Recent Literature

WITH the two volumes devoted to an account of the Life and Death of John of Barneveld, Mr. Motley brings to a conclusion his history of the United Provinces, and at the same time prepares the way for a still more difficult work, the history of the Thirty Years’ War. The Rise of the Dutch Republic, The History of the United Netherlands, The Life and Death of John of Barneveld, stand prominent in a field of literature in which it is no easy task to win great fame. The writer has good reason to be proud of the honorable place he has attained among the best historians of the day. He, at least, is an American who has secured his position by thorough and serious work.

In this last history Mr. Motley takes up the thread of his narrative where his History of the United Netherlands ceases, and gives us an account of the internal discord which wrought such ruin in the Dutch republic. In the first place he briefly reviews the life of Barneveld up to 1609, when the twelve years’ truce with Spain was signed. Mr. Motley has written a glowing tribute to his memory, showing us how amid all the dangers from the outside which threatened the safety of the young republic, and the no less dangerous misrepresentations to which he was exposed at home, John of Barneveld never forgot the one aim of his life, the honorable safety of his country.

In 1609 the advocate was the leading statesman of the Netherlands; it was by his influence that the truce had been made with Spain, a truce with which Maurice of Orange was but little contented. “ The treaty was made, and from that time forth the antagonism between the eminent statesman and the great military chieftain became inevitable. The importance of the one seemed likely to increase day by day. The occupation of the other for a time was over.”

The advocate had opposed the proposition of giving the sovereignty to Maurice, thereby giving the hot-headed soldier cause for hatred, which was ever fed by jealousy of the great influence exercised by the cool and cautious statesman.

Under Barneveld’s care, guided by his mingled boldness and tact, the republic established itself among the nations of Europe, and it was acknowledged, though with considerable reluctance, as a sovereign state. The country, however, was much torn by religious and political dissensions. It was thought by many that the result of the successful war against Spain was, not the defeat of religious persecution, but a fitting opportunity to establish what they considered the only true faith, Calvinism, in all its severity. From this quarter the chief danger came. The last years of Barneveld’s life were merely a short breathingtime before Catholicism and Protestantism were to enter into the long struggle of the Thirty Years’ War. The strength of Protestantism, the freedom it gives to individual thought and opinion, is its weakness when it comes in direct conflict with the compact unity of the Catholic church. It is like a disorganized mass of brave men, suspicious of one another, jealous of their rivals, almost as hostile against their brethren in arms as against their common foe ; while the Catholic church, securing by its discipline the abnegation of individuality, presents an unbroken front of combatants, intent upon a single object, the defeat of heresy.

Even before the making of peace with Spain, religious discord had broken out in the Netherlands, and it was by a strange turn of fate that just after the signing of the truce, the death of Duke William of Jülich, who held Jülich, Cleve, and other lands, brought up once more the religious question before the courts of Europe for immediate consideration. The candidates for the heritage of the duchies were the Emperor Rudolph on the one hand, and the Elector of Brandenburg and the Count Palatine of Neuburg on the other. “But,” Mr. Motley says, “ the solution of the question had but little to do with the legal claim of any man. It was instinctively felt throughout Christendom that the great duel between the ancient church and the spirit of the Reformation was now to be renewed upon that narrow, debatable spot.” Suddenly the Archduke Leopold, Bishop of Passau, made his appearance before the gates of Julich, the chief citadel of the duchies, determined to take possession of the government, and, supported by Spanish power, to secure to the Catholic church this important territory. Barneveld had been before him, however, and it had been settled that the Elector and the Palatine “should together provisionally hold and administer the duchies until the principal affairs could be amicably settled. . . . Then there was Spain in the person of Leopold perched in the chief citadel of the country, while Protestantism in the shape of the possessory princes stood menacingly in the capital.”

Henry IV. of France was regarded by all as holding in his hands the power of finally deciding the matter of the inheritance. He favored the side of Brandenburg, and in the face of Pope, Emperor, and King of Spain, he determined to support the princes and to maintain his alliance with the StatesGeneral. He saw Spain behind the emperor, intriguing against him, and in spite of the ridiculous behavior of the possessory princes, who wrote him a letter asking for a loan of four hundred thousand crowns, he made every preparation for war. Besides the complications abroad to hem him in, treachery at home was undermining his strength. He had one good friend, however, Sully, his chief adviser, whom Mr. Motley describes as follows : —

“ The haughty, defiant, austere grandee, brave soldier, sagacious statesman, thrifty financier, against whom the poisoned arrows of religious hatred, envious ambition, and petty court intrigue were daily directed, who watched grimly over the exchequer confided to him, which was daily growing fuller in spite of the cormorants who trembled at his frown ; hard worker, good hater, conscientious politician, who filled his own coffers without dishonesty, and those of the state without tyranny; unsociable, arrogant, pious, very avaricious, and inordinately vain, Maximilian de Bèthune, Duke of Sully, loved and respected Henry as no man or woman loved and respected him. In truth, there was but one living being for whom the duke had greater reverence and affection than for the king, and that was the Duke of Sully himself.”

At this time Henry fell in love with Marguérite de Montmorency, and of this episode of his life Mr. Motley gives an admirable description. He shows that although this affair was not, as has been suggested, the main reason of Henry’s determination to make war, it was still not without influence in confirming him in that policy. He agreed entirely with Barneveld’s views, and was in full expectation of occupying the duchies by a French and Dutch army which should strengthen the Protestant Union and humble the house of Hapsburg, when he was assassinated.

With the death of Henry, Spanish influence gained the ascendency in France. The country sank rapidly from its position of arbiter in the great struggle, and the Dutch republic found itself suddenly almost alone in opposition to the vast forces of Catholicism. Barneveld did not lose hope. He set himself to work with his accustomed zeal to form an army and to strengthen the Protestant Union. Command of the forces of the commonwealth was given to Maurice, who suddenly entered the duchies, at the head of a considerable army, took possession of Jülich, drove out Leopold, and put in his place Brandenburg and Neuburg under the protection of the republic. This, by the way, was the beginning of the greatness of the house of Brandenburg. As Mr. Motley says : —

“ The republic had placed itself in as proud a position as it was possible for commonwealth and kingdom to occupy. It had dictated the policy and directed the combined military movements of Protestantism. It had gathered into a solid mass the various elements out of which the great Germanic mutiny, Rome, Spain, and Austria, had been compounded. A breathing-space of uncertain duration had come to interrupt and postpone the general and inevitable conflict. Meanwhile the republic was encamped upon the enemy’s soil. France, which hitherto had commanded, now oheved. England, vacillating and discontented, now threatening and now cajoling, saw, for the time at least, its influence over the council of the Netherlands neutralized by the great statesman who still governed the provinces in all but name.”

Soon Matthias took possession of the power that had lain unused in the hands of Rudolph, and with the aid of Spain took measures to assert his claim to the duchies. Spinola was put in command of an army of eighteen thousand foot and three thousand horse, “ and now began one of the strangest series of warlike evolutions that were ever recorded. Maurice, at the head of an army of fourteen thousand foot and three thousand horse, manœuvred in the neighborhood of his great antagonist and professional rival without exchanging a blow.”

Spinola captured Aachen, Wesel, and other places, but “ the Catholic forces under Spinola or his lieutenants, meeting occasionally and accidentally with the Protestants under Maurice or his generals, exchanged no cannon shots or buffets, but only acts of courtesy; falling away each before the other, and each ceding to the other with extreme politeness the possession of towns which one had preceded the other in besieging.”

The result of this military pantomime was that the question of the duchies seemed on the point of settlement with a division, as equable as possible, of the debatable territory between Brandenburg and Neuburg. But at the last moment, Spain, confident in her own strength and seeing her opportunity in the weakness of those opposed to her, absolutely prohibited the treaty. The duchies were left under the joint occupation of Catholicism and Protestantism, and so they were to remain until the Thirty Years' War should “ bring its fiery solution at last to all these great debates.”

In spite of this unsatisfactory conclusion, the Dutch republic had shown itself but little disheartened even by the loss of its strong ally, France. Now new dangers were threatening it, which it was but illprepared to meet. France, as has been seen, was falling more and more under Spanish control; England, under the bigoted policy of James I., was showing hatred and contempt of the Dutch republic; the Catholic powers were strengthening themselves for a renewal of the conflict with Protestantism, and now “personal, sometimes even paltry jealousy; love of power, of money, of place ; rivalry between civil and military ambition for predominance in a free state ; struggles between church and state to control and oppress each other ; conflict between the cautious and heaithy, but provincial and centrifugal spirit on the one side, and the ardent centralizing, imperial, but dangerous instinct on the other, for ascendency in a federation ; mortal combat between aristocracy disguised in the plebeian form of trading and political corporations and democracy sheltering itself under a famous sword and an ancient and illustrious name, — all these principles and passions will be found hotly at work in the melancholy five years with which we are now to be occupied, as they have entered, and will always enter, into every political combination in the great tragi-comedy which we call history.”

While this was the condition of the Dutch republic, matters were in no better state in any other Protestant country. The German princes were blind to the needs of the hour, while the Catholic powers were preparing to strike a heavy blow.

If there had been unanimity in the Netherlands, it is not impossible that Protestantism might have had a leader strong enough to calm dissension elsewhere, but when Ferdinand of Gratz was elevated to the throne of Bohemia, and that fiery Catholic and apt pupil of the Jesuits started the glowing embers of discontent into an open blaze of war, the discord in the Dutch republic was at its height. Those who held to the gentler Arminian faith fell under the suspicion, so common in times of great agitation, of treachery. They were supposed to he secretly furthering the cause of Roine, and to be faithless to their own country. The Calvinists were full of the rigor of their faith. It was a struggle for life or death into which Protestantism was about to enter, and it is not to be wondered at that the Calvinists, never a pliable band of men, held any trifling with the severity of the law to be no better than opening the gates to Catholicism. To our thinking, Mr. Motley is inclined to look too harshly on the obstinate support they gave their creed. They saw their peril, they knew they had to deal with a relentless foe, and when both sides were arming for the fight, the Calvinists very naturally considered it an unfitting moment to propose compromise or anything that looked like indifference. Their austerity was the proof of their energy.

Besides their religious differences, the Netherlanders had other causes of dissension. The question of the rights of the separate states composing the republic was one that excited almost as much bitterness as did the relative merits of Calvinism and Arminianism. John of Barneveld found himself on the unpopular side, that of the Arminians and state-rights party, and although in the religious question he tried to calm the strife which was growing hotter and hotter, he held with great obstinacy, such as characterizes the lawyer rather than the statesman, to the doctrine of staterights. Maurice was the leader on the opposite side. Though he cared little for, and knew less of the intricacies of the religious question, he was very glad to have the opportunity to oppose Barneveld, of whom he had long been jealous.

It is impossible in this short space to give all the particulars of Barneveld’s downfall. He was accused of betraying his country to Spain, of being a Papist in disguise. In vain did he try to make a compromise upon a legal basis. Maurice marched through the provinces at the head of his army, much to the joy of the people, conquering without opposition the strong. holds of Arminianism, and sovereign “for the time being at least, while courteously acknowledging the States-General as sovereign.” Meanwhile Barneveld and two of his friends, one of whom was the celebrated Hugo Grotins, were arrested. After seven months’ delay Barneveld was granted the form of a trial. In fact, like other statetrials of the time, it was a mere farce. No words can too severely denounce its unfairness. As a natural consequence of his arrest, he was condemned to death. We quote Mr. Motley’s impressive description of his execution : —

“ The old statesman, leaning on his staff, walked out upon the scaffold and calmly surveyed the scene. Lifting up his eyes to heaven, he was heard to murmur, 'O God, what does man come to?’ Then he said bitterly once more, ' This, then, is the reward of forty years’ service to the state ! '

“ La Motte, who attended him, said fervently, ‘It is no longer time to think of this. Let us prepare your coming before God.’

“ ‘ Is there no cushion or stool to kneel upon ?ߡ said Barneveld, looking around him.

“ The provost said he would send for one, but the old man knelt at once on the bare planks. His servant, who waited upon him as calmly and composedly as if he had been serving him at dinner, held up his arm. It was remarked that neither master nor man, true stoics and Hollanders both, shed a single tear upon the scaffold.

“ La Motte prayed for a quarter of an hour, the advocate remaining on his knees. He then rose, and said to John Franken, ‘ See that he does not come near,’ pointing to the executioner, who stood in the background grasping his long double-handed sword. Barneveld then rapidly unbuttoned his doublet with his own hands, and the valet helped him off with it. ‘ Make haste, make haste,’ said his master.

“ The statesman then came forward, and said in a loud, firm voice to the people : ‘ Men, do not believe that I am a traitor to the country. I have ever acted uprightly and loyally as a good patriot, and as such I shall die.’

“ The crowd was perfectly silent.

“ He then took his cap from John Franken, drew it over his eyes, and went forward towards the sand, saying, ‘ Christ shall be my guide; O Lord, my heavenly Father, receive my spirit.’

“ As he was about to kneel with his face to the south, the provost said: ' My lord will be pleased to move to the other side, not where the Sun is in his face.’

“ He knelt accordingly with his face towards his own house. The servant took farewell of him, and Barneveld said to the executioner, ‘ Be quick about it, be quick.’

“ The executioner then struck his head off at a single blow.”

Thus, as a victim of partisan fury, under the charge of betraying his country to Rome, perished the real champion of Protestantism in Europe.

Every reader of the history will notice how completely John of Barneveld is lost in the account of events, and of betterknown men. It would seem as if more had been put upon his shoulders than they were meant to carry. The impression of the advocate left upon the reader’s mind, or, it might be fairer to say, on some readers’ minds, is that of an honest, conscientious, hard-working man, tenacious of his opinions, generally wise, and a true patriot, but of less marked ability than he possesses in the eyes of Mr. Motley, who, after all, knows a great deal more about him than do his readers. But the historian can hardly be said to have succeeded in drawing the character we were promised ; it is difficult to avoid having misgivings about John of Barneveld’s greatness, He had undoubtedly rare and valuable qualities, but perhaps not in precisely the proportion which distinguishes greatness from excellence. This is rather an impression than a conviction. So much is sure, at least, that the history outweighs in interest and importance the biography.

Allusion has already been made to the author’s treatment of the religious question. Now that indifference has nourished toleration, it is easy for us to approve of measures which two hundred and fifty years ago would have seemed like a compact with the enemy. Calvinism was like military authority in times of peril ; it demanded strict obedience, and looked with natural distrust at half-way measures ; and when we condemn its severity, we do it rather with the comfortable security with which we look back upon the stormy past, than with complete sympathy for those who knew the enemy was at their gates. As we have said, it is just here that Mr. Motley seems to us to have lost the sense of strict historical perspective. Then, too, it is to be remembered that the close connection then existing between theology and politics was the reason that not all the followers of Arminianism were advanced apostles of toleration ; far from it; they held certain theological opinions on account of their political prejudices. Bearing this in mind, the reader will get a fairer view of the conditions of parties in Barneveld’s time than if he brings to the consideration of the question the mode of thought of the present day.

The course of events that followed the death of Barneveld, Mr. Motley hopes yet to describe, and for this undertaking he has the good wishes of his readers. We cannot be too grateful to him for this last history. It holds an important place in completing a work he had begun so well. The nature of the subject does not lend itself so well to the picturesque treatment of which he is a master, but the episodes of Henry IV. and of the fate of Grotius show that the difference lies in the subject and not in the writer. The closest knots of intrigue are disentangled and set before us clearly, new light is thrown on one of the most complicated periods of modern times, and in spite of the objections which we have briefly mentioned, the book is an interesting and valuable contribution to modern history.

— It is rather odd that while most of us, in these days of diminished leisure, spend many sighs over our own letter-writing, we should yet be very willing to read the correspondence of other people. The letters we write and the letters we receive consume an unconscionable portion of our time, and yet we extend a welcome to epistolary matter with which it would appear, logically, that we might thank our stars we had nothing to do. There is a permanent charm in the epistolary form, when it has been managed with any grace, and people find in it a sort of mixture of the benefits of conversation and of literature. This applies, of course, especially to the epistolary form as it was practiced in those spacious, slowmoving days, when a swinging mail-coach offered to a complacent generation the brightest realization of the rapid and punctual, and the penny-post, in its infancy, an almost perplexing opportunity for alertness of wit; days which, although not chronologically distant, seem as distinctly severed from our own as the air of an old-fashioned quadrille, played by an orchestra, from the rattling galop which follows it. There were doubtless many dull letters written in those days, and indeed the railway and the telegraph have not now made all letters brilliant; but we incline to think that the average of letter-writing was higher. The telegraph, now, has made even our letters telegraphic, and we imagine the multiplication of occasions for writing to have acted upon people’s minds very much as it has done on their hands, and rendered them dashy and scrappy and indistinct. In fact, it may be questioned whether we any longer write letters in the real sense at all. We scribble off notes and jot down abbreviated dispatches and memoranda, and at last the postal card has come to seem to us the ideal epistolary form.

Dr. Channing’s and Miss Aikin’s letters belong to the ante-telegraphic period, and to an epistolary school diametrically opposed to the postal card manner. They have a sort of perfume of leisure ; you feel that the Writers could hear the scratching of their pens. Miss Aikin lived at quiet Hampstead, among suburban English lanes and garden-walls, and Dr. Channing dwelt in tranquil Boston, before the days of streetcars and semi-annual fires. It took their letters a month to come and go, and these missives have an air of expecting to be treated with respect and unfolded with a deliberate hand. They have other merits beside this agreeable suggestiveness ; but we are obliged to ask ourselves what degree of merit it is that would make it right we should read them at all. Dr. Channing expressed the wish that they should be rescued from such a fate, and requested Miss Aikin either to return or to burn them. “ Miss Aikin,” says Dr. Channing’s descendant, on whom the responsibility of publishing them rests, " did not herself interpret the passage so strictly ; ” did not, in fact, interpret it at all. She kept the letters intact, and publicity has now marked them for its own. Miss Aikin was excusable ; she was a clever, eager old woman, who was not in the least likely to surrender what she had once secured, and who was free to reflect that if the letters were ever published (with her own as the needful context), she would by no means come off second best. Those of Dr. Channing take nothing from his reputation, but they add nothing to it, and under the circumstances they might very Well have been left in obscurity. We touch Upon this point because the case seems to us a rather striking concession to the pestilent modern fashion of publicity. A man has certainly a right to determine, in so far as he can, what the world shall know of him and what it shall not; the world’s natural curiosity to the contrary notwithstanding. A while ago we should have been tolerably lenient to non-compliance on the world’s part; have been tempted to say that privacy was respectable, but that the future was for knowledge, precious knowledge, at any cost. But now that knowledge (of an unsavory kind, especially) is pouring in upon us like a torrent, we maintain that, beyond question, the more precious law is that there should be a certain sanctity in all appeals to the generosity and forbearance of posterity, and that a man’s table-drawers and pockets should not be turned inside out. This would be our feeling where even a truly important contribution to knowledge was at stake, and there is nothing in Dr. Channing’s letters to overbear the rule.

He made Miss Aikin’s acquaintance during a short visit to England prior to 1826, when the correspondence opens. She was a literary lady, a niece of Mrs. Barbauld, and member of a Unitarian and liberal circle in which Dr. Channing’s writings were highly prized. She felt strongly the influence of his beautiful genius, and found it a precious privilege to be in communication with him. In a letter written in 1831 she returns him almost ardent thanks for all that his writings have been to her. “ I shudder now to think how good a hater I was in the days of my youth. Time and reflection, a wider range of acquaintance, and a calmer state of the public mind, mitigated by degrees my bigotry ; but I really knew not what it was to open my heart to the human race until I had drunk deeply into the spirit of yonr writings.” They continued to exchange letters until the eve of Dr. Channing’s death in 1842, and their correspondence offers a not incomplete reflection of the public events and interests of these sixteen years. It deals hardly at all with personal matters, and has nothing for lovers of gossip. Except for alluding occasionally to his feeble health, Dr. Channing writes like a disembodied spirit, and defines himself, personally, almost wholly by negatives. Politics and banks are his principal topics, and in Miss Aikin he found an extremely robust interlocutor. The letters were presumably published for the sake, mainly, of Dr. Channing’s memory, but their effect is to throw his correspondent into prominent relief. This lady’s extremely sturdy and downright personality is the most entertaining thing in the volume. Clever, sagacious, shrewd, a student, a blue-stocking, and an accomplished writer, one wonders why her vigorous intellectual temperament has not attracted independent notice. She wrote a Life of Charles I. and a Life and Times of Addison (which Macaulay praises in his Essay); but she did a great deal of lively thinking which is not represented by her literary performances. Much of it (as of that of her correspondent) is of a rather old-fashioned sort, but it is very lucid and respectable, and, in a certain way, quite edifying. Both she and Dr. Channing were strongly interested in their times and the destiny of their respective countries, and there is a sort of antique dignity in the way they exchange convictions and theories upon public affairs and the tendencies of the age. Many of these affairs seem rather ancient history now, and the future has given its answer to Miss Aikin’s doubts and conjectures. She troubled herself a good deal about shadows, and she was serenely unconscious of certain predestined realities; but, on the whole, she read the signs of the times shrewdly enough. A striking case of this is her prophecy that the Italians would come up before long and prove themselves a more modern and practical people than the French. There was little distinct promise of this when she wrote. She had no love for the French, and they were rather a bone of contention between her and the doctor, who admired them in a fashion that strikes one as rather anomalous. But his admiration was intellectual ; he was in sympathy with their democratic and égalitaire theories; whereas Miss Aikin’s dislike was inherent in her stout British temperament. By virtue of this quality she gives one a really more masculine impression than her friend. She had a truly feminine garrulity; pen in hand, she is an endless talker; but her style has decidedly more color and force than Dr. Channing’s, and whatever animation and point the volume contains is to be found in her letters. She was evidently a woman of temper, and her phrase often has a snap in it ; but the only approach to absolute gayety in the book, perhaps, is on her side. “I have had a glimpse, however, of the English reprint of the book ; a glimpse only, for it was lent to Mr. Le Breton and to me, and in our mingled politeness and impatience we have been sending it to each other and then snatching it back, so that neither of us yet has had much good of it.” It is rather amusing, in the light of subsequent history, to read in the same letter this allusion to Mr. Bryant: “ I lament over the unpoetical destiny of the poet Bryant: his admirers should have endeavored to procure for him some humble independence ; but it will be long, I suspect, before you pension men of letters.” Miss Aikin’s early letters have a tone of extreme deference and respect, but as the correspondence lasts, her native positiveness and conservatism assert themselves Her letters indeed have throughout a manner, such as may very well have belonged personally to a learned British gentlewoman ; she professes much, and she fulfills to the utmost all the duties of urbanity. But she speaks frankly, when the spirit moves her, and her frankness reaches a sort of dramatic climax in the last letter of the series, which Dr. Channing did not live to answer. She was willing to think hospitably and graciously of American people and things, but the note of condescension is always audible. She says of Prescott’s style that “ it is pretty well for an American,” but regrets that, not having “mingled with the good society of London,” he should be guilty of the vulgarity of calling artisans “operatires, the slang word of the Glasgow weavers.” It illustrates her literary standard that she could see nothing in Carlyle but pure barbarism.

Dr. Channing’s letters are briefer and undeniably less entertaining. But they are characteristic, and will be found interesting by those who know the writer otherwise. He was it moral genius, he had a passion (within the rather frigid form of his thought) for perfection, and he believed that we are steadily tending to compass it here below. One feels that his horizon is narrow, that his temperament is rather pale and colorless, and that he lacked what is called nowadays general culture, but everything he says has an exquisite aroma of integrity. His optimism savors a trifle of weakness; it seems rather sentimental than rational, and Miss Aikin, secluded spinster as she is, by virtue of living simply in the denser European atmosphere, is better aware of the complexity of the data on which any forecast of the future should rest; but he holds his opinions with a firmness and purity of faith to which his correspondent’s less facile, Old-World liberalism must have seemed not a little corrupt and cynical. Even his personal optimism is great. “ What remains to me of strength becomes more precious for what is lost. I have lost one ear, but was never so alive to sweet sounds as now. My sight is so far impaired that the brightness in which nature was revealed to me in my youth is dimmed, but I never looked on nature with such pure joy as now. My limbs soon tire, but I never felt it such a privilege to move about in the open air, under the sky, in sight of the infinity of creation, as at this moment. I almost think that my simple food, eaten by rule, was never relished so well. I am grateful, then, for my earthly tabernacle, though it does creak and shake not a little.” There is something almost ascetic in the rule he had made to be satisfied with a little. “A fine climate! What a good those words contain to me ! It is worth more than all renown, considering renown as a personal good, and not a moral power which may help to change the face of society. The delight which I find in a beautiful country, breathing and feeling a balmy atmosphere and walking under a magnificent sky, is so pure and deep that it seems to me worthy of a future world. Not that. I a m in danger of any excess in this particular, for I never forget how very, very inferior this tranquil pleasure is to disinterested action; and I trust I should joyfully forego these gratifications of an invalid, to toil and suffer for my race.” And yet he was not unable to understand the epicurean way of taking life, and speaks of the pleasure he has had in hearing his children read out Lever’s Charles O’Malley. “ I read such books with much interest,” he adds, “ as they give me human experience in strong and strange contrast with my own, and help my insight into that mysterious thing, the human soul.” We have said that the correspondence moves toward a kind of dramatic climax. The late Miss Sedgwick had expressed herself disparagingly on the subject of the beauty and grace of Miss Aikin’s countrywomen, and Dr. Channing, with a placid aggressiveness which must certainly have been irritating to his correspondent, attempts to lay down the law in defense of her dictum. “ You know, I suppose, that we have much more beauty in our country than there is in yours, and this beauty differs much in character.” He intimates even that “ the profiles of the American gentlemen are of a higher order than yours,” and enumerates the various points in which English loveliness fails to rise to our standard. He had flung down the glove and it was picked up with a vengeance. Miss Aikin comes down upon him, in vulgar parlance, with a cumulative solidity which he must have found rather startling. If he wishes the truth he shall have it! She proceeds to refute his invidious propositions with a logical and categorical exhaustiveness at which, in the light of our present easy familiarity with the topic, we feel rather tempted to smile. Miss Aikin is not complimentary either to American beauty or to American manners, and the most she will admit is that so lon as Dr. Channing’s countrywomen sit in a corner and hold their tongues, they avoid giving positive offense; whereas she proves by chapter and verse that English comeliness and English grace ought to be, must be, shall be, of the most superlative quality. The English ladies “walk with the same quiet grace that pervades all their deportment, and to which you have seen nothing similar or comparable!” Dr. Channing died almost immediately after the receipt of her letter.

— In his short volume, Professor Shepherd has written an interesting and trustworthy account of the growth of the English language. “ The book,” the author says in his preface, “ contains the substance of the lectures delivered to the advanced classes in English in the Baltimore City College during the past three years, and is intended for the purposes of instruction in colleges, high schools, and academies, as well as to meet the wants of general readers. The necessity for some work similar in design to the present must be obvious to all teachers of the English language in the United States. The want of suitable textbooks constitutes one of the most serious obstacles with which the magnificent and rapidly expanding science of English philology has to contend upon this side of the Atlantic.”

For this purpose the book may with proper treatment be found of considerable service. It contains an excellent résumé of recent philological work, sketching briefly the history of the Indo-European family of languages, and tracing the growth of the English language from the earliest times down to the end of the reigns of the Georges. Thus, it will be seen, the author goes over a great deal of ground in short compass, for his book consists of less than two hundred and thirty pages. What might seem to many an arid, untempting subject is made entertaining, but without any sacrifice of solid merit. The general reader, who may be defined as the person who shuns textbooks, will find Professor Shepherd’s book an excellent guide. As to its utility as a textbook we confess that we have our doubts; not from any fault of the book, however, but because it must fail to give more than a superficial knowledge of its subject, unless it is taken merely to supplement more vigorous work with grammar and dictionary and many volumes of English literature. If this be done, if the student has a chance to learn for himself with some toil what is here crowded into a few pages, or, possibly, lines, he will find Professor Shepherd’s brief account of service in imprinting it upon his memory. But if, on the other hand, he contents himself with what he may retain from this abridged history, his knowledge will be certainly vague and insecure, because built upon too slight a foundation.

If every teacher were as familiar with the subject as Professor Shepherd, there would be no difficulty. There are only too many, however, who can do nothing in the way of explaining, illustrating, and confirming the brief statements of the book. Professor Shepherd can read between the lines of his history, he can explain at length whatever his brevity has left obscure; and unless this is done, it is certain that the book will fall very far short of accomplishing its purpose.

The history might be made more serviceable if full reference were made to authorities. There are many points where the writer could aid his readers by showing them where they might be able to pursue further investigations. After all, there is no royal road to learning, and even lectures are no more than stepping-stones at very unequal distances. Philology is a difficult science, and it requires hard work of its pupils.

— In the number of this magazine for September, 1874, there was printed a review of two books by Mr. R. A. Proctor, from which the following words are taken :

“ The titles of these [referring to various books by this author] are well known, and they are an index to the rather sensational character of the books themselves: The Sun, Ruler, Light, Fire, and Life of the Planetary System ; Other Suns than Ours; The Orbs around Us ; Other Worlds than Ours, etc. The contents of these books confirm the evil prognostic of their titles.”

To these remarks Mr. Proctor replied in a letter to the editor, in which he objected to the including of Other Suns than Ours in the list above given, for the reason that although it had been announced three years before, it had never been published.

As soon as possible, it was replied to Mr. Proctor that the mention of Other Suns than Ours, even in so incidental and casual a way as was done in the above-quoted paragraph, was “ an undoubted slip, for which Mr. Proctor had our apology.” In extenuation of this quite incidental mention, it was submitted that since 1868 Mr. Proctor had “ published at least twenty different volumes,” and this was supposed to be sufficient to excuse a slight confusion in the mind of even the most conscientious critic as to the exact contents of each of the twenty. It was further said that “ a striking peculiarity of many of these is that their titles are like the parts of a Waltham watch, ' warranted mutually interchangeable.’ ” This was intended to show that the conviction, which really existed in the critic’s mind at the time of writing, that Other Suns than Ours had been read and was a poor book, was not unnatural, and was easily to be held by any one who believed that three hundred pages of Mr. Proctor’s recent style of essay was in print, which could be gathered into a mass sufficiently homogeneous to be put under one of the very general titles which Mr. Proctor affects : The Orbs around Us, Other Suns than Ours, Other Worlds than Ours, etc.

Before Mr. Proctor’s first protest could be answered, he wrote a second to The English Mechanic, and on the appearance of the answer above given, Mr. Proctor wrote to The New York Herald a somewhat violent letter on Dishonest Criticism, in which he expressed his fervent wish “ to bring before the bar of public opinion ” “ an offense against the morality of literature.” In this letter he does not object to, nor attempt to disprove, a single stricture made by the critic, but reiterates the charge, already answered, that Other Suns, etc., had been mentioned as a published book. He however distinctly conveys the false impression that this mention was made in a formal way, for he says the reviewer " specially vilified ” Other Suns than Ours.

We call the attention of the reader to the paragraph first quoted above, to show how casual and passing a mention of one of Mr. Proctor’s books may be regarded by him as a special vilification.

It is not necessary for us to comment on Mr. Proctor’s private opinions, which he expresses in an open-hearted manner in the letter to the Herald ; but we note the great ratio of reply to prococation as unusual.

When Mr. Proctor seeks a grievance he is sure to find one : —

FRENCH AND GERMAN.²

It would be hard to find three volumes better suited for gift-books than these publications of Didot, which form a series representing with exactness and tolerable completeness the civilization of the Middle Ages. The only objection to their being put to the agreeable use we have mentioned is the beauty and attractiveness of the volumes, which are great enough to tempt even the most generous to keep them himself. What first strikes one on opening them is the excellence of the illustrations, more particularly of the chromo-lithographs, which give fac-similes of many of the miniatures of the Middle Ages. These are so rich in color, and so admirable in execution, that it is easy to see that to produce them in a satisfactory state there is needed more than ordinary mechanical skill. The blame given to chromo-lithography is often deserved, but such successes as these show what could he done if those who are engaged in the business would only take all the pains required to give more than a diluted copy of the original.

These three volumes treat of the manners, usages, and dresses of the Middle Ages and the time of the Renaissance, of military and religious life and of the arts at those periods. These titles are rather vague, but there is included under them a great deal that is novel and interesting. There but little danger of excess of pedantry in books of this sort; they are made to entertain that easily fatigued abstraction, the general reader, to win whose favor writers are always becoming superficial, and they wisely avoid going too far into a subject. They do not give us a complete notion of the Middle Ages, but they do contain a great deal of curious information about those times. Then the frequent wood-engravings throw light on much that would otherwise be obscure. In short, these volumes are very much like a portable museum ; he is a very well-informed man who does not get profit from them, and a very indifferent one who is not entertained by them. The descriptive hardly equals the artistic part of the books; for instance, we are told, and with a quotation from Voltaire for our authority, that the Inquisition was a benefit to Spain, for by its means that country was preserved from anarchy and revolution. If Voltaire had lived a century later perhaps his remarks on this subject would not have found their place in this work. Most of the ghastly illustrations of the horrible work of the Inquisition represent the cruelties perpetrated by the Huguenots and the Protestants of the Low Countries, and the blame for all the religious persecution of those days is put upon Calvin’s shoulders! Schism was certainly not always as easy to bring about as it has been within the past few years, when we have had no Calvin to introduce religious persecution.

In profane matters there is fuller information. There are also some curious anecdotes, as that of the Sire du Beaunmnoir, who defended the dress of his wife, at which a lady was laughing, by saying that it was in accordance with his own wishes that she was dressed “after the fashion of the good ladies of France and of her country, not according to that of the women of England.”This way of thinking, it is understood, is still held by a great many French people, not to speak of the inhabitants of newer lands. In general, one will read these books but hastily if at all. The illustrations will demand and receive the greater part of the attention, and they can hardly be praised too highly. The volumes should be in every public library in the country. They contain in all, it will be noticed, forty-eight remarkable chromolithographs, and between twelve and thirteen hundred valuable wood - engravings. In their specialty these volumes are as useful as an encyclopaedia.

— Les Contes Flamands et Wallons is the title of a collection of short stories by M. Camille Lemonnier, which is well worth reading. M. Lemonnier is a Belgian, and in his writings he confines himself strictly to the material with which his residence in that country has made him familiar. These tales consist of what are called scenes of national life : every one of them contains descriptions of the people and manners of Belgium, told with the real art of a novelist, and so more noteworthy than if their sole merit were geographical accuracy. In some of them there is to be noticed a trace of modern sentimentality, as in La Noël du petit Jouer de Violon, and in Bloomentje, which make rather violent assaults on the reader’s capacity for pathos; but in the others there is a healthier tone. Un Mariage en Brabant is perhaps the best; it is but a slight sketch, which does not need any elaborate dissection to show the plot; but it will be read with pleasure by any one into whose hands the volume may fall.

The Histoires de Gras et de Maigres, by the same author, hardly pleases us so much. The first story, Les bons Amis, is too strongly marked by Dickens’s mannerisms, and the others are for the most part rather coldly fantastic. But the first volume is worthy of attention for the simplicity of the stories, the modest excellence of the narration, and the accuracy of the pictures of Belgian life.

— We have just received, too late for more than brief mention at this time, the fourth volume of Julian Schmidt’s Bilder aus dem geistigen Leben unserer Zeit. Almost every year this industrious writer sends out a new and massive volume on subjects of great interest to the reading public. It is not only his subjects that are. interesting; in his manner of treatment he always shows the same energy and unflagging zeal which have made his more solid works masterpieces of industry and critical acumen. Mr. Schmidt’s various merits have been often pointed out in these pages, and there is no need to-day of much more than calling our readers’ attention to the fact that a new volume of his essays has appeared ; the eager public Mr. Schmidt has created for himself in this country will know that they have a solid treat awaiting them.

In the volume we find the names of Auerbach, who has a long article devoted to him, Otto Ludwig, Paul Heyse, Franz Grillparzer, Hoffmann von Fallersleben, Tourguéneff, and Pisemski, as well as others less known, and many pages of studies of the English novel. This is a tempting list.

Pisemski, it may be remembered, is the author of a depressing novel called Tausend Scelen in the German version, which is marked by the most uncompromising realism. He is not brought forward as a rival of Tourguéneff’s, but rather as a Russian who is influenced in his manner of writing by the same causes which have made so much that Tourguéneff has written hopeless and depressing. Mr. Schmidt had already written an article on Tourguéneff, and a very interesting article it is, in the first volume of the Bilder; but in this essay he adds to what he said then some remarks which have been inspired by regarding Tourguéneff as a Russian, as one who belongs to a nationality stamped with feelings, and religious instincts and training, different from those of the west of Europe. Fully to understand a writer it is necessary to know whatever can be known of the countless influences which have gone to the shaping of his mind, and certainly the influence of race is one that ought not to be neglected, Schmidt, like every one who reads Tourguéneff, has found prominent in him the disposition to ask, What is the end of it all ? what is the real value of life ? The same tendency to pessimism he has observed in the earlier Russian writers, Pouschkine and Lermontoff. Schopenhauer, Schmidt also says, has nowhere found more devoted followers than in Russia. That this quality is so wide-spread he takes to be the consequence of the manner in which the Russians regard the ideal, so different from that of the rest of Europe. In other countries mind is modified by the prevailing religion. English literature, as well as German literature, starts from a Protestant basis; that is to say, even when there is no mention made of theology, there is tacit reference to certain universally acknowledged truths. In Catholic countries, and noticeably in France, the same thing is true. In other words, the civilization of Western Europe is homogeneous: culture and Christianity either agree together, or, disagreeing, respect one another. In Russia, on the other hand, the religion of the people is to those who are cultivated something unknown. As was the case in the third and fourth centuries with the first baptized Germans, this is probably due to what may be called the superficial way in which that country was converted to Christianity. It was done in the way Congress tries to make paper the same thing as gold, — by order of the government. Russian was pagan; edicts commanding conversion were pronounced, baptism of whole villages followed, and the country has since been called Christian. As Mr. Schmidt says, all its old superstitions remain, fastening themselves to traditions about the saints. Under the influence of their leaders the masses are capable of almost any amount of desperate devotion; to what extremities they can go there have been many instances in modern Russian history. The cultivated classes have but little sympathy with this. All the cultivation they have imbibed is unnational; it has its origin in either Protestantism or Catholicism, and so is out of accord with the national religion of Russia. The Russian, then, who draws pictures of his national life, finds himself confronted by emotions which do not fully appeal to his sympathies, but which strike an unused, almost forgotten chord in his mind; and while he can partly appreciate what he sees, his cultivation causes him to regard these feelings as diseased growths, and he cannot help wondering how they made their appearance. It will be good news to our readers to hear that Tourguéneff is writing another longnovel of Russian life.

We have not space this month for further mention of Schmidt’s volume, but we hope to return to it in the next number.

PUBLICATIONS RECEIVED.

J. B. Lippincott & Co., Philadelphia: The Life of Benjamin Franklin. Written by himself. Now first edited from Original Manuscripts and from his Printed Correspondence and other Writings. By John Bigelow. Three Volumes. — Manual of Political Ethics. Designed chiefly for the use of Colleges and Students at Law. By Francis Lieber, LL. D. Second Edition, revised. Edited by Theodore D Woolsey.— Memoirs of John Quincy Adams: Comprising Portions of Uis Diary from 1795—1848. Edited by Charles Francis Adams. Volume IV. — The Voice in Speaking. Translated from the German of Emma Seiler. By W . II. Furness, D. D.

Macmillan & Co., New York : A Short History of the English People. By J. R. Green, M. A., Examiner in the School of Modern History, Oxford. With Maps and Tables, —The Poetical Works of John Milton. Volumes I., II., and III. Edited, with Introductions, Notes, and au Essay oil Milton ’s English, by David Masson. — Christ and other Masters : An Historical Inquiry into some of the Chief Parallelisms and Contrasts between Christianity and the Religious Systems of the Ancient World. By Charles Hardwick, M. A., late Archdeacon of Ely. Third Edition. Edited by Francis Proctor.—The Extant Odes of Pindar. Translated into English, with an Introduction and short Notes, by Ernest Myers, M. A. —Tales in Political Economy. By Millicent Garrett Fawcett. — An Elementary Latin Grammar. By John Barrow Allen, M. A.— Milton Areopagitica. Edited, with Introduction and Notes, by J. W. Hales, M. A. —A First Latin Reader. By the Rev. T. J. Nunns, M. A., formerly Scholar of St. John’s College, Cambridge. — Shakespeare. Select Plays: The Tempest. Edited by William Aldis Wright, M. A. — Elementary Lessons in Historical English Grammar. Containing Accidence and Word Formation. By the Rev. Richard Morris. LL. D.— Social Life in Greece, from Homer to Menander. By the Rev. J. P. Mahaffy, M. A., Fellow of Trinity College, Dublin. — For the King’s Dues. By Agnes Macdonell.

Hurd and Houghton, New York : His Two Wives. By Mary Clemmer Ames.

Sheldon & Co., New York: Estelle. A Novel. By Mrs. Annie Edwards.

Porter and Coates, Philadelphia: South Meadows. A Tale of Long Ago. By E. T. Disosway.

D. Appleton & Co., New York : My Story. A Novel. By Mrs. K. S. Macquoid.

J. W. Bouton, New York: The Portfolio. An Artistic Periodical, edited by Philip Gilbert Hamerton. With Numerous Illustrations.

Lockwood anti Brainerd Co., Hartford: Some Observations. Published in part in The Hartford Courant in the winter of 1872. By a Practical Stone Cutter.

Edwin A. Wilson & Co., Springfield, Illinois: Abraham Lincoln. His Life, Public Services, Death, and great Funeral Cortege. With a History and Description of the National Lincoln Monument. By John Carroll Power.

American Publishing Company, Hartford : The History of Democracy ; or, Political Progress Historically Illustrated, from the Earliest to the Latest Periods. By Nahum Capen, LL. D. With Portraits of Distinguished Men. Volume I.

Estes and Lauriat, Boston : Checkmate. By J. S. Le Fanu.—Too Much Alouc. By Mrs. J. H. Riddell. With Illustrations. — Half-Hour Recreations in Popular Science. Dana Estes, Editor. No 13. — The Transmission of Sound by the Atmosphere: Bv John Tyndall, —Gigantic Cuttle-Fish. By W. Saville Kent.—Half-Hour Recreations in Natural History. Division First: Half-Hours with Insects. Twelve Parts. Part V. Insects of the Pond and Stream. By A. S. Packard, Jr.

Roberts Brothers, Boston: Singers and Songs of the Liberal Faith. With Biographical Sketches of the Writers, and with Historical and Illustrative Notes. By Alfred P. Putnam. — The Story of Boon. By H. H. — Our New Crusade. A Temperance Story. By Edward E. Hale.

Harper and Brothers, New York: The Communistic Societies of the United States ; from Personal Visit and Observation. Their Religious Creeds, Social Practices, Numbers, Industries, and Present Condition. By Charles Nordholf.—Remains of Lost Empires: Sketches of the Ruins of Palmyra, Nineveh, Babylon, and Persepolis, with some Notes on India and the Cashmerian Himalayas. By P. V. N. Myers, A. M. Illustrations. — The Vatican Decrees in their bearing on Civil Allegiance; A Political Expostulation. By the Right Hon. W. E. Gladstone, M. P. To which are added : A History of the Vatican Council, together with the Latin and English Text of the Papal Syllabus and the Vatican Decrees. By the Rev. Philip Schaff, D. D., from his forthcoming History of the Creeds of Christendom.—The Ugly-Girl Papers; or, Hints for the Toilet. Reprinted from Harper’s Bazar. — Lost for Love. A Novel. By Miss M. E. Braddon. — A Sack of Gold. A Novel. By Virginia W. Johnson.

Dodd and Mead, New York : The Starling. By Norman MacLeod, D. D.

Scribner, Armstrong, & Co., New York: The House of Lancaster and York, with the Conquest and Loss of France. By James Gairdner.

G. P. Putnam’s Sons, New York: The Bewildered Querists and other Nonsense. By Francis Blake Crofton.

Lee and Shepard, Boston: Caleb Krinkle. A Story of American Life. By Charles Carleton Coffin.

James R. Osgood & Co., Boston : Parnassus Edited by Ralph Waldo Emerson.

Noyes, Holmes, & Co., Boston: Thoughts to Help and to Cheer.

A. Williams & Co., Boston : Legends and Memories of Scotland. By Cora Kennedy Aiken. Published by Hodder and Stoughton, London .

Government Printing Office, Washington : Report of the International Penitentiary Congress of London, held July 3-13, 1872 By E. C. Wines, D. D., LL. D., U. S. Commissioner To which is appended the Second Annual Report of the National Prison Association of the United States, containing the Transactions of the National Prison Reform Congress, held at Baltimore, Md., January 21-24, 1873.