bathos: “As an attempt, too, to follow the most shadowy and sublime of Nature’s footsteps, to take her in her form, to enter into her profoundest moods, and learn her most unimaginable secrets.”

The shadowy and sublime footsteps—of a hare! Directly opposite to this writer in virtues and defects is Talfourd. On reading these essays collected, all their elegance and scholarly good taste cannot conceal a meagreness and tameness of mind and want of great leading views. Moral beauty and delicacy of taste, with penetration and good judgment in enforcing his opinions, constitute his chief claims to the high rank he has held in the dominion of thought, and posterity will place him lower and read him less than his contemporaries have. As a specimen of what was finest in him, we may take the following, where, in that most difficult department of newspaper

1. Brackets are in the original.

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obituary writing, he shows the beauty of moral feeling and fine sense of the play of life, which give a gentleman and man of the world such influence in his own time: the late dowager lady holland Morning Chronicle, Nov. 25, 1845. It seems scarcely fitting that the grave should close over the remains of the late Dowager Lady Holland without some passing tribute beyond the paragraph which announces, with the ordinary expression of regret, the decease of a widow lady advanced in years, and reminds the world of fashion that the event has placed several noble families in mourning. That event which a fortnight ago was regarded by friendly apprehensions as probably at the distance of some years has not merely clouded and impaired the enjoyments of one large circle, but has extinguished for ever a spirit of social happiness which has animated many, and severed the most genial link of association, by which some of the finest minds which yet grace the literary and political world were connected with the mightiest of those which have left us. The charms of the celebrated hospitalities of Holland House, in the time of its late revered master, have been too gracefully developed, by one who has often partaken, and enhanced them in the Edinburgh Review for July, 1841, to allow a feeble expression; but death had not then bestowed the melancholy of expatiating on the share of its mistress in crowding those memorable hours with various pleasure, or on the energetic kindness with which she strove, against the perpetual scene of unutterable loss, to renew some portion of their enjoyments. For the remarkable position she occupied, during many years of those daily festivals in which genius, wit, and patriotic hope were triumphant, she was eminently gifted. While her own remarks were full of fine practical sense, and nice observation, her influence was chiefly felt in the discourse of those whom she directed and inspired, and which, as she impelled it, startled by the most animated contrasts, or blended in the most graceful harmonies. Beyond any other hostess we ever knew—and very far beyond any host—she possessed the tact of perceiving and the power of evoking the various capacities which lurked in every part of the brilliant circle she drew around her. To enkindle the enthusiasm of an artist on the theme over which he had achieved the most facile mastery; to set loose the heart of the rustic poet, and imbue his speech with the freedom of his native hills; to draw from the adventurous traveler a breathing picture of his most imminent danger, or to embolden the bashful soldier to disclose his own share in the perils and glories of some famous battle field; to encourage the generous praise of friendship, when the speaker and the subject reflected interest on each other, or win the secret history of some

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effort which has astonished the world or shed new lights on science;—to conduct those brilliant developments to the hight of satisfaction, and then to shift the scene by the magic of a word, were among the daily successes. And if this extraordinary power over the elements of societal enjoyment was sometimes wielded without the entire concealment of its despotism; if a decisive check sometime rebuked a speaker who might intercept the variegated beauty of Jeffrey’s indulgent criticism, or the jest announced and self-rewarded in Sydney Smith’s delighted and delighting chuckle, the authority was too clearly exerted for the evening’s prosperity, and too manifestly impelled by an urgent consciousness of the value of those golden hours which were fleeting within its confines, to sadden the enforced silence with more than a momentary regret. If ever her prohibition, clear, abrupt, and decisive, indicated more than a preferable regard for livelier discourse, it was when a depreciatory tone was adopted toward genius, or goodness, or honest endeavor, or when some friend, personal or intellectual, was mentioned in slighting phrase. Habituated to a generous partisanship by strong sympathy with a great political cause, she carried the fidelity of her devotion to that cause into her social relations, and was ever the truest and the fastest of friends. The tendency, often more idle than malicious, to soften down the intellectual claims of the absent, which so insidiously beset literary conversation, and teaches a superficial insincerity even to substantial esteem and regard, found no favor in her presence; and hence the conversations over which she presided, perhaps beyond all that ever flashed with a kindred splendor, were marked by that integrity of good nature which might admit of their exact repetition to every living individual whose merits were discussed, without the danger of inflicting pain. Under her auspices not only all critical but all personal talk was tinged with kindness; the strong interest which she took in the happiness of her friends shed a peculiar sunniness over the aspects of life presented by the common topics of alliances, and marriages, and promotions; and not a hopeful engagement, or a happy wedding, or a promotion of a friend’s son, or a new intellectual triumph of any youth with whose name and history she was familiar, but became an event on which she expected and required congratulation, as on a part of her own fortune. Although there was naturally a preponderance in her society of the sentiment of popular progress, which once was cherished almost exclusively by the party to whom Lord Holland was united by sacred ties, no expression of triumph in success, no virulence in sudden disappointment was ever permitted to wound the most sensitive ear of her conservative guests. It might be that some placid comparison of recent with former times spoke a sense of Freedom’s peaceful victory; or that, on the giddy edge of some party struggle, the festivities of the evening might take a more serious cast, as news arrived from the scene of contest, and the pleasure be deepened with the peril;

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but the feeling was always restrained by the present evidence of permanent solaces for the mind, which no political changes could disturb. If to bail and welcome genius—or even talent which revered and imitated genius—was one of the greatest pleasures of Lord Holland’s life, to search it out, and bring it within the sphere of his noble sympathy, was the delightful study of hers. How often, during the last half century, has the steep ascent of fame been hightened by the genial appreciation she bestowed, and the assurance of success received its crowning delight amid the genial luxury of her circle, where renown itself has been realized for the first time in all its sweetness! How large a share she communicated to the delights of Holland House will be understood by those who shared her kindness, first in South-st. and recently in Standope-st. where, after Lord Holland’s death she honored his memory by cherishing his friends and following his example; where, to the last, with a voice retaining its girlish sweetness, she welcomed every guest, invited or casual, with the old cordiality and queenly grace; where authors of every age and school—from Rogers, her old and affectionate friend, whose first poem illuminated the darkness of the last closing century “like a rich jewel in an Ethiop’s ear,” down to the youngest disciple of the latest school—found that honor paid to literature which England aristocracy has too commonly denied it; and where, every day, almost to the last, added to her claim to be remembered as one who, during a long life, cultivated the great art of living happily, by the great means of making others happy.

Over Stephen’s articles, as here collected, we have not looked, but the richness of material alone would make them very valuable. Those on the Port Royalists, Ignatius Loyola, and the like are a treasure to the general reader, and will long continue to be sought with the same interest as they were upon their first appearance.2 We come, in fine, to speak of the book which stands first at the head of our list—a book which we look on with the true satisfaction as the growth of American literature—a book which combines elegance of taste with tenderness of feeling, literary culture with wide and generous sympathies for the common feelings of man. The range of Mr. Tuckerman’s subjects will be seen by his list to take in a large part of the circle of known diversities in character and opinion, and we think there is no critic who has done, in a larger number of instances, justice

2. Port Royal, a Cistercian abbey for nuns near Paris; Saint Ignatius of Loyola (1491–1556), Spanish soldier and mystic who founded the Society of Jesus (Jesuits).

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and refined justice. He has shown himself a citizen of the world, able to see and feel extremes such as are found in Petrarch and Alfieri,n Crabbe and Shelley, Rogers and Burns.3 He does refined justice to merits; he sees defects, but sees and shows their causes too. He has the affectionate sympathies of Gilfillan without his heat and redundance—the delicate taste of Talfourd, unfettered by many restraints which professional and social habits have, unconsciously to himself, imposed upon the spirit of the author of Ion,4 till the waters trickle in a small though pure rill from the mouth of the elaborate marble fountain. The style of Mr. Tuckerman is, indeed, deficient in elasticity and variety. It is too much the style of a reading man, and wants the soft, fresh glow and activity of life. Add that he shows the marks of too much contact with ordinary minds. He tries to explain what cannot be explained to those who demand the explanation, and holds in mind prejudice and ignorance not worth considering. A good writer should address man at large, and in a strong, direct style, capable of arousing him from stupidity and error; he will never be enlightened by stopping to conciliate those. To aim at the ideal man is not to address a cold abstraction, but that better self which is hid in the breast of every man, and only needs sufficient force and genius in him who dares the appeal to be made to answer. But Mr. Tuckerman sometimes forgets this, and explains and enforces what should be considered as truisms. Add to this that there is evidence of his not always having thought out his own principles so as to see in all cases what their results must inevitably be. Then his pictures, of course, vary in merit according to his own personal experience and range of imagination. That of Coleridge, for instance, is quite insufficient and unworthy. But, generally, they are marked with much excellence both in leading views and details. The critic shows a delicate sense of individuality in character, and a religious willingness that men should be what God made them, rather than conform to his chosen patterns. So his drawings have both spiritual unity and accuracy in detail.—He has happily brought in many anecdotes, and chooses well the salient traits which make our passage easy and sure, like stepping-stones across a rushing stream. We say we are proud that this book is American. It is very un-American in the patient and affectionate acquaintance with its subject, the love of literature for its own sake which it evinces; and we hope it will be generally read, for Alfiere [ Alfieri 3. George Crabbe (1755–1832), English scientist, cleric, and poet; Samuel Rogers (1763–1855), English poet and essayist. 4. Talfourd published his tragedy Ion in 1836.

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the benefit to the general taste, and the counteraction to general bad habits, which would be the natural results of acquaintance with such criticisms. We make no extracts, because it is not a book that can be judged fairly by samples as one great merit is the catholicity and wise mildness of consideration, by which what the careless observer deems opposites are harmonized. The letter in answer to a person who found fault with the sketch of Shelley will be a valuable document for posterity. It is sad to see the rank weeds of bigoted prejudice uprooted now in the parent land, grow up again so easily in this. This sketch of Shelley, like that of Cowper, contains passages of great justness and beauty.5 Among others, this happily expresses a fact: “Whatever views his countrymen may entertain, there is a kind of living posterity in this young republic, who judge of genius by a calm study of its fruits, wholly uninfluenced by the distant murmur of local prejudice and party rage. To such the thought of Shelley is hallowed by the aspirations and spirit of love with which his verse overflows.”

Gilfillan, too, has attempted to give a sketch of Shelley, which shows a good deal of true feeling. He has also written, though not well, of Godwin, and so has Mr. Talfourd. Sincere witnesses arise when men are dead. We should have liked, instead of scribbling these hasty generalities, to have written out in detail some comments upon Mr. Tuckerman’s views of these poets; for we have looked at them with attention enough to find many such called out; and that is more than we can say of any book of the kind that has appeared this long time. But newspaper limits forbid, and indeed we have made the present writing so long, that it is doubtful whether the war with Mexico lets it see the light. So we must close, commending “Thoughts on the Poets” to all who have time and patience just now to enjoy such serene studies.  Review of Henry T. Tuckerman, Thoughts on the Poets (New York: C. S. Francis, 1846), The Modern British Essayists. Containing Essays of Talfourd and Stephen (Philadelphia: Carey and Hart, 1846), George Gilfillan, Sketches of Modern Literature, and Eminent Literary Men (Being a Gallery of Literary Portraits) (New York: D. Appleton, 1846), A New Spirit of the Age, ed. Richard Henry Horne (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1844). New-York Daily Tribune, 10 June 1846, supplement, p. 1; reprinted as “Critics and Essayists,” New-York Weekly Tribune,

5. William Cowper (1731–1806), English poet and satirist.

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13 June 1846, p. 1. Henry Theodore Tuckerman (1813–71), poet, critic, and travel writer; Thomas Noon Talfourd (1785–1854), English dramatist and literary critic; James Stephen (1789–1859), English statesman, educator, and historical writer; George Gilfillan (1813–78), Scottish clergyman, essayist, and poet; Richard Henry Horne (1803–44), English poet, essayist, and travel writer.

[Review of Joel T. Headley, Napoleon and His Marshals]


As we pass the old brick chapel, our eye is sometimes arrested by placards that hang side by side. On one is advertised “The Lives of the Apostles,” on the other “Napoleon and His Marshals.” Surely it is the most monstrous thing the world ever saw that eighteen hundred years’ profound devotion to a religious teacher should not preclude flagrant, and all but universal, violation of his most obvious precepts. That Napoleon and his Marshals should be some of the best ripened fruit of our time; that our own people, so unwearied in building up temples of wood and stone to the Prince of Peace, should be at this moment mad with boyish exultation at the winning of a battle, and in a bad cause too. In view of such facts we cannot wonder that Dr. Channing, the Editor of The Tribune, and others who make Christianity their standard, should find little savor in glowing expositions of the great French drama and be disgusted at words of defence, still more admiration, spoken in behalf of its leading actor. We can easily admit at once that the whole French drama was anti-Christian just as the national conduct of every nation of Christendom has been thus far, with rare and brief exceptions. Something different might have been expected from our own, because the world has now attained a clearer consciousness of right, and in our own case our position would have made obedience easy. We have not been led into temptation; we sought it. It is greed, and not want, that has impelled this nation to wrong. The paths of peace would have been for her also the paths of wisdom and of pleasantness, but she would not, and has preferred the path of the beast of prey in the uncertain forest to the green pastures where “walks the good Shepherd, His meek temples crowned with roses red and white.” Since the state of things is such, we see no extremity of censure that should fall upon the great French leader, except that he was like the majority. He was ruthless and selfish on a larger scale than most monarchs, but we see no difference in grain or in principles of action. 448

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Admit, then, that he was not a good man, and never for one moment acted disinterestedly. But do not refuse to do homage to his genius. It is well worth your while to learn to appreciate that, if you wish to understand the work that the spirit of the time did, and is still doing, through him; for his mind is still upon the earth, working there through the tributary minds it fed. We must say, for our own part, we cannot admit the right of minds severely to criticize Napoleon, till they are able to appreciate what he was as well as see what he was not. And we see no mind of sufficient grasp or high placed enough to take this estimate duly, nor do we believe this age will furnish one. Many problems have to be worked out first. We reject the exclusively moral, no less than exclusively intellectual view, and find most satisfaction in those who, aiming neither at apology nor attack, make their observations upon the great phenomenon as partial, and to be received as partial. Mr. Headley, in his first surprise at finding how falsely John Bull,1 rarely liberal enough to be fully trusted in evidence on any topic, has spoken of the acts of a hated and dreaded foe, does, indeed, rush too much on the other side. He mistakes the touches of sentiment in Napoleon for genuine feeling. Now we know that Napoleon loved to read Ossian, and could appreciate the beauty of tenderness; but we do not believe that he had one particle of what is properly termed heart—that is, he could always silence sentiment at once when his projects demanded it. Then Mr. Headley finds apologies for acts where apology is out of place. They characterize the ruthless nature of the man, and that is all that can be said of them. He moved on, like the Juggernaut car,2 to his end, and spilled the blood that was needed for this, whether that blood were “ditch-water” or otherwise. Neither is this supposing him a monster. The human heart is very capable of such uncontrolled selfishness, just as it is of angelic love. “ ’T is but the first step that costs” much. Yet some compassionate hand strewed flowers on Nero’s grave,3 and the whole world cried shame when Bonaparte’s Mameluke forsook his master. Mr. Headley does not seem to be aware that there is no trust to be put in Napoleon’s own account of his actions. He seems to have been almost incapable of speaking sincerely to those about him. We doubt whether he could 1. John Bull, name for an Englishman. 2. Juggernaut is Krishna as Lord of the World in the Hindu religion; the image is bathed and placed in a huge car for an annual procession. 3. Tiberius Claudius Nero Caesar (42 b.c.–37 a.d.), Emperor Nero of Rome (14–37), known for his vices and cruelty.

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have forgotten with the woman he loved that she might become his historiographer.4 But granting the worst that can be said of ruthless acts in the stern Corsican, are we to reserve our anathema for him alone? He is no worse than the other crowned ones, against whom he felt himself continually in the balance. He has shed a greater quantity of blood and done mightier wrongs because he had more power and followed with more fervor a more dazzling lure. We see no other difference between his conduct and that of the great Frederickn of Prussia.5 He never did any thing so meanly wicked as has just been done in stirring up the Polish peasants to assassinate the nobles. He never did anything so atrocious as has been done by Nicholas of Russia, who, just after his hypocritical intercourse with “that venerable man,” the Pope, when he so zealously defended himself against the charge of scourging nuns to convert them to the Greek Church, administers the knout to a noble and beautiful lady because she had given shelter for an hour to the patriot Dembrowski. Why then so zealous against Napoleon only? He is but a specimen of what man must become when he will be king over the bodies where he cannot over the souls of fellow men. We doubt it is no worse in the sight of God to drain France of her best blood by the conscription than to tear the flower of genius from the breast of Italy, to perish in a dungeon, leaving her overwhelmed and broken hearted. Leaving all this aside and granting that Bonaparte might have done more and better had his heart been pure from ambition, which gave it such electric power to animate a vast field of being, there is no reason why we should not prize what he did do. And here we think Mr. Headley’s style is the only one in place. We honor him for the power he shows of admiring the genius which, in plowing its gigantic furrow, broke up every artificial barrier that hid the nations of Europe one from the other, that has left “the career open to talent” by a gap so broad that no Chinese Alliance can ever close it again, and in its vast plans of civic improvement half anticipated Fourier. With him all thoughts became things; it has been spoken in blame, has been spoken in praise; for ourselves we see not how this most practical age and country can refuse to apprehend the designs and study the instincts of this wonderful practical genius.

4. Josephine (1763–1814), Empress Consort to Napoleon, published Historical and Secret Memoirs of the Empress Josephine in 1848. Frederic [ Frederick 5. Frederick II (1712–86), King of Prussia (1840–86), called “the Great.”

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The characters of the Marshals are kept up with the greatest spirit and that power of seizing leading traits that gives these sketches the greatness of dramatic poetry. The Marshals are majestic figures, men vulgar and undeveloped on many sides, but always clear and strong in their own way. One mind animates them, and of that mind Napoleon is the culminating point. He did not choose them; they were a part of himself, a part of the same thought of which he was the most forcible expression. If sometimes inclined to disparage them, it was as a man might disparage his hand by saying it was not his head. He truly felt that he was the central force, though some of them were greater in the details of action than himself. Attempts have often been made to darken even the military fame of Bonaparte and his Generals, attempts disgraceful enough from a foe whom they so long held in terror. But to any unprejudiced mind is evident in the conduct of their battles the development of the instincts of genius in mighty force and to inevitable results. With all the haste of hand and inequality of touch they show, these sketches are full of strength and brilliancy, an honor to the country that produced them. There is no got-up harmony, no attempt at originality or acuteness; all is living, the overflow of the mind: we like Mr. Headley; even in his faults he is a most agreeable contrast to the made men of the day. In the sketches of the Marshals we have the men before us-a living reality. Massena, at the siege of Genoa, is represented with a great deal of simple force.6 The whole personality of Murat with his “Oriental nature” and Oriental dress, is admirably depicted.7 Why had nobody ever before had the clearness of perception to see just this and no more in the “theatrical” Murat? Of his darling hero Ney, the writer has implied so much all along that he lays less stress on what he says of him directly.8 He thinks it is all understood, and it is. Take this book for just what it is; do not look for cool discussion, impartial criticism, but take it as a vivacious and feeling representation of events and actors in a great era; you will find it full of truth, such as only sympathy could teach, and will derive from it a pleasure and profit, lively and genuine as itself. As to denying or correcting its statements it is very desirable that those who are able should do that part of the work, but, in doing it, let them be grateful for what is done and what they could not do, grateful for reproduction such as

6. André Massena (1758?–1817), French marshal who defended Genoa in 1800. 7. Joachim Murat (1771–1815), King of Naples and brother-in-law of Napoleon. 8. Michel Ney (1769–1815), French marshal who defected to Napoleon’s side and was later executed for treason.

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he who throws himself into the genius and the persons of the time may hope for, but he never can who keeps himself composed in critical distance and selfpossession. You cannot have all excellences combined in one person; let us then cheerfully work together to complete the beautiful whole—beautiful in its unity, no less beautiful in its variety.  Review of Joel T. Headley, Napoleon and His Marshals, 2 vols. (New York: Baker and Scribner, 1846). New-York Daily Tribune, 18 June 1846, p. 1; reprinted, New-York Weekly Tribune, 27 June 1846, p. 6. Title supplied. Fuller had earlier reviewed this book in the 2 May 1846 New-York Weekly Tribune. Joel Tyler Headley (1813–97), biographer, historian, and travel writer.

[Review of Nathaniel Hawthorne, Mosses from an Old Manse]


We have been seated here the last ten minutes, pen in hand, thinking what we can possibly say about this book that will not be either superfluous or impertinent. Superfluous, because the attractions of Hawthorne’s writings cannot fail of one and the same effect on all persons who possess the common sympathies of men. To all who are still happy in some groundwork of unperverted Nature, the delicate, simple, human tenderness, unsought, unbought and therefore precious morality, the tranquil elegance and playfulness, the humor which never breaks the impression of sweetness and dignity, do an inevitable message which requires no comment of the critic to make its meaning clear. Impertinent, because the influence of this mind, like that of some loveliest aspects of Nature, is to induce silence from a feeling of repose. We do not think of any thing particularly worth saying about this that has notn been so fitly and pleasantly said. Yet it seems unfit that we, in our office of chronicler of intellectual advents and apparitions, should omit to render open and audible honor to one whom we have long delighted to honor. It may be, too, that this slight notice of ours may waken the attention of those distant or busy who might not otherwise search for the volume, which comes betimes in the leafy month of June. So we will give a slight account of it, even if we cannot say much of value. Though Hawthorne has now a standard reputation, both for the qualities we have mentioned and the beauty of the style in which they are embodied, yet we believe he has not been very widely read. This is only because his works have not been published in the way to insure extensive circulation in this new, hurrying world of ours. The immense extent of country over which the reading (still very small in proportion to the mere working) community is scattered, the rushing and pushing of our life at this electrical stage of develhas [ has not

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opment, leave no work a chance to be speedily and largely known that is not trumpeted and placarded. And, odious as are the features of a forced and artificial circulation, it must be considered that it does no harm in the end. Bad books will not be read if they are bought instead of good, while the good have an abiding life in the log-cabin settlements and Red River steamboat landings, to which they would in no other way penetrate. Under the auspices of Wiley & Putnam, Hawthorne will have a chance to collect all his own public about him, and that be felt as a presence which before was only a rumor. The volume before us shares the charms of Hawthorne’s earlier tales; the only difference being that his range of subjects is a little wider. There is the same gentle and sincere companionship with Nature, the same delicate but fearless scrutiny of the secrets of the heart, the same serene independence of petty and artificial restrictions, whether on opinions or conduct, the same familiar, yet pensive sense of the spiritual or demoniacal influences that haunt the palpable life and common walks of men, not by many apprehended except in results. We have here to regret that Hawthorne, at this stage of his mind’s life, lay no more decisive hand upon the apparition—brings it no nearer than in former days.—We had hoped that we should see, no more as in a glass darkly, but face to face. Still, still brood over his page the genius of revery and the nonchalance of Nature, rather than the ardent earnestness of the human soul which feels itself born not only to see and disclose, but to understand and interpret such things. Hawthorne intimates and suggests, but he does not lay bare the mysteries of our being. The introduction to the “Mosses,” in which the old Manse, its inhabitants and visitants are portrayed, is written with even more than his usual charm of placid grace and many strokes of his admirable good sense. Those who are not, like ourselves, familiar with the scene and its denizens, will still perceive how true that picture must be; those of us who are thus familiar will best know how to prize the record of objects and influences unique in our country and time. “The Birth Mark” and “Rappaccini’sn Daughter” embody truths of profound importance in shapes of aerial elegance. In these, as here and there in all these pieces, shines the loveliest ideal of love and the beauty of feminine purity, (by which we mean no mere acts or abstinences, but perfect single truth felt and done in gentleness,)n which is its root. “Rapaccini’s [ “Rappaccini’s gentleness) [ gentleness,)

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“The Celestial Railroad,” for its wit, wisdom, and the graceful adroitness with which the natural and material objects are interwoven with the allegories, has already won its meed of admiration.—“Fire-worship” is a most charming essay for its domestic sweetness and thoughtful life. “Goodman Brown” is one of those disclosures we have spoken of the secrets of the breast. Who has not known such a trial that is capable indeed of sincere aspiration toward that only good, that infinite essence, which men call God. Who has not known the hour when even that best-beloved image cherished as the one precious symbol left, in the range of human nature, believed to be still pure gold when all the rest have turned to clay, shows, in severe ordeal, the symptoms of alloy. Oh hour of anguish, when the old familiar faces grow dark and dim in the lurid light—when the gods of the hearth, honored in childhood, adored in youth, crumble, and nothing, nothing is left which the daily earthly feelings can embrace—can cherish with unbroken Faith! Yet some survive that trial more happily than young Goodman Brown. They are those who have not sought it—have never of their own accord walked forth with the Tempter into the dim shades of Doubt. Mrs. Bull-Frog is an excellent humorous picture of what is called to be “content at last with substantial realities”!! The “Artist of the Beautiful” presents in a form that is, indeed, beautiful, the opposite view as to what are the substantial realities of life. Let each man choose between them according to his kind. Had Hawthorne written “Roger Malvin’s Burial” alone, we should be pervaded with the sense of the poetry and religion of his soul. As a critic, the style of Hawthorne, faithful to his mind, shows repose, a great reserve of strength, a slow secure movement. Though a very refined, he is also a very clear writer, showing, as we said before, a placid grace, and an indolent command of language. And now, beside the full, calm yet romantic stream of his mind, we will rest. It has refreshment for the weary, islets of fascination no less than dark recesses and shadows for the imaginative, pure reflections for the pure of heart and eye, and, like the Concordn he so well describes, many exquisite lilies for him who knows how to get at them.

Ciacord [ Concord

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 Review of Nathaniel Hawthorne. Mosses from an Old Manse, 2 vols. (New York: Wiley and Putnam, 1846). New-York Daily Tribune, 22 June 1846, p. 1; reprinted, New-York Weekly Tribune, 27 June 1846, p. 1; in “American Literature,” Papers on Literature and Art, 2:143–46. Title supplied. Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804–64) was already well-established as a short story writer. Fuller had visited the Hawthornes at the Old Manse (formerly the home of Ralph Waldo Emerson) during her visits to Concord.

[Review of George Sand, Consuelo]


We greet with delight the conclusion of this translation which will make Consuelo accessible to the American reader. To the translator it has been a labor of love, the honorable and patient employment of leisure hours, and accordingly shows a very superior degree of fidelity and spirit to those which are undertaken for money, often by people who are not prepared for the task, but forced to by their necessities, and who feel that they must go through it in the shortest possible time. Among such we must notice one from Dumas now going the rounds where the translator is even so ignorant as to use the verb learn instead of teach, a vulgarity very common among the worse educated people of this country, and which they should not be exposed to find authenticated by any kind of book. It is, however, no matter how the scene painting of Dumas is rendered, compared with the admirable style ofn Sand, the best living French writer, and in some respects the best living prose writer. We see with pleasure unusual justice done to her excellence in such respects in one of the leading English Reviews of this season.1 Here we find an admirably translated passage which we give as presenting in brief compass a specimen of the bold clear eye, the imagination all compact, and great descriptive powers of the author: Striking into a wild gorge, Leonce walked rapidly to relieve his over-excited and tumultuous feelings. His ill-humor soon melted away before the charms of nature. Pursuing a winding path that skirted the bases of the cliffs, he came to the margin of a miniature lake, or rather to a crystaline disk of water, deep-set, and almost hidden in a hollow cone of granite. The deep pool, gleaming like the azure sky and golden clouds it reflected seemed the very emblem of quiet happiness. Leonce sat down on the bank in a recess of the rock, which formed a flight of style [ style of 1. The extract translated from Tévérino (1845) is from “George Sand’s Recent Novels” in the April 1846 Foreign Quarterly Review.

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natural steps, as if to invite the traveler down to the verge of the still waters. He gazed a long while on the insects coated in turquoise and ruby mail, that hovered about the aquatic plants; and then he saw in the mirror of the lake a flock of wood-pigeons darting through the air, and disappearing like a vision with the speed of thought. “So pass away,” said Leonce to himself, “the joys of life, with a flight as swift and inexorable; and like that reflection of the careening image, they, too, are but shadows.”—Then he was struck with the absurdity of thus fabricating German metaphors, and he envied the tranquility of soul of the curé, in whose eyes that beautiful lake would have been nothing more than a capital reservoir for trout. A slight sound above him struck his ear, and for a moment he though it was Sabina coming to meet him; but the beating of his heart quickly subsided at the sight of a person who was descending the rocky staircase, on the last step of which he himself was seated. This was a tall, strapping fellow, worse than meanly clad, with a small bundle tied up in a red and blue pocket-handkerchief, and hung by a stick over his shoulder. His rags, his long hair falling over his pale and sharply-marked features, his thick inky beard, his easy, careless bearing, and a certain jeering expression that plays about the countenance of the vagabond when he meets the rich man alone and face to face—all this marked the new comer for an arrant scamp. It flashed across the mind of Leonce that he was in a very lonely spot, and that the advantage of the ground was all on the side of the unknown; for the path was too narrow for two, and it would need but a very brief contest for it, to send into the silent depths of the lake whichever of the combatants should prove to have the weaker fists and the worse position. Contemplating this contingency, which, however, did not give him much concern, Leonce assumed an air of indifference, and awaited the stranger’s approach in philosophical composure. Still he could not help counting with some little impatience the footsteps that sounded on the rock, until the vagabond had reached the lowest stair, and was just at his side. “Beg pardon, sir, if I incommode you,” said the stranger, in a sonorous voice, and with a very decided Southern accent, “but mayhap your worship would have the civility to make way for me a bit, that I may get a drink.”—“By all means,” said Leonce; allowing him to pass, and going back a step higher so as to be immediately behind him. The stranger took off his tattered straw hat, knelt down on the rock, and eagerly plunged his rough beard and half his face into the water. Then he began to suck in long draught with a noise like that made by a horse in drinking, which suggested to Leonce the facetious idea of whistling to him, as grooms do to amuse their impatient and irritable animals on like occasions.

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But he abstained from this piece of pleasantry, and envied the superb confidence with which the ragged rascal thus placed himself at his feet, with his head and body thrown heedlessly forward, in a téte a téte which, in case of a dispute, might easily have proved fatal to one of them. “This is the poor man’s only blessing,” thought Leonce, again resuming his reflections; “He feels at ease in encounters like this. He are we, two men equally matched perhaps in strength: yet one of us could not venture to drink thus under the nose of the other without looking a little behind him, and the one who can thus quench his thirst gratis with such zest is not the rich man.” When the vagabond had drank enough, he drew himself up and remained seated on his heels. “It’s very warm for drinking, is this water,” said he, “and it’s likely to cool one’s thirst a deal more in passing through the pores than down the throat. What you worship’s opinion?”—“Have you a fancy to take a bath?” said Leonce, who hardly knew whether the other’s words did not convey a threat. “Yes, sir, I have a fancy that way,” replied the man, quietly beginning to undress, an operation which did not occupy much time, as he was not superabundantly clad, and had scarcely one button-hole in his apparel that was not burst. “You know how to swim, I hope,” said Leonce. “This is a wide pool, there is no beach on this side, but the rock runs straight down, apparently to a great depth.” “Oh, never fear, sir; trust an ex-professor of the art of natation in the Gulf of Baja,” replied the stranger; and whipping off the rag that served him for a shirt, he threw himself into the lake with the ease of a waterfowl. Leonce took pleasure in watching him dive down, disappear for some moments, and then come to the surface again at a more distant point, swim across the whole breadth of the little lake in the twinkling of an eye, float on his back, place himself erect as if he trod the bottom, and then gambol about, flinging up the waves of foam around him, and going through all these performances with native grace and admirable vigor. He soon, however, returned to the foot of the rock, and as the bank was indeed very steep, he requested Leonce to lend him a hand and help him to climb it. The young man complied with a good grace, at the same moment keeping a wary eye to avoid being pulled in by surprise; and when the swimmer sat down on a stone heated by the sun, Leonce could not help admiring the strength and beauty of his frame, the fairness of which contrasted with his somewhat tanned face and hands. “This water is colder than I thought,” said the swimmer, “it is warm only on the surface, and it is not till I take a second dip that I shall rightly enjoy it. Now is the time, by the by, to see to my toilet a little.” And he took out of his

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scanty bundle a large shell that served him for a cup, but which he had disdained to make use of when he drank. He filled it again and again with water, which he poured over his head and beard, washing and scrubbing with extreme care and exquisite zest, that ample black fleece which dripped at every point, and gave him the appearance of a wild river deity. Then beginning to feel himself incommoded by the rays of the sun that fell vertically on his head and neck, he gathered bunches of rushes and flaggers, twisted them together, and made himself a hat, or rather a crown, of verdure and flowers. Whether it was the effect of chance, or of a certain natural taste, it happened that this head-dress was arranged in so artistic a fashion, that it completed the idea of an antique Neptune, which his appearance otherwise suggested. He leaped again into the lake, swam to the opposite side, and running about the shore, which there shelved gently, and was covered with vegetation, he gathered some splendid white water-lillies and placed them in his diadem. Finally, as if aware of the real admiration with which Leonce beheld him, he made himself a sort of garb with a girdle of reeds and aquatic leaves; and then, free, stately, and beautiful as the first man, he stretched himself out on a patch of fine sand, and seemed to dream or sleep in the sunshine, in a majestic attitude. Struck by the perfection of such a model, Leonce opened his album, and attempted a sketch of that strange being who, as he lay reflected in the limpid water, half naked and half clad in leaves and flowers, presented the most beautiful type that ever artist had good fortune to behold in such a scene:—the accessories, dark rocks glistening foliage, and silvery sands all admirably harmonizing with the subject. The broad masses of light, broken by the deep shadows of the rock, and the reflection cast by the water on the moist and Titian-toned form, all combined to give Leonce one of the most complete artistic enjoyments, and one of the most vivid poetic perceptions, he had ever experienced; for though a statuary, he was equally susceptible of the beauty of color as of that of form. All at once he shut up his album and cast it from him, exclaiming: “Shame upon me to think of portraying a scene, the contemplations of which Raphael or Paul Veroneso, Giorgione, Rubens, or Poussin would have envied!—Yes, the great masters of painting would alone have been worthy of reproducing what I have casually discovered, and almost flinched from the favor of chance. It is quite enough for me, who cannot handle a pencil, to behold it, feel it, and engrave it on my memory.” [Foreign Quarterly Review, No. LXXIII.

In the translation before us we find slight things we would wish to see altered. For instance, the address Mademoiselle, should always have been used

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instead of the English Miss, which has something pert and grating in its sound. The Venetian ambassador is called Corner, and the name we suppose, though we do not recollect, is Cornaro.2 Anglicising foreign names and titles in this way has usually a ludicrous effect. But these are trifles; in substantials the translation shows a great deal of true feeling and ability. The work itself cannot fail of innumerable readers, and a great influence, for it counts many of the most significant pulse-beats of the time. Apart from its range of character and fine descriptions, it records some of the mystical apparitions and attempts to solve some of the problems of the time. How to combine the benefits of the religious life with those of the artist life in an existence more simple, more full, more human in short, than either of the two hitherto known by these names has been. This problem is but poorly solved in the “Countess of Rudolstadt,” the sequel to Consuelo. It is true, as the English reviewer says, that George Sand is a far better poet than philosopher, and that the chief use she can be of in these matters is by her great range of observation and fine intuitions to help to develop the thoughts of the time a little way farther. But the sincerity, the reality of all he can obtain from this writer will be highly valued by the earnest man. In one respect the book is entirely successful, in showing how inward purity and honor may preserve a woman from bewilderment and danger, and secure her a genuine independence. Whoever aims at this is still considered by unthinking or prejudiced minds as wishing to despoil the female character of its natural and peculiar loveliness. It is supposed that delicacy must imply weakness, and that only an Amazon can stand upright and have sufficient command of her faculties to confront the shock of adversity or resist the allurements of tenderness. Miss Bremer, Dumas, and the Northern novelist, Andersen, make women who have a tendency to the intellectual life of an artist fail and suffer the penalties of arrogant presumption, in the very first steps of a career to which an inward vocation called them in preference to the usual home duties.3 Yet nothing is more obvious than that the circumstances of the time do, more and more frequently, call women to such lives, and that, if guardianship is absolutely necessary to women, many must perish for the want of it. There is, then, reason to hope that God may be a sufficient guardian to those who dare to rely on Him, and if the heroines of the novelists we have

2. In the French, the name of the Ambassador is “Corner.” 3. Hans Christian Andersen (1805–75), Danish novelist, poet, and writer of fairy tales.

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named ended as they did, it was for want of the purity of ambition and simplicity of character which do not permit such as Consuelo to be either unsexed and depraved, or unresisting victims and breaking reeds if left alone in the storm and crowd of life. To many women this picture will prove a true Consuelo, (consolation) and we think even very prejudiced men will not read it without being charmed with the expansion, sweetness and genuine force of a female character such as they have not met, but must, when painted, recognize as possible, and may be led to review their opinions, and, perhaps, to elevate and enlarge their hopes as to “woman’s sphere” and “woman’s mission.” If such insist on what they have heard of the private life of this writer and refuse to believe that any good thing can come out of Nazareth, we reply that we do not know the true facts as to the history of George Sand, there has been no memoir or notice of her published on which any one can rely, and we have seen too much of life to accept the monsters of gossip in reference to any one. But we know, through her works, that, whatever the stains on her life and reputation may have been, there is in her a soul so capable of goodness and honor as to depict them most successfully in her ideal forms.—It is her works and not her private life that we are considering. Of her works we have means of judging—of herself not; but among those who have passed unblamed through the walks of life, we have not often found a nobleness of purpose and feeling, a sincere religious hope to be compared with the spirit that breathes through the pages of Consuelo. The experiences of the artist life, the grand and penetrating remarks upon music, make the book a precious acquisition to all whose hearts are fashioned to understand such things. We suppose that we receive here not only the mind of the writer but of Liszt, with whom she has publically corresponded in “Letters of a Traveler.”4 None could more avail us, for “in him, also, is a spark of the divine fire,” as Beethoven said of Schubert.5 We may thus consider that we have in this book the benefit of the most electric nature, the finest sensibility, and the boldest spirit of investigation combined, expressing themselves in a little world of beautiful or picturesque forms. Although there are grave problems discussed, and sad and searching experiences described in this work, yet its spirit is, in the main, hopeful, serene, almost glad. It is the spirit inspired from a near acquaintance with the higher

4. Franz Liszt (1811–86), Hungarian pianist and composer; see Sand’s Lettres d’un Voyager (1845). 5. Franz Peter Schubert (1797–1828), Austrian composer.

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life of Art. Seeing there something really achieved and completed corresponding with the soul’s desires, faith is enlivened as to the eventual fulfilment of those desires, and we feel a certainty that the existence which looks at present so marred and fragmentary shall yet end in harmony. The shuttle is at work, and the threads are gradually added that shall bring out the pattern and prove that what seems at present confusion is really the way and means of order and beauty. The book is to be found at W. H. Graham’s, Tribune Buildings.  Review of George Sand, Consuelo, trans. Francis G. Shaw, 2 vols. (Boston: William D. Ticknor, 1846). New-York Daily Tribune, 24 June 1846, p. 1; reprinted, New-York Weekly Tribune, 27 June 1846, p. 1. Title supplied. Shaw reprinted his translation from the Harbinger as this book. Privately, Fuller wrote of Shaw’s work, “I am glad he is translating Consuelo; it will be a gift to the world” (Letters, 4:127).

[Review of Thomas L. McKenney, Memoirs, Official and Personal]


Yesterday, the 4th of July, we passed in looking through this interesting work. The feelings and reflections it induced were in harmony with the aspect of the day, a day of gloom, of searching chill and dripping skies. We were very sorry for all the poor laborers and children whom the weather deprived of pleasure on the pleasantest occasion of their year—most of all for those poor children of the Farm Schools on this, perhaps, the first holiday of their dull, narrow little lives. But the mourning aspect of the day seemed to us most appropriate. The boys and boyish young men were letting off their crackers and revelling in smoke and hubbub all day long; a din not more musical, of empty panegyric and gratulation, was going on within the halls of oratory; the military were parading our profaned banners. But the sweet heavens, conscious of the list of wrongs by which this nation, in its now three score years and ten of independent existence, has abused the boon, veiled themselves in crape and wept. The nation may wrap itself in callousness and stop its ears to every cry except that of profit or loss; it may build its temples of wood and stone, and hope, by formal service of the lips, to make up for that paid to Mammon in the spirit,1 but God is not mocked; it is all recorded, all known. The want of honor and even honorable sentiment shown by this people in the day of repudiation; the sin of Slavery and the conduct of the slaveholder, who, at first pretending that he wished, if possible, to put an end to this curse of unlawful bondage, has now unveiled his falsehood by the contrivance and consummation of a plan to perpetuate it, if possible, through all ages; the intolerance and bigotry which disgrace a country whose fundamental idea affords them no excuse, shown in a thousand ways and on every side, but, of late, in a most flagrant form, through the murder of the Mormon leader, the expulsion of his followers, and 1. Mammon, word used in the New Testament as a personification of riches that has come to mean avarice.

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their persecution even while passing out of these borders,2 persecution of precisely the same kind, excused on the same grounds, as that with which the Egyptians pursued the Hebrews, add to these the war which at present engages us, at whose very triumphs those who have steady intellect or steady principle must look with an aching heart, and which the Louisiana Marseillais is fain to celebrate in such terms as these: “Levez-vous! fils de l’Amerique, La patrie invoque vos bras, Verrez vous le faible Mexique, Ravager, piller vos Etats!”

“Rise, sons of America, your country demands your aid, will you see feeble Mexico ravage, pillage your States!” And even in this city they were not ashamed to pen and sing verses calling on the citizen to fight in defense of “liberty,” as if it were not the Mexicans alone, the feeble Mexicans, that were fighting in defense of their rights, and we for liberty to do our pleasure. But of all these plague-spots there is none from which we feel such burning pain of shame and indignation, as from the conduct of this nation toward the Indians. Spoilation, aggression, falsehood of the blackest character, a hundred times repeated, each time with increased shamelessness, mark every step of this intercourse. If good men have sometimes interposed, it is but as a single human arm might strive to stay the torrent. The sense of the nation has been throughout, Might makes Right. We will get what we want at any rate. What does it signify what becomes of the Indians? They are red. They are unlike us in character and person.—Let them save themselves if they can, the Indian dogs. We will get all we want at any rate. For the last twenty-five years these proceedings have assumed a still darker shade, when it has been the effort of public and private avarice alike to drive the Indians beyond the Mississippi— when treaties have been made by treachery, signed only by a minority of their tribes, then enforced by our Government so long as they served its purpose, broken then and new ones made and adhered to with the same fidelity. How bitter is the satire of the Indian phrase, “A White Man’s Treaty!” How just and

2. Joseph Smith (1805–44), founder of the Mormons, and his brother Hyrum were murdered by a mob near Nauvoo, Illinois, in 1844.

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natural the reply to the missionary who urged upon them the religious benefit of becoming Christians. “Christians!—Why the white men are Christians!” Most of the facts on these subjects contained in Col. M’Kenney’s book we knew before, but they are here detailed in their full force by one intimately connected, often an eye-witness, and whose benevolence, liberal views, and manly sympathy had made him a “beloved brother” to the red man.—He can conclusively show the falsehood of the pretext that they are incapable of civilization, a pretext, indeed, refuted by all who please to look at it by the prospects of the Cherokees, if they had not been so wickedly arrested in their progress. He can show how open they are to the advice of any friend who they think has judgment combined with sympathy for their sad and difficult position. This reliance is expressed toward Col. M’Kenney with the most touching simplicity by these stalwart men, childlike because representing a race reduced to the weakness of childhood. “Brother! We have opened our ears wide to your talk; we have not lost a word of it. We were happy and our hearts grew big, when we heard you had come to our country. We have always thought of you as our friend; we have confidence in you; we have listened more close, because we think so much of you; we know well you would not deceive us, and we believe you know what is best for us and for our children. Brother, do not you forsake us. Our friends, as you told us, are few—we have none to spare—we know that.”

How deeply affecting are the images in the magnificent speech of the Choctaw chief! speech of col. cobb, Head Mingo of the Choctaws East of the Mississippi, in reply to the Agent of the United States. “Brother—We have heard your talk as from the lips of our father, the great white chief at Washington, and my people have called upon me to speak to you. The red man has no books, and when he wishes to make known his views, like his father before him, he speaks from his mouth. He is afraid of writing. When he speaks he knows what he says; the Great Spirit hears him. Writing is the invention of the pale-faces; it gives birth to error and to feuds. The Great Spirit talks—we hear him in the thunder—in the rushing winds and the mighty waters—but he never writes. “Brother—When you were young we were strong, we fought by your side; but our arms are now broken. You have grown large; my people have become small.

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“Brother—My voice is weak; you can scarcely hear me; it is not the shout of a warrior, but the wail of an infant. I have lost it in wailing over the misfortunes of my people. These are their graves, and in those aged pines you hear the ghosts of the departed. Their ashes are here, and we have been left to protect them. Our warriors are nearly all gone to the far country west; but here are our dead. Shall we go, too, and give their bones to the wolves? “Brother—Two sleeps have passed since we heard you talk. We have thought upon it. You ask us to leave our country, and tell us it is our father’s wish. We would not desire to displease our father. We respect him, and you his child. But the Choctaw always thinks. We want time to answer. “Brother—Our hearts are full. Twelve winters ago our chiefs sold our country. Every warrior that you see here was opposed to the treaty. If the dead could have been counted, it could have never been made; but, alas! tho’ they stood around, they could not be seen or heard. Their tears came in the rain drops, and their voices in the wailing wind, but the pale-faces knew it not, and our land was taken away. “Brother—We do not now complain. The Choctaw suffers, but never weeps. You have the strong arm, and we cannot resist: but the pale-face worships the Great Spirit. So does the red man. The Great Spirit loves truth. When you took our country you promised us land. There is your promise in the book. Twelve times have the trees dropped their leaves, yet we have received no land. Our houses have been taken from us. The white man’s plow turns up the bones of our fathers. We dare not kindle our fires; and yet you said we might remain, and you would give us land. “Brother—Is this truth? But we believe now our great father knows our condition, he will listen to us. We are as mourning orphans in our country; but our father will take us by the hand. When he fulfils his promise, we will answer his talk. He means well. We know it. But we cannot think now. Grief has made children of us.—When our business is settled, we shall be men again, and talk to our grandfather about what he has proposed. “Brother, you stand in the moccasins of a great chief, you speak the words of a mighty nation, and your talk was long. My people are small, their shadow scarcely reaches to your knee; they are scattered and gone; when I shout, I hear my voice in the depth of the woods, but no answering shout comes back. My words, therefore, are few. I have nothing more to say, but to request you to tell what I have said to the tall chief of the pale-faces, whose brother* stands by your side.”

* William Tyler, of Virginia, brother of the late President of the United States, one of the Choctaw Commissioners. [McKenney’s note]

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Still more affecting, however, is the address of Lowrey, the now acting chief of the Cherokees, to the Christian community of the U.S., published in our papers a few days since.3 It is affecting, not from its eloquence like the preceding, but from its broken-hearted subdued tone as overpoweringly pathetic, from this once great, strong, seemingly indomitable race, as when the perishing Cæsar cries, “Give me some drink, Titinius,—like a sick girl.”4 He appeals to the Christian community, which today has been dozing in the churches over texts of scripture which they apply only to the by gone day, while there is before them at this moment such a mighty appeal for sympathy, for justice, such wrong to be set right, such service to be done to the commands of Christ, Love one another—Feed my lambs—Go forth to the Gentile.—O Jesus! how dare we say to thee, Lord, Lord?—Can there be hope of avoiding the repulse— “Depart from me, I never knew ye.” Col. M’Kenney, in showing the mistakes that have been made, and the precious opportunities lost of doing right and good to the Indians, shows also that, at this very moment, another such opportunity is presented, probably the last. We bespeak attention to this plan. We do not restate it here, preferring the public should be let to it by gradual steps, through his own book, which we hope to see in general circulation. We shall content ourselves with repeating that the time to attend to the subject, get information and act, is NOW, or never. A very short time and it will be too late to release ourselves, in any measure, from the weight of ill doing, or preserve any vestige of a race, one large portion of the creation of God, and whose life and capacities ought by all enlightened and honest, not to say religious, minds to be held infinitely precious, if only as a part of the history of the human family. The details of conduct in General Jackson are very characteristic.5 That a man so incompetent should have been placed in so responsible a position at such a crisis, merely because he had a ray of genius, some fine instincts, and represented the war spirit in the country, was very sad and fatal. Happy those who opposed it, vanquished though they be! The account of Osceola’s and the Agent’s conduct relatively at the time when the Indian thrust his knife into

3. George Lowrey, cousin of the chief Sequoyah. 4. Julius Caesar, act 1, scene 2. 5. When McKenney expressed concern for the welfare of the Indians and dismay when treaties with them were violated, President Andrew Jackson replied, “Sir, the sovereignty of the states must be preserved” (see the edition of Memoirs, ed. Herman J. Viola [Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1973], p. 258).

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the treaty, on being urged, as if he had been a sullen schoolboy, to make his mark, is a history in little of the whole relation between the two races.6 No wonder Osceola, on his death bed, painted his face red, in token of eternal enmity to the whites. The narrative of the delivery to the whites of Red Bird, his conduct on that occasion, the just and intelligent appreciation of the motives which actuated him in shedding the blood of Gagnier, nothing being extenuated, nothing set down in malice or in ignorance, make this narrative one of the few truly valuable memorials that remain on this subject. To Col. M’Kenney we are also indebted for the story of Potalesbarro in its original simple traits of pure instinctive magnanimity. This work is embellished with many appropriate designs, and, as frontispiece to the second volume, boasts a colored lithograph portrait of POCHAHONTAS, from an undoubted original, painted in London in 1616. The face is extremely lovely, the eye has the wild, sweet look of the Indian women, with more fullness of soul than they usually posses; the lips too, are full, the upper one too much so for regular beauty, but very expressive of tenderness and generosity. The skin has that golden lustre which makes the Indian complexion as beautiful, compared with the swarthy or dingy red, as the softest blonde is, compared to the coarse or tarnished skins so common among Europeans. The hair is rich and slightly curled; the dress, a rich green, lined and faced with white, leaving bare the neck and the lower part of the arms, is very beautiful and no less becoming. The possession of so fair a copy of a beloved original would, of itself, alone, make the book a desirable possession to many. All men love Pocahontas for the angelic impulse of tenderness and pity that impelled her to the rescue of Smith.7 We love her for a sympathy with our race which seemed instinctive and marked her as an instrument of Destiny. Yet we pity her, too, for being thus made a main agent in the destruction of her own people, and feel the fate of Philip, Pontiac, Tecumseh, Nappier, who died in defense of the stock from which they sprang.8 Of the tender mercies which

6. Osceola (1804?–38), Seminole war leader. 7. Pocahontas (1595?–1617), known for her rescue from Chief Powhatan of John Smith (1580–1631), British adventurer, in Virginia. 8. Philip (d. 1676), chief of the Wampanogs who waged war on the colonists after his initially peaceful relations with them unraveled; Pontiac (d. 1769) fought the British frequently, especially at the Siege of Detroit (1763–64); Tecumseh (1768?–1813), Shawnee chief who attempted to unite various tribes against the whites.

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were to be the reward of every kindness conferred by the red upon the white man, we have a sample in the way in which Smith meets the lovely heroine who had saved his life in his native land. She, alone among strangers, rushes to him, calls him father, secure of a kind welcome to his heart. He, entrenched in cold conventional restraints, takes her hand and leads her to a chair, addresses her as Miss or Madam, and freezes back at once the warm gushing stream of her affections with the ice of civic life. A comment upon this is found in the position of the Indian boys brought up by Col. McKenney, and especially in the catastrophe of McDonald.9 The book, adorned with the portrait of Pocahontas, is enriched by many traits especially calculated to interest women. Among these is the punishment of an Indian for ill treatment of his mother in law, received with acclamation by the women of the tribe, as bringing a new era in their destiny. We could have wished, however, that the punishment had been something else than the degradation of the brave to the position of a woman. The Indian custom to that effect being the most powerful expression of the contempt in which they hold the sex, ought not to have been countenanced in an attempt to rectify this way of thinking. The book is appropriately dedicated to two women. The first volume, with a portrait of the author for its frontispiece beneath which might have been inscribed as a proud title which few can boast, The Indian’s Friend, is dedicated to Mrs. Madison, and an autograph letter from her in reply, forms an interesting prefix to its pages. The second, with the portrait of Pocahontas, is dedicated to Mrs. Saunders, of Salem, Mass. as having also shown herself with talents, time and money, a friend to the Indians, a happiness which we envy her, and must wish her many competitors more powerful and leisurely than ourselves in its enjoyment. Honors are paid to the character of John Ross, which it gives us great pleasure to see, as confirmation of what we have always felt.10 There is a tone not to be mistaken in the papers which Ross has addressed to the public—a grave, majestic sorrow, a resolute honor, justice, and courage to act as love and duty prompt in a losing cause to the last, an excellent discernment, and a serenely tempered wisdom. We have often wished to extend the hand of friendship to

9. James Lawrence McDonald, a Choctaw, was partially raised by McKinney. During treaty negotiations in 1824–25, he took to drink, causing a falling-out with McKinney. He died, possibly a suicide, in 1831. 10. John Ross (1790–1866), son of a Scot father and a Cherokee mother, who as a chief protested the removal of the Cherokees west in 1835.

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this man, and assure him that there was one pale face who, not having seen, yet knows him, and prizes his efforts as they deserve. We may name, in the late Dr. Channing, another who felt thus toward Ross from the perusal of his writings.11 We solicit an extensive perusal of this book; the interest of its contents will repay the money and trouble that may be thus expended. We scarcely dare hope that any thing righteous will be done in consequence, for our hopes as to National honor and goodness are almost wearied out, and we feel obliged to turn to the Individual and to the Future for consolation. Yet, oh Father! might we pray that thou wouldst grant a ray of pure light in this direction, and grant us to help let it in! It were a blessed compensation for many sorrows, many disappointments. At all events, none who have leisure and heart to feel on these subjects may stand excused from bearing open testimony to the truth, whether it avail or no.  Review of Thomas L. McKenney, Memoirs, Official and Personal; With Sketches of Travel Among Northern and Southern Indians; Embracing a War Excursion, and Descriptions of Scenes Along the Western Borders (New York: Paine and Burgess, 1846). New-York Daily Tribune, 8 July 1846, p. 1; reprinted, New-York Weekly Tribune, 11 July 1846, p. 1. Title supplied. Thomas Loraine McKenney (1785–1859), ethnographer and supporter of rights for Indians. 11. Fuller probably obtained this information personally from the Reverend William Ellery Channing.

[Review of Charles Brockden Brown, Wieland; or, the Transformation and Ormond; or, the Secret Witness]


We rejoice to see these reprints of Brown’s novels, as we have long been ashamed that one who ought to be the pride of the country, and who is, in the higher qualities of the mind, so far in advance of our other novelists, should have become almost inaccessible to the public. It has been the custom to liken Brown to Godwin. But there was no imitation, no second hand in the matter. They were congenial natures, and whichever had come first might have lent an impulse to the other. Either mind might have been conscious of the possession of that peculiar vein of ore without thinking of working it for the mint of the world, till the other, led by accident, or overflow of feeling, showed him how easy it was to put the reveries of his solitary hours into words and upon paper for the benefit of his fellow men. “My mind to me a kingdom is.”1

Such a man as Brown or Godwin has a right to say that. It is no scanty, turbid rill, requiring to be daily fed from a thousand others or from the clouds! Its plenteous source rushes from a high mountain between bulwarks of stone. Its course, even and full, keeps ever green its banks, and affords the means of life and joy to a million gliding shapes, that fill its deep waters, and twinkle above its golden sands. Life and Joy! Yes, Joy! These two have been called the dark Masters, because they disclose the twilight recesses of the human heart. Yet their gravest page is joy compared with the mixed, shallow, uncertain pleasures of vulgar minds. Joy! because they were all alive and fulfilled the purposes of being. No sham, no imitation, no convention deformed or veiled their native lineaments, checked the use of their natural force. All alive themselves, they understood that there is no joy without truth, no perception of joy without 1. “My Mind to Me a Kingdom Is” by Edward Dyer (1543?–1607), English poet and diplomat.

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real life. Unlike most men, existence was to them not a tissue of words and seemings, but a substantial possession. Born Hegelians, without the pretensions of science, they sought God in their own consciousness, and found him.2 The heart, because it saw itself so fearfully and wonderfully made, did not disown its Maker. With the highest idea of the dignity, power and beauty of which human nature is capable they had courage to see by what an oblique course it proceeds, yet never lose faith that it would reach its destined aim. Thus their darkest disclosures are not hobgoblin shows, but precious revelations. Brown is great as ever an human writer was in showing the self-sustaining force of which a lonely mind is capable. He takes one person, makes him brood like the bee, and extract from the common life before him all its sweetness, its bitterness, and its nourishment. We say makes him, but it increases our own interest in Brown that, a prophet in this respect of a better era, he has usually placed this thinking royal mind in the body of a woman. This personage too is always feminine, both in her character and circumstances, but a conclusive proof that the term feminine is not a synonym for weak. Constantia, Clara Wieland, have loving hearts, graceful and plastic natures, but they have also noble thinking minds, full of resource, constancy, courage. The Marguerite of Godwin, no less, is all refinement, and the purest tenderness, but she is also the soul of honor, capable of deep discernment, and of acting in conformity with the inferences she draws.3 The Man of Brown and Godwin has not eaten of the fruit of the tree of knowledge and beenn driven to sustain himself by the sweat of his brow for nothing, but has learned the structure and laws of things, and become a being, natural, benignant, various, and desirous of supplying the loss of innocence by the attainment of virtue. So his Woman need not be quite so weak as Eve, the slave of feeling or of flattery: she also has learned to guide her helm amid the storm across the troubled waters. The horrors which mysteriously beset these persons, and against which, so far as outward facts go, they often strive in vain, are but a representation of those powers permitted to work in the same way throughout the affairs of this world. Their demoniacal attributes only represent a morbid state of the intel-

2. Followers of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831), German idealistic philosopher. ever [ ever a 3. Marguerite, heroine of Godwin’s novel St. Leon (1799). heen [ been

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lect, gone to excess from want of balance with the other powers. There is an intellectual as well as a physical drunkenness and which, no less, impels to crime. Carwin, urged on to use his ventriloquism, till the presence of such a strange agent wakened the seeds of fanaticism in the breast of Wieland, is in a state no more foreign to nature than that of the wretch executed last week, who felt himself drawn as by a spell to murder his victim because he had thought of her money and the pleasures it might bring him, till the feeling possessed his brain that hurls the gamester to ruin. The victims of such agency are like the soldier of the Rio Grande, who, both legs shot off and his life-blood rushing out with every pulse, replied serenely to his pitying comrades that “he had now that for which the soldier enlisted.” The end of the drama is not in this world, and the fiction which rounds off the whole to harmony and felicity before the curtain falls, sins against truth, and deludes the reader. The Nelsons of the human race are all the more exposed to the assaults of Fate that they are decorated with the badges of well-earned glory.4 Who but feels as they fall in death, or rise again to a mutilated existence, that the end is not yet? Who, that thinks, but must feel that the recompense is, where Brown places it, in the accumulation of mental treasure, in the severe assay by fire that leaves the gold pure to be used sometime—somewhere. Brown, man of the brooding eye, the teeming brain, the deep and fervent heart; if thy country prize thee not and has almost lost thee out of sight, it is that her heart is made shallow and cold, her eye dim, by the pomp of circumstance, the love of gross outward gain. She cannot long continue thus for it takes a great deal of soul to keep a huge body from disease and dissolution. As there is more soul thou wilt be more sought, and many will yet sit down with thy Constantia to the meal and water on which she sustained her full and thoughtful existence who could not endure the ennui of aldermanic dinners, or find any relish in the imitation of French cookery. To-day many will read the words and some have a cup large enough to receive the spirit, before it is lost in the sand on which their feet are planted. Brown’s high standard of the delights of intellectual communion and of friendship correspond with the fondest hopes of early days. But in the relations of real life, at present, there is rarely more than one of the parties ready for such intercoursen as he describes. On the one side there will be dryness, want

4. Horatio Nelson (1758–1805), English admiral. intercouse [ intercourse

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of perception or variety, a stupidity unable to appreciate life’s richest boon when offered to its grasp, and the finer nature is doomed to retrace its steps, unhappy as those who having force to raise a spirit cannot retain or make it substantial, and stretch out their arms only to bring them back empty to the breast. We were glad to see those reprints, but angry to see them so carelessly done. Casting the eye lightly over the page we find feign for fain, illegibility for eligibility and the like. Under the cheap system, the carelessness in printing and translating grows to a greater excess day by day. Please, Public, to remonstrate, else very soon all your books will be offered for two shillings apiece and none of them in a fit state to be read.  Review of Charles Brockden Brown, Wieland; or, the Transformation (1798) and Ormond; or, the Secret Witness (1799), both reprinted in New York by W. Taylor in 1846. New-York Daily Tribune, 21 July 1846, p. 1; reprinted, New-York Weekly Tribune, 25 July 1846, p. 1; in “American Literature,” Papers on Literature and Art, 2:146–50. Title supplied. Charles Brockden Brown (1771–1810), novelist and journalist.

[Review of Anna Jameson, Memoirs and Essays]


Mrs. Jameson appears to be growing more and more desperately modest, if we may judge from her motto: What if the little rain should say, “So small a drop as I Can ne’er refresh the thirsty plain, I’ll tarry in the sky?”1

and other superfluous doubts and disclaimers proffered in the course of the volume. We thought the time was gone by when it was necessary to plead “request of friends” for printing, and that it was understood now-a-days that from the facility of getting thoughts into print, literature has become not merely an archive for the preservation of great thoughts, but a means of general communication between all classes of minds, and all grades of culture. If writers write much that is good, and write it well, they are read much and long; if the reverse, people simply pass them by, and go in search of what is more interesting. There needs be no great fuss about publishing or not publishing. Those who forbear may, rather, be considered the vain ones, who wish to be distinguished among the crowd. Especially this extreme modesty looks superfluous in a person who knows her thoughts have been received with interest for ten or twelve years back. We do not like this from Mrs. Jameson, because we think she would be amazed if others spoke of her as this humble little flower, doubtful whether it ought to raise its head to light. She should leave such affectations to her Aunts; they were the fashion in their day. It is very true, however, that she should not have published the very first paragraph in her book, which presents an inaccuracy and shallowness of thought quite amazing in a person of her fine perceptions, talent and culture. 1. This verse is attributed to “Anon.”

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We allude to the contrast she attempts to establish between Raphael and Titian, in placing Mind in contradistinction to Beauty, as if beauty was merely physical.2 Of course she means no such thing, but the passage means this or nothing, and as an opening to a paper on Art is, indeed, reprehensible and fallacious. The rest of this paper, called the House of Titian, is full of pleasant chat, though some of the judgments, that passed on Canaletto’sn pictures,3 for instance, are opposed to those of persons of the purest taste, and in other respects, such as in speaking of the railroad to Venice, Mrs. J. is much less wise than those over whom she assumes a superiority.—The railroad will destroy Venice; the two things cannot co-exist; and those who do not look upon that wondrous dream in this age, will, probably, find only vestiges of its existence. The picture of Adelaide Kemble is very pretty, though there is an attempt of a sort too common with Mrs. J. to make more of the subject than it deserves.4 Adelaide Kemble was not the true Artist, or she could not so soon or so lightly have stept into another sphere. It is enough to paint her as a lovely woman and a woman genius. The true Artist cannot forswear his vocation; Heaven does not permit it; the attempt makes him too unhappy, nor will he form ties with those who can consent to such sacrilege.n Adelaide Kemble loved Art but was not truly an Artist. “The Xanthian Marbles” and “Washington Allston” are very pleasing papers. The most interesting part, however, are the sentences copied from Mr. Allston. These have his chaste, superior tone. We copy some of them: “What light is in the natural world, such is fame in the intellectual: both requiring an atmosphere in order to become perceptible. Hence the fame of Michael Angelo is to some minds, a nonentity; even as the sun itself would be invisible in vacuo.”

(A very pregnant statement, containing the true reason why no man is a hero to his valet de chambre.) 2. Titian (ca. 1477–1576), Venetian painter and courtier. Canaletti’s [ Canaletto’s 3. Antonio Canaletto (1697–1768), Italian painter known for his scenes of Venice. 4. Adelaide Kemble (1814–79), sister of Frances Anne (Fanny) Kemble (1809–93), actress and author, was an opera singer of great promise who, after her marriage to Edward Sartoris in 1843, turned to the writing of stories. sacriledge. [ sacrilege.

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“Fame does not depend on the will of any man, but reputation may be given or taken away; for fame is the sympathy of kindred intellects, and sympathy is not a subject of willing: while reputation, having its source in the popular voice, is a sentence which may either be altered or suppressed at pleasure. Reputation, being essentially contemporaneous, is always at the mercy of the Envious and Ignorant. But Fame, whose very birth is posthumous, and which is only known to exist by the echo of its footsteps through congenial minds, can neither be increased nor diminished by any degree of wilfulness.”

(We presume these word are italicized by Mrs. Jameson, not by Mr. Allston.) “An original mind is rarely understood until it has been reflected from some half dozen congenial with it; so averse are men to admitting the true in an unusual form; while any novelty, however fantastic, however false, is greedily swallowed. Nor is this to be wondered at, for all truth demands a response, and few people care to think, yet they must have something to supply the place of thought. Every mind would appear original if every man had the power of projecting his own into the minds of others.” “All effort at originality must end either in the quaint or monstrous. For no man knows himself as an original: he can only believe it on the report of others to whom he is made known, as he is by the projecting power before spoken of.” “There is an essential meanness in wishing to get the better of any one. The only competition worthy of a wise man is with himself.” “Reverence is an ennobling sentiment; it is felt to be degrading only by the vulgar mind, which would escape the sense of its own littleness by elevating itself into the antagonist of what is above it.” “He that has no pleasure in looking up, is not fit to look down; of such minds are the mannerists in art; and in the world, the tyrants of all sorts.” “Make no man your idol! For the best man must have faults, and his faults will usually become yours, in addition to your own. This is as true in art as in morals.” “The Devil’s heartiest laugh is at a detracting witticism. Hence the phrase ‘Devilish good’ has sometimes a literal meaning.”

“Woman’s Mission and Woman’s Position” is an excellent paper, in which plain truths are spoken with an honorable straight-forwardness and a great deal of good feeling. We despise the woman who, knowing such facts, is afraid to speak of them, yet we honor one, too, that does do the plain right thing, for she exposes herself to the assaults of vulgarity in a way painful to a person who

[Review of Anna Jameson, Memoirs and Essays]

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has not strength to find repose and shelter in her motives. We recommend this paper to the consideration of all those, the unthinking, wilfully unseeing million, who are in the habit of talking of “Woman’s sphere” as if it really was, at present, for the majority, one of protection and the gentle offices of home. The rhetorical gentlemen and silken dames who, quite forgetting their washerwomen, their seamstresses, and the poor hirelings for the sensual pleasures of man that jostle them daily in the streets, talk as if Woman need to be fitted for no other chance than that of growing like a cherished flower in the garden of domestic love, are requested to look at this paper, in which the state of women, both in the Manufacturing and Agricultural districts of England, is exposed with eloquence and just inferences drawn. “This, then, is what I mean when I speak of the anomalous condition of women in these days. I would point out as a primary source of incalculable mischief, the contradiction between her assumed and her real position, between what is called her proper sphere by the laws of God and Nature, and what has become her real sphere by the law of necessity, and through the complex relations of artificial existence. In the strong language of Carlyle I would say that ‘here is a Lie, standing up in the midst of society’—I would say ‘down with it, even to the ground’: for while this perplexing and barbarous anomaly exists, fretting like an ulcer at the very heart of society, all new specifics and palliatives are in vain. The question must be settled one way or another; either let the man in all the relations of life be held the natural guardian of the woman—constrained to fulfill that trust—responsible to society for her wellbeing and her maintenance; or, if she be liable to be thrust from the sanctuary of home to provide for herself through the exercise of such faculties as God has given her, let her at least have fair play; let it not be avowed in the same breath that protection is necessary to her, and that it is refused to her; and while we send her forth into the desert, and bind the burthen on her back,n and put the staff in her hand—let not her steps be beset, her limbs fettered, and her eyes blindfolded.” —Amen

The sixth and last of these papers “On the relative social position of Mothers and Governesses” exhibits in true and full colors a state of things in England beside which the custom in some parts of China, of drowning female infants, looks mild, generous and refined. An accursed state of things, beneath whose influence nothing can and nothing ought to thrive. Though this paper, back,, [ back,

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of which we have not patience to speak farther at this moment, is valuable from putting the facts into due relief, it is very inferior to the other, and shows the want of thoroughness and depth in Mrs. Jameson’s intellect. She has taste, feeling and knowledge, but she cannot think out a subject thoroughly, and is unconsciously tainted and hampered by conventionalities. Her advice to the governesses reads like a piece of irony, but we believe it was not meant as such.—Advise them to be burnt at the stake at once rather than to this slow process of petrifaction. She is as bad as the reports of the “Society for the relief of distressed and dilapidated Governesses.” We have no more patience. We must go to England ourselves and see these victims under the water torture. Till then—á Dieu.  Review of Anna Jameson, Memoirs and Essays Illustrative of Art, Literature, and Social Morals (New York: Wiley and Putnam, 1846). New-York Daily Tribune, 24 July 1846, p. 1; reprinted, New-York Weekly Tribune, 1 August 1846, p. 6. Title supplied. Fuller also reviewed Jameson’s The Heroines of Shakespeare in the 30 June 1846 New-York Daily Tribune.

[Review of Samuel Maunder, The Treasury of History]


These volumes have been for a long time on our table unexamined on account of their bulk. For we belong to that small minority among the reviewers who will not consent to pen a line about a book, without some real knowledge of its contents, and the prodigious influx of books overtasks our power of attention, so that it is often a long time before we can really examine a large work on an important subject. This reason alone has prevented out taking notice of the historical works of Dr. Arnold, republished here by the Appletons,1 because, though we have read enough in them to prize the life, vigor, and generosity shown in the method of treatment, we have not paid the degree of attention necessary to fit us for a full and detailed criticism, such as alone can do justice to a work of that class. The present work we have looked over with some care. We find it comparatively free from the usual defects of outline histories, being content with a simple, clear, well-arranged statement of received versions of facts, avoiding those false and flimsy comments and portraitures which make books of the Peter Parley class positively injurious, by presenting information so adulterated that it is very difficult to get it rinsed clean by after years of more serious study and companionship.2 We consider “Treasuries” and other abridgements, valuable merely as reference books, of a convenient size. What we want of the Past is living acquaintance, instruction as to what has been in the very hearts and minds of men. This is the only use of history, to give a real and sincere acquaintance with the experiences of other men, differently placed and taught from us. Such can only be gained by full and contemporary records in the shape of memoirs and letters. The finest philosophic history of events is far less 1. Among the books by Arnold are The History of Rome (1846), History of the Later Roman Commonwealth (1846), Introductory Lectures on Modern History (1845), and The Miscellaneous Works of Thomas Arnold (1845), all published in New York by D. Appleton. 2. Samuel Griswold Goodrich wrote under the name “Peter Parley.”

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[Review of The Treasury of History]

valuable than those which impart to us directly the spirit that animated those events. Even the great philosophic historian must give us his version of the events, instead; and what we gain by the pleasure of companionship with his mind scarcely makes up for having the facts at second-hand. Still lower in value are “Treasuries,” abridgements, and outlines of all sorts. We want not merely the facts, or some person’s comments on the facts, but the spirit which animated them, and made them once full and green ears of sweet corn, instead of the husks now set before us. Still, though we cannot gain in positive life and knowledge by a use of such aids, they have become, in some measure, necessary as a scaffold by which we may ascend to something better. The field is now so very large, that, in order more easily to find what has grown in parts, it is needful to have a chart of it as a whole; especially in the country or in schools which have not access to large libraries, it is needful to make use of such books, in order to understand the grouping and succession of characters and events. Of the sort, we think this will be found a good one, and very useful to those who keep in view that they must not be satisfied with it alone, or think that it is of any consequence to know who reigned or what events took place in a certain year or age, unless such knowledge leads to something real or essential, to a thought or an idea. We must quarrel with this book, however, for making no reference to its authorities. Those who make use of such a compend ought to have the means at command of rectifying its statements whenever it is necessary or desirable so to do.  Review of Samuel Maunder, The Treasury of History: Comprising a General Introductory Outline of Universal History, Ancient and Modern, 2 vols. (New York: Daniel Adee, 1846). New-York Weekly Tribune, 8 August 1846, p. 1; reprinted, New-York Daily Tribune, 14 August 1846, p. 1. Title supplied. Samuel Maunder (1785–1849), English publisher and editor.

Index

Abencerrages family, 354 Abolitionism, 65, 116, 149–50, 279, 386–89 Achilles, 258 Adair, James, 83 Adams, John Quincy, 15, 151 Addison, Joseph, 68 Æolian harp, 217 Æsop, 364 [“Age could not wither her . . .”], 402–05 Aladdin, 304 Albert, Prince, 221 Alcott, Amos Bronson, xiii Alfieri, Count Vittorio, xxxi, 124, 229, 252–58, 262–63, 266, 445 Allston, Washington, 296, 477–78 ‘American Facts,’ 126–27 American Monthly Magazine, xxvii Andersen, Hans Christian, 461 Andrews, Joseph, 28 Anthon, Charles, 121–23 Apollo, 272, 320n Apollo Belvedere, 279 Apraxin, Fyodor Matveyevich, 185 Arabian Nights, 67 Argo, 207–09 Ariosto, Ludovico, 256, 263, 370 Arnold, Thomas, 212, 481 Association for the Benefit of Prisoners, 10–11, 13

Association for the Reform of Prisons and Their Inmates, 13 Associationism, xvi, xx, 62, 141, 230, 328–29 “Asylum for Discharged Female Convicts,” 134–37 August First, 183–88 Bach, Johann Sebastian, 73 Bailey, Philip James, 211–19 Balzac, Honoré de, xxvii, 54–64, 152 Banquo, 284n Barnum, Phinneas T., xviii Barrett, Elizabeth B., xiv, xxxiii, 20–27, 59–60 Bayard, 198 Baym, Nina, xxvi Beaumont, Francis, 367 Beckford, William, 33, 258 Beecher, Catharine Esther, 233–39 Beethoven, Ludwig van, 71–79, 370, 412, 427–28, 462 Belisarius, 193–94 Bellevue Alms House, 98–104 Bentham, Jeremy, xxi Béranger, Pierre Jean de, 63, 196–97 Blackwell’s prison, xx, 98–104, 136 Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine, xxii, xxxvii Blanchard, Samuel Laman, 356

483

484

Blessington, Marguerite, Countess of, 410 Boccaccio, Giovanni, 113–14, 318 Boiardo, Matteo Maria, 370 Bonaparte, Napoleon, xviii, 55, 183, 208, 302, 431–32, 448–52 “Books of Travel,” 299–305 Boston Association of Congregational Ministers, 96n Boston Quarterly Review, xxvii Bradbury, Osgood, 334–35 Braham, John, 427 Bremer, Fredrika, xiv, 29, 230, 461 Briareus, 22 Briggs, Charles F., xxii Broadway Journal, xxii Brook Farm, 62n, 227, 328n Brown, Charles Brockden, 472–75 Browning, Elizabeth Barrett. See Elizabeth B. Barrett Browning, Robert, 27n, 390–99 Bryant, William Cullen, xv, 289 Bull, Ole Bornemann, 230, 232, 240–44, 261 Bunyan, John, 67, 371 Buonarroti, Michelangelo, 124, 373 Burdett, Charles, xl, 233–39 Burke, Edmund, 148 Burns, Robert, 156, 256, 363, 445 Byron, George Gordon, Lord, 197, 256, 258, 319, 367n, 370; Hebrew Melodies, 124; Sardanapalus, 397–98 Caesar, Gaius Julius, 208, 404, 468 Caesar, Tiberius Claudius Nero, 449 Calamis, 279 Calhoun, John C., 151, 279 Canaletto, Antonio, 477 Carlyle, Thomas, xv, xxxii, 139, 193, 221; Oliver Cromwell’s Letters and Speeches, 306–16; Past and Present, 307

Index

Cary, Alice, 378 Cary, Henry Francis, 258n, 265, 266n “The Celestial Empire,” 259–61 Cellini, Benvenuto, xxxi, 252–58 Chamisso, Adelbert von, 381–82 Channing, Reverend William Ellery, xiii, 94, 131–32, 188, 448, 471 Channing, William Ellery, 271n Channing, William Henry, xvi, xxxi Chapman, George, 38 Chapman, Maria Weston, xiv Charlemagne, Emperor, 198 Charles, Prince, of Austria, 329 Charles I, 311, 357 Charles X, 318n Chateaubriand, François René, 301 Chaucer, Geoffrey, 38 Child, Lydia Maria Francis, xiv, xxxi, 69, 119–20 Children’s literature, 67–70 China, 259–61, 266, 329, 407, 479 Chinese Theatre, 259–61 Chiron, 258n Christian VII, 412–23 Circe, 151, 165 Clarke, Adam, 342 Clarke, James Freeman, 95–96 Clay, Cassius Marcellus, xvi, 187, 338–41 Clay, Henry, xv Cleopatra, 404 Cockaigne, 324 Coleridge, Samuel Taylor, xxvii, 36, 91, 189, 192, 254, 445 Confucius, 259–61 Congreve, William, 408 Cooper, James Fenimore, 333 Corner, Ambassador, 461 Courrier des Etats-Unis, 221–26 Cowper, William, 446 Coxe, Arthur Cleveland, 124–25 Crabbe, George, 445

Index

“Critics and Essayists,” 439–47 Croesus, 364 Cromwell, Oliver, 306–16 Cunningham, Allan, 189 Curran, John Philpot, 148 Dana, Richard Henry, Sr., 91 Dante Alighieri, xxxi, xxxii, 22,114, 240, 252–58, 262–66, 367–71 David, 312 Delphi, Oracle of, 365 Dembowski, 449 Democratic Review, xxii, xxiii, xxxvii, 55. See also United States Magazine and Democratic Review De Quincey, Thomas, 319 Deutsche Schnellpost, xl, 174–75 Dial, xiii, xxvii, xxviii–xxix, 1 Dickens, Charles, 164, 333 Disraeli, Benjamin, xxvii, 139–40, 141 Dix, Dorothea, xiv Douglass, Frederick, xvi, 29, 131–33 Dumas, Alexandre, 131–32, 457, 461 Duyckinck, Evert A., xxix Dyer, Edward, 472 Eckermann, Johann Peter, xxviii Edgeworth, Maria, 68–69 Edinburgh Review, xxii Edwards, J. P., 384–85 Elizabeth I, 176 Elliott, Ebenezer, 196–98, 218 Ellison, Julie, xxxvii–xxxviii Emerson, Ralph Waldo, xiii, xxxiii, 1–7, 109, 390n, 456n; “Emancipation Address,” 188; Essays: First Series, 1; Essays: Second Series, 1–7; Man the Reformer, 1; Nature, 1, 40n; “The Poet,” 6; “The World-Soul,” 135–36; The Young American, 1 Emmet, Robert, 147 Ertheiler, Moritz, 117–18, 293–94

485

Everett, Alexander Hill, 351–52, 412 Everett, Edward, xxi Fannin, James Walker, 432 Farnham, Eliza Woodson Burhans, xiv, 429–30 “1st January, 1846,” 323–32 “First of August, 1845,” 183–88 Fitzgerald, Lord Edward, 147 Flaxman, John, 258n, 265, 266n Fletcher, John, 367 Follen, Eliza Lee Cabot, 67–70 Ford, John, 38–40 Foreign Quarterly Review, 457–58 Forster, John, 392–93 Forsyth, Joseph, 302, 305 Foster, George G., 319–20 Fourier, François Marie Charles, 62n, 449 “Fourth of July,” 149–51, 464 Franklin, Benjamin, 127 Frederic, King of Prussia, 230 Frederick II, 449 “French Novelists of the Day. Balzac . . . . . . . George Sand . . . . . . . Eugene Sue,” 54–64 Fuller, Arthur, xxxix Fuller, Margaret: At Home and Abroad, xxxix; Conversations, xiii; Conversations with Goethe, xxviii, xxix; “The Great Lawsuit,” xxix; Life Without and Life Within, xxxix; Papers on Literature and Art, xxix, xxx; 401n; Summer on the Lakes, in 1843, xxvii, xxix; Woman in the Nineteenth Century, xiii, xxvii, xxix; Woman in the Nineteenth Century, and Kindred Papers, xxxix, 401n Gagnier, Mr., 469 Garrison, William Lloyd, 132 George IV, 375

486

Gilfillan, George, 439–47 Godey’s Ladies’ Book, xxix Godwin, William, 65, 152, 441, 446, 472–73 Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von, xiii, xviii, xxviii, xxx, 91, 193, 289–90, 302–03, 305, 407; Conversations with Goethe, xxviii; Faust, 262–63; “Ferdinand,” 69; “Journey into Italy,” 302; Leben des Benvenuto Cellini, 254; “Second Residence at Rome,” 302 Goldsmith, Oliver, 68, 256 Goliad, Battle of, 432n Goodrich, Samuel Griswold, 68, 481 Gore, Catherine Grace Frances, 141, 410 Grace Church, 372–74 Graham’s Magazine, 42 “The Grand Festival Concert at Castle Garden,” 426–28 Great Britain, xxiv, 207–09 Greeley, Horace, xv–xxiv passim, xxx, xxxi, xxxix, 283–84, 356, 438n, 448 Griscom, John Hoskins, 103 Griswold, Rufus Wilmot, 245, 246, 248 Hale, Sarah Josepha, xxvi Hampden, John, 364 Handel, Georg Friedrich, 73 Harbinger, xxii, 227, 328n, 463n Hare, Julius, 105–15 Hargoos, Mr., 431 Harper & Brothers, xxiii, 239 Harring, Harro, xxxi, xl, 350–58, 410–23 Hartmann, Moritz, 330–31 Hawthorne, Nathaniel, 401n, 453–56; “The Artist of the Beautiful,” 455;

Index

“The Birth-Mark,” 454; “The Celestial Railroad,” 455; “Fire-Worship,” 455; Mosses from an Old Manse, 453–56; “Mrs. Bullfrog,” 455; “The Old Manse,” 454; “Rappaccini’s Daughter,” 454; “Roger Malvin’s Burial,” 455; “Young Goodman Brown,” 455 Hawthorne, Sophia Peabody, 456n Haydn, Joseph, 73 Hazlitt, William, 91 Headley, Joel Tyler, 448–52 Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich, 473 Heine, Heinrich, xxxvi Hemans, Felicia Dorothea, 404 Henry IV, 324 Herbert, George, 378 Herder, Johann Gottfried von, xiii, xviii, xxii Herschel, John Frederick William, 72 Hildreth, Richard, 65–66 Hoar, Samuel, 15–16, 187 Homer, 207–09, 263 Hood, Thomas, 137, 161–72, 189–94, 406 Hook, Theodore Edward, 400 Horace, 263 Horne, Richard Henry, 439–47 Horner, Jack, 8 Howard, John, 161 Howitt, Mary Botham, 301n Howitt, William, 301 Hudson, Henry Norman, 89–92 Hugo, Victor Marie, 100 Hunt, Leigh, xxxii, 367–71 Huntington, Daniel, 287, 292n Hymettus, Mount, 121–22 Iliad, 67–68 Indians, 14, 15, 50–52, 80–88, 144, 145, 261, 345, 433, 464–71

Index

“Instruction in the French Language,” 384–85 “The Irish Character,” 146–48, 155–60 “Italy,” 252–58, 262–66 Ithuriel, 246 Jackson, Andrew, xv, 151, 468 Jackson, Thomas, 342–49 Jaffa, Battle of, 432 James, George Payne Rainsford, 410 Jameson, Anna Brownell, 91, 476–80 Jefferson, Thomas, 279 Johnson, Samuel, 400 Jones, Schoolcraft, 333–37 Joseph, 124, 271 Josephine, Empress, 449–50 Judd, Sylvester, 210, 336–37 July Fourth, 149–51 Kelley, Abby, xiv Kemble, Adelaide, 477 Kemble, Frances Anne (Fanny), 477n Kinmont, Alexander, 131–32 Kirkland, Caroline Matilda Stansbury, xiv, xxv–xxvi, xxix, 267–70, 333, 430 Knickerbocker, xxii, xxix Kohl, Johann Georg, 301 Körner, Christian Gottfried, 352 Lafayette, Marquise de, 311, 338 Lamartine, Alphonse Marie Louis de Prat de, 301 Lamb, Charles, 91, 129, 189–90, 192 Lanard, Lilly, 32n Landor, Walter Savage, 36, 105–15 Lanman, Charles, 32–34 Laube, Heinrich, 174–75 Law, William, 345–46, 348 Lazarus, 134, 374 Lee, Mrs. George, 236

487

Le Sage, Alain René, 273 Lester, C. E., 258n The Liberty Bell for 1845, 28–31 Lind, Jenny, 227–32 Liszt, Franz, 462 Locke, John, 3, 77–78 Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth, xxvii, 137, 285–92 Loring, Ellis Gray, 385 Louis XIV, 140–41 Lowell, James Russell, xxix, 385; Conversations on Some of the Old Poets, 35–41; “Edgar A. Poe,” 42–45; A Fable for Critics, 41n; “The Happy Martyrdom,” 28 Lowrey, George, 468 Loyola, Saint Ignatius of, 444 Ludwig I, 352 Luther, Martin, 21–22, 93, 427 Lyell, Charles, 265, 266n McDonald, James Lawrence, 470 Machiavelli, Niccoló di Bernardo dei, 221 McKenney, Thomas Loraine, 464–71 Maclise, Daniel, 182 Macpherson, James, 272, 449 Madison, Mrs., 470 Mæcenas, 354, 357 Maidston, John, 312 Mammon, 464 Marlowe, Christopher, 165 Marsh, George Perkins, 33 Mary, Virgin, 295–98 Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Fair, 28 Massena, André, 451 Maunder, Samuel, 481–82 Medea, 367 Meech, Ezra, 32n Melville, Herman, xxv, 400–01 Mendelssohn, Felix, 427

488

Index

Metastasio, 352 Methodism, 342–49 Metternich, Prince, 302, 327 Mexican War, xvi, xvii, 15–16, 424–25, 431–38, 446, 465 Meyerbeer, Giaccomo, 243 Michaelangelo. See Michelangelo Buonarroti Midas, King, 272n, 320n Milnes, Richard Monckton, 105– 15 Milton, John, 22, 212, 240, 245–51, 379; “Apology for Smectymnuus,” 246; Areopagitica, 364; Paradise Lost, 241, 387; The Prose Works of John Milton, 245–51 “Mistress of herself, though china fall,” 406–09 Mohammed, 307, 379 Moloch, 339 Montagu, Lady Mary Worthley, 212, 300 Montgomery, James, 69n, 403 Moore, Thomas, 161, 173 Moravians, 345 More, Hannah, 272 Mormons, 464–65 Morton, Thomas, 211 Moscheles, Ignaz, 71–79 Moses, 124, 253 Motte-Fouque, Friedrich Heinrich de la, 400–01 Mowatt, Anna Cora Ritchie, 152 Mozart, Wolfgang Amadeus, 73, 381, 426 Murat, Joachim, 451 Napoleon. See Napoleon Bonaparte Nappier, 469 Nathan, James, xxxi Nelson, Horatio, 474

Nero, Emperor. See Tiberius Claudius Nero Caesar Nestor, 9 Newgate Prison, 189 Newton, Sir Isaac, 77–78 New Year’s Day, 14–19, 323–32 New Yorker, xxix New York Prison Association, 13 Ney, Michel, 451 Niagara Falls, 127, 242–43, 280–83 Nicholas, Czar, xviii, 329, 449 North, Christopher (pseud. John Wilson), 240–44 Northall, Julia, 426 North American Review, xxii, xxxvii, 283 Norton, Caroline Sheridan, 173–82, 185, 198 O’Connell, Daniel, 148 Odysseus, 151. See also Ulysses Odyssey, 67–68, 165 Olga, Grand Duchess, 329 Olin, Stephen, 374 Opium War, 183 Osceola, 468–69 Otto, Madame, 426–27 “Our City Charities. Visit To Bellevue Alms House, to the Farm School, the Asylum for the Insane, and Penitentiary on Blackwell’s Island,” 98–104 Pactolus, 198 Pan, 272n, 320n Pantheon, 285 Parker, Theodore, 93–97 Parley, Peter. See Samuel Griswold Goodrich Parnassus, Mount, 286, 426 Peale, Rembrandt, 295–98

Index

Pease, Elizabeth, 28 Peck, John H., 32n Peel, Robert, 192, 331 Peter, Saint, 295–98 Petrarch, 113–14, 240, 445 Pharisees, 11 Philip, Chief, 469 Philippe, Louis, 311, 318n, 327 Phillips, Wendell, 28, 132 Pickering (publishers), 212 Pico, Rosina, 427 Pindar, 3, 244, 287 Plato, xxvii, 263 Platonism, xxvii Pocahontas, 469 Poe, Edgar Allan, xxii, xxix, xxxiii, xxxv–xxxvii passim, 42–45, 153–54, 271–76, 401n; “Al Aaraaf,” 275; “Bridal Ballad,” 275; “The Haunted Palace,” 43–44, 274; “Israfel,” 276; “Lenore,” 274; “The Murders in the Rue Morgue,” 153; “Politian,” 275; “The Raven,” 273; The Raven and Other Poems, 271–76; “The Sleeper,” 275; Tales, 153–54; “To F—,” 274; “To Helen,” 44; “To One in Paradise,” 273–74 Polk, James K., xvi, 329 Pollok, Robert, 212 Pontiac, 469 “The Poor Man–An Ideal Sketch,” 375–83 Pope, Alexander, 240 Port Royal, 444 Potalesbarro, 469 Powers, Hiram, 373 “Prevalent Idea that Politeness is too great a Luxury to be given to the Poor,” 128–30 Prince, John Critchley, xxiii, 173–82, 195–206

489

Prometheus, 57 “Publishers and Authors. Dolores by Harro Harring,” 350–58 Pückler-Muskau, Hermann Ludwig Heinrich, Prince de, 303, 305 Puritanism, 248 Putnam, George Palmer, 126–27 Pythagoras, 323 Quincy, Edmund, 29 Randall’s Island, xx Raphael, 124, 284, 285n, 381, 477 Red Bird, 469 Rejon, Manuel C., 16n Richardson, Samuel, 318 “The Rich Man–An Ideal Sketch,” 359–66 Ripley, George, xxvii, 328n Rogers, Samuel, 445 Ronge, Johannes, 328–29 Roscoe, Thomas, 258n Rose, Ernestine, xiv Ross, John, 470 Rosse, William Parsons, third Earl of, 16–17 Rousseau, Jean Jacques, 60, 255 Samaria, 10 Sand, George, Baroness Dudevant, xxvi, xl, 54–64, 227–32, 457–63 Santa Ana, Antonio Lopez de, xxxii, 431–32 Sargent, John Turner, 95–96 Sartoris, Edward, 477n Saul, 124, 312 Saunders, Mrs., 470 Schelling, Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph von, 33 Schiller, Johann Christoph Friedrich von, 58, 363, 392, 425

490

Schindler, Anton, 71–79 Schlegel, Friedrich von, 91 Schoolcraft, Henry Rowe, 80–88 Schubert, Franz Peter, 462 Scott, Sir Walter, 100, 189 Sealsfield, Charles, 145 Sedgwick, Catharine Maria, xiv, xxi, 333 Shakespeare, William, 67, 89–92, 379; Antony and Cleopatra, 402; As You Like It, 146; Hamlet, 65, 90, 264; Julius Caesar, 468; King Henry IV, 264; King Henry V, 264; King Lear, 57, 392; Love’s Labours Lost, 122, 275; Macbeth, 89–90, 162, 284n, 326; The Merry Wives of Windsor, 264; A Midsummer Night’s Dream, 165; Othello, 401 Shaw, Francis George, 227, 463n Shelley, Percy Bysshe, xxv, xxvi, xxxii, 173, 196, 317–22, 370, 445, 446 Sheridan, Richard Brinsley, 161 Sigourney, Lydia Howard Huntley, 46–53 Simms, William Gilmore, 401n Simonianism, xxvii Sing Sing prison, 102, 429 Smith, Hyrum, 464–65 Smith, John, 469 Smith, Joseph, 464–65 Socialism, 62 Society of Jesus, 54 Socrates, xxvii Sophocles, 392 Souliè, Frédéric, 131–32 Southey, Robert, 342, 425 Southworth, Nathaniel, 28 Spenser, Edmund, 20, 240–44 Staël, Madame de, xx, xl, 41 Steele, Richard, 68 Stephen, James, 439–47

Index

Stephens, Ann, xxvi Stephens, John Lloyd, 301 Sterling, John, 392–93 Stone, Mrs. Lucy, 233 Story, William Wetmore, 385 “Story Books for the Hot Weather,” 138–42 Stowe, Calvin, 238 Stowe, Harriet Beecher, xiv, 238 Strafford, Sir Thomas Wentworth, first Earl of, 392–93 “Study of the German Language,” 293–94 Stultz, Mr., 221–26 Sue, Eugène, 54–64, 136, 140–41, 164, 350 “The Tailor,” 220–26 Talfourd, Thomas Noon, 439–47 Tantalus, 197 Tasso, Torquatto, 263, 370, 441 Taylor, Henry, 217–18 Taylor, Jeremy, 220 Taylor, Zachary, 15–16n Tecumseh, 469 Tennyson, Alfred, Lord, 20, 193–94, 217–18, 398 Thackeray, William Makepeace, 400–01 Thanksgiving, 8–13 Thom, William, xxiii, 196, 198 Thompson, Waddy, xxxii, 431–38 Thumb, Tom, xviii Tieck, Ludwig, 370 Timms, Henry Christian, 427 Timolus, 320n Titans, 304 Titian, 477 Tombs prison, 103 Torrey, Joseph, 32n, 33 Trinity Church, 425

Index

Tschulick, Mr., 293 Tuckerman, Henry Theodore, 439–47 Turner, William W., 284n Ulysses, 353. See also Odysseus “United States Exploring Expedition,” 143–44 United States Magazine and Democratic Review, xv Utilitarianism, xxi, xxiv, xxvii Van Buren, Martin, xv Victoria, Queen, 176 “Victory,” 424–25 Vigny, Alfred Victor, Count de, 55, 63 Violet Woodville, 136 Von Raumer, Friedrich Ludwig Georg, 116, 277–84, 293 Waagen, Gustav Friedrich Von, 303–05 Washington, George, 244, 373 Webster, Daniel, xv Webster, Delia, xiv, xvi, 16 Wellek, Renée, xxv–xxvi Wellington, Arthur Wellesley, first Duke of, 221 Wesley, Charles, 342–49 Wesley, John, 342–49 Wesley, Susannah, 343–44 Western Messenger, xxvii “What Fits a Man to be a Voter? Is it to be White Within, or White Without?,” 386–89 Whigs, xv, xvi, xxxii Whitefield, George, 345–46 Whitman, Walt, xxii, xxxvi Whittier, John Greenleaf, 401n Wiley, John, xxx

491

Wiley & Putnam, xvii, xxix, 254, 454, 400–01 Wiley & Putnam’s Library of American Books, xxix, 401n Wiley & Putnam’s Library of Choice Reading, 401n Wilkes, Charles, 143–44 Willis, Nathaniel Parker, xxv, 139, 141–42, 178–79 Wilson, John, 240 Winchester, J., 54 Woman’s rights, 233–39, 478–79 Wordsworth, William, 20, 21, 161, 217; “Character of the Happy Warrior,” 184; “Elegiac Stanzas (Addressed to Sir G. H. B. Upon the Death of His Sister-in-Law),” 192; “The Fountain: A Conversation,” 326; “Lines Written in a Blank Leaf of Macpherson’s Ossian,” 35; “Matthew,” 21; “Milton! thou should’st be living at this hour,” 245; “Sonnet to Steamboats, Viaducts, and Railways,” 208–09 “Writers Little Known Among Us. Milnes . . . Landor . . . Julius Hare,” 105–15 “The Wrongs of American Women. The Duty of American Women,” 233–39 Wyllys, Samuel, 51–52 Xenophon, xxvii Youngquist, Paul, xxv, xxxvi Zegris family, 354 Zinzendorf, Count Nicholas Ludwig von, 345–46