EDITOR'S TABLE.

Dreamthorp; A Book of Essays written in the Country. ByAlexander Smith, Author of 'A Life Drama,' 'City Poems,' etc. Boston: J.E. Tilton & Company. For sale by Walter Low, 823 Broadway. New York.

We have been very unexpectedly charmed with this volume. Inverted and fantastical as he may be in his poems, Mr. Smith's essays are fresh, natural, racy, and genial. They are models in their way, and we wish our contributors would study them as such. Each essay is complete in itself; every sentence full of interest; there is no straining for effect, no writing to astonish ablaséaudience, no show of unwonted erudition; but the light of a poet's soul, the sunshine of a calm and loving heart, are streaming and brooding over all these gentle pages. Knowledge is indeed within them, but it has ripened into wisdom; culture has matured into wine with the summer in its glow—yet, notwithstanding its many excellences, the book is so quiet, true, and natural, we know not what favor it may find among us. We were pleased to see that in 'A Shelf in My Book-case' our own Hawthorne had a conspicuous place. 'Twice-Told Tales' is an especial favorite with Mr. Smith, as it indeed is with most imaginative people. His analysis of Hawthorne is very fine, and it is like meeting with an old friend in a foreign land to come across the name so dear to ourselves in these pages from across the sea. Equally pleasant to us is the Chapter on Vagabonds. 'A fellow feeling makes us wondrous kind,' and, confessing ourselves to be one of this genus, we dwell with delight on our author's genial description of their naive pleasures and innocent eccentricities. Mr. Smith says: 'The true vagabond is to be met with among actors, poets, painters. These may grow in any way their nature dictates. They are not required to conform to any traditional pattern. A little more air and light should be let in upon life. I should think the world had stood long enough under the drill of Adjutant Fashion. It is hard work; the posture is wearisome, and Fashion is an awful martinet and has a quick eye, and comes down mercilessly on the unfortunate wight who cannot square his toes to the approved pattern, or who appears upon parade with a darn in his coat or with a shoulder belt insufficiently pipe-clayed. It is killing work. Suppose we try 'standing at ease' for a little?'

Scenes and Thoughts in Europe. ByGeorge H. Calvert, Author of 'The Gentleman.' Boston: Little, Brown & Company. A new edition of a work first published in 1846.

Mr. Calvert is a writer of considerable vigor, but we think these 'Scenes and Thoughts' seriously injured by the hatred of Catholicity which breathes everywhere through them. We miss in them the large, liberal, and loving spirit which characterized 'The Gentleman.' Charity is the soul of wisdom, and we can never rightly appreciate that which we hate. Mr. Calvert totally ignores all the good and humanizing effects of the Catholic Church, and sees only the faults and follies of those who minister at her altars. Not the least cheering example of the progress we are daily making, is the improvement in this respect in our late books of travels. We have ceased to denounce in learning to describe aright, and feel the pulsations of a kindred heart, though it beat under the scarlet robe of the cardinal, the dalmatic of the priest, or the coarse serge of the friar. 'My son, give me thy heart,' says our God. If we can deem from a life of self-abnegation a man has so done, we have ceased inquiring into the dogmas of his creed. It is the heart and not the intellect which is required, 'Little children, love one another,'is the true law of life, progress, and human happiness.

Soundings From the Atlantic, byOliver Wendell Holmes. Boston: Ticknor & Fields. For sale by D. Appleton & Co., New York.

As the title indicates, the essays contained in this volume are already known to the readers ofThe Atlantic.

Wherever Dr. Holmes sounds, he is sure to light upon pearls and golden sands, and scatter them about with a profusion so reckless that we feel convinced the supply is not to be exhausted. Scientist and poet, analyst and creator, full of keen satire, genial humor, and tender pathos, who may compete with him in varied gifts, or rival the charm of intellectual grace which he breathes at will into all he writes?

The contents of this volume are: 'Bread and the Newspaper,' 'My Hunt After the Captain,' 'The Stereoscope and the Stereograph,' 'Sun Painting and Sun Sculpture,' 'Doings of the Sunbeam,' 'The Human Wheel, its Spokes and Felloes,' 'A Visit to the Autocrat's Landlady,' 'A Visit to the Asylum for Aged and Decayed Punsters,' 'The Great Instrument,' 'The Inevitable Trial.'

Hints for the Nursery; or, The Young Mother's Guide. By Mrs.C. A. Hopkinson. Boston: Little, Brown & Company, 1863. For sale by Blakeman & Mason.

A valuable and instructive little book, eminently calculated to spare the rising generation many a pang in body and mind, and the youthful mother many a heartache.

Life and Letters of John Winthrop, Governor of the Massachusetts Bay Company, at their Emigration to New England, 1630. ByRobert C. Winthrop. Boston: Ticknor & Fields. For sale by D. Appleton & Co., New York.

This work is dedicated to the Massachusetts Historical Society, who have honored the author with their presidency for eight years past. It is rather an autobiography than a biography, and an autobiography of the most trustworthy kind, 'written accidentally and unconsciously, as it were, in familiar letters or private journals, or upon the records of official service.' Such a Life is the volume before us. The most skilful use has been made of his material by our author. John Winthrop the elder, through contemporaneous records, in the familiar language of private correspondence and diary, tells us the story of a considerable part of his career in his own words, Cotton Mather says of him: ... 'This third Adam Winthrop was the father of that renowned John Winthrop, who was the father of New England, and the founder of a colony, which, upon many accounts, like him that founded it, may challenge the first place among the English glories of America.'

The volume also offers us in great detail a picture not only of the outward life, but of the inmost thoughts, motives, and principles of the American Puritans. Valuable to the antiquarian, it will also interest, in its naive pictures of home life, the general reader.

The brave and brilliant Theodore Winthrop, who gave up his young life to his country in the battle of Big Bethel, has rendered this name dear to all loyal Americans.

Round the Block. An American Novel. With Illustrations. New York: D. Appleton & Co., 443 and 445 Broadway.

A Novel of American life, incident, and character. The style is easy, the tale interesting, the moral healthful. There is considerable humor in the delineation of character. The people drawn are such as we have all known, sketched without exaggeration, and actuated by constantly occurring motives. The book is anonymous, but we believe the author will yet be known to fame, Tiffles and Patching are true to life, and the exhibition of the 'Pannyrarmer' worthy of Dickens.

The Life of Jesus. ByErnest Renan, Membre de l'Institut. Translated from the original French by Charles Edwin Wilbour, translator of 'Les Misérables.' New York: Carlton, publisher, 413 Broadway.

A book which has attained a sudden and wide circulation, if not a lasting popularity, in France. We look upon it as aromancebased upon the Sacred History of the Gospels. It is artistically constructed, and written with considerable genius. 'It is dramatic, beginning with a pastoral and ending with the direst of human tragedies.' M. Renan we suppose to be a Pantheist. He says: 'As to myself, I think that there is not in the universe an intelligence superior to that of man.'This view of course leads him to discard supernaturalism, and write of Christ as simply man. He believes as suits his system, and refuses testimony—without condescending to tell us why it is not equally as valid as that received. He says: 'The highest consciousness of God that ever existed in the bosom of humanity, was that of Jesus.' He is the 'universal ideal'—and yet we think he strives to make of this 'universal ideal' an impostor! Christ tells us of various facts with regard to himself: of his divine Sonhood and mission—if these things are not true, then was he either weakly self-deceived or a wilful deceiver. He sets up a claim to the working of miracles, and assumes the part of the Messiah of the prophets. This want of truth M. Renan smooths over by saying: 'Sincerity with oneself had not much meaning with Orientals; they are little habituated to the delicate distinctions of the critical spirit!' The resurrection of Lazarus, as he represents it, was a pious fraud managed by the apostles, agreed to by the Master, 'because he knew not how to conquer the greediness of the crowd and of his own disciples for the marvellous.' Does not the mere fact of such an acquiescence argue the impostor? Christ seeks death to deliver himself from his fearful embarrassments! Did he really rise from the dead? M. Renan tells us, with a sickly sentimentalism worthy of Michelet: 'The powerful imagination of Mary of Magdala played in that affair a capital part. Divine power of love! Sacred moments, when the passion of a visionary gives to the world a resuscitated God.' If this be indeed the Life of Jesus, well may we exclaim with the apostle: 'If in this life only we have hope in Christ, we are, of all men, the most miserable.' And is this all that the most advanced naturalism can do? All that human genius and erudition can offer us? All that artistic grace and tenderness can win for us? Clouds and darkness rise before us as we read, the mother of our Lord loses her sanctity, Jesus becomes an impostor, the apostles deceivers, human testimony is forever dishonored. A pall shrouds the infinite blue of the sky, and our beloved dead seem festering in eternal corruption!

We must confess we prefer the bold and defiant scepticism of Voltaire, to the Judas kiss of M. Renan.

Among our exchanges is a little periodical entitled 'The New Path, published by the Society for the Advancement of Truth in Art.' The members of this Society are otherwise known as 'Pre-Raphaelites,' in other words, as seekers of the Ancient Path, trodden before certain mannerisms had corrupted the minds of many painters and most technical connoisseurs. Their aims and principles are, so far as they go, pure and lofty. Truth in Art is a noble thing. But can these gentlemen find none outside of their own society? The face of nature is very dear to us, and during long years have we closely observed its forms, its changing hues and expressions. We do like when we look at a picture to know whether the trees be oaks, elms, or pines; whether the rocks be granitic, volcanic, or stratified; whether the foliage be of spring, midsummer, or autumn; even whether the foreground herbage be of grasses or broad-leaved weeds; but is there no danger that minutiæ may absorb too much attention, that the larger parts may be lost in the lesser, that while each weed tells its own story, the distant mountains, the atmosphere, the whole picture, in short, may fail to tell us theirs in any interesting or even intelligible manner? In excess of surface details, may we not lose body, roundness; and, in matching exact color rather than the effect of color through the tremulous ether, may not the subtle mysteries of distance, of actually diffused and all-suffusing light, escape the painter? It is possible to possess the body and fail to grasp the life. Give us not blotchy nondescripts for natural objects, fling to the winds all narrow, school-made, conventional ideas, but, in giving us the real, give us the ideal also; otherwise we freeze, missing the spirit which should warm and shine through the letter.

We fear lest in his zeal for truth, many a Pre-Raphaelite may be led to overlook beauty. To a finite mind the two words are by no means synonymous. There can be norealbeauty without truth, but many truths are not beautiful, and beauty, no less than truth, is an important ingredient in that complex resultant, Art.

We quote from one of the articles of organization of the above-named Society: 'The right course for young artists is faithful and loving representations of Nature, selecting nothing and rejecting nothing, seeking only to express the greatest possible amount of fact.' Now we all know that the best way to stultify the mind and conception of a youthful student, in any branch of art, is to keep before him commonplace models. Indeed, what student gifted with genius, or even with any high degree of talent, will not (if unrestrained) himself select as studies, not any mere chronicle of desired facts, but the most significant forms (suited to his proficiency) in which he can find those facts embodied?

The article quoted must be based upon the belief that there are no commonplace, ugly objects in nature. If we sit down and reason over, or use our microscopes upon any work of the Almighty, we can find wisdom and beauty therein, but that does not alter the fact that beauty and significance are distributed in degrees of more and less. 'Art is long and time is fleeting,' and the genuine artist has no hours to waste over the less significant and characteristic. Besides, each student deserving the name, has his own individuality, and will naturally select, and the more lovingly paint, objects in accordance with his especial bent of mind. Not that we would have him become one-sided, and neglect the study of matters that might some day be useful; but in this, as in all things else, he must temper feeling with judgment, and make the mechanical execution the simple, faithful handmaiden to truly imaginative conception.

In the moral world we may cheerfully accept physical deformity for the sake of some elevated principle therewith developed; but in the realm of art, man's only sphere of creation, we want the best the artist can give us, the greatest truth with the highest beauty. We are not willing to take the truth without the beauty. If we are to be told that sunlight tipping the edges of trees produces certain effects upon those edges and the shadowed foliage behind, let the fact be worthily represented, and not so prosily set forth that the picture shall be to us simply a matter of curiosity. That those trees did actually stand and grow thus, is small comfort, for the artist might surely have found other and more interesting forms telling the same tale. If light falling through loose foliage does indeed make upon the garments of a lad lying beneath spots at a little distance wonderfully like mildew, then rather let the boy sit for us under a tree of denser foliage, where a pathetic subject will not risk an unintentionally comic treatment. If a stone-breaker's face corrupts in purple spots at a certain period after death, we would prefer him painted before corruption, and consequently hideousness, had begun. If women will wear gowns ugly in color and form, and will sit or stand in graceless positions, we can readily avoid such subjects, and bestow our careful finish upon more worthy models.

Let us not be misunderstood; we well know that the humorous, the grotesque, the sublime may use ugliness to serve their own legitimate purposes, but then that ugliness must be humorous, grotesque, or sublime, and not flat, prosy, or revolting. A blemish is by no means necessarily an ugliness. A leaf nibbled by insects and consequently discolored, a lad with ragged jacket and soiled trowsers, a peasant girl with bent hat and tattered gown, are often more picturesque objects than the perfect leaf or the well-attired child.

Speaking of a certain artist,The New Pathsays: 'He follows nature as long as she is graceful and does not offend his eye, but once let her make what strikes him as a discord, and which is a discord, of course, for she, the great poet, makes no music without discords—and, straightway, Mr. —— takes out the offending note, smooths it down, and thinks he has bettered nature's work.' Now,in music there are nodiscords; so soon as a discord is admitted, the sounds cease to be music;—there aredissonances, peculiar and unusual combinations of air vibrations, but these are never long dwelt on, and must always be resolved into the full and satisfactory harmony, of which the beauty is enhanced by the momentary lapse into strangeness. Dissonance is never the prevailing idea, and above all, never the final, closing one; it must always bear a certain relation to the key in which it is used, and the musical composition must be ended by the fullest and most satisfactory chord, or suggestion of a chord, found in that key.

The majority of the Pre-Raphaelite school are willing to admit that 'there is but one Turner, and Ruskin is his prophet.' Let us then hearoneof the views which the eloquent oracle has advanced in connection with this subject. After advising the non-imaginative painter to remain in the region of the purely topographical or historical landscape, he continues; 'But, beyond this, let him note that though historical topography forbidsalteration(did Turner heed this precept?), it neither forbids sentiment nor choice. So far from doing this, the proper choice of subject is an absolute duty to the topographical painter: he should first take care that it is a subject intensely pleasing to himself, else he will never paint it well; and then also, that it shall be one in some sort pleasurable to the general public, else it is not worth painting at all; and lastly, take care that it be instructive, as well as pleasurable to the public, else it is not worth painting with care. I should particularly insist at present on this careful choice of subject, because the Pre-Raphaelites, taken as a body, have been culpably negligent in this respect, not in humble honor of Nature, but in morbid indulgence of their own impressions. They happen to find their fancies caught by a bit of an oak hedge, or the weeds at the sides of a duck pond, because, perhaps, they remind them of a stanza of Tennyson; and forthwith they sit down to sacrifice the most consummate skill, two or three months of the best summer time available for outdoor work (equivalent to some seventieth or sixtieth of all their lives), and nearly all their credit with the public, to this duck-pond delineation. Now it is indeed quite right that they should see much to be loved in the hedge, nor less in the ditch; but it is utterly and inexcusably wrong that they should neglect the nobler scenery, which is full of majestic interest, or enchanted by historical association; so that, as things go at present, we have all the commonalty, that may be seen whenever we choose, painted properly; but all of lovely and wonderful, which we cannot see but at rare intervals, painted vilely: the castles of the Rhine and Rhone made vignettes of for the annuals; and the nettles and mushrooms, which were prepared by nature eminently for nettle porridge and fish sauce, immortalized by art as reverently as if we were Egyptians, and they deities.'

Want of space forbids further extracts, but we recommend the entire chapter: Of Turnerian Topography, Modern Painters, vol. iv., to the perusal of our readers.

We are glad to see the national mind beginning to effervesce on art subjects. The most opposite views, the new and the old, the conventional and the truly imaginative, the severely real and the more latitudinarian, the earnest and the flippant, the pedantic and the broad, far reaching—will continue to clash for a season, while a school of American Landscape is, we think, destined to rise steadily through the chaotic elements, and to reach a height of excellence to which the conscientious efforts of all advocates of the highest Truth in Art will have greatly contributed.

We are indebted to Mr. Cropsey for a pleasant opportunity to visit his studio (No. 625 Broadway), and see such pictures and sketches as he now has by him, the results of a long residence abroad and of his summer work among the hills of Sussex, N. J. A view of Korfe Castle, Dorsetshire, England, is a highly-finished and evidently accurate representation of that interesting spot. We are presumed to be standing amid the ferns, flowers, and vines of the foreground, and looking off toward the castle-crowned hill, the village at its foot, and the far-away downs, with a silver stream winding into the distance. A rainbow quivers among the retreating clouds to the right, and from the left comes the last brilliant light of day, gilding the greenery of the hills, and throwing out the deepened hues of the long shadows. There are also pleasant views of other English scenery, of Italian landscape, and ofAmerican lakes and streams. Mr. Cropsey has a high reputation both at home and abroad, and we are glad to learn that for the present, at least, he intends to pursue his art labors within the limits of his native land.

Beethoven's Fidelio.—This noble opera has lately been given us by Mr. Anschütz, with the best use of such means as were at his disposal. The orchestral, choral, and concerted vocal portions are grand and beautiful, highly characteristic and effective. The story is simple, pure, and deeply pathetic. The prison scene affords scope for the finest histrionic abilities. In the solos, however (with the exception of that of Pizarro, where dramatic power satisfies), we miss the lyric genius of the Italians, their long-phrased, passionate, and never-to-be-forgotten melodies, containing the element of beautyper seso richly developed. Cannot the whole world produce one man, who, with all the expanded musical knowledge of the present day, can unite for us Italian gift of melody and German power of orchestral and choral effect, whose endowments shall be both lyric and dramatic, and whose taste shall be pure, refined, and ennobling? Should we recognize such a genius were he actually to stand in our midst, or would both schools reject him because he chanced to possess the best qualities of either?

L. D. P.

Hear me, stranger, hear me tellHow my gallant brother fell.We were rushing on the foe,When a bullet laid him low.At my very side he fell—He whom I did love so well.On we rushed—I could not stay—There I left him where he lay.Then when fled the rebel rout,I came back and searched him out.Wounded, bleeding, suffering, dying,Midst a heap of dead men lying.Friend and foe above each other—There I found my mangled brother.Blind with tears, I lifted him:But his eyes were sunk and dim.'Brother, when I'm dead,' said he,'Find some box to coffin me.'For he could not bear to restWith the cold earth on his breast.All around the camp I sought;Box for coffin found I not.Still I searched and hunted round—Three waste cracker-boxes found;Nailed them fast to one another,—Laid therein my precious brother!Then a grave for him I made,Hands and bayonet all my spade.Long I worked, yet 'twas not deep:There I laid him down to sleep.There I laid my gallant brother:Earth contains not such another!Little more than boys were we,I sixteen, and nineteen he.For his country's sake he died,And for her I'd lie beside.

FOOTNOTES:[A]But a copy fell into the hands of a French bookseller, who published a wretched translation, and Jefferson authorized an edition in London in 1787.[B]A statue was erected to Buffon with the inscription:Naturam amplectitur omnem.Some sceptic wrote underneath:Qui trop embrasse, mal étreint;a saying which we do not care to translate, but which is too good a description of Jefferson's scientific acquirements to be omitted.[C]I am told that there was no resisting her smile; and that she had at her command, in moments of grief, a certain look of despair which filled even the roughest hearts with sympathy, and won over the kindest to the cruel cause.

FOOTNOTES:[A]But a copy fell into the hands of a French bookseller, who published a wretched translation, and Jefferson authorized an edition in London in 1787.

[A]But a copy fell into the hands of a French bookseller, who published a wretched translation, and Jefferson authorized an edition in London in 1787.

[B]A statue was erected to Buffon with the inscription:Naturam amplectitur omnem.Some sceptic wrote underneath:Qui trop embrasse, mal étreint;a saying which we do not care to translate, but which is too good a description of Jefferson's scientific acquirements to be omitted.

[B]A statue was erected to Buffon with the inscription:

Naturam amplectitur omnem.

Some sceptic wrote underneath:

Qui trop embrasse, mal étreint;

a saying which we do not care to translate, but which is too good a description of Jefferson's scientific acquirements to be omitted.

[C]I am told that there was no resisting her smile; and that she had at her command, in moments of grief, a certain look of despair which filled even the roughest hearts with sympathy, and won over the kindest to the cruel cause.

Back to Index Next