WEare 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 of 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 issafeto say that the poem is good; whatever Mrs. Grundy may think, she will not have it burned by the hangman if it is not. But it may not bediscreet, because she can, if she sees fit, exile its presence from bookstores, 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, andremorselessly 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 bookstore to select presents for persons with whom she was about to part, and among other things 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. Montague." She assuring him that it would not be safe to make use of this work, he offered her a miniature edition of Shakspeare, 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." 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.
To ourselves the theology of this writer, and the conscious design of the poem, have little interest. 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:"
and it is these, the deep experiences and inspirations of the immortal man, that engage us.
Even the poem 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 heWent through was of the soul-rack. The degreeHe took was high; it was wise wretchedness.He suffered perfectly, and gained no lessA prize than, in his own torn heart, to seeA 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 a one is not in a hurry to declare that the riddles of Fate and of Time are 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 develop 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 economize our joys; blessed 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 saynowriter excels him. Words are no veil between us and him, but a luminous cloud that upbears us both 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, 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: these two are Tennyson and the author of "Philip Van Artevelde." Tennyson is all that Bailey is not in melody and voluntary finish, having no less than a Greek moderation in 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 energyand 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.
WEhear 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 defences 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 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 knowfrom 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.
We have just been reading "Le Père Goriot," Balzac's most celebrated work; a remarkable production, to which Paris alone, at the present day, could have given birth.
In other of his works, I have admired his skill in giving the minute traits of passion, and his intrepidity, not inferior to that of Le Sage and Cervantes, in facing the dark side of human nature. He reminds one of the Spanish romancers in the fearlessness with which he takes mud into his hands, and dips his foot in slime. We cannot endure this when done, as by most Frenchmen, with an air of recklessness and gayety; but Balzac does it with the stern manliness of a Spaniard.
But the conception of this work is so sublime, that, though the details are even more revolting than in his others, you can bear it, and would not have missed your walk through the Catacombs, though the light of day seems stained afterwards with the mould of horror and dismay.
Balzac, we understand, is one of that wretched class of writers who live by the pen. In Paris they count now by thousands, and their leaves fall from the press thick-rustlinglike the November forest. I had heard of this class not without envy, for I had been told pretty tales of the gay poverty of the Frenchman—how he will live in garrets, on dry bread, salad, and some wine, and spend all his money on a single good suit of clothes, in which, when the daily labor of copying music, correcting the press, or writing poems or novels, is over, he sallies forth to enjoy the theatre, the social soirée, or the humors of the streets and cafés, as gay, as keenly alive to observation and enjoyment, as if he were to return to a well-stocked table and a cheerful hearth, encompassed by happy faces.
I thought the intellectual Frenchman, in the extreme of want, never sunk into the inert reverie of the lazzaroni, nor hid the vulture of famine beneath the mantle of pride with the bitter mood of a Spaniard. But Balzac evidently is familiar with that which makes the agony of poverty—its vulgarity.
Dirt, confusion, shabby expedients, living to live,—these are what make poverty terrible and odious, and in these Balzac would seem to have been steeped to the very lips.
These French writers possess the art of plunging at oncein medias res, and Balzac places you, in the twinkling of an eye, in one of the lowest boarding-houses of Paris. At first all is dirt, hubbub, and unsavory odors; but from the vapors of the caldron evolves a web of many-colored life, of terrible pathos, and original humor, not unenlivened by pale golden threads of beauty, which had better never been.
All the characters are excellently drawn: the harpy mistress of the house; Mlle. Michonnet the spy, and her imbecile lover; Mme. Coutuner, with her purblind strivings after virtue, and her real, though meagre respectability; Vautrim, the disguised galley-slave, with his cynical philosophy and Bonaparte character; and the young students of medicine, cheering the dense fog with the scintillations of their wit, andthe joyousness and petulance with which their age meets the most adverse circumstances, at least in France!
The connection between this abject poverty and the highest luxury of Parisian life is made naturally by Eugene, connected to his misfortune with a noble family, of which his own is a poor and young branch, studying a profession and sighing to live like a duke, andLe Père Goriot, who has stripped himself of all his wealth for his daughters, who are more naturally unnatural than those of Lear. The transitions are made with as much swiftness as a curtain is drawn upon the stage, yet with no feeling of abruptness, so skilfully are the incidents woven into one another.
And be it recorded to the credit of Balzac, that, much as he appears to have suffered from the want of wealth, the vices which pollute it are represented with as terrible force as those of poverty.
The book affords play for similar powers, and brings a similar range of motives into action with Scott's "Fortunes of Nigel." If less rich than that work, it is more original, and has a force of pencil all its own.
Insight and a master's hand are admirable throughout; but the product of genius isLe Père Goriot. And, wonderful to relate, this character is as much ennobled, made as poetical by abandonment to a single instinct, as others by the force of will. Prometheus, chained on his rock, and giving his heart to the birds of prey for aims so majestic, is scarcely a more affecting, a more reverent object, than the rich confectioner whose intellect has never been awakened at all, except in the way of buying and selling, and who gives up his acuteness even there, and commits such unspeakable follies through paternal love; ablindlove too, nowise superior to that of the pelican!
Analyze it as you will, see the difference between this and the instinct of the artist or the philanthropist, and it produces on your mind the same impression of a present divinity. Andscarce any tears could be more sacred than those which choke the breath at the death-bed of this man, who forgot that he was a man, to be wholly a father, this poor, mad, stupid, father Goriot. I know nothing in fiction to surpass the terrible, unpretending pathos of this scene, nor the power with which the mistaken benediction given to the two medical students whom he takes for his daughters, is redeemed from burlesque.
The scepticism as tovirtuein this book is fearful, but the love for innocence and beautiful instincts casts a softening tint over the gloom. We never saw any thing sweeter or more natural than the letters of the mother and sisters of Eugene, when they so delightfully sent him the money of which he had been wicked enough to plunder them. These traits of domestic life are given with much grace and delicacy of sentiment.
How few writers can paintabandon, without running into exaggeration! and here the task was one of peculiar difficulty. It seemed as if the writer were conscious enough of his power to propose to himself the most difficult task he could undertake.
A respectable reviewer in "Les Deux Mondes" would wish us to think that there is no life in Paris like what Balzac paints; but we can never believe that: evidently it is "too true," though we doubt not there is more redemption than he sees.
But this book was too much for our nerves, and would be, probably, for those of most people accustomed to breathe a healthier atmosphere.
Balzac has been a very fruitful writer, and, as he is fond of jugglers' 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 besurpassed in the ready and sustained command of his resources. His almost unequalled 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. 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 insure 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 ofdeath and nothingness; a rainbow arch above a pestilential chaos!
Thus Balzac, with all his force and fulness of talent, never rises one moment 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 travelling, 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.
It is cheering to know how great is the influence such a writer as Sue exerts, from his energy of feeling on some subjects 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 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 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 thatof Balzac, to entertain the intellectual 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 outspoken as in other lands, both because no such pervasive ills as yet call loudly for redress, and because private conservatism 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.
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 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 comparehis"Wandering Jew" with that of Beranger. 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 oftenmust; 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.
One of the most unexceptionable and attractive writers of modern France is De Vigny. 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, supply 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 cosmopolitan gentleman.
To sum up this imperfect account of the merits of these Novelists: I see De Vigny, a retiring figure, the gentleman, the solitarythinker, 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; Sue, a bold and glittering crusader, with endless ballads jingling in the silence of the night before the battle. They are all much right and a good deal wrong; for instance, all who would lay down their lives for the sake of truth, yet let their virtuous characters practise stratagems, falsehood, and violence; in fact, do evil for the sake of good. They still show this taint of the old régime, 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 question. They 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 quite 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.
MANis always trying to get charts and directions for the super-sensual element in which he finds himself involuntarily moving. Sometimes, indeed, for long periods, a life of continual activity in supplying bodily wants or warding off bodily dangers will make him inattentive to the circumstances of this other life. Then, in an interval of leisure, he will start to find himself pervaded by the power of this more subtle and searching energy, and will turn his thoughts, with new force, to scrutinize its nature and its promises.
At such times a corps is formed of workmen, furnished with various implements for the work. Some collect facts from which they hope to build up a theory; others propose theories by whose light they hope to detect valuable facts; a large number are engaged in circulating reports of these labors; a larger in attempting to prove them invalid and absurd. These last are of some use by shaking the canker-worms from the trees; all are of use in elucidating truth.
Such a course of study has the civilized world been engaged in for some years back with regard to what is called Animal Magnetism. We say the civilized world, because, though a large portion of the learned and intellectual, to say nothing of the thoughtless and the prejudiced, view such researches as folly, yet we believe that those prescient souls, those minds more deeply alive, which are the life of thisand the parents of the next era, all, more or less, consciously or unconsciously, share the belief in such an agent as is understood by the largest definition of animal magnetism; that is, a means by which influence and thought may be communicated from one being to another, independent of the usual organs, and with a completeness and precision rarely attained through these.
For ourselves, since we became conscious at all of our connection with the two forms of being called the spiritual and material, we have perceived the existence of such an agent, and should have no doubts on the subject, if we had never heard one human voice in correspondent testimony with our perceptions. The reality of this agent we know, have tested some of its phenomena, but of its law and its analysis find ourselves nearly as ignorant as in earliest childhood. And we must confess that the best writers we have read seem to us about equally ignorant. We derive pleasure and profit in very unequal degrees from their statements, in proportion to their candor, clearness of perception, severity of judgment, and largeness of view. If they possess these elements of wisdom, their statements are valuable as affording materials for the true theory; but theories proposed by them affect us, as yet, only as partially sustained hypotheses. Too many among them are stained by faults which must prevent their coming to any valuable results, sanguine haste, jealous vanity, a lack of that profound devotion which alone can win Truth from her cold well, careless classification, abrupt generalizations. We see, as yet, no writer great enough for the patient investigation, in a spirit liberal yet severely true, which the subject demands. We see no man of Shakspearian, Newtonian incapability of deceiving himself or others.
However, no such man is needed, and we believe that it is pure democracy to rejoice that, in this department as in others, it is no longer some one great genius that concentrates within himself the vital energy of his time. It is many workingtogether who do the work. The waters spring up in every direction, as little rills, each of which performs its part. We see a movement corresponding with this in the region of exact science, and we have no doubt that in the course of fifty years a new spiritual circulation will be comprehended as clearly as the circulation of the blood is now.
In metaphysics, in phrenology, in animal magnetism, in electricity, in chemistry, the tendency is the same, even when conclusions seem most dissonant. The mind presses nearer home to the seat of consciousness the more intimate law and rule of life, and old limits, become fluid beneath the fire of thought. We are learning much, and it will be a grand music, that shall be played on this organ of many pipes.
With regard to Mr. Grimes's book, in the first place, we do not possess sufficient knowledge of the subject to criticise it thoroughly; and secondly, if we did, it could not be done in narrow limits. To us his classification is unsatisfactory, his theory inadequate, his point of view uncongenial. We disapprove of the spirit in which he criticises other disciples in this science, who have, we believe, made some good observations, with many failures, though, like himself, they do not hold themselves sufficiently lowly as disciples. For we do not believe there is any man,yet, who is entitled to give himself the air of having taken a degree on this subject. We do not want the tone of qualification or mincing apology. We want no mock modesty, but its reality, which is the almost sure attendant on greatness. What a lesson it would be for this country if a body of men could be at work together in that harmony which would not fail to ensue on adisinterestedlove of discovering truth, and with that patience and exactness in experiment without which no machine was ever invented worthy a patent! The most superficial, go-ahead, hit-or-miss American knows that no machine was ever perfected without this patience and exactness; and let no one hope to achieve victories in the realm of mind at a cheaper rate than in that of matter.
In speaking thus of Mr. Grimes's book, we can still cordially recommend it to the perusal of our readers. Its statements are full and sincere. The writer has abilities which only need to be used with more thoroughness and a higher aim to guide him to valuable attainments.
In this connection we will relate a passage from personal experience, to us powerfully expressive of the nature of this higher agent in the intercourse of minds.
Some years ago I went, unexpectedly, into a house where a blind girl, thought at that time to have attained an extraordinary degree of clairvoyance, lay in a trance of somnambulism. I was not invited there, nor known to the party, but accompanied a gentleman who was.
The somnambulist was in a very happy state. On her lips was the satisfied smile, and her features expressed the gentle elevation incident to the state. At that time I had never seen any one in it, and had formed no image or opinion on the subject. I was agreeably impressed by the somnambulist, but on listening to the details of her observations on a distant place, I thought she had really no vision, but was merely led or impressed by the mind of the person who held her hand.
After a while I was beckoned forward, and my hand given to the blind girl. The latter instantly dropped it with an expression of pain, and complained that she should have been brought in contact with a person so sick, and suffering at that moment under violent nervous headache. This really was the case, but no one present could have been aware of it.
After a while the somnambulist seemed penitent and troubled. She asked again for my hand which she had rejected, and, while holding it, attempted to magnetize the sufferer. She seemed touched by profound pity, spoke most intelligently of the disorder of health and its causes, and gave advice, which, if followed at that time, I have every reason to believe would have remedied the ill.
Not only the persons present, but the person advised also,had no adequate idea then of the extent to which health was affected, nor saw fully, till some time after, the justice of what was said by the somnambulist. There is every reason to believe that neither she, nor the persons who had the care of her, knew even the name of the person whom she so affectionately wished to help.
Several years after, in visiting an asylum for the blind, I saw this same girl seated there. She was no longer a somnambulist, though, from a nervous disease, very susceptible to magnetic influences. I went to her among a crowd of strangers, and shook hands with her as several others had done. I then asked, "Do you not not know me?" She answered, "No." "Do you not remember ever to have met me?" She tried to recollect, but still said, "No." I then addressed a few remarks to her about her situation there, but she seemed preoccupied, and, while I turned to speak with some one else, wrote with a pencil these words, which she gave me at parting:—
Others may explain this as they will; to me it was a token that the same affinity that had acted before, gave the same knowledge; for the writer was at the time ill in the same way as before. It also seemed to indicate that the somnambulic trance was only a form of the higher development, the sensibility to more subtle influences—in the terms of Mr. Grimes, a susceptibility to etherium. The blind girl perhaps never knew who I was, but saw my true state more clearly than any other person did, and I have kept those pencilled lines, written in the stiff, round character proper to the blind, as a talisman of "Credenciveness," as the book before me styles it. Credulity as the world at large does, and, to my own mind, as one of the clews granted, during this earthly life, to the mysteries of future states of being, and more rapid and complete modes of intercourse between mind and mind.
THEpublishers of this interesting and spirited journal have, this year, begun to issue a weekly paper in addition to their former arrangement. We regret not to have been able earlier to take some notice of their prospectus, but an outline of it will be new to most of our readers.
Their journal has hitherto been intended for German readers in this country, and has been devoted to topics of European interest, but by the addition of the Weekly, it hopes to discuss with some fulness those of American interest also; thus becoming "an organ of communication between Germans of the old and new home, as to their wants, interests, and thoughts." These judicious remarks follow:—
"The editors do not coincide with those who believe it the vocation of the immigrant German, by systematic separation from the people who offer him a new home, by voluntary withdrawal from the unaccustomed, and, perhaps, for him too vehement stream of their life, in a word, by obstinate adhesion to the old, to keep inviolate the stamp of his nationality.
"Rather is it their faith that it should be the most earnest desire of the immigrant, not merely to appropriate in form, but todeservethe rights of a citizen here—rights which we confide in the healthy mind of the nation to sustain him in, all fanatical opposition to the contrary notwithstanding. And he must deserve them by becoming an American, not merelyin name, but in deed, not merely by assuming claims, but by appreciating duties.
"But while we renounce this narrow and one-sided isolation, desiring to integrate ourselves, fairly and truly, with the great family that receives us to its hospitality, we will hold so much the more firmly to the higher traits of our own race. We hold to the noble jewel of our native tongue; the memories of our nation's ancient glory; the sympathy with its future, as yet only glimmering in the dusk; our old, true, domestic manners; dear inherited customs, that give to the tranquillities of home their sanctity—to the intercourse between men a fresh, glad life.
"So much for our position in general."
They promise, as to American affairs, "to be just as far as in them lies, and independent, certainly."
We think the tone of these remarks truly honorable and right-minded. It is such a tone that each division of our adopted citizens needs to hear from those of their compatriots able to guide and enlighten them. We do want that each nation should preserve what is valuable in its parent stock. We want all the elements for the new people of the new world. We want the prudence, the honor, the practical skill of the English; the fun, the affectionateness, the generosity of the Irish; the vivacity, the grace, the quick intelligence of the French; the thorough honesty, the capacity for philosophic view, and deep enthusiasm of the German Biedermann; the shrewdness and romance of the Scotch,—but we want none of their prejudices. We want the healthy seed to develop itself into a different plant in the new climate. We have reason to hope a new and generous race, where the Italian meets the German, the Swede, the Jew. Let nothing be obliterated, but all be regenerated; let each leader say in like manner to his band. Apply the old loyalty to a study of new duties. Examine yourself whether you are worthy of the new rights so freely bestowed upon you, and recognizethat only intelligent action, and not mere bodily presence, can make you really a citizen on any soil. It is a glorious boon offered you to be a founder of the new dynasty in the new world; but it would have been better for you to have died a thousand deaths beneath the factory wheels of England, or in the prisons of Russia, than to sell this great privilege for selfish or servile ends. Here each man has before him the choice of Esau—each may defraud a long succession of souls of their princely inheritance.
Do those whose bodies were born upon this soil reject you, and claim for themselves the name of natives? You may be natives, in another sort, for the soul may be re-born here. Cast for yourselves a new nativity, and invoke the starry influences that do not fail to shine into the life of a good man, whose heart is kept open daily to truth in every new form, whose heart is strengthened by a desire to do his duty valiantly to every brother of the human family. Offer upon the soil a libation of worthy feelings in gratitude for the bread it so willingly yields you, and it is true that the "healthy mind of the nation" cannot long fail to greet you with joy, and hail your endowment with civic rights.
We must think there is a deep root, in fact, for the late bitter expressions of prejudice, however unworthy the mode of exhibiting them, against the foreign element in our population. We want all this new blood, but we want it purified, assimilated, or it will take all form of comeliness from the growing nation. Our country is a willing foster mother, but her children need wise tutors to prevent them from playing, willingly or unwillingly, the viper's part.
There is a little poem in the Schnellpost, by Moritz Hartmann, called the "Three,"—which would be a forcible appeal, if any were needed, in behalf of all who are exiled from their native soil. We translate it into prose, and this will not spoil it, as its poetry lies in the situation.
"In a tavern of Hungary are sitting together Three whohave taken refuge there from storm and darkness—in Hungary, where the wind of chance drives together the children of many a land.
"Their eyes glow with fires of various light; their locks are unlike in their flow; but their hearts—their wounded hearts—are urns filled with the tears of a common grief.
"One cries, 'Silent companions! Shall we have no toast to cheer our meeting? I offer you one which you cannot fail to pledge—Freedom and greatness to the Fatherland!
"'To the fatherland! But I am one that knows not where is his; I am a Gypsy; my fatherland lies in the realm of tradition—in the mournful tone of the violin swelled by grief and storm.
"'I pass musing over heath and moor, and think of my painful losses. Yet long since was I weaned from desire of a home, and think of Egypt but as the cymbal sounds.'
"The second says, 'This toast of fatherland I will not drink; mine own shame should I pledge. For the seed of Jacob flies like the dried leaf, and takes no root in the dust of slavery.'
"The lips of the third seem frozen at the edge of his goblet. He asks himself in silence, 'ShallIdrink to the fatherland? Lives Poland yet, or is all life departed, and am I, like these, a motherless son?'"
To those and others who, if they still had homes, could not live there, without starving body and soul, may our land be a fatherland; and may they seek and learn to act as children in a father's house!
A foreign correspondent of the Schnellpost, having, it seems, been reproved by some friends on the safe side of the water for the violence of his attack on crowned heads, and other dilettanti, defends himself with great spirit, and argues his case well from his own point of view. We do notagree with him as to the use of methods, but cannot fail to sympathize in his feeling.
Anecdotes of Russian proceedings towards delinquents are well associated with one anecdote quoted of Peter, who yet was truly the Great. In a foreign city, seeing the gallows, he asked the use of that three-cornered thing. Being told, to hang people on, he requested that one might be hung for him, directly. Being told this, unfortunately, could not be done, as there was no criminal under sentence, he desired that one of his own retinue might be made use of. Probably he did this with no further thought than the Empress Catharine bestowed, on having a ship of the line blown up, as a model for the painter who was to adorn her palace with pictures of naval battles. Disregard for human life and human happiness is not confined to the Russian snows, or the eastern hemisphere; it may be found on every side, though, indeed, not on a scale so imperial.
A long expectation is rewarded 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, buthowwe 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 professthat, 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," "Dilettante," "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 regard to Mahomet, for instance. The natural autocrat is his delight, and in such pictures as that of the monk in "Past and Present," where the geniuses 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 afterwards 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. Tothose 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; butisit 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 rose-water 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 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—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.
* * *
"In fact, Oliver's dialect is rude and obsolete; the phrasesof 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 every where, Peace, peace, when there is no peace,—such a phenomena 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; perennialfireof it visible athwart all drosses and 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 in 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 bewell 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!"
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 the town; and I think that night they put to the sword about two thousand men, divers of the officers and soldiers being fled over the bridge into the other part of the town; and where about one hundred 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 Godupon 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 therethenno 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 pressureof 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 sufficiently 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 Philippe, 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.
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. Many who took part in this act whichdidrequire 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 counsels of Cromwell. Butwe 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 no 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. 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 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 any thing 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 Maidstone:—
"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 divinestsight 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. 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 difficulties attended the writing the history of Cromwell, the reader will like to see what Mr. Carlyle himself says:—
"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."
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 presentedthat 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.