A RECOLLECTION OF MENDELSSHON'S "SONGS WITHOUT WORDS."
WRITTEN FOR THE INTERNATIONAL MONTHLY MAGAZINE.
BY ALICE B. NEAL.
Far out in the moonlight how softly we glide!Scarce knowing, scarce heeding the lapse of the tide.I watch the light shadows steal over thy face,And pillow thy head in a last, long embrace.Thy heart keeps low music still beating to mine,Thy white arms around me I slowly entwine—I part the wild tresses that shroud thy pale cheek,I kiss thee—I clasp thee—no word dare I speak.Alas! that star-light should fade from the sky!Alas for the parting that draweth so nigh!Glide slowly—ye ripples—flow softly, oh tide!For the silence ofdeath, must the living divide.
Far out in the moonlight how softly we glide!Scarce knowing, scarce heeding the lapse of the tide.I watch the light shadows steal over thy face,And pillow thy head in a last, long embrace.
Thy heart keeps low music still beating to mine,Thy white arms around me I slowly entwine—I part the wild tresses that shroud thy pale cheek,I kiss thee—I clasp thee—no word dare I speak.
Alas! that star-light should fade from the sky!Alas for the parting that draweth so nigh!Glide slowly—ye ripples—flow softly, oh tide!For the silence ofdeath, must the living divide.
Again, but alone, I am out on the sea—I come, where so often I floated with thee;I list for the tones of thy low evening hymn—But the breeze hath a moan—and the starlight is dim.I think of thee here, of thy deep mournful eyes,That spoke to my own in mute, thrilling replies;Of thy gentle caress, and thy cold brow, so pale,When I pressed that last kiss—but I utter no wail!I garner in silence the memories of years,With yearnings too tender, too hopeless for tears;For down 'neath the stillness and hush of its waves,The tide of my life, like the sea, hath its graves!
Again, but alone, I am out on the sea—I come, where so often I floated with thee;I list for the tones of thy low evening hymn—But the breeze hath a moan—and the starlight is dim.
I think of thee here, of thy deep mournful eyes,That spoke to my own in mute, thrilling replies;Of thy gentle caress, and thy cold brow, so pale,When I pressed that last kiss—but I utter no wail!
I garner in silence the memories of years,With yearnings too tender, too hopeless for tears;For down 'neath the stillness and hush of its waves,The tide of my life, like the sea, hath its graves!
COMMUNICATED TO THE INTERNATIONAL MAGAZINE
BY JOHN ROMEYN BRODHEAD.[2]
In the year 1649, there appeared in Holland a small anonymous pamphlet of forty-two pages, bearing the imprint of Antwerp, and entitledBreeden Raedt, aen de Vereenighde Nederlandeche Provintien, or Plain Counsels to the United Netherlands' Provinces. It is very rare; the only copy I know of, in this country, is the one with which I have been kindly furnished by my friend Mr. Campbell, the Deputy Librarian at the Hague.
[2]The substance of this interesting article was read by Mr. Brodhead at the last meeting of the Historical Society.—Ed. International.
[2]The substance of this interesting article was read by Mr. Brodhead at the last meeting of the Historical Society.—Ed. International.
It purports to be a conversation between ten Dutch interlocutors, respecting the trade of the Netherlands West India Company. The chief speaker, is a Dutch "schipper," who had been in New Netherland. In the course of his remarks, he gives many very interesting and novel details, concerning the two directors, Kieft and Stuyvesant, and their respective administrations. As some of these particulars have never before been known to our historians, I propose to translate a few of the most interesting. It is very evident, however, that the narrator was not a mere schipper of a merchant vessel. He was intimately acquainted with the details of the local politics of New Netherland; and evidently was personally unfriendly both to Kieft and Stuyvesant. From internal evidence, and for various other reasons, I have been led to believe that this little work was prepared by or under the superintendence of Cornelius Melyn, who had been one of the foremost and most consistent advocates of the popular cause under Kieft, and who suffered gross injustice from the tyrannical and oppressive conduct of Stuyvesant. The title-page of the tract states that it was "prepared and compiled from divers true and veritable memorials, by 'I. A.,'" who is described as G.W.O., perhaps Gezaghebber, or Director of the West India Company. Whoever these initials, I. A., are meant to represent, the author seems to have fully adopted the views and expressed the feelings of Melyn. While, therefore, some allowance should be made for occasional exhibitions of personal bitterness, the statements in the Breeden Raedt appear to be entitled to full credit, respecting the facts which they relate. Some of these are entirely novel; others are confirmatory of what we have before known; all of them seem to be entirely harmonious with the story of New Netherland.
The antecedents of director Kieft, (of whom we have heretofore known little or nothing previously to his arrival at Manhattan in 1638), are thus related: "William Kieft was born at Amsterdam. From youth he was educated as a merchant; and, after having taken charge of, or rather neglected, his own and his master's business, for a certain time, at Rochelle, he happened to fail there. Upon which, according to custom, his portrait was stuck upon the gallows there, as several living witnesses, who have seen it with their own eyes, can yet testify. This man, having been for some time out of business, was employed to ransom several Christian prisoners out of Turkey. To such a bankrupt the money was intrusted. He went and freed some, for whom there was the least to pay; but the others, whose friends had contributed the most money, he left in bondage. For these, their parents and friends were once more obliged to raise funds. This fine brother was appointed by the directors, to be Director over the inhabitants and trade of New Netherland in the year 1637."
The events of the Indian war in 1643, are referred to with a distinctness which leaves little doubt that the narrator was himself, one of the witnesses of them. In these respects, the Breeden Raedt confirms the statements of De Vries and other authorities in the Holland documents at Albany. With respect to the transactions on Long Island in 1644, and the civil and religious difficulties which divided the people against director Kieft until his successor arrived in 1647, the pamphlet exhibits several interesting and novel details.
Stuyvesant is described as "the son of a clergyman in Friesland, and who formerly, at Franiker (the seat of a famous high school, now extinct), had robbed the daughter of his own landlady. Being caught in the fact, he had been let off for his father's sake; otherwise it would perhaps have been there, that he must have paid the penalty of his first offence." On his arrival in New Netherland, Stuyvesant is described as conducting himself as arrogantly as the "Grand Duke of Moscovy," and as promptly taking the side of hispredecessor Keift, against Melyn and Kuyter, the leaders of the popular party. In this, the Breeden Raedt confirms our official accounts. The two patriots were tried, convicted, and sentenced to be fined, and transported to Holland. They were sent as prisoners on board the ship Princess, in which the late director Kieft, and Dominie Everardus Bogardus, the first clergyman in New Netherland also embarked. The ship struck on the English coast, "where this ungodly Kieft seeing death before his eyes, sighing very deeply, dubiously addressed both these (Kuyter and Melyn): 'Friends, I have done you wrong, can you forgive me?' The ship being broken into eight fragments, drove the whole night in the water. By daybreak, the greater part (of passengers) were drowned. Cornelius Melyn lost his son. Dominie Bogardus, Kieft, Captain John De Vries, and a great number of people were drowned. There was swallowed up a great treasure with Kieft, for the ship was returning with more than four hundred thousand guilders. Joachim Petersen Kuyter remained alone on one of the fragments of the ship, upon which there was a piece of cannon sticking out of a port, with which he was saved at daylight. He had taken it for a man and had spoken to it, but receiving no answer thought he was dead. In the end, he was thrown on shore with it, to the great astonishment of the English, who came down to the strand by thousands, and who set up the piece of cannon as a lasting memorial. Melyn floating on his back in the sea, fell in with others who were clinging to a part of the wreck, and was driven on a sand bank, which became dry with the ebb tide." From this place they made their escape to the shore. Kuyter and Melyn, after saving their lives, became most solicitous to secure their papers, which were to serve for their defence in Holland against the sentences which had been pronounced on them in New Netherland. After three days' labor, they fished up a box containing these valued papers. With these they proceeded to Amsterdam, and laid their case before the States General, which granted them an appeal, and meanwhile suspended Stuyvesant's sentence.
After describing the escape of the "patriots," Kuyter and Melyn, and their safe arrival in Holland with their papers, the Breeden Raedt continues its review of the Provincial administration, and gives some particulars respecting the chief officers and public affairs in New Netherland, to be found no where else. The narrative is brought down to August, 1649, at which time Melyn, who had returned to New Netherland, seems to have embarked a second time for Holland, to bring his case again before the States General. He appears to have sailed in the same vessel which conveyed Van der Donck, Couwenhoven, and Bont, the delegates who had been commissioned to carry over the "Vertoogh," or remonstrance of the commonalty of New Netherland, against Stuyvesant's arbitrary government. The Breeden Raedt appears to have been printed soon after Melyn's return to the Fatherland. As it contains very severe reflections upon official persons in the Province, and as it was an anonymous tract, it was perhaps judged prudent to publish it with the imprint of Antwerp. I think, however, that it was actually printed in Holland. The Breeden Raedt was one of the earliest, if not the very earliest separate pamphlet respecting New Netherland. It was followed in 1650, by the Vertoogh; in 1651, by Hartger's description; and in 1655, by Van der Donck's larger work, and by De Vries's Journal printed at Alckmaer.
WRITTEN FOR THE INTERNATIONAL MONTHLY MAGAZINE.
BY W. A. SUTLIFFE.
Come, say the Ave-Mary prayer.And chant the Miserere!The autumn frosts have chilled the air,The winter groweth dreary!The willow, bending o'er the tomb,Moans dolefully for ever,—The north-wind bloweth in the gloom,The morning cometh never!Avaunt, thou memory, springing upLike demon bold uprising!Full cold and bitter is our cup,Nor needeth thine apprising!The Future glimmereth in the dark,We hear the billows roaring,The wind beleaguereth our barque,The storm will soon be pouring.Of all the visions of our youth,The mind is disenchanted;When manhood sternly paints the truth,The soul is sadly haunted.The sun is sepulchred of night,The flower in autumn bendeth;Fair fruitfulness has soonest blight—All beauty graveward tendeth.The world is petrified at heart,No sympathy is welling;Each plays in mine his soulless part,Too woful 'tis for telling.Then say the Ave-Mary prayer,And chant the Miserere!The autumn frosts have chilled the air—The winter groweth dreary!Bethink ye that He made ye all!The same God bends above ye!The same God spreads the light or pall,The same God deigns to love ye!The wind that blows the cultured lea.And through the rich man's hedges,Sighs round the poor man pleasantly,And o'er the barren ledges.The rich go up on Fortune's wheel.The poor are crushed beneath it;Oppression draws the bloody steal,Alas, when will she sheathe it!Then say the Ave-Mary prayer,And chant the Miserere!The autumn frosts have chilled the air,The winter groweth dreary!The beldame sitteth at her loom,She weepeth 'mid the weaving;The orphan lingers at the tomb,He's mickle cause for grieving.The dust is laid with dropping tears;The slave cowers 'neath the scourging;Each day is filled with busy fears,Like restless spirits urging.O, God! within the Heaven unseen!When will the sun be shining;Until the spring-time cometh green,Forgive us for our pining!Then say the Ave-Mary prayer,And chant the Miserere!The autumn frosts have chilled the air,The winter groweth dreary!
Come, say the Ave-Mary prayer.And chant the Miserere!The autumn frosts have chilled the air,The winter groweth dreary!The willow, bending o'er the tomb,Moans dolefully for ever,—The north-wind bloweth in the gloom,The morning cometh never!
Avaunt, thou memory, springing upLike demon bold uprising!Full cold and bitter is our cup,Nor needeth thine apprising!The Future glimmereth in the dark,We hear the billows roaring,The wind beleaguereth our barque,The storm will soon be pouring.
Of all the visions of our youth,The mind is disenchanted;When manhood sternly paints the truth,The soul is sadly haunted.The sun is sepulchred of night,The flower in autumn bendeth;Fair fruitfulness has soonest blight—All beauty graveward tendeth.
The world is petrified at heart,No sympathy is welling;Each plays in mine his soulless part,Too woful 'tis for telling.Then say the Ave-Mary prayer,And chant the Miserere!The autumn frosts have chilled the air—The winter groweth dreary!
Bethink ye that He made ye all!The same God bends above ye!The same God spreads the light or pall,The same God deigns to love ye!The wind that blows the cultured lea.And through the rich man's hedges,Sighs round the poor man pleasantly,And o'er the barren ledges.
The rich go up on Fortune's wheel.The poor are crushed beneath it;Oppression draws the bloody steal,Alas, when will she sheathe it!Then say the Ave-Mary prayer,And chant the Miserere!The autumn frosts have chilled the air,The winter groweth dreary!
The beldame sitteth at her loom,She weepeth 'mid the weaving;The orphan lingers at the tomb,He's mickle cause for grieving.The dust is laid with dropping tears;The slave cowers 'neath the scourging;Each day is filled with busy fears,Like restless spirits urging.
O, God! within the Heaven unseen!When will the sun be shining;Until the spring-time cometh green,Forgive us for our pining!Then say the Ave-Mary prayer,And chant the Miserere!The autumn frosts have chilled the air,The winter groweth dreary!
No work has yet appeared this season in which the better portion of the reading public have felt so deep an interest as in the Life of John Sterling, byThomas Carlyle. But this is less a consequence of the subject than of the authorship. Any thing from the hand of Carlyle is sure of a large audience, but he has hitherto done nothing in which his personality was likely to be so much involved as in this life of his friend "Archæus." We copy from the LondonSpectatorthe following reviewal of it:
"The domain of political economy is not unlimited; the laws of supply and demand are not the only or the strongest forces at work in nature. Here is a man whom the world would have been well content to leave quiet in his early grave by the sea-shore in the sweetest of English islands; to leave him there to the soft melodies of the warm wind and the gentle rain, and the pious visits now and then of those who knew and loved him when his eye was bright and his voice eloquent with sparkling thoughts and warm affections. He had done nothing that the public cared for; had left no traces on the sands of Time that the next tide would not have effaced. But he lived amongst men who write books, amongst some of the very best of such; and two of the foremost of them loved him so well, that they could not let his memory die,—thought that the positive actual results of his life made known to the public were but faint indications of the power that lay in him though sorely foiled and baffled, and that he in his individual spiritual progress typified better than most the struggle that the age is passing through, its processes, and its results. But the two men, though united in affection for Sterling, were so different in other respects, that the memorial raised by the one could scarcely fail to be unsatisfactory to the other. Archdeacon Hare, the author of the earlier biography, is a man of encyclopœdic knowledge,—a profound classical scholar, the most learned and philosophical of modern English theologians, at once accurate and wide in his acquaintance with European history and literature. And this large survey of the forms under which the men of the past have thought and acted, has not led in him to an indifference to all forms, but rather to a keener sense of the organic vitality of forms, especially of national institutions, whether civil or ecclesiastical polities, states or churches. Moreover, apart from this general characteristic, which would lead to an intellectual and practical reverence for the institutions of his own land, and a hesitating caution in the introduction of constitutional changes, Mr. Hare is an English churchman of no ordinary cast. He has passed from the region of traditional belief, has skirted the bogs and quicksands of doubt and disbelief, and has found firm footing where alone it seems possible, in a revelation whose letter is colored by the human media through which it has passed, and in a faith whose highest mysteries are not only harmonious with but necessary complements to the truths of reason. The English Church is to him the purest embodiment of his religious idea, as the English constitution was to him, in common with Niebuhr, Coleridge, and other great thinkers, of the idea of a state. Such a man could not write a life like Sterling's without feeling that his relation to Christianity and the Church was the great fact for him as for all of us; and that the change in him, from hearty acceptance of Christian doctrine and church organization to a rejection of the former and something very like contempt for the latter, needed explanation. That explanation he has sought in the overthrow of the balance of Sterling's life through repeated attacks of illness, which shut him out from practical duties, and threw him entirely upon speculation, thereby disproportionately developing the negative side of him, already too strong from early defects of education: and few persons will, we should think, be found to deny Mr. Hare's general position, that the pursuit of speculative philosophy as the business of life has this tendency; Mr. Carlyle, we should have supposed least of all men. But a special cause interferes with Mr. Carlyle's recognition of the principle as applicable to Sterling. Christianity, as understood commonly perhaps everywhere, except, it may be, at Weimar and Chelsea, and church formulas certainly as understood everywhere, he is in the habit of classing under a category which in his hands has become an extensive one—that ofshams. He calls them by various forcible but ugly names,—as "old clothes," "spectral inanities," "gibbering phantoms," or, with plainer meaning, "huge unveracities and unrealities." That Sterling at any time of his life accepted these for "eternal verities" he cannot consider a step from the "no" to the "yes," nor their repudiation as a step backwards from the "yes" to the "no." Let him speak for himself. He is commenting on Sterling's entry into orders as Mr. Hare's curate at Hurstmonceaux:"Concerning this attempt of Sterling's to find sanctuary in the old Church, and desperately grasp the hem of her garment in such manner, there will at present be many opinions; and mine must be recorded here in flat reproval of it, in mere pitying condemnation of it, as a rash, false, unwise and unpermitted step. Nay, among the evil lessons of his time to poor Sterling, I cannot but account this the worst; properly indeed, as we may say, the apotheosis, the solemn apology and consecration, of all the evil lessons that were in it to him. Alas! if we did remember the divine and awful nature of God's Truth, and had not so forgotten it as poor doomed creatures never did before,—should we, durst we in our most audacious moments, think of wedding it to the world's untruth,which is also, like all untruths, the devil's? Only in the world's last lethargy can such things be done, and accounted safe and pious! Fools! 'Do you think the living God is a buzzard idol,' sternly asks Milton, 'that you dare address Him in this manner?' Such darkness, thick sluggish clouds of cowardice and oblivious baseness, have accumulated on us; thickening as if towards the eternal sleep! It is not now known, what never needed proof or statement before, that Religion is not a doubt; that it is a certainty,—or else a mockery and horror. That none or all of the many things we are in doubt about, and need to have demonstrated and rendered probable, can by any alchemy be made a 'Religion' for us; but are and must continue a baleful, quiet or unquiet, Hypocrisy for us; and bring—salvation, do we fancy? I think it is another thing they will bring; and are, on all hands, visibly bringing, this good while!—--"
"The domain of political economy is not unlimited; the laws of supply and demand are not the only or the strongest forces at work in nature. Here is a man whom the world would have been well content to leave quiet in his early grave by the sea-shore in the sweetest of English islands; to leave him there to the soft melodies of the warm wind and the gentle rain, and the pious visits now and then of those who knew and loved him when his eye was bright and his voice eloquent with sparkling thoughts and warm affections. He had done nothing that the public cared for; had left no traces on the sands of Time that the next tide would not have effaced. But he lived amongst men who write books, amongst some of the very best of such; and two of the foremost of them loved him so well, that they could not let his memory die,—thought that the positive actual results of his life made known to the public were but faint indications of the power that lay in him though sorely foiled and baffled, and that he in his individual spiritual progress typified better than most the struggle that the age is passing through, its processes, and its results. But the two men, though united in affection for Sterling, were so different in other respects, that the memorial raised by the one could scarcely fail to be unsatisfactory to the other. Archdeacon Hare, the author of the earlier biography, is a man of encyclopœdic knowledge,—a profound classical scholar, the most learned and philosophical of modern English theologians, at once accurate and wide in his acquaintance with European history and literature. And this large survey of the forms under which the men of the past have thought and acted, has not led in him to an indifference to all forms, but rather to a keener sense of the organic vitality of forms, especially of national institutions, whether civil or ecclesiastical polities, states or churches. Moreover, apart from this general characteristic, which would lead to an intellectual and practical reverence for the institutions of his own land, and a hesitating caution in the introduction of constitutional changes, Mr. Hare is an English churchman of no ordinary cast. He has passed from the region of traditional belief, has skirted the bogs and quicksands of doubt and disbelief, and has found firm footing where alone it seems possible, in a revelation whose letter is colored by the human media through which it has passed, and in a faith whose highest mysteries are not only harmonious with but necessary complements to the truths of reason. The English Church is to him the purest embodiment of his religious idea, as the English constitution was to him, in common with Niebuhr, Coleridge, and other great thinkers, of the idea of a state. Such a man could not write a life like Sterling's without feeling that his relation to Christianity and the Church was the great fact for him as for all of us; and that the change in him, from hearty acceptance of Christian doctrine and church organization to a rejection of the former and something very like contempt for the latter, needed explanation. That explanation he has sought in the overthrow of the balance of Sterling's life through repeated attacks of illness, which shut him out from practical duties, and threw him entirely upon speculation, thereby disproportionately developing the negative side of him, already too strong from early defects of education: and few persons will, we should think, be found to deny Mr. Hare's general position, that the pursuit of speculative philosophy as the business of life has this tendency; Mr. Carlyle, we should have supposed least of all men. But a special cause interferes with Mr. Carlyle's recognition of the principle as applicable to Sterling. Christianity, as understood commonly perhaps everywhere, except, it may be, at Weimar and Chelsea, and church formulas certainly as understood everywhere, he is in the habit of classing under a category which in his hands has become an extensive one—that ofshams. He calls them by various forcible but ugly names,—as "old clothes," "spectral inanities," "gibbering phantoms," or, with plainer meaning, "huge unveracities and unrealities." That Sterling at any time of his life accepted these for "eternal verities" he cannot consider a step from the "no" to the "yes," nor their repudiation as a step backwards from the "yes" to the "no." Let him speak for himself. He is commenting on Sterling's entry into orders as Mr. Hare's curate at Hurstmonceaux:
"Concerning this attempt of Sterling's to find sanctuary in the old Church, and desperately grasp the hem of her garment in such manner, there will at present be many opinions; and mine must be recorded here in flat reproval of it, in mere pitying condemnation of it, as a rash, false, unwise and unpermitted step. Nay, among the evil lessons of his time to poor Sterling, I cannot but account this the worst; properly indeed, as we may say, the apotheosis, the solemn apology and consecration, of all the evil lessons that were in it to him. Alas! if we did remember the divine and awful nature of God's Truth, and had not so forgotten it as poor doomed creatures never did before,—should we, durst we in our most audacious moments, think of wedding it to the world's untruth,which is also, like all untruths, the devil's? Only in the world's last lethargy can such things be done, and accounted safe and pious! Fools! 'Do you think the living God is a buzzard idol,' sternly asks Milton, 'that you dare address Him in this manner?' Such darkness, thick sluggish clouds of cowardice and oblivious baseness, have accumulated on us; thickening as if towards the eternal sleep! It is not now known, what never needed proof or statement before, that Religion is not a doubt; that it is a certainty,—or else a mockery and horror. That none or all of the many things we are in doubt about, and need to have demonstrated and rendered probable, can by any alchemy be made a 'Religion' for us; but are and must continue a baleful, quiet or unquiet, Hypocrisy for us; and bring—salvation, do we fancy? I think it is another thing they will bring; and are, on all hands, visibly bringing, this good while!—--"
Herein consists the whole difference between Hare and Carlyle in their views of Sterling's career. They looked at it from such opposite points that what is the zenith to one is the nadir to the other. What Sterling himself thought of it, was strikingly expressed to his brother, Captain Anthony Sterling, by a comparison, of his case "to that of a young lady who has tragically lost her lover, and is willing to be half-hoodwinked into a convent, or in any noble or quasi-noble way to escape from a world which has become intolerable." The truth seems to be, that Sterling went into orders under the combined influence of remorse for the share he had inadvertently had in causing the disastrous fate of a near relative (Mr. Boyd, who was shot with Torrijos in Spain), and of a gradual disenchantment from trust in mere political schemes for the regeneration of mankind,—a disease more common to the genial young men of his time than of ours. That while in the exercise of his duties as a parish-priest he was energetic, useful, and happy, the evidence in Mr. Hare's book is fully sufficient to show. It is impossible to say whether his scepticism would have come upon him had he continued in that active career; but it is certainly a gratuitous supposition of Mr. Carlyle that the ill-health which put an end to it was only the outward and ostensible cause of its termination, and does not appear to be borne out by a single letter or expression of Sterling's own. Indeed, for years after he left Hurstmonceaux, he seemed to continue as firm in his attachment to Christianity as when he was there; though, on the other hand, it may well be doubted whether a man of Sterling's intellect, who would surrender his beliefs to Strauss'sLeben Jesu, is likely in the present day to keep them under any conceivable circumstances. We think that Mr. Hare on the one hand has attributed too exclusive an influence to Sterling's forced inactivity, and Mr. Carlyle has certainly not taken it sufficiently into account as a determining cause of his skepticism.
[3]The Life of John Sterling. By Thomas Carlyle. Published by Chapman & Hall. [Boston, republished by Ticknor, Reed & Fields, 1851.]
[3]The Life of John Sterling. By Thomas Carlyle. Published by Chapman & Hall. [Boston, republished by Ticknor, Reed & Fields, 1851.]
But whatever subject Mr. Carlyle takes up, and whether he be right or wrong in his opinions, he is sure to write an interesting book. He is never wearisome, and whether his tale have been twice told or not, he clothes it by his original treatment with an attractive charm that few writers can lend even to an entirely new subject. The maxim of the author ofModern Antiquity, that
"True genius is the ray that flingsA novel light o'er common things,"
"True genius is the ray that flingsA novel light o'er common things,"
has seldom been better illustrated than by this life of Sterling. The facts are most of them neither new nor of a nature in themselves to excite any very strong interest, but the details of the life are told with such simplicity, and yet with such constant reference to the grand educational process which they collectively make up, that one seems listening to a narrative by Sterling's guardian angel, loving enough to sympathize in the smallest minutiæ, and wise enough to see in each of them the greatness of the crowning result. Nor is this impression in the least impaired by the insignificance of the sum total of Sterling's actual achievements. For had they been tenfold greater than they were, they would have been as nothing in the presence of that which Mr. Carlyle looks to as the soul's great achievement—heroic nobleness of struggle and a calm abiding of the issue. After noticing the purity of Sterling's character, and his conformity to "the so-called moralities," his biographer goes on to say:
"In clear and perfect fidelity to Truth wherever found, in childlike and soldierlike, pious and valiant loyalty to the Highest, and what of good and evil that might send him,—he excelled among good men. The joys and the sorrows of his lot he took with true simplicity and acquiescence. Like a true son, not like a miserable mutinous rebel, he comported himself in this Universe. Extremity of distress—and surely his fervid temper had enough of contradiction in this world,—could not tempt him into impatience at any time. By no chance did you ever hear from him a whisper of those mean repinings, miserable arraignings and questionings of the Eternal Power, such as weak souls even well disposed will sometimes give way to in the pressure of their despair; to the like of this he never yielded, or showed the least tendency to yield;—which surely was well on his part. For the Eternal Power, I still remark, will not answer the like of this, but silently and terribly accounts it impious, blasphemous, and damnable, and now as heretofore will visit it as such. Not a rebel but a son, I said; willing to suffer when Heaven said, Thou shalt;—and withal, what is perhaps rarer in such a combination, willing to rejoice also, and right cheerily taking the good that was sent, whensoever or in whatever form it came."A pious soul we may justly call him; devoutly submissive to the will of the Supreme in all things: the highest and sole essential form which Religion can assume in man, and without which all forms of religion are a mockery and a delusion in man."
"In clear and perfect fidelity to Truth wherever found, in childlike and soldierlike, pious and valiant loyalty to the Highest, and what of good and evil that might send him,—he excelled among good men. The joys and the sorrows of his lot he took with true simplicity and acquiescence. Like a true son, not like a miserable mutinous rebel, he comported himself in this Universe. Extremity of distress—and surely his fervid temper had enough of contradiction in this world,—could not tempt him into impatience at any time. By no chance did you ever hear from him a whisper of those mean repinings, miserable arraignings and questionings of the Eternal Power, such as weak souls even well disposed will sometimes give way to in the pressure of their despair; to the like of this he never yielded, or showed the least tendency to yield;—which surely was well on his part. For the Eternal Power, I still remark, will not answer the like of this, but silently and terribly accounts it impious, blasphemous, and damnable, and now as heretofore will visit it as such. Not a rebel but a son, I said; willing to suffer when Heaven said, Thou shalt;—and withal, what is perhaps rarer in such a combination, willing to rejoice also, and right cheerily taking the good that was sent, whensoever or in whatever form it came.
"A pious soul we may justly call him; devoutly submissive to the will of the Supreme in all things: the highest and sole essential form which Religion can assume in man, and without which all forms of religion are a mockery and a delusion in man."
Every one not personally acquainted with Sterling will feel that the great interest of the book is in the light thrown by it on Mr. Carlyle's own belief. For good or evil, Mr. Carlyle is a power in the country; and thosewho watch eagerly the signs of the times have their eyes fixed upon him. What he would have us leave is plain enough, and that too with all haste, as a sinking ship that will else carry us—state, church, and sacred property—down along with it. But whither would he have us fly? Is there firm land, be it ever so distant? or is the wild waste of waters, seething, warring round as far as eye can reach, our only hope? the pilot-stars, shining fitfully through the parting of the storm-clouds, our only guidance? There are hearts on this land almost broken, whose old traditional beliefs, serving them at least as moral supports, Mr. Carlyle and teachers like him have undermined. Some betake themselves to literature, as Sterling did; some fill up the void with the excitement of politics; others feebly bemoan their irreparable loss, and wear an outward seeming of universal irony and sarcasm. Mr. Carlyle has no right, no man has any right, to weaken or destroy a faith which he cannot or will not replace with a loftier. We have no hesitation in saying, that the language which Mr. Carlyle is in the habit of employing towards the religion of England and of Europe is unjustifiable. He ought to have said nothing, or he ought to have said more. Scraps of verse from Goethe, and declamations, however brilliantly they may be phrased, are but a poor compensation for the slightest obscuring of "the hope of immortality brought to light by the gospel," and by it conveyed to the hut of the poorest man, to awaken, his crushed intelligence and lighten the load of his misery. Mr. Carlyle slights, after his contemptuous fashion, the poetry of his contemporaries: one of them has uttered in song some practical wisdom which he would do well to heed:
"O thou that after toil and stormMay'st seem to have reached a purer air,Whose faith has centre everywhere,Nor cares to fix itself to form,"Leave thou thy sister, when she prays,Her early heaven, her happy views;Nor thou with shadowed hint confuseA life that leads melodious days."Her faith through form is pure as thine,Her hands are quicker unto good.Oh, sacred be the flesh and bloodTo which she links a truth divine!"See thou, that countest reason ripeIn holding by the law within,Thou fail not in a world of sin,And even for want of such a type."
"O thou that after toil and stormMay'st seem to have reached a purer air,Whose faith has centre everywhere,Nor cares to fix itself to form,
"Leave thou thy sister, when she prays,Her early heaven, her happy views;Nor thou with shadowed hint confuseA life that leads melodious days.
"Her faith through form is pure as thine,Her hands are quicker unto good.Oh, sacred be the flesh and bloodTo which she links a truth divine!
"See thou, that countest reason ripeIn holding by the law within,Thou fail not in a world of sin,And even for want of such a type."
This life of Sterling will be useful to the class whose beliefs have given way before Mr. Carlyle's destroying energies; because it furnishes hints, not to be mistaken though not obtrusive, as to the extent to which they must be prepared to go if they would really be his disciples. If the path has in its very dangers an attraction for some, while others are shudderingly repelled, in either case the result is desirable, as it is the absence of certainty which causes the pain and paralyzes the power of action. At any rate, the doctrines of this teacher must be so much more intelligible to the mass when applied, as they are here, in commentary upon a life all whose details are familiar, because it is the life of a contemporary and a countryman, that all who read must inevitably be impressed with that great lesson of the philosophic poet—
"The intellectual power through words and thingsGoes sounding on,a dim and perilous way."
"The intellectual power through words and thingsGoes sounding on,a dim and perilous way."
Though John Sterling is of course the principal figure in the composition, and Mr. Carlyle's treatment the great attraction of the book, yet the figures in the background will be those to make most impression on the general reader. Coleridge stands there in striking but caricatured likeness; and even his most devoted admirers will not be sorry to see a portrait of their master by such a hand: and all will curiously observe the contrast between the sarcastic bitterness which colors the drawing of the philosophic Christian, and the kindly allowance through which the character of John Sterling's father, the famous "Thunderer" of theTimes, is delineated. We half suspect that Coleridge would have appeared to Mr. Carlyle a much greater man, if he had allowed him to declaim—"Harpocrates-Stentor," as Sterling calls him—with trumpet voice and for time unlimited on the divine virtues of Silence. There are besides, as in all Mr. Carlyle's works, passages of wise thought expressed in most felicitous language: of which not the least important is this advice given to Sterling in reference to his poetic aspirations:
"You can speak with supreme excellence; sing with considerable excellence you never can. And the Age itself, does it not, beyond most ages, demand and require clear speech; an Age incapable of being sung to, in any but a trivial manner, till these convulsive agonies and wild revolutionary overturnings readjust themselves? Intelligible word of command, not musical psalmody and fiddling, is possible in this fell storm of battle. Beyond all ages, our Age admonishes whatsoever thinking or writing man it has: Oh speak to me, some wise intelligible speech; your wise meaning, in the shortest and clearest way; behold, I am dying for want of wise meaning, and insight into the devouring fact: speak, if you have any wisdom! As to song so-called, and your fiddling talent,—even if you have one, much more if you have none,—we will talk of that a couple of centuries hence, when things are calmer again. Homer shall be thrice welcome; but only when Troy istaken: alas, while the siege lasts, and battle's fury rages every where, what can I do with the Homer? I want Achilleus and Odysseus, and am enraged to see them trying to be Homers!—"
"You can speak with supreme excellence; sing with considerable excellence you never can. And the Age itself, does it not, beyond most ages, demand and require clear speech; an Age incapable of being sung to, in any but a trivial manner, till these convulsive agonies and wild revolutionary overturnings readjust themselves? Intelligible word of command, not musical psalmody and fiddling, is possible in this fell storm of battle. Beyond all ages, our Age admonishes whatsoever thinking or writing man it has: Oh speak to me, some wise intelligible speech; your wise meaning, in the shortest and clearest way; behold, I am dying for want of wise meaning, and insight into the devouring fact: speak, if you have any wisdom! As to song so-called, and your fiddling talent,—even if you have one, much more if you have none,—we will talk of that a couple of centuries hence, when things are calmer again. Homer shall be thrice welcome; but only when Troy istaken: alas, while the siege lasts, and battle's fury rages every where, what can I do with the Homer? I want Achilleus and Odysseus, and am enraged to see them trying to be Homers!—"
These bricks from Babylon convey but scanty intimation of the varied interest of the book. However the readers of it may differ from its opinions, they cannot but find, even in Mr. Carlyle's misjudgments and prejudices, ample matter for serious reflection: for if he misjudges, it is generally because he is looking too intently at a single truth, or a single side of a truth; and such misjudgments are more suggestive than the completest propositions of a less earnest, keen-sighted, and impassionedthinker. He is indeed more a prophet than a logician or a man of science. And one lesson we may all learn from this, as from everything he writes,—and it is a lesson that interferes with no creed,—that honesty of purpose, and resoluteness to do and to say the thing we believe to be the true thing, will give heart to a man's life, when all ordinary motives to action and all ordinary supports of energy have failed like a rotten reed.
WRITTEN FOR THE INTERNATIONAL MONTHLY MAGAZINE.
BY A. OAKEY HALL.
Over my pebbly bed I flow:Till foaming—now splashing,Soon leaping—then dashingInto the chasm's bowl below,Where my pearl drops glittering,Rival the driven snow.The chains of Winter I spurn!All Summer and SpringThrough the grove I sing,Gladdening lily and fern,And the tired bird who kisses my cheekWith a dainty touch of his thirsty beak.And when from the mountain sideThe sunshines of MayCharm the snows away—The torrent's impulsive tideMingles its turbid strength with mine,Marking the thicket with surging line.Then as the grove I enter,The tree-tops shake,The granite beds quake,Into their very centre;Whilst the birds around on the soaking groundHush their song at my thunder sound!Man never with puny armMypower shall curb,Myflow disturb!Ha! ha! for nature's charm:Powerful in the rockThat human strength doth mock!Long as stern Father TimeShall harvest future years—Garnering joys and tears—In every land and clime:So long shall I from the moss-clad steep,Bubble or vaunt in the foaming leap!
Over my pebbly bed I flow:Till foaming—now splashing,Soon leaping—then dashingInto the chasm's bowl below,Where my pearl drops glittering,Rival the driven snow.
The chains of Winter I spurn!All Summer and SpringThrough the grove I sing,Gladdening lily and fern,And the tired bird who kisses my cheekWith a dainty touch of his thirsty beak.
And when from the mountain sideThe sunshines of MayCharm the snows away—The torrent's impulsive tideMingles its turbid strength with mine,Marking the thicket with surging line.
Then as the grove I enter,The tree-tops shake,The granite beds quake,Into their very centre;Whilst the birds around on the soaking groundHush their song at my thunder sound!
Man never with puny armMypower shall curb,Myflow disturb!Ha! ha! for nature's charm:Powerful in the rockThat human strength doth mock!
Long as stern Father TimeShall harvest future years—Garnering joys and tears—In every land and clime:So long shall I from the moss-clad steep,Bubble or vaunt in the foaming leap!
Under the dams I go,With sullen plash,And humbled dash,On giant wheels below,That proudly turn where huge fires burn,Mocking the sunset glow!As the "feeders" I enter,High windows shake,And brick walls quake,Deep to their very centre,WhileIpainfully sob to the taunting throbIn the heart of my mill tormentor.Afar up the arid hill,Huger wheels are turning—Fiercer fires are burning—The mountain torrent is still!And I mourn me now for the thicket's greenIn the grove where our surging line was see.Man with his stalwart arms,Plying the axe and spade—Reft the grove of its shade,Dissolving nature's charms;With genius to plan it blasted the granite,As involving the earthquake's aid.Nothing of freedom now I know!For the glare of the brick,The machinery click,And the mist from the wheels below,Blindeth and stunneth—I faint—I reel.I yield my charm to the spell of steel!
Under the dams I go,With sullen plash,And humbled dash,On giant wheels below,That proudly turn where huge fires burn,Mocking the sunset glow!
As the "feeders" I enter,High windows shake,And brick walls quake,Deep to their very centre,WhileIpainfully sob to the taunting throbIn the heart of my mill tormentor.
Afar up the arid hill,Huger wheels are turning—Fiercer fires are burning—The mountain torrent is still!And I mourn me now for the thicket's greenIn the grove where our surging line was see.
Man with his stalwart arms,Plying the axe and spade—Reft the grove of its shade,Dissolving nature's charms;With genius to plan it blasted the granite,As involving the earthquake's aid.
Nothing of freedom now I know!For the glare of the brick,The machinery click,And the mist from the wheels below,Blindeth and stunneth—I faint—I reel.I yield my charm to the spell of steel!
The new nautical story by the always successful author ofTypee, has for its name-giving subject a monster first introduced to the world of print by Mr. J. N. Reynolds, ten or fifteen years ago, in a paper for theKnickerbocker, entitledMocha Dick. We received a copy when it was too late to review it ourselves for this number of theInternational, and therefore make use of a notice of it which we find in the LondonSpectator:
"This sea novel is a singular medley of naval observation, magazine article writing, satiric reflection upon the conventionalisms of civilized life, and rhapsody run mad. So far as the nautical parts are appropriate and unmixed, the portraiture is truthful and interesting. Some of the satire, especially in the early parts, is biting and reckless. The chapter-spinning is various in character; now powerful from the vigorous and fertile fancy of the author, now little more than empty though sounding phrases. The rhapsody belongs to wordmongering where ideas are the staple; where it takes the shape of narrative or dramatic fiction, it is phantasmal—an attempted description of what is impossible in nature and without probability in art; it repels the reader instead of attracting him.
[4]The Whale. By Herman Melville, Author of "Typee," "Omoo," "Redburn," "Mardi," "White Jacket." In three volumes. Published by Bentley.[Moby Dick, or the Whale: By Herman Melville: 1 vol. 12mo. New-York, Harper & Brothers.]
[4]The Whale. By Herman Melville, Author of "Typee," "Omoo," "Redburn," "Mardi," "White Jacket." In three volumes. Published by Bentley.
[Moby Dick, or the Whale: By Herman Melville: 1 vol. 12mo. New-York, Harper & Brothers.]
"The elements of the story are a South Sea whaling voyage, narrated by Ishmael, one of the crew of the ship Pequod, from Nantucket. Its 'probable' portions consist of the usual sea matter in that branch of the industrial marine; embracing the preparations for departure, the voyage, the chase and capture of whale, with the economy of cutting up, &c., and the peculiar discipline of the service. This matter is expanded by a variety of digressions on the nature and characteristics of the sperm whale, the history of the fishery, and similar things, in which a little knowledge is made the excuse for a vast many words. The voyage is introduced by several chapters in which life in American seaports is rather broadly depicted.
"The 'marvellous' injures the book by disjointing the narrative, as well as by its inherent want of interest, at least as managed by Mr. Melville. In the superstition of some whalers, (grounded upon the malicious foresight which occasionally characterizes the attacks of the sperm fish upon the boats sent to capture it,) there is awhitewhale which possesses supernatural power. To capture or even to hurt it is beyond the art of man; the skill of the whaler is useless; the harpoon does not wound it; it exhibits a contemptuous strategy in its attacks upon the boats of its pursuers; and happy is the vessel were only loss of limb, or of a single life, attends its chase. Ahab, the master of thePequod—a mariner of long experience, stern resolve, and indomitable courage, the high hero of romance, in short, transferred to a whale-ship—has lost his leg in a contest with the white whale. Instead of daunting Ahab, the loss exasperates him; and by long brooding over it his reason becomes shaken. In this condition, he undertakes the voyage; making the chase of his fishy antagonist the sole abject of his thoughts, and, so far as he can without exciting overt insubordination among his officers, the object of his proceedings.
"Such a groundwork is hardly natural enough for a regular-built novel, though it might form a tale, if properly managed. But Mr. Melville's mysteries provoke wonder at the author rather than terror at the creation; the soliloquies and dialogues of Ahab, in which the author attempts delineating the wild imaginings of monomania, and exhibiting some profoundly speculative views of things in general, induce weariness or skipping; while the whole scheme mars, as we have said, the nautical continuity of story—greatly assisted by various chapters of a bookmaking kind.
"Perhaps the earliest chapters are the best although they contain little adventure. Their topics are fresher to English readers than the whale-chase, and they have more direct satire. One of the leading personages in the voyage is Queequeg, a South Sea Islander, that Ishmael falls in with at New-Bedford, and with whom he forms a bosom friendship.
"Queequeg was a native of Kokovoko, an island far away to the West and South. It is not down in any map; true places never are.
"While yet a new-hatched savage, running wild about his native woodlands in a grass clout, followed by the nibbling goats, as if he were a green sapling,—even then, in Queequeg's ambitious soul lurked a strong desire to see something more of Christendom than a specimen whaler or two. His father was a high chief, a king; his uncle a high priest; and on the maternal side he boasted aunts who were the wives of unconquerable warriors. There was excellent blood in his veins—royal stuff; though sadly vitiated, I fear, by the cannibal propensity he nourished in his untutored youth.
"A Sag Harbour ship visited his father's bay; and Queequeg sought a passage to Christian lands. But the ship having her full complement of seamen, spurned his suit; and not all the King his father's influence could prevail. But Queequeg vowed a vow. Alone in his canoe, he paddled off to a distant strait, which he knew the ship must pass through when she quitted the island. On one side was a coral reef; on the other a low tongue of land, covered with mangrove thickets, that grew out into the water. Hiding his canoe, still afloat, among these thickets, with its prow seaward, he sat down in the stern, paddle low in hand; and when the ship was gliding by, like a flash he darted out—gained her side—with one backward dash of his foot capsized and sank his canoe—climbed up the chains—and throwing himself at full length upon the deck, grappled a ring-bolt there, and swore not to let it go though hacked in pieces.
"In vain the captain threatened to throw him overboard—suspended a cutlass over his naked wrists: Queequeg was the son of a king, and Queequeg budged not. Struck by his desperate dauntlessness, and his wild desire to visit Christendom, the captain at last relented, and told him he might make himself at home. But this fine young savage—this sea Prince of Whales—never saw the captain's cabin. They put him down among the sailors, and made a whaleman of him. But, like the Czar Peter content to toil in the ship-yards of foreign cities, Queequeg disdained no seeming ignominy, if thereby he might haply gain the power of enlightening his untutored countrymen. For at bottom—so he told me—he was actuated by a profound desire to learn among the Christians the arts whereby to make his people still happier than they were, and more than that, still better than they were. But, alas! the practices of whalemen soon convinced him that even Christians could be both miserable and wicked, infinitely more so than all his father's heathens. Arrived at last in old Sag Harbour, and seeing what the sailors did there, and then going on to Nantucket, and seeing how they spent their wages in that place also, poor Queequeg gave it up for lost. Thought he, it's a wicked world in all meridians: I'll die a Pagan.
"The strongest point of the book is its 'characters.' Ahab, indeed, is a melodramatic exaggeration, and Ishmael is little more than a mouthpiece; but the harpooners, the mates, and several of the seamen, are truthful portraitures of the sailor as modified by the whaling service. The persons ashore are equally good, though they are soon lost sight of. The two Quaker owners are the author's means for a hit at the religious hypocrisies. Captain Bildad, an old sea-dog, has got rid of every thing pertaining to the meeting-house save an occasional 'thou' and 'thee.' Captain Peleg, in American phrase, 'professes religion.' The following extract exhibits the two men when Ishmael is shipped: