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THE INTERNATIONAL MAGAZINE

Of Literature, Art, and Science.

Vol. V.
NEW-YORK, FEBRUARY 1, 1852.
No. II.

THE LATE MARSHAL SOULT, DUKE OF DALMATIA.

Contents

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MARSHAL SOULT, DUKE OF DALMATIA.

On the preceding page is a portrait, and under the head of Recent Deaths, in another part of this magazine, is a sketch of the history of Nicholas Jean-de-Dieu Soult, the last of the great Marshals created by the Emperor Napoleon. He was unquestionably possessed of extraordinary abilities, fitting him for eminence in many and diverse capacities, but it cannot be said that he was of the first rank of illustrious generals, as the world has been led to suppose, chiefly by the masterly but partial delineations of his career in the Peninsula by General Napier. He had a genius for war which qualified him for every position in connection with it but that of leader in the field. The subtle and irreversible decisions of Napoleon followed his astonishingly quick apprehensions of facts, as suddenly as the thunderbolt follows lightning; but Soult, profoundly familiar with all the arts of war, and surpassing any of the great commanders with whom he was associated except only his chief, in the wisdom of his judgments, was yet so slow in his intellectual operations, so destitute of the enthusiasm, passion, and fire, which in high circumstance give an almost miraculous activity to the minds of the first order of men, that he could never have entitled himself to all the precedences he has received in history. Napoleon understood him, and in a few pregnant words addressed to O'Meara, gave that measure of his character which will be adopted as the final opinion of the world. "He is," said Napoleon, "an excellent minister at war, or major-general of an army, one who knows much better how to manage an army than to command in chief."

The course of Soult as a citizen, a legislator, and a minister, was not one upon which his best biographers will linger with much satisfaction. The glory he had achieved as one of the lieutenants of Napoleon, in that turbulent and grand career which has no parallel for interest or importance in human history, was his only claim to distinction in politics. His master had an ambition as fair in its proportions as it was vast in its extent, and brought to every purpose the same forces of character and preternatural energy of intelligence; but Soult had no love for civil duties, but little capacity for them, and he accepted place as a gratification of vanity or a means of success in mercenary aims. We see in all his private and political life "the soilure of his revolutionary origin,"—proofs that he loved money and power far more than he loved honor, and himself far more than his country or mankind.

The last of the imperial marshals, the last of that gigantic race who filled the world with a red glory like the gloom which will precede the judgment, closed his stormy life peacefully in the place where he was born, and thence was borne to the Invalides, to "sleep well" with his old companions."

THE HOMES OF COWLEY AND FOX.

We have in the last Art Journal another of the pleasant gossipping Pilgrimages to English Shrines, by Mrs. S. C. Hall, and the following abridgement of it will please all who have perused the previous papers of the series. In Chertsey and its neighborhood are memorials of some of the noblest men of England.

ABRAHAM COWLEY.

CHERTSEY AND ITS FAMOUS CHARACTERS.

The county of Surrey is rich to overflowing in memories, both of persons and events, and the little quaint and quiet town of Chertsey could tell of the gorgeous and gloomy past as much as many of its ancient neighbors within a day's drive of the city. Had its old abbey stones but tongues, how they could discourse of years when a visit to Chertsey was an undertaking; though now the distance is but half an hour.

Nowhere within twenty miles of London does the Thames appear more queenly, or sweep with greater grace through its fertile dominions, than it does at Chertsey. It is, indeed, delightful to stand on the bridge in the glowing sunset of a summer evening, and turning from the refreshing green of the Shepperton Range, look into the deep clear blue of the flowing river, while the murmur of the waters rushing through Laleham Lock give a sort of spirit music to the scene. On the right, as you leave Chertsey, the river bends gracefully towards the double bridge of Walton, and to the left, it undulates smoothly along, having passed Runnymede and Staines, while the almost conical hill of St. Anne's attracts attention by its abrupt and singular form when viewed from the vale of the Thames.

About a mile, on the Walton side, from our favorite bridge (Old Camden tells us so), is the spot where Cæsar crossed the Thames. Were the peasantry as imaginative as their brethren of Killarney, what legends would have grown out of this tradition; how often would the "noblest Roman of them all" have been seen by the pale moonlight leading his steed over the waters of the rapid river—how many would have heard Cassivelaunus himself during[pg 147] the stillness of some particular Midsummer night working at the rude defence which can still be traced beneath the blue waters of the Thames. What hosts of pale and ghastly spectres would have risen from those tranquil banks, and from the deepest hollows of the rushing current, and—like the Huns, who almost live on the inspired canvas of Kaulbach,—fought their last earthly battle, again and again, in the spirit world, amid the stars! But ours is no region of romance; even remnants of history, which go beyond the commonest capacity, are rejected as dreams, or put aside as legends. But history has enough to tell to interest us all; and we may be satisfied with the abundant enjoyment we have in delicious rambles through the lanes and up the hills, along the fair river's banks, and among the many traditional ruins of ancient and beautiful Surrey.

Never was desolation more complete than in the ruin of the Mitred Abbey of Chertsey; hardly one stone remains above another to tell where this stately edifice—since the far-away year 664—grew and flourished, lording it with imperial sway over, not only the surrounding villages, but extending its paternal wings into Middlesex and even as far as London. The abbey was of the Benedictine order, and founded, almost as soon as the Saxons were converted from Paganism; but it was finished and chiefly endowed by Frithwald, Earl of Surrey. The endowment prospered rarely; the establishment increased in the reputation of wealth and sanctity; that it was "thickly populated" is certain, for when the abbey was sacked and burnt by the Danes, in the ninth century, the abbot, and ninety monks, were barbarously murdered by the invaders.

Standing upon the site of their now obliterated cloisters and towers, their aisles and dormitories, cells and confessionals, seeing nothing but the dank, damp grass, and the tracings of the fish-ponds—stagnant pools in our day—it is almost impossible to realize the onslaught of these wild barbarians panting for plunder, the earnest defence of men who fought (the monks of old could wield either sword or crosier) for life or death, the terrible destruction, the treasures and relics, and painted glass, and monuments, the plunder of the secret almerys, the intoxicated triumph of those rude northern hordes let loose in our fair and lovely island; what scenes of savagery, where now the jackdaw builds, and the blackbird whistles, and the wild water-rat plays with her brood amongst the tangled weeds!

The fierce sea-kings being driven back to their frozen land, King Edgar, willing to serve God after the fashion of his times, refounded the Abbey of Chertsey, dedicating it to St. Peter, and vying with Pope Alexander in augmenting its privileges and its wealth.

Some of the abbots took great interest in home improvements, planting woods, conducting streams, enlarging ponds—building, now a mill, now a dove-cot, according to the wants of the abbey or their own fancies. Henry I. granted them permission to keep dogs, that, according to the old chronicle, they might take "hare, fox, and cats." King John, in the first year of his reign, gave them ample confirmation of all their privileges, which, it would seem, they had somewhat abused, for we find that the sovereign seized their manors of Egham and "Torp" (Thorp) on account of a servant of the abbot's having killed "Hagh de Torp." Oh, rare "old times!" The abbot was mulcted in a heavy fine. Then, while Bartholomew de Winchester was abbot, from 1272 until 1307, during the reign of our first Edward, complaints were made to Pope Gregory X. that the possessions of the abbey were alienated to civilians and laymen, whereupon the pope issued a bull ordering such grants to be revoked.

It is worthy of note, that the Chertsey monastery sheltered, for a time, the remains of the pious, but unfortunate, Henry VI.

"Poor key-cold figure of a Holy King,

Pale ashes of the house of Lancaster."

And the reader of Shakespeare will recall the scene in which Richard meets the Lady Anne on her way to Chertsey with her husband's body. This poor king's remains had a claim to be well received by the monks of Chertsey Abbey, for he had granted to the abbot the privilege of holding a fair on St. Anne's-hill, then called Mount Eldebury, on the feast of St. Anne's (the 26th of July): the fair has changed its time and quarters as well as its patron, and is held in the town on the 6th of August, and called Black Cherry Fair. Manning, in his history of Surrey, says, that the tolls of this fair were taken by the abbot, and are now taken by the owner of the site of the Abbey House; thus the memory of King Henry VI. is commemorated in the town of Chertsey to this day, by the sale of black cherries in the harvest month of August!

"THE NUN'S WELL."

Centuries passed over those magnificent abbeys, whose ruins in many places add so much beauty to our fertile landscapes; they grew and grew, and added acre to acre, and stone to stone, and knowledge to knowledge; but most they cherished the knowledge which blazed like a lamp under a bushel, and kept all but themselves in darkness; they preached no freedom in Christ to the Christian world, they abolished no serfdom, they taught no liberty, they enslaved even those who in their turn enslaved their "born thralls," and saw no evil in it. Oh, rare old times! Better it is for us that the site of Chertsey Abbey should be scarcely traceable now-a-days than that it should be as it was, with its proud pageants and pent-up learning!—Yet we have neither sympathy no respect for that foul king, who, to serve his own carnal purposes, overthrew the very faith which had hallowed his throne. But he did not attack and storm the Abbey of Chertsey, as he did other religious houses. He came to them, this Eighth[pg 148] Harry, with a fair show of kindness, saying that "to the honor of God, and for the health of his soul, he proposed and most nobly intended to refound the late Monastery, Priory, or Abbey of Bisham in Berks, and to incorporate and establish the Abbot and Convent of Chertsey, as Abbot and Convent of Bisham, and to endow them with all the Manors late belonging to Bisham." How the then Abbot John Cordrey, and his brethren, must have shivered at the conditions; how they must have grieved at quitting their cherished home, their stews and fish-ponds, their rich meadows of Thorpe, overlooked by the woods of Eldebury hill, their nursing ground where their calves and young lambs were stowed in luxurious safety in the pleasant farm of Simple Marsh at Addlestone!

But their star was setting, and they were forced to "give, sell, grant and confirm, to the king their house and all manors belonging to them."

The total destruction of the Abbey must have amazed the whole country. An earthquake could hardly have obliterated it more entirely. Aubrey, writing in the year 1673, says "of this great Abbey, scarce any thing of the old building remains, except the out walls about it. Out of this ruin, is built a 'fair house,' which is now in possession of Sir Nicholas Carew, master of the Buckhounds." Dr. Stukeley alludes to this house, in a letter written in 1752; he speaks of the inveterate destruction, and of "the gardener" carrying him through a "court" where he saw the remains of the church of the Abbey. He says the "east end reached up to an artificial mount along the garden wall; that mount and all the terraces of the pleasure garden, to the back front of the house, are entirely made up of the sacred rudera or rubbish of continual devastations. Bones of abbots, monks, and great personages, who were buried in large numbers in the church and cloisters which lay on the south side of the church, were spread thick all over the garden, so that one may pick up whole handsfull of them every where amongst the garden stuff." Brayley mentions in his pleasant History of Surrey, that this artificial mount was levelled in 1810, and its materials employed to fill up a pond. Many human skulls and bones were found intermixed with the chalk and mortar of which it had been formed. Fragments of old tiles were also frequently found, and are still sometimes turned up. No trace even of the "Abbey house" is left; it was purchased in 1809 by a stock-broker, who in the following year sold the materials—and so ends the great monastic history of Chertsey. Where are now its spiritualities in Surrey?—its temporalities in Berkshire and Hampshire?—its revenues of Stanwell, and rents of assize?—its spiritualities in Cardiganshire? Alas! they have left no sign, except on the yellow parchment—of rare value to the antiquary.

Those who desire, like ourselves, to investigate what tradition has sanctified, will do well to turn down a lane beyond Chertsey Church, which leads directly to the Abbey[pg 149] bridge, and there, amid tangled hedge rows and orchards, stands the fragment of an arch, partly built up, and so to say, disfigured by brick-work, and an old wall, both evidently portions of the Abbey. In the wall are a great number of what the people call "black stones," a geological formation, making them seem fused by fire. Layers of tiles were also inserted in this wall, and where the cement has dropped away they can be distinctly traced; there is also an ivy, very aged indeed; it is so knotted and thick that it seems to grow through the stones, the soil has so evidently encroached on the wall that it is most probably rooted at the foundation. The pleasant market garden of Mr. Roake covers the actual ground on which the Abbey stood. The workmen frequently turn up broken tiles and human bones, and there is no doubt that by digging deeper much would be discovered that might elucidate the history of the past. At the farther end of the market garden a vault has been discovered which is of considerable length and breadth; but the water rises so high in it (except after a long continuance of dry weather has sealed the land springs) that it is impossible to get to the end without wading. An enormous quantity of richly-colored and decorated encaustic tiles have been found here; some are preserved in our local museum. But the most interesting remains in this place are the "stews," or fish-ponds, which run parallel to each other like the bars of a gridiron; these ponds do not communicate one with the other, nor has the water any outlet: a little care and attention might make them valuable for their old purposes; but they are deplorably neglected. Occasionally you see the fin of some huge fish, whose slow movement partakes of the character of the stagnant water he has inhabited for years;—who can tall how many?

"THE GOLDEN GROVE."

"The Abbey River," as it is still called, travels slowly along its way, fertilizing the meadows and imparting life and freshness to the placid scene. The denizens of Chertsey have planted orchards, and in a few instances gardens on its banks. One, the garden of Mr. Herring, is a model of neatness, almost concealed by its roses and carefully tended shrubs. We wandered from orchard to orchard, amid the trees and over the uneven ground; all was so still and lonely that it required the suggestions of an active imagination to believe it had ever been the scene of contention by flood and field. From the Abbey Bridge the richness of the meadow scenery is exceedingly refreshing, the grass is deep and verdant, as it cannot fail to be, lying so low, and fertilized by perpetual moisture.

During their wide-spreading magnificence, the abbots of Chertsey erected a picturesque chapel on the lovely hill of St. Anne: this was done somewhat about the year 1334. Orleton, Bishop of Winchester, granted an indulgence of forty days to such persons as should repair to, and contribute to the fabric and its ornaments.

There is nowhere a more delightful road, than that which leads from the "Golden Grove," rendered picturesque by its old tree, the plantations of Monksgrove on one side, and those of the once residence of Charles James Fox on the other. The road is perfectly embowered, and so close is the foliage that you have no idea of the beautiful view which awaits you, until leaving the statesman's house to the left, you pass through a sort of wicket gate on the right, and follow a foot-path to where two magnificent trees crown the hill; it is wisest to wait until passing along the level ridge you arrive at the "view point," and there, spread around you in such a panorama as England only can show, and show against the world for its extreme richness. On the left is Cooper's Hill, which Denham, that high-priest of "Local poetry," long ago made famous; in the bend just where it meets the plain, you see the towers of Windsor Castle; there is Harrow Hill, the sun[pg 150] shining brightly on its tall church; a deep pall hovers over London, but you can see the dome of St. Paul's looming through the mist; nay, we have heard of those who have told the hour of the day upon its broad-faced clock, with the assistance of a good glass. How beautifully the Thames winds! Ay! there is the grand stand at Epsom, and there Twickenham, delicious, soft, balmy Twickenham; and Richmond Hill—a very queen of beauty!

REMAINS OF CHERTSEY ABBEY.

Yonder, beyond the valley, are Foxes Hills crowned with lofty pines—and that is the church at Staines, and as you turn, there again is Cooper's Hill; Laleham seems spread as a tribute at your feet, and there is no end to the villages and mansions—the parks, and cottages like snow-drops in a parterre, and church spires more than we can number; while close behind us are the stones piled thickly one on the other—the only relics of the holy Chapel of St. Anne.

How grandly the promontory of St. George's Hill stands out—sheltering Weybridge, and forming a beautiful back-ground to Byfleet and the banks of the Way; not forgetting its ruins—a Roman encampment of two thousand years age, and its modern ornaments of rare trees, of which a generous nobleman has made common property, to be enjoyed daily by all who choose. At the foot of this richly planted hill, is the beautiful park of Oatlands—on the eve of becoming an assemblage of villa-grounds. How pleasant to feel that we can account, by our own knowledge of that glowing mount, for all the shades formed by the hills and hollows, and different growths of trees in the depths or heights of "the encampment," which forms the delight of many a toilsome antiquary. Beyond are the more distant eminences of the North Downs, and a tract of country extending into Kent. But we have not yet explored the beauties of this our own hill of Chertsey; truly, to do so, would take a day as long as that of its own black cherry fair.

A path to the left, among the fern and heather, leads to a well, famed for its healing properties—it is called the Nun's Well; even now, the peasants believe that its waters are a cure for diseases of the eye; the path is steep and dangerous, and it is far pleasanter to walk round the brow of the hill and overlook the dense wood which conceals the well, fringing the meadows of Thorpe, than to seek its tangled hiding-place in the dell. The monks of old would be sorely perplexed if they could arise, to account for the long line of smoke which marks the passage of the different trains along their railroads. But we turn from them to enjoy a ramble round the brow of St. Anne's Hill; the coppice which clothes the descent into the valley, is so thick, that though it is intersected by many paths, you might lose yourself half-a-dozen times within an hour; if it be evening, the nightingales in the thickets of Monksgrove have commenced their chorus, and the town of Chertsey, down below, is seen to its full extent, its church tower toned into beauty by the rich light of the setting sun, while through the trees and holly thickets you obtain glimpses of the Guildford and Leatherhead hills, so softly blue, that they meet and mingle with the sky.

GATE OF FOX'S HOUSE.

SUMMER HOUSE IN FOX'S GARDEN.

TEMPLE OF FRIENDSHIP.

Those who feel no interest in monkish chronicles, may reverence St. Anne's Hill,[pg 151] because of its having been the favorite residence of Charles James Fox, the contemporary of Pitt and Burke and Sheridan and Grattan, at a period when men felt strongly and spoke eloquently. The site of the house on the south-eastern site of the hill is extremely beautiful, and it is much regretted in the neighborhood that it finds so little favor in the heart of its present noble proprietor. The grounds are laid out with much taste; there is a noble cedar planted by Mrs. Fox when only the size of a wand. The statesman's widow survived her husband more than thirty-six years, but never outlived her friends or her faculties. There is a temple dedicated to Friendship, which was erected to perpetuate the coming of age of one of the late Lords Holland; on a pedestal ornamented by a vase, are inscribed some verses by General Fitzpatrick; another placed by Mrs. Fox to mark a[pg 152] favorite spot where Mr. Fox loved to muse, is enriched by a quotation from the "Flower and the Leaf," concluded by two graceful stanzas:

"Cheerful in this sequestered bower,

From all the storms of life removed;

Here Fox enjoyed his evening hour,

In converse with the friends he loved.

And here these lines he oft would quote,

Pleased from his favorite poet's lay;

When challenged by the warbler's note,

That breathed a song from every spray."

At the bottom of the garden is a grotto, which must have once possessed many attractions, and above it there is a pretty little quaint chamber that was used as a tea-room, when, according to the custom of the time, the English drank tea by daylight; it is adorned by painted glass windows; there are portraits of the Prince of Wales and Mr. Fox, when both were looking their best, and the balcony in front commands a delicious view of the surrounding country.

The peasantry are still loud in their praise of "Madam Fox;" and some remember with gratitude the education they received at her school, and love to tell how the old lady was drawn there at "feast times," to see how they all looked in their new dresses. She certainly retained her sympathy with the young, and put away the feelings and habits of old age with a determined hand, for it is said, when she was eighty she took lessons on the harp. The present generation remember personally nothing of the great statesman; he has become history to us, and we must look to history, garbled as it always is, and always will be, by the opinions and feelings of its writers, to determine the position of Charles James Fox in the annals of his country. Those who were admitted to his society have written with enthusiasm of his social qualities, and bestow equal praise on his brilliant talents, his affability of manner, and the generosity of his disposition. He was the third son of Henry Fox, afterwards Lord Holland, and his mother was the eldest daughter of Charles, second Duke of Richmond, and consequently great-granddaughter to Charles II.; the material descent is one of blotted royalty, of which a man like Fox could not have been proud. His academic course was unmarked by any of those honors of which Oxford men are so ambitious, and yet, like his great rival, William Pitt, he became a statesman before he was of age.

FOX'S ARBOR.

At St. Anne's Hill he enjoyed as many intervals of repose and tranquillity as could fall to a statesman's lot; in the time of wars and tumults, how he must have luxuriated in its delicious quiet, surrounded by friends who dearly loved him; and swayed only for good by the wife who (although it is known that her early intimacy with him was such as prevented her general recognition in society) according to the evidence of all who knew her, was the minister only to his better thoughts and nobler ambitions, and who weaned him from nearly all the follies and vices which stained his youth and earlier manhood. Various causes led to his death, before age had added infirmities to disease. He died at Chiswick House, and his last words, addressed to Mrs. Fox were, "I die happy." It is said he wished to be buried at Chertsey, but his remains were interred in Westminister Abbey.

The brilliant Sheridan pronounced so elegant an eulogium on his character, that it is pleasant to think of it in those shades where, as we have said, he so often sought and found repose: "When Mr. Fox ceased to live, the cause of private honor and friendship lost its highest glory, public liberty its most undaunted champion, and general humanity its most active and ardent assertor. In him was united the most amiable disposition with the most firm and resolute spirit; the mildest manners, with the most exalted mind. With regard to that great man it might, indeed, be well said, that in him the bravest heart and most exalted mind sat upon the seat of gentleness."

COWLEY'S SEAT.

COWLEY'S HOUSE—STREET FRONT.

There is, at all events, an imaginary pleasure in turning from the wearing out turmoil of a statesman's life, to what the world believes the tranquil dreams of a poet's existence. But there are few things the worldling so little understands as literary industry, or so little sympathizes with as literary care. We have no inclination to over-rate either its toils or its pleasures, and perhaps no life is more abundantly supplied with both. Its toils must be evident to any who have noted the increasing literary labor which is necessary to produce the ordinary sources of comforts; but its high and holy enjoyments are not so apparent; they are so different from those of almost all others as not to be easily explained or understood; but above all other gifts, the marvellous gift of poesy is a distinction conferred by the Almighty, and should be acknowledged and treasured as such. We know little of a poet's studies except by their imperishable produce, and it is a common but ill-founded prejudice to imagine regularity or diligence incompatible with high genius. Genius is neither above law, nor opposed to it; but as many have a poetic taste and temperament without the inspiration, the world is apt to mistake the eccentricity of the pretender for the outward and visible sign of genius. Whether or not the poet of the Porch-house of Chertsey had the actual poetic fire we do not venture to determine. Abraham Cowley takes a prominent position, amongst the poets of our land, and the eventful[pg 154] times in which he lived, and his participation in their tumults give him additional interest in all the relations of his anxious and not over-happy life. It is recorded of him that he became a poet in consequence of reading the Faery Queene, which chance threw in his way while yet a child. In allusion to this, Dr. Johnson gave his well-known definition of genius: "A mind of large general powers, accidentally determined to some particular direction." We had almost dared to say this is rather the definition of a philosopher than of one who comprehended the spirituality of a marvellous gift. Abraham Cowley—the posthumous son of a London grocer—owed much to his mother. She, by her exertions, procured him a classical education at Westminster School. She lived to see him loved, honored, and great, and what was better still, and more uncommon, grateful. At the age of fifteen he published a volume called "Poetic Blossoms," which he afterwards described as "commendable extravagancies in a boy." He obtained a scholarship in Trinity College, Cambridge, in 1686, and there took his degree; but was ejected by the Parliament, and thence removed to Oxford. Shortly after, he followed the Queen Henrietta to Paris, as Secretary to the Earl of St. Albans, and was employed in the court of the exiles in the most confidential capacity. In 1656 he returned to England, and was immediately arrested as a suspected spy. He submitted quietly—the royalists thought too quietly—to the dominion of the Protector, but his whole life proved that he was no traitor. At the Restoration, that great national disappointment, his claims upon the ungrateful monarch were met by a taunt and a false insinuation—he was told that his pardon was his reward! Wood said, "he lost the place by certain enemies of the Muses;" certain "friends of the Muses," however, procured for him the lease of the Porch-house and farm at Chertsey, held under the Queen, and the great desire of his life—solitude—was obtained.

COWLEY'S HOUSE—GARDEN FRONT.

The place still seems a meet dwelling for a poet, and is, perhaps, even more attractive to strangers than St. Anne's hill. The porch, which caused his residence to be called "The Porch-house," was taken down during the last century by the father of its present proprietor, the Rev. John Crosby Clarke, and the house is now known as "Cowley House."[1] It is situated near the bridge which crosses a narrow and rapid stream, in a lonely part of Guildford Street; a latticed window which overhangs the road is the window of the room in which the poet expired; on the outside wall Mr. Clarke has recorded his reason for removing the porch. "The porch of this house, which projected ten feet into the highway, was taken down in the year 1786, for the safety and accommodation of the public."

"Here the last accents flowed from Cowley's tongue."

STAIRCASE—COWLEY'S HOUSE.

The appearance of the house from Guildford[pg 155] Street, is no index to its size or conveniences.[2] You enter by a side gate, and the new front of the dwelling is that of a comfortable and gentlemanly home; the old part it is said was built in the reign of James the First, and what remains is sufficiently quaint to bear out the legend; the old and new are much mingled, and the modern part consists of one or two bed-rooms, a large dining-room, and a drawing-room, commanding a delicious garden view, the meanderings of the stream, and a long tract of luxuriant meadows, terminated by the high and richly timbered ground of St. Anne's Hill. A portion of the old stairway is preserved, the wood is not as has been stated oak, but sweet chestnut. One of the rooms is panelled with oak, and Cowley's study is a small closet-like chamber, the window looking towards St. Anne's Hill. It is never difficult to imagine a poet in a small chamber, particularly when his mind may imbibe inspiration from so rich and lovely a landscape. Beside the group of trees, beneath whose shadow the poet frequently sat, there is a horse chestnut of such exceeding size and beauty, that it is worthy a pilgrimage, and no lover of nature could look upon it without mingled feelings of reverence and affection.

Here then amid such tranquil scenes, and such placid beauty, the "melancholy Cowley," passed the later days of big anxious existence; here we may fancy him receiving Evelyn and Denham, the poets and men of letters of his troubled day, who found the disappointments of courtly life more than their philosophy could endure. Here his friendly biographer, Doctor Spratt, cheered his lonely hours.

Cowley was one of those fortunate bards who obtain fame and honor during life. His learning was deep, his reading extensive, his acquaintance with mankind large. "To him," says Denham in his famous elegy,

"To him no author was unknown,

Yet what he wrote was all his own."

His biographer adds, "There was nothing affected or singular in his habit, or person, or gesture; he understood the forms of good breeding enough to practise them without burdening himself or others." This indeed is the perfection of good breeding and good sense.

Having obtained, as we have said, the Porch-house at Chertsey, his mind dwelt with pleasure—a philosophic pleasure—upon[pg 156] the hereafter, which he hoped for in this life of tranquillity, and the silent labor he so dearly loved; but he was destined to prove the reality of his own poesy:

"Oh life, thou Nothing's younger brother,

So like that one might take one for the other."

The career of Abraham Cowley was never sullied by vice,[3] he was loyal without being servile, and at once modest, independent and sincere. His character is eloquently drawn by Doctor Spratt. "He governed his passions with great moderation, his virtues were never troublesome or uneasy to any, whatever he disliked in others he only corrected by the silent reproof of a better practice."

He died at Chertsey on the 28th of July, 1667, and was interred in Westminster Abbey. A throng of nobles followed him to his grave, and the worthless king who had deserted him is reported to have said, that Mr. Cowley had not left a better man behind him in England.

It is said the body of Cowley was removed from Chertsey by water, thus making the Thames he loved so well, the highway to his grave; there is something highly poetic in this idea of a funeral, so still and solemn, with the oars dropping noiselessly in the blue water. Pope in allusion to it, says:

"What tears the river shed,

When the sad pomp along his banks was led;"

which rather inclines us to the belief, that in this, as in many other instances, the poetic reading is not the true one,

"The muses oft in lands of vision play:"

but the fact that he died at Chertsey, as much respected as a man, as he was admired as a poet, is certain, and his house is often visited by strangers, who are permitted to see his favorite haunts by the kindness of its proprietor, who honors the spot so hallowed by memories of "the melancholy Cowley:"—he who considered and described "business" as:

"The contradiction to his fate."

But we must postpone our farther rambles for the present.

TREES ON ST ANNE'S HILL.

Chertsey loses half its romantic interest by the intrusion of the progressive agents of our time—our noisy time, of which the spirit willingly brooks no souvenirs of monastic repose. The old quaint quiet town has now its railroad, and the shades of its heroes have departed.

[pg 157]

TRAUGOTT BROMME ON THE UNITED STATES OF NORTH AMERICA, TEXAS AND THE COLONIES.

We have at different times, by reviews or translations, endeavored to give our readers some idea of what people think of us, in continental Europe. But there are two sides to every thing—or there is an universal dualism, as Emerson declares—which is perfectly true as to the method which might be adopted in the execution of this self-imposed task. One class of readers understand by the word people the beau monde, and would have us invariably follow the school of the Countesses Hahn-Hahn or Ladies Blessington or Milords Fitz-Flummery, contented if we have but a fair name in society. Another and more reasonable class would be satisfied to know the opinion of the literati, or perhaps the poets, particularly when they do fit homage to our "grand old woods," and to Niagara. Others regard with most respect a plain literal account of our branches of industry—our railroads, factories, and canals. They would have the country judged purely from a mechanical or practical point of view—contenting themselves as to other matters with the reflection. "Oh, sensible people care very little about any thing else. If they know what we produce, and what our resources are, they'll understand and respect us sufficiently."

Now the opinion of each of these classes has its weight, and though not of the greatest ultimate importance, is always to be respected. If we were questioned as to the views of which of them we yielded full regard, we should candidly say, "to none." It is the general, universal opinion, of a nation at large that we deem authoritative, and none other. It is that popular opinion so readily yet often so falsely formed (at times from trifles of almost incredible levity), and which when once fairly developed, is well-nigh ineradicable. In a word, it is to the views of the people.

We propose, as opportunity shall offer, to make our readers familiar with the writings of all these different classes of travellers—and in the present article, we shall make a few extracts from a work interesting, as having probably contributed more than any other to a general knowledge of the United States in Germany. It is the book which has had the greatest currency among all classes, but particularly with the lower order of readers and emigrants.

Before proceeding, however, to the work itself, it may be as well to answer a question which has perhaps been suggested to the minds of a certain class of readers. Of what great use, after all, is this nervous regard as to the opinion of the world? Is not our character established—are not our characteristics known, to the uttermost corners of the earth? To which question we may answer, Not quite. In avoiding that ridiculous sensitiveness which prompts so many Americans to feel personally insulted by the weak remarks of every wandering ignoramus, we would by no means fall into the opposite error of attaching no importance whatever to the good opinion or the degree of consciousness as to our existence entertained by the world at large.

Should any feel disposed to smile at such an expression, as "the consciousness of our existence," we will take the liberty of citing a few curious instances, for the authenticity of which we assume the entire responsibility—instances which may perhaps astonish a few even of the better informed. There are in many districts (not altogether provincial) of Italy and France great numbers, who would not even in America be classed as ignorant in regard to other matters, who have not the remotest idea as to the nature or geography of our country. An instance has come to our knowledge of an intelligent Hungarian who, by intercourse with the world, had acquired a fluency in five languages, and who inquired of an American gentleman if his country were not situated somewhere in England. The late Mr. Cooper, when placing his daughters at a celebrated seminary on the continent, found a great curiosity had been created by the rumor that they were coming, some supposing they were black, some that they were copper-colored, and all unprepared to see American girls looking for all the world like the young German ladies. We have heard of a similar instance in which an English gentleman—a Cambridge graduate—inquired of an American what was the current language of the United States. Lastly, we may cite the case of an English author, well known to our own public, and favorably mentioned not long since in these pages, who was under the impression that owing to the great emigration from Germany, the English language must with us, in a very few years, yield to that of the Vaterland. Now our commercial and industrial relations are seriously hindered by this absurd ignorance of America, which in a word prevails to such an extent, that we have known an American, who—probably from having been over-questioned and speered at in New England—had imbibed such a wholesome hatred of inquisitiveness, that he wished the French government would hang up, for the benefit of all concerned, the following list of questions, with satisfactory answers annexed, in all the cafés of the politest nation in Europe:

Whether America is an island or a continent?
What is the color of its inhabitants?
What language do they speak?
Have they a religion and what is it?
What is the state of their morals and cookery?
Have they a correct state of feeling as regards the opera?

The reader is not to infer that this is the general state of knowledge regarding our country. But it is worth nothing as a curious illustration of the vast number of individuals who derive their ideas, not from what is going on at the present day, or from available sources of information, but from the[pg 158] antiquated views of a by-gone generation. And we trust it will not be deemed inappropriate that we here speak a word of the want of opportunities of acquiring very general information under which the ordinary readers of continental Europe suffer. With all their libraries, all their immense arrays of magazines and journals, we find among them an apathy in regard to the world without (to the Fan-Qui), which appears incredible until we reflect on the deadening influences of the censorship, which views with distrust all information in regard to the Land of Liberty. We are not aware, throughout the whole of continental Europe, of a single publication so thoroughly cosmopolite in its character, so general in the scope of its information, or which is so universally disseminated among all classes of readers, as The International; and we trust we do not go too far when we assert, that it is to an extended sale of periodical publications somewhat approaching it in the concentration and dissemination of news from the world at large, that our countrymen owe that superior intelligence and citizen-of-the-world character which distinguish them from the insular Briton, self-important Frenchman, or abstracted German.

The work from which we propose to make some extracts, is Traugott Bromme's Hand und Reisebuch für Auswanderer nach den Vereinigten Staaten (or Traugott Bromme's Journey and Handbook for Emigrants to the United States). As we have already stated, no work on America is at the present day more familiarly known to that class of readers to whom it is addressed. Certain remarks on the present condition of German emigration with which it is prefaced, may not be devoid of interest to our readers, though not constituting a part of such observations as we have more particularly referred to:

"There is, it appears, implanted in every man an impulse to advance and better his condition—an impulse caused by poverty, dependent circumstances, or pressure from every side, vexing at times even the highest in rank, and which is the cause why thousands leave their fatherland, to seek afar a now home, and hundreds of thousands cast around them disturbed and anxious glances, restrained only by hard poverty, which imprisons them at home. Such is very generally the case at present in our own country, where—despite the political concessions of March in the year 1848, of the published original privileges of the German people, and of the promising prospect of a free and united Germany, with a concluding general empire—emigration appears to be by no means on the decrease." "These emigrants of the present day consist not as formerly of poor people of the lower orders, who turn their backs on the German fatherland, or liberal declaimers, dreaming of an ideal of freedom which could scarcely be realized in Utopia, but of sober excellent families of the middle class, who, free from all delusive fancies, do not expect to find in the western world wealth and honorable offices, but desire only to inhabit a land, wherein they may dwell quietly and happily with their children." "What the German wants is room—a new broad field for his abilities—and this America extends to him in unbounded space. No one at the present day hopes to obtain hills of gold without labor, but every one knows that the far more estimable treasure of perfect independence, or to speak more correctly, of perfect self-dependence, with the prospect of a future free from care, may in America be obtained at the cost of a few years of earnest, honest industry. And what, to the man oppressed in his fatherland by all the cares incident upon the obtaining a bare subsistence, is two or three or even four years of hard work, when compared to a whole life of poverty and misery?"

After accurately sketching the extreme misery and poverty oppressing the inhabitants of many districts of Germany, of late years sadly increased by the falling off in manufactures since the political disturbances, our author proceeds to set forth the advantages offered by America:

"That most emigrants should rather look to America, than Poland, Russia, Servia, or Siebenburgen, is natural enough, since all of these countries together cannot offer so many attractions as America. Where on earth is there such a vast array of unoccupied lands, offered at such a moderate price—land so cheap that in many districts twenty or thirty and even more acres, covered with wood, are given at a price for which a single acre of similar land is sold in Germany?"

The richness of the soil, the excellence of the climate, and the demand for labor, are then described; to which, as the greatest inducement, he adds the fact that in America the fullest "liberty of labor and mechanical calling or trade," is allowed. Also, that the taxes are so light that an industrious man is able not only to live, but even to lay up something for his old age, or his children, or to employ in the extension of his business.

"For as there exists in America no standing army, its inhabitants may retain their children, as the best possible assistants in labor, and train, govern, and discipline them as can only properly done under the eye of a parent. Furthermore, in that country every one is permitted to enjoy the fullest civil and religious liberty. These are the advantages to be expected from an emigration to America, and he who anticipates more will find himself bitterly deceived. But a man who can be content with this, and can live actively, moderately, and frugally, will here, better than in any other land in the world, ultimately attain to happiness and fortune. In times like ours, when every branch of industry is crowded, when tender parents think with grief and trouble on the future prospects of their children, there are for the emigrant no other resources save those held out by a full and bountiful nature, and no means of livelihood which may be so certainly depended upon as those afforded by agriculture. Here it is that industry throws open the widest field, and affords the fullest opportunity of doing good."

In the following extract, our author proceeds to set forth the national character of the American:

"The national character of the American has been greatly misunderstood; few travellers seem,[pg 159] in fact, to have understood it, since they mention it as something as new and unfounded as the country itself, and yet it is so well confirmed—so well established in every elevated and noble characteristic of the human race, that it may confidently be placed in comparison with that of the most celebrated nations of antiquity. Springing originally from England, they have the pride and manly confidence of the Briton, for through their ancestry they claim an equal share of all which gives dignity to those inheriting glory and a great name. Their forefathers were those brave religious pilgrims who were transferred by British laws (or rather by old German) and British genius to the shores of the new world—to there give to those laws and genius an immortality. Building still further on this new land, they opened the temple of the Lord to all his followers, and received with open arms all the unfortunate or oppressed exiles of Europe. For the first time in reality in this world they flung wide the flag of truth and freedom—fought under its folds an unequal fight against the mightiest power in the world—and overcame it. And when a second time they armed themselves to combat with England, they again came forth unconquered from the contest. Reason enough this for the national pride of the American, for nothing could more naturally cause a certain degree of self-content than to belong to a nation whose brilliant deeds in war as in politics, in commerce as in manufactures, have astonished the world. A second and not less characteristic trait of the American is seen in a certain earnestness, which appears to strangers to indicate a want of sociable feeling—and yet perhaps in no country is true noble sociability as developed in domestic life, so much at home, as in America.

"Accustomed from his cradle to reflect on himself and his circumstances, the American from the first instant of his entry into active life is ever on the watch to improve their condition. Is he rich, and consequently more directly interested in the common wealth, then every new law, every change in the personal direction of the government, awakes in him a new care for the future, while on the other hand, if poor, then every change in the state may perhaps afford him a new opportunity of bettering his condition. Therefore he is ever wide awake—ever looking out for the future, not as a mere spectator, but as one playing a part and occupied in maintaining the present state of affairs, or in improving them. The entire mass of the population is continually in a state of political agitation, and, urged by hope of their aid or fear of their power, we see every one continually seeking for expressions of public opinion. No man is so rich or powerful that he need not fear them—none so wretched and poor but that he may venture to entertain the hope of being through them aided and relieved. Public opinion is in America the mightiest organ of justice—shielding no one, from the president to the simplest citizen, and proceeds, mowing, casting down, or grinding to powder all things which oppose it and deserve its condemnation.

"This condition of perpetual agitation gives the American an appearance of ceaseless restlessness, but it is in reality the true ground of peace and content. The American has no time to be discontented, and this is the most praiseworthy point of their constitution and popular life. The republican has necessarily as many severe and arduous duties to fulfil as the inhabitants of any monarchy—but their fulfilment is gratifying and consoling—for it is allied to the consciousness of power. The American has no desire for the quiet temper of the European, and least of all for the silent happiness of the German, which last, alas! appears since the dissipation of the intoxication of the Revolution of March, 1848, to consist, as far as the great mass of the population is concerned, merely in the egotistic repose of self-sufficiency, weakness, and ignorance. The American finds repose only in his house, in his family circle, and among his children; all without the walls of that home is an incessant working and striving, in politics as in trade—by the streets and canals, as in the woods of the West. Different as the elements are from which the inhabitants of the United States are formed, and different as the circumstances may be under which they live, there still prevails among them a certain unity of character, an equanimity of feeling, which it would be difficult to parallel, resulting perhaps from the very heterogeneousness and mixture of elements itself, since no one element allows to another pre-eminence. They have all something in common in their appearance, which gives them the air almost of relations—something in their gait and manners which declares them to be other than English, Germans, or French. Through the entire land, through every class, there is disseminated a certain refinement of manner, an appreciation of decency and nobility of character, which springs from a consciousness of their own rights and respect for mankind. Even emigrants, in America, soon learn to cast aside their rough prejudices as regards caste, for the proud affability of the aristocratic, the vanity of the small citizen, the want of confidence and ease in the mechanic, the slavish servitude and snappish insolence of liveried servants, find in America no place. Man is there esteemed only as man—only ability gains honor—and where that is, and there alone, can true nobility be found. No one there inquires who a man is, or who were his parents, but 'What can he do, what are his capabilities, and what can he produce?' Rank and caste are in America unknown. Every man feels his freedom and independence, and expresses himself accordingly. Even the servant is a free man, who has, it is true, hired his service, but not his entire existence. The American is polite, but over-refined, unmeaning compliments form no part of his manners, nor does he expect them from others. No man vexes or troubles himself for another, in consequence of which we find in American society very little stiffness and reserve, yet we find in every respect that the very highest regard is there paid to propriety and decency—particularly as regards the female sex, since in no country, not even in England, do ladies enjoy such respect and regard as in the United States. Ever depending upon, and confiding in himself, the American is in his manners free, open, and unreserved. The mass of the people is possessed of intelligence and spirit, though not so scientifically educated as in Europe, and a higher degree of intelligence penetrates even the lower class, who consequently form a marked and singular contrast with those of like rank in Europe. It is not from being versed in the higher branches of abstract learning and[pg 160] science, but from the great amount of that direct practical knowledge which exerts the greatest influence in making life happy, that the Americans are distinguished from other nations, and for the acquisition of which they have made better provision and preparation than any other people. As yet too deeply occupied with the Needful and Important, they are compelled to leave the development of the higher branches to the care and noble generosity of individuals. But a glance at the sums which are annually devoted to the establishment and maintenance of schools and universities, will suffice to evidence the liberality with which the proper education of the people is cared for in the United States. Knowledge is indeed esteemed, but only according to its use and applicability to the wants of life; so that a practical tanner is there worth more than a learned pedant. Wealth, or rather wealth allied to ability and universality of talent, is there more highly esteemed than learning, while hospitality, patriotism, and toleration, allowing every one to think and feel as he likes, are universal characteristics. So that in the United States nothing is wanting to the attainment of a true civil and social freedom, even though the means thereto are not invariably correctly understood or admitted (as is indeed the case by us), and though—since men are every where subject to the same weaknesses—they measure happiness rather by the standard of their own intelligence and virtues, than by fortune and nature, which latter, impartially considered, is the basis of the physical happiness of the American. That, however, which constitutes his moral happiness is this; that in his country, domestic life enjoys the true supremacy, and to this, public life and the state are subordinate. It is true that the American statesmen have fallen into the same error as the European—id est, to believe that without them the people could never prosper, and still live in the belief that home-happiness hangs on them, their theories and arts of governing; but the most superficial glance teaches that if wise laws are able to effect more for the happiness of man than they can bring about, still no one should there attempt to draw happiness from such a source when popular and private life have combined to bestow it. But should the happiness of the Americans ever be derived from this side, it will be more sensible to assume that the foundation thereof will be the release from that which in the recent culture has passed for the deepest political wisdom. The true secret of all the good fortune of America lies in the favorable condition of external things. 'It is not with them as in Europe, where the poor can only better their condition or become rich by making the rich poor, for therein lies the source of an infinite strife which hath been combated for centuries, with the axioms of religion and morals. But in America, men when striving to better their condition, instead of becoming enemies and turning their arms against each other, strive with Nature, and wring from her boundless stores that wealth which she so bountifully affords!'"

We have made these quotations less on account of any merit which they possess, than to give our readers an idea of the general opinion prevailing in Germany in regard to our country; and to confirm an assertion made in a recent number of the International, that in no country in Europe are we so impartially and favorably judged. There is one particular, however, in which we find this book worthy of especial praise. The author highly commends the flourishing state of religion in the United States, declaring that we are in this respect superior to the Germans, and that on the Sabbath the churches are filled to a degree unknown in Europe. It is from our deep-rooted attachment to domestic life, and our observance of religion, that he correctly deduces our true happiness, as separated from the natural advantages of the country. It is greatly to be desired that the majority of his countrymen resident in America, would allow themselves to be impressed in a similar manner as to the advantages of piety and Sabbath-keeping. There is in the United States a vast number of German newspapers—conducted we should imagine for the greater part by unprincipled and worthless adventurers of the red republican, socialist stamp, who, despite the protection which they here enjoy, incessantly and spitefully abuse every institution to which they are really indebted for their asylum among us, and most of all our observation of the Sabbath, in a style which entitles them to something severer than mere contempt. But Herr Bromme is right. Respect for morality and religion, a due regard for the Sabbath, and a dependence on the home-circle for pleasure and recreation, are the surest safeguard of peace, happiness, and prosperity.

A VISIT TO THE FIRE WORSHIPPERS' TEMPLE AT BAKU.

In a recent number of the Russian Archives for Scientific Information, is an account of a visit made by a Russian lady of distinction, in company with her husband and sons, to a temple of the Indian sect of Gebers, or Fire Worshippers, near Baku, a city of Georgia, lying on the Caspian Sea. We translate this interesting narrative for the International, as follows:

In order the better to enjoy the spectacle of the fire, we chose the evening for our excursion thither; but a thick fog came on, which made the road difficult and dangerous. When we finally reached the place it was pitch dark; the flames were rising in beautiful purity to the peaceful sky of night, and the entire castle, within which was the temple, seemed to be surrounded by a circle of watch-fires. These were lighted by Persians from the neighborhood, who were busy burning lime and baking bread, dark forms like those which worked on the tower of Babel, and burnt lime for it. They were now brought here by the ease and cheapness of carrying on their occupations. All that is necessary is to make a hole in the ground, touch a burning coal to it, and an inexhaustible flame rises forth like a spring. Behind this range of little flames and fires, rose, in the pale light, the dirty white walls of the[pg 161] castle, in the centre of which there flashed from the summit of two lofty pillars great masses of the purest, clearest, and keenest flame, which were now bent down horizontally and wreathed like serpents by the force of the wind, and now rose perpendicularly to the sky, whose dome they lighted up like two vast altar tapers. We drove around the edifice, and stopped on one side where there were no flames rising from the earth. A fine rain was falling, but we remained without while our guide went in to announce us. He came back immediately with a swarthy Hindoo. The sight of this man impressed me strangely, and I forgot that he belonged to a remote colony of a few individuals, and asked myself if we had been suddenly transported to India, or if India had been brought up to the Caspian.

We went into the court-yard, in which stands the temple, with its two fire-pillars. About half way up hang a couple of large bells, which the Hindoo sounded by way of preparing us for what we were to see. There was something fearful in the loud clangor, and my boys crowded close beside me. Except our party, no one was to be seen except the swart Geber, in his white turban and long brown robe, with just enough of a pair of light blue trowsers visible to bring into distinctness his naked black feet. His features were noble, and his beard long and black. He looked like a conjurer, like the lord of an enchanted castle, summoning his spirits. The hissing fire, as if obeying him, flashed up more brightly at the crash of the bells; now it was clear as day around us, and now it was twilight as the wind lowered the flame. My husband and sons and the guide who had brought us to the place, were all dressed in oriental costume, and I alone seemed to belong to Europe. A shudder of home-sickness came over me, and at every moment I expected to see something monstrous, to behold all the cruelties of a heathenish and barbarous worship.

The interpreter now summoned us to follow the Geber. We were told that the castle was built by a rich Indian nabob, who was a fire worshipper, and who, with his followers, long inhabited it. Now, only three Hindoos remain from that period of splendor. But nature remains eternally the same, and whether worshipped or not, the flames still shine and awe the superstitious, and so great is the fame of the place that many pilgrims come yearly from distant India to pray, and to have prayers said for them, here in the visible presence of the primeval light.

At last we came to the cell of the priest, and on his invitation entered it. We passed through a low door, and down a few steps, and found ourselves in a small, semicircular, low, but very white room, with a floor of mason-work, and a small altar in the centre. Around the wall were seats, also of mason-work. In the altar there was an opening as large as a gun-barrel, from which rose a slender flame that lighted the room very clearly. There were other little openings on the sides of the altar. The Hindoo took a wisp of straw, lighted it, and touched these openings, from which the most beautiful flames at once issued. The children, who had never seen gas lights, or at least did not remember them, regarded all this as the most perfect witchery. On a second altar, which, like the first, was about the height of a common table, lay or stood the idols and treasures of our priest. Small steps led up to it, which were used to hold muscles, stones, shells, and other instruments employed in the sacred rites. The idols were of metal, and ugly and monstrous, like Chinese images. Beside these figures, we were astonished to see crosses of various forms and sizes. We asked the Geber about them, and he answered with oriental emphasis: "There is one God, and no one has seen him; therefore every one adores him after his own way, and represents him after his own way." The reply was diplomatic enough, and we could not ascertain how the crosses had come there.

On the altar and its steps lay a great number of singularly beautiful Indian stones, which the boys wanted very much, but which, in spite of our large offers, we could not obtain. They were mementoes from the distant fatherland, and possibly they served as sacred ornaments for the little cell. There were also several censers, lamps, and little silver plates and salvers. The air was stifling from the fumes of gas, and the heat was like that of a vapor bath. The priest took from the altar some pieces of red and white candied sugar, held them, praying, before his idols, sprinkled them with holy water, and handed them to us on a silver plate.

A second Hindoo now came in, a tall old man, whose name, as he told us, was Amintaas. He invited us into his cell, which was larger and differently arranged. In the centre was a large kettle, set in mason-work, with water in it, and a gas flame burning under it; the altar was in another apartment beyond, and separated from the first by a low wall or fence, with a passage through. Another apartment, similarly divided off, was spread with carpets for sleeping. After we had seen the stones, shells, and idols, which were richer and more numerous than in the former cell, the Hindoos asked us if they should pray for us. We agreed, and the ceremony began. A large muscle shell was washed in the kettle, the plates were set in order at the foot of the altar, a censer began to smoke, the silver plate with candied sugar was set over a lamp Between two bells, whose handles were the most monstrous figures of idols. These bells Amintaas took and began to ring vehemently. The other Hindoos stood behind him and beat two big cymbals, accompanying this noise with the most inhuman and frightful howling that a man's lungs ever produced.[pg 162] Still, there was method and a regular cadence in it. Finally, they made a pause, bowed before the images, murmuring softly, after which they arranged the plates anew, and sprinkled the sugar with holy water. My husband whispered in my ear a line from the conjuration in "Faust," and the whole of that scene rushed vividly into my memory.

Meanwhile the lungs of the old Amintaas had recovered their power, for he now seized a conch shell, held it in both hands, and with incredible strength blew long wild notes, with scarce any thing like a tune. I grew dizzy in listening to this clamor, and at once understood what is meant by the heathen making a "vain noise," This cannibalistic music was kept up for a long time, and seemed to form the climax of the sacred rites. The finale was a combination of wild shouting, banging of the cymbals, ringing and murmuring. At last the concert was over, and we breathed freely. Amintaas handed us the candied sugar, and my husband laid down two ducats in its place. They were received with warm expressions of gratitude, and laid upon the altar. We went out into the open air, but the scene had changed. The lonely castle was crowded with Persians who had come from their lime-burning to see the Europeans. Persian women were sitting around by sundry little ovens of masonry, where, by the help of gas flames, they baked their Tsheuks, thin cakes of unleavened bread. Followed by the crowd, we were led a couple of hundred steps from the castle to a spring that was covered over; the cover was taken off, and a bundle of burning straw thrown in, when, crackling and hissing, sprung up a splendid pillar of fire, vanishing in sparks like stars. This beautiful spectacle lasted but for a moment, and a quarter of an hour was necessary to collect gas enough to repeat the experiment.

We returned to Baku in the rain, more dead than alive. It was the eve of Easter. The next morning, as I was sitting on the sofa with the children, there came in a tall, meagre Hindoo, with gray hair; he was dressed in a white robe, and brought me white and red sugar on a silver plate. He was the chief priest from the temple of the Gebers, and had come to Baku to see the Easter festivities. We took a few grains of his sugar, and I laid a silver rouble on the plate. While he was making his bows for this, my husband came in and told him, partly in Tartar, partly in Russian, and partly in pantomime, that we had been to his temple the night before, and had prayers said there. He asked at once, with eagerness, how much we had given, and when he learned the sum, asked for a certificate to that effect, as, without it, the others would give him no part of the money. We sent him away without granting his request, for the two screamers of the night previous had earned all we gave them. We learned afterwards that the gifts of visitors occasioned quarrels, and often blows, in the romantic fire-castle. This disgusted me, and yet it is not the fault of these poor fellows. They must necessarily become covetous, since they profane their most sacred ceremonies as a means of living. They have neither fields nor gardens, and the only thing like vegetation that I saw was some lone boxes in the court yard, filled with shrubs and plants, remains, no doubt, from the time of the Indian nabob, who sought in vain to establish cultivation in a soil impregnated with inflammable gas. However, I learned to my sorrow that grass at least grows there, for, in going through it to the spring, my feet became perfectly wet.

The air of the locality does not seem to be unwholesome for man. At least, the Geber priests, who had lived there for years, were perfect lions for health and vigor.

A NEW PORTRAIT OF CICERO.

In the third volume of his History of the Romans under the Empire, just published in London, Mr. Merivale gives some elaborate pieces of character writing, one of which has for its subject Cicero. It is not good for a man to think harshly of Cicero, and however easy it may seem to be to condemn manifest faults in his character, it is by no means easy to be fair in the estimate we make. Mr. Merivale sums up a character which has too often been roughly put down as that of a great writer and a little man, as follows:

"Many writers, it has been remarked, have related the death of Cicero, but Plutarch alone has painted it. In the narrative here laid before him the reader has the substance of this picturesque account, together with some touches introduced from collateral sources. In this, as in many other massages of his Lives, the Greek biographer has evidently aimed at creating an effect, and though he seems to have been mainly guided by the genuine narrative of Tiro, Cicero's beloved freedman, we may suspect him of having embellished it to furnish a striking termination to one of his favorite sketches. Nevertheless the narrative is mainly confirmed by a fragment of Livy's history, which has fortunately been preserved. The Roman author vies with the Greek in throwing dignity and interest over the great statesman's end. But in reviewing the uneven tenor of his career, Livy concludes with the stern comment, "He bore none of his calamities as a man should, except his death." These are grave words. In the mouth of one who had cast his scrutinizing glance over the characters and exploits of all the heroes of the great republic, and had learnt by the training of his life-long studies to discriminate moral qualities and estimate desert, they constitute the most important judgment on the conduct of Cicero that antiquity has bequeathed to us. Few indeed among the Romans ever betrayed a want of resolution in the face of impending death. But it was in the endurance of calamity rather than the defiance of danger that the courage of Cicero was deficient. The orator, whose genius lay in the arts of peace and persuasion, exhibited on more than one occasion a martial spirit worthy of other habits and a ruder training. In the contest with[pg 163] Catilina he displayed all the moral confidence of a veteran general: in the struggle with Antonius he threw himself without reserve into a position where there was no alternative but to conquer or to perish. In the earlier conflict he had still his fame to acquire, his proud ascendency to establish; and the love of praise and glory inspired him with the audacity which makes and justifies its own success. But in the later, he courted danger for the sake of retaining the fame he so dearly prized. He had once saved his country, and he could not endure that it should be said he had ever deserted it. He loved his country; but it wan for his own honor, which he could preserve, rather than for his country's freedom, which he despaired of, that he returned to his post when escape was still possible. He might have remained silent, but he opened the floodgates of his eloquence. When indeed he had once launched himself on the torrent he lost all self-command; he could neither retrace nor moderate his career; he saw the rocks before him, but he dashed himself headlong against them. But another grave authority has given us the judgment of antiquity, that Cicero's defect was the want of steadfastness. His courage had no dignity because it lacked consistency. All men and all parties agreed that he could not be relied upon to lead, to co-operate, or to follow. In all the great enterprises of his party, he was left behind, except that which the nobles undertook against Catilina, in which they rather thrust him before them than engaged with him on terms of mutual support. When we read the vehement claims which Cicero put forth to the honor of association, however tardy, with the glories and dangers of Cæsar's assassins, we should deem the conspirators guilty of a monstrous oversight in having neglected to enlist him in their design, were we not assured that he was not to be trusted as a confederate either for good or for evil.

"Of all the characters of antiquity Cicero is undoubtedly that with which we are most intimately acquainted; for he alone has left to us the record of his thoughts and actions for more than half his public career in a voluminous mass of familiar as well as political correspondence. No public character probably could pass unscathed through the fiery ordeal to which he has thus subjected himself. Cicero, it must be avowed, is convicted from his own mouth of vanity, inconstancy, sordidness, jealousy, malice, selfishness, and timidity. But on the other hand no character, public or private, could thus bare its workings to our view without laying a stronger claim to our sympathy, and extorting from us more kindly consideration than we can give to the mere shell of the human being with which ordinary history brings us in contact. Cicero gains more than he loses by the confessions he pours into our ear. We read in his letters what we should vainly search for in the meagre pages of Sallust and Appian, in the captious criticism of Dion, and even in the pleasant anecdotes of his friendly biographer Plutarch, his amiableness, his refined urbanity, his admiration for excellence, his thirst for fame, his love of truth, equity, and reason. Much indeed of the patriotism, the honesty, the moral courage he exhibited, was really no other than the refined ambition of attaining the respect of his contemporaries and bequeathing a name to posterity. He might not act from a sense of duty, like Cato, but his motives, personal and selfish as they in some sense were, coincided with what a more enlightened conscience would have felt to be duty. Thus his proconsulate is perhaps the purest and most honorable passage in his life. His strict and rare probity amidst the temptations of office arrests our attention and extorts our praise: yet assuredly Cicero had no nice sense of honor, and was controlled by no delicacy of sentiment, where public opinion was silent, or a transaction strictly private. His courting his ward Publilia for her dower, his caressing Dolabella for the sake of getting his debt paid, his soliciting the historian Lucceius to color and exaggerate the merits of his consulship, display a grievous want of magnanimity and of a predominant sense of right. Fortunately his instinct taught him to see in the constitution of the republic the fairest field for the display of his peculiar talents; the orator and the pleader could not fail to love the arena on which the greatest triumph of his genius had been or were yet, as he hoped, to be acquired. And Cicero indeed was not less ambitious than Cæesar or Pompeius, Antonius or Octavius. To the pursuit of fame he sacrificed many interests and friendships. He was not less jealous of a rival in his chosen career than any of the leaders of party and candidates for popular favor. He could not endure competition for the throne of eloquence and the sceptre of persuasion. It was on this account perhaps that he sought his associates among the young, from whose rivalry he had nothing to fear, rather than from his own contemporaries, the candidates for the same prize of public admiration which he aimed at securing for himself. From his pages there flows an incessant stream of abuse of all the great masters of political power in his time; of Cæsar and Pompeius; of Crassus and Antonius, not to mention his coarse vituperation of Piso and Gabinius, and his uneasy sneers at the impracticable Cato. We may note the different tone which his disparagement assumes towards these men respectively. He speaks of Cæsar with awe, of Pompeius with mortification, with dislike of Crassus, with bitter malice of Antonius. Cæsar, even when he most deeply reprobates him, he personally loves; the cold distrust of Pompeius vexes his self-esteem; between him and Crassus there subsists a natural antipathy of temperament: but Antonius, the hate of his old age, becomes to him the incarnation of all the evil his long and bitter experience of mankind have discovered in the human heart. While we suspect Cicero of injustice towards the great men of his day, we are bound also to specify the gross dishonesty with which he magnifies his own merits where they are trivial, and embellishes them where they are really important. The perpetual recurrence to the topic of his own political deserts must have wearied the most patient of friends, and more than balanced the display of sordidness and time-serving which Atticus doubtless reflected back in his share of the correspondence between them.

"But while Cicero stands justly charged with many grave infirmities of temper and defects of principle, while we remark with a sigh the vanity, the inconstancy, and the ingratitude he so often manifested, while we lament his ignoble subserviencies and his ferocious resentments, the high standard by which we claim to judge him is in itself the fullest acknowledgment of his transcendent[pg 164] merits. For undoubtedly had he not placed himself on a higher moral level than the statesmen and sages of his day, we should pass over many of his weaknesses in silence, and allow his pretensions to our esteem to pass almost unchallenged. But we demand a nearer approach to the perfection of human wisdom and virtue in one who sought to approve himself the greatest of their teachers. Nor need we scruple to admit that the judgment of the ancients on Cicero was for the most part unfavorable. The moralists of antiquity required in their heroes virtues with which we can more readily dispense: and they too had less sympathy with many qualities which a purer religion and a wider experience have taught us to love and admire. Nor were they capable, from their position, of estimating the slow and silent effects upon human happiness of the lessons which Cicero enforced. After all the severe judgments we are compelled to pass on his conduct, we must acknowledge that there remains a residue of what is amiable in his character and noble in his teaching beyond all ancient example. Cicero lived and died in faith. He has made converts to the belief in virtue, and had disciples in the wisdom of love. There have been dark periods in the history of man, when the feeble ray of religious instruction paled before the torch of his generous philanthropy. The praise which the great critic pronounced upon his excellence in oratory may be justly extended to the qualities of his heart, and even in our enlightened days it may be held no mean advance in virtue to venerate the master of Roman philosophy."

LORD MAHON'S HISTORY OF THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION.

Incomparably the best history of our struggle for independence that has been written by a foreigner is that of which we have the larger portion in the just-published fifth and sixth volumes of Lord Mahon's History of England from the Peace of Utrecht, comprising the period from 1763 to 1780—from the commencement of the popular discontents until the virtual conclusion of the war.

The character of Lord Mahon as a historian has long been established. When Sismondi, in 1842, had brought his History of France down to the peace of Aix-la-Chapelle, he lamented that he could no longer be guided by Lord Mahon, and expressed a hope that his "brilliant labors" would be continued. The portion of his work on which the illustrious Frenchman thus set the seal of his approval has been reprinted in this country by the Appletons, in two large volumes (embracing the first four of the original impression), carefully and judiciously edited by Professor Henry Reed, of Philadelphia. It well indicates the right of its author to a place with the best British writers in this department. History was never before written so brilliantly or profoundly as in the last half century. Germany in this period has boasted her Schiller, Niebuhr, Von Hammer, Heeren, Ranke, and two Mullers; France her Sismondi, Barrante, Thierrys, Michelet, Mignet, Guizot, and Thiers; England her Mitford, Arnold, Thirlwall, Grote, Napier, Hallam, Mackintosh, Macaulay, Palgrave, and Mahon; and we have ourselves the noble names of Bancroft, Prescott, and Irving, to send to the next ages. Of the English authors we have mentioned, we regard Lord Mahon as in many respects the first; Hallam is a laborious and wise critic; Thirlwall and Grote, in their province, have greatly increased the fame of British scholarship; and Macaulay, brilliant and picturesque beyond any of his contemporaries, has an unprecedented popularity, which will last until the worthlessness of his opinions and the viciousness of his style are more justly appreciated than they are likely to be by the mobs of novel readers who in this generation have preferred him to James and Ainsworth. Lord Mahon is the most legitimate successor of the greatest historian of his country, David Hume.

Although the chief subject of these new volumes is the American war, the general political history of England, from the decline of the fortunes of Bute through the administration of Grenville, Rockingham, Chatham, the Duke of Grafton, and Lord North, is illustrated and commented on as largely as the special purpose of the author permitted; and we have many striking passages respecting Wilkes and his various persecutions, the Letters of Junius and their authorship, and the common intellectual and material progress of the British empire. The spirit in which he regards our Revolution is illustrated by the following paragraph, on the rejection, by the House of Peers, of the conciliatory Bill by which Lord Chatham hoped, in 1775, to prevent the threatened separation of the colonies:

"It may be proper, or at least pardonable, here to pause for an inquiry, what probable issue might have attended an opposite decision in the British Parliament? If the ministers had been defeated on this Bill, if, in consequence, they had resigned, and it had in other hands been carried through, would the Americans have accepted the measure cheerfully and readily—would it for a long time to come have closed the breach, and cemented the union with the Mother Country? From all the facts and testimonies then or since made public, I answer without hesitation that it would. The sword was then slumbering in its scabbard. On both sides there were injuries to redress, but not as yet bloodshed to avenge. It was only a quarrel. It was not as yet a war. Even the boldest leaders of that war in after years, whether in council or the field, were still, in January, 1775, the firm friends of colonial subordination. Washington himself (and he at least was no dissembler—from him, at least, there never came any promise or assurance that did not deserve the most implicit credit) had only a few months before presided at a meeting of Fairfax County, in Virginia. That meeting, while claiming relief of grievances, had also at his instance adopted the following Resolve:—'That it is our greatest wish and inclination, as well as interest, to continue our connection with, and dependence upon, the British Government.'[pg 165] But further still, although the first Congress was praised by Chatham for its moderate counsels, and although the calmer voice of history has ratified the praise, we learn that these moderate counsels did not lag behind, but rather exceeded and outran the prevailing sentiment in many of the colonies. To this fact we find an unimpeachable testimony in the letters of President Reed, who, writing to a friend in strict confidence, laments that 'The proceedings of Congress have been pitched on too high a key for some of those middle provinces.' With such feelings, how gladly, how gratefully would they have welcomed the hand of reconciliation stretched out by the Parliament of England! It may be true, indeed, that such feelings as these did not prevail in all, or nearly all, the colonies. It may be true, especially, that no amount of good government, of forbearance, or of kindness, would have won back Massachusetts. But herein lay, as I think, the especial force and efficacy of Lord Chatham's scheme, that it did not refer the questions of parliamentary supremacy and colonial taxation to the decision of any one province; but, as the Americans themselves desired, to the decision of a Congress composed from all the provinces, so that disaffection, however firmly rooted here and there, would of course be overpowered by a loyal and large majority. Nor do I believe that the proposal of a new grant to the Crown, and the consequent necessity of increased taxation to the people, would have interposed any serious obstacle. The load of taxation on the colonies was at this period light indeed: according to a calculation made by Lord North in that very year, each inhabitant of England paid in taxes, upon an average, not less than twenty-five shillings annually; but each inhabitant of British America no more than sixpence. The experience of the closely-following Revolutionary war proves how easily and readily, when their feelings were involved, the Americans could raise far greater supplies. And surely had Lord Chatham's scheme prevailed, their feelings would have been involved. They would have been pleased and proud to show that their previous refusal to pay taxes sprang from principle, and not from inability or disaffection; and that, when once their views of principle had been complied with, they could contribute with no sparing hand to the exigencies of their countrymen, and to the service of their king."

The opinion of Lord Mahon that, even after Burgoyne's surrender, and the treaty of alliance between France and America, the colonies might have been preserved, had Lord Chatham lived and returned to office, we think entirely erroneous. Our separation from England, though there had been no stamp act or tea tax, was inevitable.

Lord Mahon is exceedingly fond of personal portraiture, in which he is sometimes very successful. One of his most carefully-elaborated performances in this way has for its subject Washington, and in the dozen pages he devotes to the analysis of the character of the great chief he has displayed his best abilities, though, we confess, without suggesting any thing very novel. He dislikes Franklin, and loses no opportunity of imputing to him personal dishonesty. We think the influence of Mr. William B. Reed's Life of President Reed is traceable in almost every allusion made by Lord Mahon to our philosopher. Without further observation upon the qualities of the work, we avail ourselves of the possession of an early copy of it to present our readers with some of the most striking passages pencilled in a hasty reading.

WASHINGTON.

During many years did Washington continue to enjoy the pleasures and fulfil the duties of an independent country gentleman. Field-sports divided his time with the cultivation and improvement of his land, and the sales of his tobacco; he showed kindness to his dependents, and hospitality to his friends; and having been elected one of the House of Burgesses in Virginia, he was, whenever that House met, exact in his attendance. To that well-regulated mind nothing within the course of its ordinary and appointed avocations seemed unworthy of its care. His ledgers and day-books were kept by himself: he took note of all the houses where he partook of hospitality, so that not even the smallest courtesies might pass by unremembered; and until his press of business in the Revolutionary War he was wont every evening to set down the variations of the weather during the preceding day. It was also his habit through life, whenever he wished to possess himself perfectly of the contents of any paper, to transcribe it in his own hand, and apparently with deliberation, so that no point might escape his notice. Many copies of this kind were after his death found among his manuscripts.

We may observe, however, that in the mind of Washington punctuality and precision did not, as we often find them, turn in any degree to selfishness. On the contrary, he was rather careless of small points where only his own comfort was concerned. Thus he could seldom be persuaded to take any remedy, or desist from any business, whenever he caught a cold, but used to say, "let it go as it came!"

Nor yet was his constant regularity of habits attended by undue formality of manner. In one of his most private letters there appears given incidentally, and as it were by chance, a golden rule upon that subject:—"As to the gentlemen you mention I cannot charge myself with incivility, or what in my opinion is tantamount, ceremonious civility.

In figure Washington was thin and tall (above six feet high), in countenance grave, unimpassioned, and benign. An inborn worth, an unaffected dignity, beamed forth in every look as in every word and deed. His first appearance and address might not convey the idea of superior talents; such at least was the remark of his accomplished countryman, Mr. Gallatin; but no man, whether friend or enemy, ever viewed without respect the noble simplicity of his demeanor, the utter absence in him of every artifice and every affectation.

It has been justly remarked that of General Washington there are fewer anecdotes to tell than perhaps of any other great man on record. So equally framed were the features of his mind, so harmonious all its proportions, that no one quality rose salient above the rest. There were none of those chequered ques, none of those warring emotions, in which Biography delights. There was no[pg 166] contrast of lights and shades, no flickering of the flame; it was a mild light that seldom dazzled, but that ever cheered and warmed. His contemporaries or his close observers, as Mr. Jefferson and Mr. Gallatin, assert that he had naturally strong passions, but had attained complete mastery over them. In self-control indeed he has never been surpassed. If sometimes on rare occasions, and on strong provocation, there was wrung from him a burst of anger, it was almost instantly quelled by the dominion of his will. He decided surely, though he deliberated slowly; nor could any urgency or peril move him from his serene composure, his calm and clear-headed good sense. Integrity and truth were also ever present in his mind. Not a single instance, as I believe, can be found in his whole career when he was impelled by any but an upright motive, or endeavored to attain an object by any but worthy means. Such are some of the high qualities which have justly earned for General Washington the admiration even of the country he opposed, and not merely the admiration but the gratitude and affection of his own. Such was the pure and upright spirit to which, when its toils were over and its earthly course had been run, was offered the unanimous homage of the assembled Congress, all clad in deep mourning for their common loss, as to "the man first in war, first in peace, and first in the hearts of his fellow-citizens." At this day in the United States the reverence for his character is, as it should be, deep and universal, and not confined, as with nearly all our English statesmen, to one party, one province, or one creed. Such reverence for Washington is felt even by those who wander furthest from the paths in which he trod. A President when recommending measures of aggression and invasion can still refer to him whose rule was ever to arm only in self-defence as to "the greatest and best of men!" States which exult in their bankruptcy as a proof of their superior shrewdness, and have devised "Repudiation" as a newer and more graceful term for it, yet look up to their great General—the very soul of good faith and honor—with their reverence unimpaired!"

PATRICK HENRY.

The colony of Virginia was the place, and the the year 1736 the time, of birth to Patrick Henry. His parents were in easy circumstances, but burthened with a numerous family; they resided at a country scat to which the ambitious name of Mount Brilliant had been given. In childhood Patrick Henry gave little promise of distinction. His person is represented as having been coarse, his manners extremely awkward, his dress slovenly, and his aversion to study invincible. No persuasion could bring him either to read or to work. At sixteen his father gave him means to open a small shop, which failed, however, in less than one year. Then he tried a small farm, and married; then again he entered upon the life of a tradesman, but in a few years more was a bankrupt. It was at this period that he became acquainted with Mr. Jefferson, afterwards President of the United States. "Mr. Henry," says Jefferson, "had a little before broken up his store (shop), or rather it had broken him up, but his misfortunes were not to be traced either in his countenance or conduct. His manners had something of coarseness in them; his passion was music, dancing, and pleasantry. He excelled in the last, and it attached every one to him."

As a last resource, Patrick Henry now determined to make a trial of the law. It cannot be said that his preparatory studies were unduly arduous, since, as his biographer informs us, they were all comprised in the period of six weeks. Under such unpromising circumstances, and in the year 1763, he obtained a brief in the long-contested cause then raging in Virginia between the clergy on the one side, and the legislature on the other, as regarding the stipends which the former claimed. On this occasion Henry, to the astonishment of all who knew him, poured forth a strain of such impassioned eloquence as not only carried the cause, contrary to all previous expectation, but placed him ever afterwards at the head of his profession in the colony. To this very day, says Mr. Wirt, writing in 1818, the impression remains, and the old people of that district think that no higher compliment can be paid to any public speaker than to say of him in their homely phrase, "He is almost equal to Patrick when he plead (pleaded) against the parsons!"

The natural eloquence which on this occasion flashed forth from the coarse and unlettered Henry, as the spark-of fire from the flint, continued to distinguished him both as a Member of the House of Burgesses at Williamsburg, and afterwards as a member of Congress. He took from the first a bold and active part against the pretensions of the mother country; indeed Mr. Jefferson goes so far as to declare that "Mr. Henry certainly gave the earliest impulse to the ball of revolution." His most celebrated burst of oratory, or rather turn of phrase, was in this very year 1765, when descanting in the House of Burgesses on the tyranny of the Stamp Act. "Cæsar—" he cried, in a voice of thunder and with an eye of fire—"Cæsar had his Brutus—Charles the First had his Cromwell—and George the Third"—"Treason!" here exclaimed the Speaker, "Treason! Treason!" re-echoed from every part of the House. Henry did not for an instant falter, but fixing his eye firmly on the Speaker, he concluded his sentence thus "—may profit by their example. If this be treason make the most of it!"

Indolence and aversion to reading seemed almost as natural to Henry's mind as powers of debate. To the last he never overcame them. Thus, at his death, in 1799, his books were found to be extremely few, and these too consisting chiefly of odd volumes. But his gift of speech was (for his hearers) sufficiently supported by his fiery energy, his practical shrewdness, and his ever keen glance into the feelings and characters of other. Nor were these his only claims to his country's favor. He retained the manners and custom of the common people, with what his friendly biographer terms "religious caution.—He dressed as plainly as the plainest of them," continues Mr. Wirt, "ate only their homely fare, and drank their simple beverage, mixed with them on a footing of the most entire and perfect equality, and conversed with them even in their own vicious and depraved pronunciation." By such means he soon acquired and long retained a large measure of popularity, and he applied himself with zeal and success before any audience, and on every occasion which arose, to increase and perpetuate the estrangement between the North American Colonies and England.

FRANKLIN.

Dr. Benjamin Franklin is one of those men who have made the task of succeeding biographers more difficult by having been in part their own. He was born at Boston in 1706, the youngest of ten sons. "My father," he says, "intended to devote me, as the tithe of his sons, to the service of the Church;" but on further reflection, the charges of a college education were thought too burthensome, and young Benjamin became a journeyman printer. From a very early age he showed a passionate fondness for reading, and much ingenuity in argument, but, as he acknowledges, had at first contracted a disputatious and wrangling turn of conversation. "I have since observed," he says, "that persons of good sense seldom fall into it, except lawyers, University-men, and generally men of all sorts who have been bred at Edinburgh."

Young Franklin was at first bound apprentice to one of his elder brothers, a printer at Boston; but some differences arising between them, he proceeded to Philadelphia, where he soon obtained employment, and ere long set up for himself. His success in life was secured by his great frugality, industry, and shrewdness. In his own words: "I spent no time in taverns, games, or frolics of any kind; reading was the only amusement I allowed myself." His knowledge and shrewdness,—great zeal in urging any improvements, and great ingenuity in promoting them,—speedily raised him high in the estimation of his fellow-townsmen, and enabled him to take a forward part in all the affairs of his province. In England, and indeed all Europe, he became celebrated by his experiments and discoveries in electricity. These may deserve the greater credit when we recollect both their practical utility and their unassisted progress,—how much the pointed rods which he introduced have tended to avert the dangers of lightning, and how far removed was Franklin at the time from all scientific society, libraries, or patronage.

It has also been stated by no less an authority in science than Sir Humphrey Davy, that "the style and manner of Dr. Franklin's publication on Electricity are almost as worthy of admiration as the doctrine it contains." The same remark may indeed be applied to all his writings. All of them are justly celebrated for their clear, plain, and lively style, free from every appearance of art, but, in fact, carefully pointed and nicely poised. In public speaking, on the other hand, he was much less eminent. His last American biographer observes of him, that he never even pretended to the accomplishments of an orator or debater. He seldom spoke in a deliberative assembly, except for some special object, and then only for a few minutes at a time.

As a slight instance of Franklin's humor and shrewdness in all affairs of common life I may quote the following: "Question. I am about courting a girl I have had but little acquaintance with. How shall I come to a knowledge of her faults? Answer. Commend her among her female acquaintance!"

Whether in science and study, or in politics and action, the great aim of Franklin's mind was ever practical utility. Here again we may quote Sir Humphrey Davy as saying of Franklin that he sought rather to make philosophy a useful inmate and servant in the common habitations of man, than to preserve her merely as an object of admiration in temples and palaces. Thus, also, in affairs he had a keen eye to his own interest, but likewise a benevolent concern for the public good. Nor was he ever indifferent to cases of individual grievance or hardship. In the pursuit of his objects, public or private, he was, beyond most other men, calm, sagacious, and wary; neither above business nor yet below it; never turned aside from it by flights of fancy nor yet by bursts of passion.

Among the good qualities which we may with just cause ascribe to Franklin we cannot number any firm reliance on the truths of Revelation. Only five weeks before his death we find him express a cold approbation of the "system of morals" bequeathed to us by "Jesus of Nazareth." In his Memoirs he declares that he always believed in the existence of a Deity and a future state of rewards and punishments, but he adds that although he continued to adhere to his first—the Presbyterian—sect, some of its dogmas appeared to him unintelligible, and others doubtful. "I early absented myself from the public assemblies of the sect; and I seldom attended any public worship; Sunday being my studying day."

Such being Franklin's own practice, and such his own description of it as to public worship, it seems worthy of note that it was he who in the American Convention brought forward a motion for daily prayers. "I have lived, Sir," said he, "a long time, and the longer I live the more convincing proofs I see of this truth, that God governs in the affairs of men. And if a sparrow cannot fall to the ground without his notice, is it probable that an empire can rise without his aid?" But in spite of this most earnest appeal the motion was rejected, since, as we are told, "the Convention, except three or four persons, thought prayers unnecessary."

The accomplished American biographer, by whom this last incident is recorded, expresses in the same passage deep regret that Dr. Franklin did not bestow more attention than he seems to have done on the evidences of Christianity. And indeed there are several indications that he was less well acquainted with points of Christian faith and discipline than with almost any other subject. One of these indications, and surely a most strange one, occurs in the Private Diary which he kept at Passy during part of 1784. It appears that two young American gentlemen had come over to London with the view of entering Holy Orders, but that the Archbishop of Canterbury refused them Ordination unless they would take the Oath of Allegiance. In this dilemma Franklin actually applied to the Pope's Nuncio at Paris to ascertain whether a Roman Catholic Bishop in America might not perform the ceremony for them as Protestants, and he transcribes as remarkable the natural reply: "The Nuncio says the thing is impossible unless the gentlemen become Roman Catholics."

The religious scepticism or indifference of Franklin, which his present biographers justly lament, was, however, in his own day, a recommendation and a merit with the French philosophists. On the other hand, his hostility to England endeared him to the French politicians. On both these grounds, as well as from his high scientific attainments, he found himself during his residence of several years at Paris in no common measure courted, flattered, and caressed. A fine verse, one[pg 168] of the noblest which modern Latinity can boast, describes him as having plucked the lightning from Heaven and the sceptre from tyrants.

Descending from such lofty flights to the regions of sober reality, we may observe that Franklin in his later years, and especially in France, adopted to a great extent the Quaker garb. He laid aside the huge wig which he used to wear in England, and allowed his long white hair to flow down nearly to his shoulders. His clothes were of the plainest cut and of the dunnest color. The Parisians of that period, ever swayed by external impressions, were greatly struck with, and in their writings frequently refer to, his venerable aspect, and they compared him by turns to all the sages of antiquity. It is also probable that his Quaker-like attire may have tended to invest him in their estimation with the other attributes which they assigned to the ideal Quaker character, as simplicity, guilelessness, inviolable truth.

LA FAYETTE.

It so chanced that in the summer of 1776, La Fayette, still in his teens, and serving as a subaltern with the French army, was stationed with his regiment at Metz. It happened also that in the course of a foreign tour their Royal Highnesses of Gloucester passed a few days in that town. The principal officers entertained the Duke at dinner, when the conversation turned to the last news from Philadelphia and the new Declaration of Independence. Being at that period offended with his Court, from its neglect of the Duchess, the Duke indulged in Opposition topics, and, in some degree at least, took the part of the Americans. The details were new to La Fayette. He listened with eagerness, and prolonged the conversation by asking questions of the Royal guest. The cause of the colonies that had risen against England seemed to him just and noble, even on the showing of one of the English princes; and before he left the table, the thought came into his head that he would go to America, and offer the Americans his services. He determined to return to Paris, and make further inquiries. His inquiries being mainly addressed to Silas Deane and other zealous friends of the insurgents, could not fail to confirm him in his first impressions. He became fired with an ardent zeal for Republican principles and the American cause. That zeal continued ever afterwards—for well nigh sixty years—the polar star of his course. That zeal, favored as it was by fortune, adapted to the times that came upon him, and urged forward by great personal vanity, laid the foundations of his fame far more, as I conceive, than any strength of mind or talents of his own. Few men have ever been so conspicuous from afar with so little, when closely viewed, of real weight or dimension. As a general, it can scarcely be pretended that his exploits were either many or considerable. As an orator, we look in vain for any high powers of debate. As a statesman, we find only an undistinguishing eagerness to apply the Transatlantic examples and to act the part of Washington, without duly estimating either the immense superiority of Washington's character above his own, or the manifold points of difference between America and Europe.

It was said by Napoleon at St. Helena, that "La Fayette was a man of no ability, either in civil or military life; his understanding was confined to narrow bounds; his character was full of dissimulation, and swayed by vague ideas of liberty, which, in him, were undefined and ill-digested." No doubt there is some exaggeration in these words. No doubt the late Emperor, at that period, was stirred by personal resentment at the hostile conduct of the General in 1815; yet it will perhaps be found more easy by any admirer of La Fayette to impugn the good faith of the draughtsman than the general accuracy of the portrait.

The fortune of La Fayette was ample, his yearly income being little short of two hundred thousand livres; and his connexions, as we have seen, were among the first at Court. Under such circumstances, Silas Deane felt the vast importance of securing him. An agreement was concluded between them, by the intervention of one Mr. Carmichael (for as yet La Fayette spoke no English, and Deane little French), according to the terms of which the Marquis de La Fayette was to join the American service, and to receive from Congress the rank of Major-General—no slight temptation to a stripling of nineteen! La Fayette was to be accompanied, or rather attended, by the Baron de Kalb and eleven other officers of lower rank, seeking service in America. He sent, in secret, an agent to Bordeaux, there to purchase and prepare a vessel for their voyage. Meanwhile he made an excursion of three weeks to London, where his kinsman, the Marquis de Noailles, was ambassador. He was presented to the King, and graciously received. He saw at the opera General Clinton, who had come home on a winter leave of absence, and who was next to meet him on a field of battle in America. But, mindful of his own hostile designs, he deemed it proper to forbear from prying into the military forces of the kingdom, and declined an invitation to visit the naval armament at Portsmouth.

On his return to France, La Fayette bade farewell to his young wife, leaving her four months gone with child, and set out for Bordeaux. Thus far all had prospered according to his wishes. But at Bordeaux he found that his preparations had been discovered and complained of by Lord Stormont, and that a lettre de cachet for his arrest was already issued. Nevertheless, he did not relinquish his design. He crossed the Spanish frontier in the disguise of a courier, found his vessel at Pasages, and there embarked with his companions. Towards the middle of June he landed on the coast of Carolina; and after a few days' rest, pursued his route to Philadelphia. His reception by the Congress was not at first a warm one; but La Fayette declared that he would accept no pay, and was willing to serve as a volunteer; and under these circumstances, the Assembly fulfilled the terms of the secret agreement, and bestowed on him the rank of Major-General.

At Philadelphia La Fayette saw the American troops for the first time, and, according to his own account, was struck with their grotesque appearance—with green boughs fastened to their hats—coarse hunting-shirts instead of uniforms—and muskets, many wanting bayonets, and all of unequal make and size. But he soon learnt to think more favorably of these raw levies, when, notwithstanding all their disadvantages, he observed their conduct in the field. With regard to their commander, his early impressions never changed. It was also at Philadelphia, and at a dinner-table,[pg 169] comprising several members of the Congress, that La Fayette was introduced to Washington. The boy-general found himself warmly welcomed by the chief whom he had long admired. "When you come to the army," said Washington, "I shall be pleased if you will make my quarters your home, and consider yourself as one of my family." The invitation thus frankly tendered was no less frankly accepted. Thus did a cordial intimacy arise between them, Washington at all times treating La Fayette with fatherly kindness, and La Fayette looking up to Washington with filial regard.

La Fayette had already begun to speak a little English, and by degrees acquired more. But to the last the difficulties of the language were a main obstacle, not only to himself, but to every other foreigner who served with, or under, the United States. Thus there are still preserved some of the ill-spelled and scarcely intelligible notes of Count Pulasky, during the short time that he served as general of cavalry. Still worse was the case of Baron Steuben, a veteran of the school of Frederick the Second, who joined the Americans a few months later than La Fayette, and who greatly aided them in the establishment of discipline. The Baron, it appears, could not teach and drill, nor even swear and curse, but by means of an interpreter! He was, therefore, most fortunate in securing as his aid-de-camp Captain Walker of New-York—most fortunate, if, as his American biographer assures us, "there was not, perhaps, another officer in the army, unless Hamilton be excepted, who could speak French and English so as to be well understood in both."

La Fayette did not always confine himself to the bounds of his own profession; sometimes, and, perhaps, not greatly to his credit, he stepped beyond them. Here is one case recorded with much satisfaction by himself. He states, that soon after his arrival in America, and while attending on Sunday the service of the Church of England, he was displeased with the clergyman, because in his sermon he had said nothing at all of politics. "I charged him to his face," says La Fayette, "with preaching only about Heaven!... But next Sunday," continues the keen young officer, "I heard him again, when his loud invectives against 'the execrable House of Hanover,' showed that he was ready and willing to take my good advice."

JOHN HORNE TOOKE.

His abilities were ill fitted for the profession of a clergyman, which indeed he at last renounced, but they highly qualified him for his favorite occupation as a demagogue. Between him and Wilkes there now arose a violent animosity and a keen altercation carried on in newspapers. Descending to the lowest and most selfish details, they were not ashamed thus publicly to wrangle respecting a Welsh pony and a hamper of claret! Even before the close of 1770 might be discerned the growing discord and weakness of Wilkes and his city friends. At a meeting which they convened to consider their course of action, some proposed a new Remonstrance to the King, while others urged an impeachment of Lord North in the House of Commons. "What is the use of a new Remonstrance?" cried Wilkes. "It would only serve to make another paper kite for His Royal Highness the Prince of Wales!"—"What is the use of an impeachment?" cried Sawbridge. "Lord North is quite sure of the Bishops and the Scotch Peers in the Upper House, and could not fail to be acquitted!" But although these ardent patriots might differ a little as to the means, they were bent on one and the same end; and the Remonstrance which was at last agreed upon, appears to have been framed by their united wisdom. As thus drawn up it teemed with silly vagaries fit only to please the lowest order of intellects. Thus it prayed that His Majesty would for ever remove from his presence and councils all his Ministers and Secretaries of State, especially Lord Mansfield (who by the way was not one of them), and that His Majesty would not again admit any Scotchman into the administration!

THE CHARACTER OF WILKES.

He was born in 1727, the son of a rich distiller. Early in life he set up a brewery for himself, but soon relinquished the wearisome business. Early in life also he improved his fortune by his marriage with the daughter and heiress of the celebrated Dr. Mead, the author of the "Treatise on Poisons." But this lady, being of maturer age than himself, and of slight personal attractions, was speedily slighted, and he left her with as much disgust as he had his brewery. In 1757 he was elected Member of Parliament for Aylesbury, but never obtained any success as an orator, his speeches being, though flippant, yet feeble. In truth he had no great ability of any kind, but dauntless courage and high animal spirits. Nor should we deny him another much rarer praise,—a vein of good humor and kindliness, which did not forsake him through all his long career, amidst the riot of debauchery or the rancor of faction. So agreeable and insinuating was his conversation, that more than one fair dame as she listened found herself forget his sinister squint and his ill-favored countenance. He used to say of himself in a laughing strain, that though he was the ugliest man in England, he wanted nothing to make him even with the handsomest but half an hour at starting! Politics indeed seemed at first wholly alien from Wilkes's sphere; gayety and gallantry were his peculiar objects. For some time he reigned the oracle of green-rooms and the delight of taverns. In conjunction with other kindred spirits, as Paul Whitehead and Sir Francis Dashwood, amounting in all to twelve, he rented Medmenham Abbey, near Marlow. It is a secluded and beautiful spot on the banks of the Thames, with hanging woods that slope down to the crystal stream, a grove of venerable elms, and meadows of the softest green. In days of old it had been a convent of Cistercian monks, but the new brotherhood took the title of Franciscans in compliment to Sir Francis Dashwood, whom they called their Father Abbot. On the portal, now again in ruins, and once more resigned to its former solitude and silence, I could still a few years since read the inscription placed there by Wilkes and his friends: fay çe que voudras. Other French and Latin inscriptions, now with good reason effaced, then appeared in other parts of the grounds, some of them remarkable for wit, but all for either profaneness or obscenity, and many the more highly applauded as combining both. In this retreat the new Franciscans used often to meet for summer pastimes, and varied the round of their debauchery by a mock celebration of the principal Roman Catholic rites.

WILKES'S ESSAY ON WOMAN.

It appears that Wilkes had, several years before, and in some of his looser hours, composed a parody of Pope's "Essay on Man." In this undertaking, which, according to his own account, cost him a great deal of pains and time, he was, it is said, assisted by Thomas Potter, second son of the late Archbishop of Canterbury, who had been Secretary of Frederick Prince of Wales, and had since shown ability and gained office in the House of Commons, but was (as well became one of Wilkes's friends) of lax morals in his private life. The result of their joint authorship, however, has little wit or talent to make any amends for the blasphemy and lewdness with which it abounds. As the original had been inscribed by Pope to Lord Bolingbroke, so was the parody by Wilkes to Lord Sandwich; thus it began, "Awake my Sandwich!" instead of "Awake my St. John!" Thus also, in ridicule of Warburton's well-known commentary, some burlesque notes were appended in the name of the Right Reverend the Bishop of Gloucester.

This worthless poem had remained in manuscript, and lain in Wilkes's desk, until in the previous spring he had occasion to set up a press at his own house, and was tempted to print fourteen copies only as presents to his boon companions. Of one of these copies the Government obtained possession, through a subordinate agent, and by not very creditable means, and Lord Sandwich holding it forth in his hand with the air of injured innocence, denounced it as not only scandalous and impious, but also as a breach of Privilege against the Bishop as a Peer of Parliament. He likewise complained of another profane parody, written by the same hand, and printed on the same occasion; this last was entitled, "The veni creator paraphrased." The most offensive passages of both were now by Lord Sandwich's order read aloud to the House, until Lord Lyttleton with a groan entreated that they might hear no more!

In the discussion which ensured, Bishop Warburton, forgetting that such ribaldries could not really tarnish his character, showed a heat which little became it. He exclaimed that the blackest fiends in Hell would disdain to keep company with Wilkes,—and then asked pardon of Satan for comparing them together! Both the Earl and Bishop in their passion would have readily over-leaped the common forms of justice. The former, after producing evidence at the Bar as to the authorship of Wilkes, wished the House to take measures for his prosecution, without the least delay. But the Peers, although readily agreeing to vote the two parodies blasphemous and breaches of Privilege, resolved, on the motion of Lord Mansfield, to adjourn all further questions until the day after the next, so as to give Wilkes the opportunity, if he desired it, of alleging any matter in denial or defence.

LORD THURLOW.

With all his faults and shortcomings there was that in Thurlow which overawed and daunted his contemporaries, and of which the impression is not wholly lost even on posterity. It was a saying of Mr. Fox, that no man ever yet was so wise as Thurlow looked. His countenance was fraught with sense; his aspect stately and commanding; his brow broad, massy, and armed with terrors like that of the Olympian Jove, to which indeed it was often compared. His voice loud, sonorous, and as rolling thunder in the distance, augmented the effect of his fierce and terrible invective. Few indeed were they who did not quail before his frown; fewer still who would abide his onset in debate. Perhaps no modern English statesman, in the House of Lords at least, was ever so much dreaded. In parliament, as at the bar, his speeches were home thrusts, conveying the strongest arguments or keenest reproofs in the plainest and clearest words. His enemies might accuse his style of being coarse, and sometimes even ungrammatical, but they could never deny its energy or its effect. In private life Thurlow was remarkable for his thorough knowledge of the Greek and Latin writers; and no less for his skill in argument and brilliant powers of conversation. While yet at the bar, Dr. Johnson said of him to Boswell: "I honor Thurlow, sir; Thurlow is a fine fellow; he fairly puts his mind to yours." And after he became Chancellor, the same high authority added: "I would prepare myself for no man in England but Lord Thurlow. When I am to meet him, I should wish to know a day before." Unless with ladies, his manner was always uncouth, and his voice a constant growl. But beneath that rugged rind there appears to have lurked much warmth of affection and kindliness of heart. Many acts of generous aid and unsolicited bounty are recorded of him. Men of learning and merit seldom needed any other recommendation to his favor. Thus, on reading Horsley's "Letters to Dr. Priestly," he at once obtained for the author a stall at Gloucester, saying—what I earnestly wish all other Chancellors had borne in mind—"that those who supported the Church should be supported by it." Nevertheless his temper, even when in some measure sobered down by age, was always liable to violent and unreasonable starts of passion. It is related by a gentleman who dined with him at Brighton only a few months before his death—for I must ever hold that great characters are best portrayed by little circumstances—that a plateful of peaches being brought in, the ex-Chancellor, incensed at their ill appearance, ordered the window to be opened, and not only the peaches but the whole desert to be thrown out!

EDMUND BURKE.

In pamphlets, however, and political essays—and even speeches, when revised and sent forth singly, may be comprehended in that class,—the personal disadvantages of Burke could no longer apply; and as regards that class of writings, it may be doubted whether he has ever, in any age, or in any country, been excelled. The philosophy and deep thought of his reflections—the vigor and variety of his style—his rich flow of either panegyric or invective—his fine touches of irony—the glowing abundance and beauty of his metaphors—all these might separately claim applause; how much more, then, when all blended into one glorious whole! To give examples of these merits would be to transcribe half his works. Yet still if one single and short instance from his maxims be allowed me, I will observe that the generous ardor and activity of mind called forth by competition has formed a theme of philosophic comment from a very early age. It is touched both by Cicero and Quintilian; it has not been neglected either by Bacon or Montaigne. Yet still, as[pg 171] handled by Burke, this trite topic beams forth, not only with the hues of eloquence, but even with the bloom of novelty. He invites us to "an amicable conflict with difficulty. Difficulty is a severe instructor set over us by the supreme ordinance of a parental guardian and legislator, who knows us better than we know ourselves, as he loves us better too. He that wrestles with us strengthens our nerves and sharpens our skill. Our antagonist is our helper!" If amidst so much of eloquence and feeling as Burke's writings display we are desired to seek for faults, we shall find them, not in the want, but only in the exuberance and overflow of beauties. The palate becomes cloyed by so much richness, the eye dazzled by so much glare. His metaphors, fraught with fancy though they be, are often bold; they seem both too numerous and strained too far; they sometimes cease to please, and occasionally border even on the ludicrous and low. Of this defect, as of his excellences, a single instance shall suffice me. In the "Letter to a Noble Lord," in 1796, Burk compares the Duke of Bedford to a lamb already marked for slaughter by the Marats and Robespierres of France, but still unconscious of his doom, "pleased to the last," and who "licks the hand just raised to shed his blood." Thus far the simile is conducted with admirable force and humor. But not satisfied with his success, Burke goes further; he insists on leading us into the shambles, and makes the revolutionary butchers inquire as to their ducal victim, "how he cuts up? how he tallows in the caul or on the kidneys?" Apart from the beauty of the style, the value, as I conceive, of Burke's writings, is subject to one not unimportant deduction. For most lofty and far-sighted views in politics they will never be consulted in vain. On the other hand, let no man expect to find in them just or accurate, or even consistent, delineations of contemporary character. Where eternal principles are at stake, Burke was inaccessible to favor or to fear. Where only persons are concerned, he was often misled by resentments or by partialities, and allowed his fancy full play. The rich stores of Burke's memory and the rare powers of his mind were not reserved solely for his speeches or his writings; they appeared to no less advantage in his familiar conversation. Even the most trivial topics could elicit, even the most ignorant hearers could discern, his genius. "Sir," said Dr. Johnson, "if Burke were to go into a stable to see his horse dressed, the hostler would say, We have had an extraordinary man here!" On other occasions, also, the author of "Rasselas" extols him as "never unwilling to begin conversation, never at a loss to carry it on, never in haste to leave it off." His attempts at wit, indeed, were not always successful, and he might be accused of an inordinate affection for quibbles and puns. His favorite niece, and latterly his guest, was sometimes provoked into a—"Really, uncle, that is very poor." But upon the whole it may be asserted, that in social converse Burke was equalled by none of his contemporaries and his countrymen, except only Dr. Johnson himself and perhaps Lord Thurlow.

We have no more room for further extracts; those we have made illustrate the temper and the style of the work, and will commend it to the favorable consideration of American readers. Among subjects treated most elaborately is that of the authorship of Junius; but Lord Mahon has no new facts for the vindication of his judgment, that Sir Philip Francis was unquestionably the writer of the famous letters under that name.

There is an appendix to each volume; and in the appendix of one, and in the notes of both, are some curious illustrations of the worthlessness of Mr. Sparks's editions of the writings of Washington and Franklin. We first called attention to this subject some five years ago, and after the changes, &c. of Mr. Sparks had been pointed out in The International, a series of carefully prepared criticisms appeared in the Evening Post, in which the discrepancies between the original letters of Washington were exhibited to a degree that at once and for ever destroyed the good reputation of Mr. Sparks in this department. He chose not to take any notice of the disclosures to which we refer, but it may be that Lord Mahon's criticism will secure his attention, and an attempt, at least, for his vindication. Besides his comparisons of MS. and printed letters in the appendix, Lord Mahon has several allusions to the subject, of which we quote specimens:

"Some samples of the manner in which that gentleman (Mr. Sparks) has thought himself at liberty to tamper with the original MSS., will be found," &c.

"Mr. Sparks has printed no part of the correspondence precisely as Washington wrote it, but has greatly altered, and as he thinks, corrected and embellished it. Such a liberty with the writings of such a man might be justifiable, nay, even in some respects necessary, if Washington and his principal contemporaries had been still alive; but the date of this publication, the year (1838), leaves, as I conceive, no adequate vindication for tampering with the truth of history."

"Washington, however, in his public letter to Congress (unless Mr. Jared Sparks has improved this passage), says," &c.

"I know not whether my readers will concur with me in liking Washington's own and though home-spun, excellent cloth, much better than the 'Cobweb schemes and gauze coverings' which have, it seems, been manufactured in its place."

A complete errata to Mr. Sparks's editions of Washington, Franklin, and Gouverneur Morris, would occupy several volumes; and we do not remember one instance in which his alterations were justifiable, or in which they were really an improvement in point of style. The reprobation with which Mr. Sparks has been visited by the learned and judicious of his own country and England will be a warning to future laborers in the same field. The works edited by Mr. Sparks are no longer, we believe, regarded by historical students as of the slightest value as authorities, and no faithfulness or excellence which may be displayed in future works from his hand will retrieve his lost reputation.

These volumes will be reprinted immediately by the Appletons.

[pg 172]

FAUST OF WITTENBERG AND FUST OF MENTZ.

It were well if writers on the origin of typography would obey the injunction of Sir Thomas Browne, who thought it not inexpedient for those who seek to enlighten mankind on any particular subject, first to acquire some knowledge thereof themselves, so that the labor of readers should not so generally be profitless. In an article by Bishop McIlvaine, and another in Frazer's Magazine, by an anonymous contributor, the exercise of necromancy is imputed to Fust, the inventor or supposed inventor of printing. Nine of every ten persons who write any thing on the subject fall into the same error; they have something always to say of Fust and the devil; curious anecdotes to rehearse of the multiplication of copies of the Scriptures in Paris and elsewhere; spells and incantations by the inventor of the "black" art to describe, &c. But this is all induced by ignorance of the facts. John Fust, the putative inventor of printing, was a shrewd silversmith, and we suspect a knavish one, for without having any thing to do with the invention of the "art preservative of arts," he managed to rob another of the credit and profit of it. He was, however, never in Paris; he was never in his lifetime accused of the exercise of magical arts; he simply endeavored to make as much money as he could in Germany by underselling the copyists in the book market. All stories in which necromancy is attributed to him or to any other printer; all accounts of the opposition of the priests to typography as an infernal invention; in fine, the whole popular idea of Faust and the devil, is a modern contrivance, and originated in this manner: Some bookmaker, about the year 1580, undertook to write a history of printing; he had an indistinct recollection of Professor Faustus of the University of Wittenberg, and in his book blended as many of his adventures as he could remember with the memoirs of John Fust the printer; and from that day a succession of ignorant chroniclers have considered two men, of totally different characters, living at different times, as one individual.

Faust, the necromancer, was born in the duchy of Weimer in 1491, twenty-five years after the printer is understood to have died. He is mentioned by Melancthon, Wierus, and many other cotemporary writers, and was probably in his time not less distinguished as a magician than Agrippa or Albertus Magnus. It is related of him by Godwin, that he was in his youth adopted by an uncle, dwelling in the city of Wittenberg, who had no children. Here he was sent to college, and was soon distinguished by the greatness of his talents, and the rapid progress he made in every species of learning that was put before him. He was destined by his relative to the profession of theology. But he is said ungraciously to have set at naught his uncle's pious intentions. He went through his examinations with applause, and carried off all the first prizes among sixteen competitors; he therefore obtained the degree of doctor in divinity; but his success only made him proud and headstrong. He disdained his theological eminence, and sighed for distinction as a man of the world. He took his degree as a doctor of medicine, and aspired to celebrity as a practitioner of physic. About the same time he fell in with certain cotemporaries, of tastes similar to his own, and associated with them in the study of Chaldean, Greek, and Arabic science, of strange incantations and supernatural influences, in short, of all the arts of a sorcerer.

Having made such progress as he could by dint of study and intense application, he at length resolved to prosecute his purposes still further by actually raising the devil. He happened one evening to walk in a thick, dark wood, within a short distance from Wittenberg, when it occurred to him that that was a fit place for executing his design. He stopped at a solitary spot where four roads met, and made use of his wand to mark out a large circle, and then two small ones within the larger. In one of these he fixed himself, appropriating the other for the use of his expected visitor. He went over the precise range of charms and incantations, omitting nothing. It was now dark night, between the ninth and tenth hours. The devil manifested himself by the usual signs of his appearance. "Wherefore am I called?" said he, "and what is it that you demand?" "I require," rejoined Faustus, "that you should sedulously attend unto me, answer my inquiries, and fulfil my behests."

Immediately upon Faustus pronouncing these words, there followed a tumult overhead, as if heaven and earth were coming together. The trees in their topmost branches bended to their very roots. It seemed as if the whole forest were peopled with devils, making a crash like a thousand wagons, hurrying to the right and left, before and behind, in every possible direction, with thunder and lightning, and the continual discharge of great cannon. Hell appeared to have emptied itself to have furnished the din. There succeeded the most charming music from all sorts of instruments, and sounds of hilarity and dancing. Next came a report as of a tournament, and the clashing of innumerable lances. This lasted so long, that Faustus was many times about to rush out of the circle in which he had inclosed himself, and to abandon his preparations. His courage and resolution, however, got the better; and he remained immovable. He pursued his incantations without intermission. Then came to the very edge of the circle a griffin first, and next a dragon, which in the midst of his enchantments grinned at him horribly with his teeth, but finally fell down at his feet, and extended his length to many a rood. Faustus persisted. Then succeeded a sort of fireworks, a pillar[pg 173] of fire, and a man on fire at the top, who leaped down; and there immediately appeared a number of globes here and there red-hot, while the man on fire went and came to every part of the circle for a quarter of an hour. At length the devil came forward in the shape of a gray monk, and asked Faustus what he wanted. Faustus adjourned their further conference, and appointed the devil to comes to him at his lodging.

He in the mean time busied himself in the necessary preparations. He entered his study at the appointed time, and found the devil waiting for him. Faustus told him that he had prepared certain articles, to which it was necessary that the demon should fully accord,—that he should attend him at all times, when required, for all the days of his life; that he should bring him every thing he wanted; that he should come to him in any shape that Faustus required, or be invisible, and Faustus should be invisible too whenever he desired it; that he should deny him nothing, and answer him with perfect veracity to every thing he demanded. To some of these requisitions the spirit could not consent, without authority from his master, the chief of devils. At length all these concessions were adjusted. The devil on his part also prescribed his conditions. That Faustus should abjure the Christian religion and all reverence for the supreme God; that he should enjoy the entire command of his attendant demon for a certain term of years; and that at the end of that period the devil should dispose of him, body and soul, at his pleasure [the term was fixed for twenty-four years]; that he should at all times steadfastly refuse to listen to any one who should desire to convert him, or convince him of the error of his ways, and lead him to repentance; that Faustus should draw up a writing containing these particulars, and sign it with his blood; that he should deliver this writing to the devil, and keep a duplicate of it himself, that so there might be no misunderstanding. It was further appointed by Faustus, that the devil should usually attend him in the habit of a cordelier, with a pleasing countenance and an insinuating demeanor. Faustus also asked the devil his name, who answered that he was usually called Mephistophiles.

Numerous adventures of Faustus are related in the German histories. It is said that the emperor Charles V. was at Inspruck, at a time when Faustus also resided there. His courtiers informed the emperor that Faustus was in the town, and Charles expressed a desire to see him. He was introduced. Charles asked him whether he could really perform such wondrous feats as were reported of him. Faustus modestly replied, inviting the emperor to make trial of his skill. "Then," said Charles, "of all the eminent personages I have ever read of, Alexander the Great is the man who most excites my curiosity, and whom it would most gratify my wishes to see in the very form in which he lived." Faustus rejoined that it was out of his power truly to raise the dead, but that he had spirits at his command who had often seen that great conqueror, and that Faustus would willingly place him before the emperor as he required. He conditioned that Charles should not speak to him, nor attempt to touch him. The emperor promised compliance. After a few ceremonies, therefore, Faustus opened a door, and brought in Alexander exactly in the form in which he had lived, with the same garments, and every circumstance corresponding. Alexander made his obeisance to the emperor, and walked several times round him. The queen of Alexander was then introduced in the same manner. Charles just then recollected he had read that Alexander had a wart on the nape of his neck; and with proper precautions Faustus allowed the emperor to examine the apparition by this test. Alexander then vanished.

As Faustus was approaching the last year of his term, he seemed resolved to pamper his appetite with every species of luxury. He carefully accumulated all the materials of voluptuousness and magnificence. He was particularly anxious in the selection of women who should serve for his pleasures. He had one Englishwoman, one Hungarian, one French, two of Germany, and two from different parts of Italy, all of them eminent for the perfections which characterized their different countries.

At length he arrived at the end of the term for which he had contracted with the devil. For two or three years before it expired his character gradually altered. He became subject to fits of despondency, was no longer susceptible of mirth and amusement, and reflected with bitter agony on the close in which the whole must terminate. He assembled his friends together at a grand entertainment, and when it was over, addressed them, telling them that this was the last day of his life, reminding them of the wonders with which he had frequently astonished them, and informing them of the condition upon which he had held this power. They, one and all, expressed the deepest sorrow at the intelligence. They had had the idea of something unlawful in his proceedings; but their notions had been very far from coming up to the truth. They regretted exceedingly that he had not been unreserved in his communications at an earlier period. They would have had recourse in his behalf, to the means of religion, and have applied to pious men, desiring them to employ their power to intercede with Heaven in his favor. Prayer and penitence might have done much for him; and the mercy of Heaven was unbounded. They advised him to still call upon God, and endeavor to secure an interest in the merits of the Saviour.

Faustus assured them that it was all in vain, and that his tragical fate was inevitable.[pg 174] He led them to their sleeping apartment, and recommended to them to pass the night as they could, but by no means, whatever they might happen to hear, to come out of it; as their interference could in no way be beneficial to him, and might be attended with the most serious injury to themselves. They lay still, therefore, as he had enjoined them; but not one of them could close his eyes. Between twelve and one in the night they heard first a furious storm of wind round all sides of the house, as if it would have torn away the walls from their foundations. This no sooner somewhat abated, than a noise was heard of discordant and violent hissing, as if the house was full of all sorts of venomous reptiles, but which plainly proceeded from Faustus's chamber. Next they heard the doctor's room-door vehemently burst open, and cries for help uttered with dreadful agony, but in a half-suppressed voice, which presently grew fainter and fainter. Then every thing became still, as if the everlasting motion of the world was suspended.

When at length it became broad day, the students went in a body to the doctor's apartment. But he was nowhere to be seen. Only the walls were found smeared with his blood, and marks as if his brains had been dashed out. His body was finally discovered at some distance from the house, his limbs dismembered, and marks of great violence about the features of his face. The students gathered up the mutilated parts of his body, and afforded them private burial at the temple of Mars, in the village where he died.

SOME SMALL POEMS.

WRITTEN FOR THE INTERNATIONAL MONTHLY MAGAZINE.

BY R. H. STODDARD.

A PROLOGUE.

Without, the winds of Winter blow;

Without, the Winter sifts its snow:

Within, the hearths are warm and bright,

And all the chambers full of light,

And we again are gathered here,

To greet the advent of the year.

Pile on the wood, and stir the fires,

And in our souls the sweet desires;

And let us frame a mingled rhyme,

To suit the singers and the time;

With different stops, and keys of art,

In quaint old measures, got by heart.

BY THE SEA.

By the rolling waves I roam,

And look along the sea,

And dream of the day and the gleaming sail,

That bore my love from me.

His bark now sails the Indian seas,

Far down the summer zone:

But his thoughts, like swallows, fly to me

By the Northern waves alone.

Nor will he delay, when winds are fair,

To waft him back to me;

But haste, my love! or my grave will be made

By the sad and moaning sea!

WHEAT AND SHEAVES.

Before me now the village stands,

Its cottages embowered in bloom;

Behind me lies the burying ground,

Its sepulchres in cypress gloom.

The bells before me ring aloud,

A pæan for the live and bold;

The bells behind are tolling low,

A requiem for the dead and cold.

The crowd before me tramp away,

And shout until the winds are stirred;

The crowd behind no longer move,

And never breathe a single word.

Before me many moan, and weep:

Behind, there is not one who grieves;

For blight but wastes the standing wheat.

It cannot touch the garnered sheaves!

FRAGMENT.

The gray old Earth goes on

At its ancient pace,

Lifting its thunder voice

In the choir of Space;

And the Years, as they go,

Are singing slow,

Solemn dirges, full of woe!

Tears are shed, and hearts are broken,

And many bitter words are spoken,

And many left unsaid;

And many are with the living,

That were better—better dead!

Tyrants sit upon their thrones,

And will not hear the people's moans,

Nor hear their clanking chains;

Or if they do, they add thereto,

And mock, not ease, their pains;

But little liberty remains—

There is but little room for thee,

In this wide world, O Liberty!

But where thou hast once set thy foot,

Thou wilt remain, though oft unseen;

And grow like thought, and move like wind,

Upon the troubled sea of Mind,

No longer now serene.

Thy life and strength thou dost retain,

Despite the cell, the rack, the pain,

And all the battles won—in vain!

And even now thou seest the hour

That lays in dust the tyrant's power,

When man shall once again be free,

And Earth renewed, and young like thee,

O Liberty! O Liberty!

CERTAIN MERRY STANZAS.