Recent Literature

THE volume of Dr. Palfrey’s History of New England, just published, is the continuation of the two abridged volumes of his greater work, and it carries us forward through a most important period to the time when the movers of the American Revolution were born and some of them were well advanced towards manhood. It covers a space of thirty-eight years which were remarkable not only for many exciting events, but also for the initiation of principles for which the people of Massachusetts never ceased to struggle. The vacation of their charter under James II. had made them directly subject to the crown, and at the sovereign’s pleasure they were vexed by a succession of placemen in the governorship, who cared little for the interests of

the Colony, and seem to have been chiefly anxious for the establishment of some fixed salary. Looked at from one point of view, the efforts of the colonists ended in a series of failures ; but the defeat was not altogether upon their side, and neither Phipps, nor Bellomnnt, nor Dudley, nor Shute can be said to have wholly prevailed against the Legislature, or to have been comfortable in their office. Their pay was scant and very uncertain ; their power was stubbornly contested. The first of them, indeed, was not misliked by the people he came to rule, and his military enterprises against the French, though so disastrous, were still felt to be endeavors for the public good. Besides, Phipps was in favor of reinstating the abrogated charter ; but Bellomont, an Episcopalian, a believer in the king’s personal government of the Colonies, ancl in every way an alien, found no sympathy, though much show of respect; while Dudley, recreant to the religion, the hopes, the principles of his fellow-colonists, was hated by the people he was sent to use for the profit of England, and regarded for nothing but his eminent abilities. As for Shute he was a mere office-holder, without the disposition or the dignity to command their goodwill, and upon his prerogatives the Legislature successfully encroached, holding him in their interest solely by the stout grip they kept upon the public purse, and the prudence with which they doled out his grants of salary.

Ex officio the governor was the spy and creature of the Lords of Trade and the king, whose ends he was to promote at the expense of the colonists, and the people over whom such a foreigner was set naturally made his place as unpleasant as they could. Massachusetts, the most populous and powerful of the New England Colonies, was irritated by the fact that Connecticut and Rhode Island might choose their own executive, while she was subject to an English governor appointed without regard to her welfare or preferences. She had, moreover, to bear the brunt of the war with the French and Indians, while her sister Colonies enjoyed immunity from both the sorrows and expenses ot the barbarous contest. To recount the events of those thirty-eight years of her history is to catalogue woes which only a people of heroic pith and force could have survived. First came the bitter disappointment of William and Mary’s indifference, and then opposition, to their desire for the revival of their charter, after they had hoped so much from the accession of princes nominally of their own religious belief and with their traditions of Self-government; then the French and Indian war broke out afresh, and one hideous massacre followed another during the summers of 1689 and 1690; then came Sir William Phipps’s expedition against Quebec, undertaken at an expense prodigious to the poverty of the Colony, and in its utter failure falling with ruinous recoil upon the exhausted people ; then came the issue of a paper currency, with the miseries following its rapid depreciation of fifty per cent ; then, fast upon these miseries, and while the Indians continued to harry the frontier with scarcely abated ferocity, the people were convulsed by the witchcraft tragedy at Salem, with all its terrors, crimes, and sorrows, after which the Indian war raged as before, with many pitiless murders in the outlying settlements of Maine, and with the terrible slaughter at Deerfield in 1704; then a wasteful and futile expedition was sent against Nova Scotia in 1707, and in 1712 an English fleet co-operated with the Colony for the reduction of Quebec, and was miserably disabled by drifting upon the rocks near the mouth of the St. Lawrence, losing many vessels and a thousand lives, and finally returning to Boston without having been within seven hundred miles of the Canadian capital.

This all but intolerable disaster fell upon a people struggling with the financial chaos produced by former costly defeats, and decimated in population by the ceaseless incursions of the enemy, the record of which is a dismal undertone throughout the whole volume. But it would be a singular misconception of Dr. Palfrey’s labors to consider this history, except in a very subordinate degree, as a mere chronicle of events. To these of course it must be faithful, and it gives them with a well-ordered distinctness that fixes their exact value and relation in the record ; but it is mainly to be prized for the analytical clearness with which the political and economical questions of the time are brought before the reader. The gradual rise of Massachusetts from the helpless dependence in which the vacation of her charter left her, to an attitude of bold resistance, is the interesting study of an historian who is writing English as well as New English history. His clear light brings the character of English statesmen into novel relief, and it leases William of Orange, for example, not so pleasing a figure in his arbitrary treatment of the free people hoping redress from him, as the imagination may have made him before. But those were days when it was thought good policy by the mother country to compel the colonist to trade solely in English vessels, and to send his produce to England before carrying it to any other country ; to forbid importation of any European manufactures save through England, and to outlaw the commerce in colonial manufactures ; to reserve in the primeval forests all pines above two feet through for the use of the royal navy ; and to do many other stupid and oppressive acts which must end in the rebellion and independence of the Colonies. It is amazing to contemplate the arrogant and blundering greed which in the cool tints of Dr. Palfrey’s study forms the portrait of the mother country, and the wonder is that her dealings with the colonies were endured so long. It is a good effect in this history that the Revolution, which is scarcely named, looms increasingly before the reader, and that the result of a half-century later is forecast in the calm examination of facts which none concerned in them dreamt of as having other than a present significance.

The chapter on the witchcraft excitement is interesting even after Mr. Upham’s two volumes, and it is an admirable instance of the author’s condensation, a succinctness in which no transparency or significance is lost. Dr. Palfrey takes the same daylight view of those terrible transactions that Mr. Upham does, attributing them to the wicked folly of the afflicted children in the first place, and then to the dark superstitions which the ministers, magistrates, and people of New England shared with all nations of their day. One of the best pieces of writing in the volume, or at any rate the most quotable, is the character of Stoughton, the relentless judge of the poor creatures who perished by his never-repented error. This character is drawn with the subtility felt in all Dr. Palfrey’s analyses of men and motives, and with a certain warmth which he does not often permit himself (except in speaking of Rhode Island), but which will not make it the less acceptable to the reader : —

“He had filled many offices and performed their duties with a surly assiduity, which commanded a certain sort of esteem, He perhaps loved nobody, though the winning as well as commanding powers of Dudley may have blended something of affection with the deference into which he was subdued by the genius of that highly endowed man. On the other hand, if he was not loved, Stoughton was not a man to be made uncomfortable by isolation, while it was a pleasure to him to feel that he had some command of that confidence which men repose in such as they see to be indifferent to their good-will, and independent of it, as coveting nothing which

it has to bestow. . . . . The prosecution of the witches was a proceeding quite to his mind; the ‘stern joy’ of inflicting great misery under the coercion of an unflinching sense of duty was strangely congenial with his proud and narrow nature ; he had a Special relish for that class of duties which, bringing wretchedness on others, may be supposed to cost the doer a struggle agains the remonstrances of pity. When, sympathizing with the almost universal sorrow and remorse that succeeded the witchcraft madness, his gentle associate Sewall publicly bemoaned his sin, and in agony implored the Divine forgiveness, Stoughton professed that, whatever mistakes might have been made, he saw ‘no reason to repent of what he had done with the fear of God before his eyes.’ While, on the one hand, his habitual unconcern about popular favor generally gave him the command of as much of it as he cared for, he was helped, on the other, by the friendship of the clergy, which he took as much pains to secure as he ever thought it worth while to bestow for any amiable purpose. If the people did not want him, he could be content; at all events, he would not complain or solicit ; if they did want him, he would serve them without fraud and without ambition, but it must be after his own dreary fashion, — a fashion to be dictated, as the occasions arose, not only by his judgment and sense of duty, but by his prejudices and his temper. He meant to be excellently firm ; he excelled in being churlish, wilful, and obstinate, in a style of the most unexceptionable dignity.”

The affairs of Massachusetts naturally occupy, by reason of their vastly greater importance, the greater share of the historian’s attention ; but events in prosperous Connecticut, miserable New Hampshire, and peculiar Rhode Island arc accurately and diligently studied. The “land of steady habits ” waxed populous and happy, while Massachusetts was annoyed by governors within and harrassed by French and Indians from without, and her annals would afford even less material for an historian less tolerant of the unpicturesque than Dr. Palfrey. But one feels that he does them justice, and he evokes at last a sort of idyllic image of the prosperity of the Colony in the last days of Queen Anne: —

“ A condition of society so happy as that enjoyed by Connecticut at this period, especially during the long administration of Governor Saltonstall, has been rare in the experience of mankind. If from time to time the charter of her liberties was threatened, the clanger of a repetition of such misgovernment as that of Andros was too remote to excite serious solicitude. A prevailing mutual respect and confidence softened the intercourse among citizens and between citizens and rulers. The friendly sentiments inspired by religious faith were promoted by a general harmony of religious opinion. An education sufficient for the advantageous transaction of business, for the enjoyment of leisure, and for a measure of refinement of mind, was offered at the public cost to the youth of every family near its own door. Frugality and industry, friends to rectitude and content, secured a comfortable living, and a comfortable living was not to be had without them. A steady but unoppressive force of public opinion rendered a life of blameless morals easy and attractive, and assured to a publicspirited and religious life a career of dignity and honor. A remarkable approach to an equal distribution of property prevented the assumptions and resentments of caste, and the jealousy of disproportioned privileges. The people of Connecticut enjoyed to a singular degree a fulfilment of their prayer ‘ that peace and unity might be continued among them, and that they might have the blessings of the God of peace upon them.’ ”

With Rhode Island it was a very different matter, and we leave to the antiquarians and historiographers of that doughty little Commonwealth the task of quoting from this volume the historian’s accounts of her colonial state and character, which, we foresee, may cause some question among them. It only remains for us to testify to the admirable execution of his work, its easy and intelligible presentation of the affairs of a period of great perplexities and contradictions, its exquisite neatness and accuracy of style, — virtues which will hardly be denied either in Providence or Newport. We have, indeed, but poorly indicated the scope and value of a book which will best commend itself to the best class of readers.

Mr. Morley, in his “ Voltaire,” has given us another of those profound and brilliant studies of the eighteenth century, which we fear have not yet made him as well known in this country as he deserves to be. He can as yet hardly be called more than a “rising” writer, even in England. But as the most gifted English champion (if we except Mr. Mill) of that general way of looking upon life which is known as positivism, he may end by being recognized as one of the leaders of popular opinion in his generation. For it is useless to close our eyes to the more and more important part which the mode of thought he represents is destined to play in our intellectual and social evolution for some time to come. And as the opinions of average men are swayed more by examples and types than by mere reasons, so a personality so accomplished as Mr. Morlcy’s cannot fail by its mere attractiveness to influence all who come within its reach, and inspire them with a certain friendliness towards the faith that animates it. The standard example, Goethe, is ever at hand. But to be thus widely effective a man must not be a specialist. Mr. John Mill, weighty and many-sided as he is by nature and culture, is yet deficient in the æthctic direction ; and the same is true of M. Littré in France. Their lances lack that final tipping with light that made Voltaire’s so irresistible. What Henry IV.’s soldiers followed was his white plume ; and that imponderable superfluity, grace, in some shape, seems one factor without which no awakening of men’s sympathies on a large scale can take place. Mr. Tyndall has emotion enough, but, besides being such a coxcomb, he is of too light weight intellectually. Mr. Huxley is a specialist, and too apt to be a mere bully, Mr. Spencer is a dry reasoner. But in Mr. Morley we find a thoroughly sympathetic intelligence of the most diverse modes of feeling united with what is rarely enough found in its company, a vehement moral or constructive impulse, and added to these a powerful reasoning faculty, a keen sense of the beautiful, and a command of expression which, if it were somewhat chastened, would place him high among the masters of English rhetoric. No essential human interest lies out of the range of his critical point of view ; opponents cannot say of him as of so many of the smaller fry of his school, that he ignores any important factor of human life. What he shall achieve with these advantages will henceforth depend entirely on his self-discipline and intellectual conscientiousness.

The present work is of about the same size and scope as Dr. Strauss’s critical biography of Voltaire. That little work has already been acknowledged as classical by competent critics ; but we must admit Morley’s to be the weightier performance of the two. It is an attempt to interpret Voltaire to the modern reader, and might, in the old-fashioned sense of the word, be called an apology for him. Mr. Morley thinks the work of destruction is not yet completed in Europe, and has no patience with that all-tolerance bred of intelligence and scepticism which characterizes so much modern thinking, “ when each controversial man at arms is eager to have it thought that he wears the colors of the other side, when the theologian would fain pass for rationalist and the freethinker for a person with his own orthodoxies if you only knew them, and when philosophic candor and intelligence are supposed to have hit their final climax in the doctrine that everything is both true and false at the same time.” Accordingly while he merely points out in passing the quarrelsomeness, uncleanness, indelicacy in money matters, and want of personal dignity which characterized his hero, he dwells at great length on his virtues. So much of what was gained for us by Voltaire and his generation at the risk of their lives, is now the tritest and most commonplace of our possessions, and it is easy to be unjust in the judgment we pass on their intellectual originality. Who now, for instance, can call up the fresh wild thrill with which the notion of the possibility of an unhindered exercise of “ reason ” by all men filled them ? The repeated banishments and imprisonments which checkered Voltaire’s youth were not well calculated to produce in him either “ sweetness ” or “ light,” and practically our author’s treatment of him is undoubtedly the fairest. His placableness, his generosity to individuals, his courage, his burning humanity and love of justice, his belief in reason, and his unconquerable energy, all receive fitting commemoration in these pages. We have no space for a closer analysis of the book, but we cordially recommend it to our readers as perhaps the most important English literary work of the year. And as we have said so much of Mr. Morley himself, we will append a passage which expresses his creed and is a favorable specimen of his style : “ It is monstrous to suppose that because a man does not accept your synthesis, he is therefore a being without a positive creed or a coherent body of belief capable of guiding and inspiring Conduct. There are new solutions for him, if the old are fallen dumb. If he no longer believes death to be a stroke from the sword of God’s justice, but the leaden footfall of an inflexible law of matter, the humility of his awe is deepened, and the tenderness of his pity made holier, that creatures who can love so much should have their days so shut round with a wall of darkness. The purifying anguish of remorse will be stronger, not weaker, when he has trained himself to look upon every wrong in thought, every duty omitted from act, each infringement of the inner spiritual law which humanity is constantly perfecting for its own guidance, less as a breach of the decrees of an unseen tribunal, than as an ungrateful infection, weakening and corrupting the future of his brothers ; and he will be less effectually raised from inmost prostration of soul by a doubtful subjective reconciliation, so meanly comfortable to his own individuality, than by hearing full in his ear the sound of the cry of humanity craving sleepless succor for her children. That swelling consciousness of height and freedom with which the old legends of an omnipotent divine majesty fill the breast, may still remain, for how shall the universe ever cease to be a sovereign wonder of overwhelming power and superhuman fixedness of law ? And a man will be already in no mean paradise, if, at the hour of sunset, a good hope can fall upon him like harmonies of music, that the earth shall still be fair, and the happiness of every feeling creature still receive a constant augmentation, and each good cause still find worthy defenders, when the memory of his own poor name and personality has long been blotted out of the brief recollection of men forever,” We ourselves hope for a still better synthesis than this ; but since we must have positivism among us too, the nearer it approaches to the type of that professed by Mr. Morley, the better it will be.

Mr. Haweis’s work on “ Music and Morals ” is, taken as a whole, a most useful publication. Treatises on music of any real value appeal, for the most part, only to musicians by profession, and are almost wholly unfitted for the reading of the general mass of music-lovers who constitute what is called “the musical public.” Nearly all musical works of a more popular character have, on the other hand, been written in such a condescendingly didactic vein as to be little less than insulting. Mr. Haweis’s book is well fitted for the reading of the general “musical public,'’ and it is no faint praise to say that the author has done his work well. To write a book of this sort is not so easy as may at first appear. In writing for any but the more cultivated class ot musicians, an author finds himself at once deprived of the use of by far the larger part of his technical vocabulary, and is constantly forced to express himself in awkward circumlocutions if he would not risk a charge both of pedantry and obscurity. Such is the almost universal ignorance both in England and America of the technical phraseology as well as of what might be called the anatomical structure of music, that it is difficult to discuss any of the higher questions in the art without interweaving a rather irksome amount of rudimentary instruction. But it is precisely these higher questions in music on which the public has instinctively conceived opinions of its own, probably in all vagueness and without formulating them, and it is only on this æsthetic ground that the cultivated musician can meet his public to any real purpose. Mr. Haweis seems to have fully appreciated both the difficulties and the possibilities of the situation, and has, with great wisdom and skill, avoided, on the one hand, filling his book with the tough, dry details of musical syntax, and, on the other, that condescending, Kindergarten spirit of instruction which tries to sugar the bitter pill of musical learning. The few condensed biographies of composers in the second part of the book, although necessarily sketchy and incomplete, are interesting and well written. The descriptions of musical instruments, especially of various bells and chimes, and much of the criticism in the volume, are valuable from the author’s evident knowledge of his subject and his genial impartiality. Some of his arttheories, in the “philosophical” part of the work, are at best fanciful and at times not strictly logical. Ilis manner of proving the emotional properties of music, for instance, must be taken as nothing more than a rather ingenious conceit, not unamusing to read, but of no philosophical value. The possibility he hints at of a new art springing up in which colors shall become the medium of emotional expression as tones are in music is an attractive, if not a thoroughly original fancy ; though we hardly suppose that it could attain that importance as an art which he is inclined to give it. His objections to the opera as a form of art seem to us to be thoroughly illogical and false. He bases these objections on the assertion that “ music expresses the emotions which attend certain characters and situations, but not the characters and situations themselves.” Had this been brought as an argument against the modern orchestral “ programme-music ” or the dramatic cantata, it might to some extent be valid ; but Mr. Haweis apparently fails to sec that what he takes as the strongest argument against the opera, is in fact the strongest argument in its favor. It is in the dramatic cantata and the symphonic poem that music is called upon to delineate characters and situations, but in the opera both characters and situations are placed before our very eyes in most tangible reality, and music has free scope in the very sphere that he would assign to it, that of expressing the accompanying emotions. We think that the author’s mistake may have arisen from confounding the opera in its present state with the lyric drama as it might be. We can conceive of no form of art more intrinsically false and vicious than the conventional opera, but we firmly believe that the true lyric drama, where music is allowed its proper emotional sphere, will in time become a high form of art, and even the highest.

Among the many books that are now appearing on the labor question, all endeavoring to analyze the troubles which seem to threaten such ruin to society, M. Le Play’s “ Organization of Labor,” which has been carefully translated from the French by Dr, Emerson, is very well worthy of study. The author has long been well known in Europe as a careful Student of social questions; as a senator of France he especially interested himself in them, under the encouragement of the Emperor, who may perhaps at some future time get more credit than it is now usual to give him for a real interest in the condition of his people. We may therefore feel confidence in the thoroughness with which the author has done his work. In the first place, he recognizes freely the peculiar conditions of his country, proceeding from the French Revolution and from the strongly marked nature of his fellowcountrymen : he foresaw, like many other intelligent Frenchmen, the dangers that the nation ran from its excesses and shortcomings, and it was for them that he earnestly sought some remedy. The various evils he traces to the growth of indifference in matters of religion, especially in regard of the simple* laws of the Ten Commandments, and among other things the abandonment of respect for family and domestic ties. He sees, what indeed strikes every careful observer, the changes that have been introduced into the world by the general growth of those ideas which have filtered down to the “masses,” by whom they are hailed with enthusiasm, while they have been, for the most part, rejected as valueless by those for whom they were first intended. He draws an exceedingly interesting picture of the state of France at different periods, as well as its present condition. He is especially eloquent against the law of Franee which deprives the father of testamentary liberty; a law which, he says, not only gradually, but steadily, impoverishes the country, but also helps destroy the respect of the children for their parents. Respect for women is diminished by the peculiarity of the French code in regard to seduction, holding it neither a crime nor the violation of a contract. Thus with the three chief inducements for improvement gone, sinful man, with no belief in God, no reverence for his parents, no respect for woman, has steadily sunk lower and lower. Without going more deeply into the discussion of M. Le Play’s explanation of some of the social problems of the day, it will only be necessary for us to recommend his book as an exceedingly thorough, temperate, and, to our thinking, accurate statement of these questions and of their causes. The history of France is peculiar among modern nations, and in the prevailing ignorance much may be learned about it from this volume. In regard, however, to the remedies he suggests, opinions will probably be at greater variance. It is easier to detect disease than to find a cure. What he wishes to see is a France that shall be like what he calls a model nation, in which “ prosperity everywhere comes from men who show a reverence for God, and derives its principal source from fathers devoted to their families, and proprietors held in esteem by their workmen. It becomes perfect when the magistrate and spiritual advisers manifest a sense of their proper duties and an affection for the people.” This is a difficult problem, but one which may probably be better helped by education than by preaching ; every age has its own troubles, and they are seldom cured simply by a return to the laws of a preceding time : if one side of faith is superstition, which only soothes the mind to obedience, and one side of inquiry is scepticism, which renders its victim uneasy and discontented, they are two evils which demand different treatment. Irreverence is never cured by biding a man be reverent. He must see how cheap is the glory of his crime. And if, nowadays, the simplicity of family-life is gone, if the fireside is so much a thing of the past, no amount of good wishes can keep the young at home as they were before it became easy for them to leave for distant parts where their handiwork was more strongly needed. The days of patriarchs have gone by, but still we need not fear that there will be no more honesty in the world. To make sure of this honesty, however, is the real question that the whole world, collectively, and every man and woman in it, has to solve every hour of their existence, and certainly how much this good work may be aided in France by the aid of an intelligent government is clearly shown in this book.

We suppose there could be no testimony to the extent of Charles Dickens’s fame and labors more striking than the publication of such books as Mr. Pierce’s “ Dictionary” of his characters and incidents, and Mr. De Fontaine’s “Cyclopedia” of his best thoughts. It was centuries before Dante and Shakespeare fell into the hands of the concordances and elegant extractors ; but within three years of his death Dickens receives a like distinction. It is a little droll to turn to “ Blimber, Doctor,” in the Dickens Dictionary, and read, as if it were the life of a real person in a biographical dictionary, “ Proprietor of an expensive private boarding-school for boys, at Brighton, to which Paul Dombey is sent to be educated,” and then a passage from the romance, in which “Blimber, Doctor,” is more minutely described by the author of his being. Besides these brief biographical sketches of each character, and the explanatory passages from the author, where the importance of any personage demands it, there is an analysis of the plot of each of the romances; and we have thus a concentrated essence of Dickens, — a sort of intellectual Liebig Extract, —very compact, very portable, and very readily purveyable, when diluted with conversation, to travellers or invalids. It might be used during lulls of the “German,” instead of the beeftea which it has been the fashion to offer the debilitated dancers ; and, on the whole, it is a book on which, if spirits care for their literature after death, the humorous ghost of Charles Dickens might look with mixed feelings. About its convenience for readers, and about its being a most agreeable collection of well-chosen extracts, there is no question. You take it up, and without trouble come upon the familiar scenes that have moved you so often to sorrow or to laughter, and your fragment of time, long or short, is passed as lightly as time can be made to move on this reluctant planet. The book is a very complete dictionary and admirable compendium, and has much the same virtue, that may be ascribed to the “ Cyclopedia of best Thoughts,” while it is not nearly so long. The “Dictionary” does not much exceed five hundred duodecimo pages, while a hundred closely printed pages (larger than those of Harper’s Magazine) in the “ Cyclopedia ” only take you half-way through the letter C. We believe Mr. De Fontaine has done his work very acceptably, and it brings vividly before you the vast variety of Dickens’s thoughts and topics, but there is not necessarily any end to it. There is nothing to stop him, but his conscience, from taking all the Dickens romances apart and alphabetically serving them up piecemeal. There arc twenty-six letters in the alphabet, with ampersand, twenty-seven : let Mr. De Fontaine think on a thousand or fifteen hundred pages of “ best thoughts,” and be sparing. The very best thoughts of all English literature might be got into the same space.

If ever there was a time and place of which the fair pastoral picture Mr. Whittier has drawn us in “ The Pennsylvania Pilgrim ” might be true, it seems as if that time and place might be the Quaker Province in the seventeenth century; but at any rate one feels that it ought to be all true of Daniel Pastorius, the young German scholar, who left the books and learned friendships of the Old World behind, and turning Quaker came to the new land of Penn and helped found Germantown near the young city of brotherly love, and marries, and lived out his long, calm, useful days there, tilling the soil, reading his books, corresponding with far-off savans, and sought alike bv the neighboring savages and by the gentle enthusiasts of all kinds who wandered into the nerv realm of peace. The poem opens with the only touch — and a very slight one — of drama in it : the scene at eventide in the sage’s garden where his good wife is tending her flowers, when he returns and tells her of the cold reception of his memorial against slaveholding in the yearly meeting in Philadelphia : —

“ ‘ What is it, my Pastorius? ’ As she spoke
A slow, faint smile across his features broke,
Sadder than tears. ‘ Dear heart,’ he said, ‘ our folk

The rest is a picture of Pastorius’s life of tranquil industry and good deeds, — a picture in which all readers of the poet can believe there are lovely and elevating qualities : —

This is the spirit of the whole serenely meditative poem,—glimpsing now the fair world without and now the calm world within, and not unlit by certain rays of quiet humor, as where the poet wonders if the soft climate had not something to do with Pennsylvanian peacefulness : —

— questions which Mr. Lowell has touched in his note of that easterly weather of ours,

We believe our readers have seen all the “ other poems ” of this little volume. Here is “ The Pageant,” one of the best descriptive poems in American literature (which is rich enough in these), the fine ballads of “ Marguerite ” and “ The Sisters,” and other pieces in which the aspiration and morality and humanity of the poet blend in a lyrical strain that takes benign sweetness and color from all the influences of nature.

“ The Rose Garden ” is not a translation from the French ; but its author shows such entire intimacy with French habits of life and modes of thought, that it might easily be taken for a translation. The scene is laid in the neighborhood of the Pyrenees, and the events are such as would naturally happen in the daily lives of two very quiet and respectable families of that region, who are yet not wholly ignorant of Paris, of the Northern Provinces, or even of England. It is one of those stories, which can hardly be too much multiplied, and which have for their object the diffusion of better knowledge of France and her people in their family relations. It is believed by many good people in America and England that home life in France is nearly destitute of two elements which lie at the very heart of all domestic happiness in England, France, and Germany, —love and truth ; that all French marriages are de convenance, and that a Frenchwoman never speaks the truth. The plot of “ The Rose Garden ” turns directly on the married life of a vivacious, warm-hearted, but unstable Frenchwoman, who, after risking the loss of one lover by boldly telling the truth, and refusing him her hand when he still pressed the offer, because her heart could not go with it, succumbs to deceit in her eagerness to secure another suitor, whom she loves no better, but who promises a more brilliant destiny. Her character is contrasted with that of her cousin, as truly French as herself, but unswerving in her devotion to perfect truth, and who carries in her heart the weight of an unrequited love, for as much of her life as the author

deals with. The successful and the unsuccessful lover, the mother of the second and of the bride, the uncle also of the bride who is the villain of the piece, and one or two minor characters, combine in a simple and natural, but very elegant and touching plot. The moral is deep, and constantly before us ; and yet the tone of the book is never sombre, being relieved by a bubbling stream of playfulness in the description of the characters. These are, at times, a little shadowy, especially the hero, René’s husband. Rut his unsuccessful rival, M. de Méhun, is touched with an exquisite pencil. The true nobility, which through a variety of little absurdities shines out on every important occasion, seems to us a truer and richer instance of that sort labored so hard in Sir Leicester Dedlock. The author — it must be a lady — of “The Rose Garden ” has managed an almost precisely similar, or even less personally distinguished character, so as to reflect new honor on the French gentillesse, a much better result than that attained in the English aristocrat’s character.

Mr. Burnand has the curious gift — we should hardly call it enviable — of making his reader feel sneaking, which is nowhere else, save in “ The Book of Snobs,” shown in so great degree as in his humorous studies. The chief person of these is that dreadful, absurd, conceited, hypocritical little snob who lurks in most human hearts, but who is fortunately for the most part locked up there, while in “ Happy Thoughts,” etc,, he is let loose with all his follies. So far as existence in fact goes Mr. Burnand’s type is grotesque caricatures ; but as the reader is apt to shudder and break out into cold perspirations and feverish flushes with the recollection of having been near doing such things himself, or with the consciousness of being capable of them, but for the mercy of heaven. In My Health,” the “ Happy Thoughtist ” (for it is always he in whatever guise) is growing fat and hypochondriacal, and the slender fable is the story of his adventures in search of health at a watering-place out of season, on a yacht, and in a country house in Cornwall. There is nothing more, and one enters upon the story with a doubt if the author can carry it through successfully, and leaves it with surprise that it is not a failure. It is really very funny, and there are people in it to remember, — especially Miss Straithmcre, whose character is very well done, though overdone.

FRENCH AND GERMAN.²

IN the last number we had room for but a most disproportionately meagre reference to a new novel of Tourguénief’s, to which we would like to devote more space to-day, and with an especial reference to those whose only practice in reading German is in the tragedies of Schiller or the ordinary German novel. One may confess to growing weary of Schiller without finding any fault with dramatic art, and even the fondest friend of fiction may fall asleep over such volumes as Germany produces; but the Germans themselves take their pleasure in translating from other people all the best works in their language, so that the soul of Bastiat would be rejoiced within him if he could see the free-trade in fiction that the Germans enjoy. That sharp-eyed people scour the surface of the earth for novels, which some all-knowing scholar translates, and the novels written in German have to fare as best they can. They certainly do not lack admirers in this country.

This novel of Tourguénief, Frühlingsfluthen, is one of the latest of a long list of translated novels. It tells the following story : Dimitri Sanin is a young Russian who finds himself in the city of Frankfort, on his way back to Russia, after a year or two of travel. He happens to make the acquaintance of an Italian family, long resident in Frankfort, which consists of an amiable, gossiping mother, the keeper of a little café, a daughter, Gemma, and a son, —a boy of about fourteen. In the household there is, besides, an old man, Pantaleone, who is friend and servant at once. Sanin gets to know them and wins their gratitude by the aid he gives the boy, who had fallen into a protracted fainting fit just as the Russian had entered the café. They all invite him to spend the evening, and he, although he was to leave that very night for Berlin, accepts. He stays so late that he loses the diligence, but consoles himself for that by the thought that he can easily amuse himself for two or three days in such pleasant company, for Gemma is wonderfully beautiful and very charming. She is, to be sure, en-

gaged to another man, but to Sanin that is of course a matter of but little interest; he will be off in a few days, meanwhile they are kind, and he only asks to have time killed. In the furtherance of this object he goes with Gemma and her betrothed to pass the day in the country. While they are dining a drunken officer insults Gemma. Sanin takes the matter up, while the betrothed, who, moreover, from his position, could not challenge the officer, has simply to retire with dignity. Sanin fights a duel with the officer, thereby — for of course it leaks out — winning much more gratitude and admiration from the family. In a word, the engagement that formerly held Gemma she breaks ; Dimitri proposes and is accepted. Every reader of Tourguénief knows with what marvellous power he tells a love-story, and nowhere has he done better than in this novel. There are so many heroes and heroines in fiction who are labelled lovers and who are as certainly running to their fate as if they were helmeted firemen running to a fire, that we feel that in fiction as in every other art it is only the masters who can be lifelike, because they alone see life as it really is, or, having seen it, can represent it as it is with its infinite complexities and mysterious combinations. Sanin falls in love as men do in real life unconsciously, even unwillingly, not with an avowed determination as people do in novels. To quote any scene of the more romantic part of the novel would be more or less unfair, — it needs the setting of the context,—but it may not be amiss to give the reader an example of some of the other qualities of this remarkable writer. There is, for instance, this account of the preparations for the duel. Sanin, having no other acquaintance in Frankfort, has to take for his second Pantaleone, who by the way was formerly an opera-singer. At first the peaceful Italian objects, but he soon accepts : —

“ ‘ I must thank you at any rate,’ he said with an uncertain voice, ‘ for the fact that you saw even in my present inferior position that I was a gentleman, nn galantuomo. Thereby you have shown yourself to he a galantuomo. But I must consider your proposition.’

“ He went to the door, then turned suddenly, ran to Sanin, seized his hand, pressed it to his breast, raised his eyes to heaven and said, ‘ Noble youth, great heart, (Nobil giovanetto ! gran cuore !) allow an old man, un vecchiotto to press your manly right hand, la vostra valorosa destra ! ’ ”

As they are going to the ground the old man is stricken with remorse and wonder.

“ Is he really a second, did he provide the horses, make everything ready beforehand, and leave his peaceful chamber at six o’clock in the morning ? Besides his feet began to hurt him and were in a terrible way.

“ Sanin found it necessary to arouse him, and found the right note by touching his most sensitive point.

“‘Where is your former courage gone, dear Mr. Cippatola ? Where is — l’ antico valor ? ’

“ 'L’ antico valor ? ’ he cried in a deep base voice ; “ non è ancora spento 1' antico valor ! ! ’ ”

After the duel “ Pantaleone really triumphed. Pride took full possession of him. A conquering general returning from a victorious fight could not have looked about him with more self-satisfaction. Sanin’s conduct during the duel filled him with enthusiasm. He called him a hero, and would not listen to his threats and entreaties. Pie compared him to a monument of marble and bronze, to the statue of the commander in Don Giovanni. Pie confessed that for his own part he had felt some slight anxiety. ‘But I am an artist,’ he said, ‘ my nature is nervous ; but you are the child of the snow and the granite rocks.’ ”

To go on with the story. Sanin in his anxiety for a speedy marriage finds it necessary to sell his estate in Russia. To his joy he meets a former schoolmate, who suggests that his wife, who is at Hamburg, might perhaps be willing to take it. For this purpose Sanin leaves Gemma to stay three days and arrange about the sale. She sees him go with half-hidden fears, while he departs only sure of his speedy return. This wife of his friend is a woman who has no love for her husband, nor indeed for any one except herself, and in Sanin she sees a fresher nature than belongs to the frivolous creatures who form her court, and, piqued by his natural indifference, so unlike the never-ending and so wearying attentions of those about her, she proceeds deliberately to flirt with him. He is young, human, unconscious of his danger, and unable to flee when he detects it. He becomes her slave, Gemma is abandoned, he shipwrecks his whole life. Many will find this an unpleasant tale, but their objections would be palliated if they would read the novel and see the grimness of the morality that fills it. It is no tricked-up account of the fascinations of a life of wrong-doing, but a wonderful study of the way in which faults may be committed, and of their natural punishment. As a work of art, for the observation of human life, for its wonderful knowledge of the human heart, we have no words of praise that are too strong. Tourguénief, in this novel has produced a rival to his best previous work. We hope that many will read and reread it.

Of other books we have but few. Dr. Karpeles has written a little book about Heine, in which he tells us but little that is new, but what he says is readable, and he is more likely to find readers than is Strodtmann with his ponderous tomes, which, however, are extremely interesting, and ought to be read by one who can skip judiciously. In regard to this work we may say that many will agree with him in denouncing Heine’s surviving brother for the way in which the poet’s memoirs are kept hidden from the public. Perhaps, however, if we belonged to the number whom Heine probably abused, we should be less austerely just in our view of the matter.