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The International Monthly, Volume 4, No. 1, August, 1851

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Title: The International Monthly, Volume 4, No. 1, August, 1851

Author: Various


        
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Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net.
(This file was produced from images generously made
available by Cornell University Digital Collections.)








THE INTERNATIONAL MONTHLY MAGAZINE

Of Literature, Science, and Art.


VOLUME IV

AUGUST TO DECEMBER, 1851.

NEW-YORK:
STRINGER & TOWNSEND, 222 BROADWAY.
FOR SALE BY ALL BOOKSELLERS.
BY THE NUMBER, 25 CTS.; THE VOLUME, $1; THE YEAR, $3.

Transcriber's note: Contents for entire volume 4 in this text. However
this text contains only issue Vol. 4, No. 1. Minor typos have been
corrected and footnotes moved to the end of the article.




PREFACE TO THE FOURTH VOLUME.


The conclusion of the Fourth Volume of a periodical may be accepted as
a sign of its permanent establishment. The proprietors of the
INTERNATIONAL MAGAZINE have the satisfaction of believing that, while
there has been a steady increase of sales, ever since the publication
of the first number of this work, there has likewise been as regular
an augmentation of its interest, value, and adaptation to the wants of
the reading portion of our community. While essentially an Eclectic,
relying very much for success on a reproduction of judiciously
selected and fairly acknowledged Foreign Literature, it has contained
from month to month such an amount of New Articles as justified its
claim to consideration as an Original Miscellany. And in choosing from
European publications, articles to reprint or to translate for these
pages, care has been taken not only to avoid that vein of
licentiousness in morals, and skepticism in religion, which in so
lamentable a degree characterize a large portion of the popular
literature of this age, but also to extract from foreign periodicals
that American element with which the rising importance of our country
has caused so many of them to be infused; so that, notwithstanding the
fact that more than half the contents of the INTERNATIONAL are from
the minds of Europeans, the Magazine is essentially more _American_
than any other now published.

For the future, the publishers have made arrangements that will insure
very decided and desirable improvements, which will be more fully
disclosed in the first number of the ensuing volume; eminent original
writers will be added to our list of contributors; from Germany,
France, and Great Britain, we have increased our literary resources;
and more attention will be given to the pictorial illustration of such
subjects as may be advantageously treated in engravings. Among those
authors whose contributions have appeared in the INTERNATIONAL
hitherto, we may mention:

MISS FENIMORE COOPER,
MISS ALICE CAREY,
MRS. E. OAKES SMITH,
MRS. M. E. HEWITT,
MRS. ALICE B. NEAL,
BISHOP SPENCER,
HENRY AUSTIN LAYARD,
PARKE GODWIN,
JOHN R. THOMPSON,
W. C. RICHARDS,
W. GILMORE SIMMS,
BAYARD TAYLOR,
ROBERT HENRY STODDARD,
ALFRED B. STREET,
THOMAS EWBANK,
E. W. ELLSWORTH,
G. P. R. JAMES,
DR. JOHN W. FRANCIS,
MAUNSELL B. FIELD,
DR. STARBUCK MAYO,
JOHN E. WARREN,
A. OAKEY HALL,
HORACE GREELEY,
RICHARD B. KIMBALL,
THE AUTHOR OF "NILE NOTES,"
THE AUTHOR OF "HARRY FRANCO."
REV. J. C. RICHMOND,
REV. H. W. PARKER,
JAMES T. FIELDS,
R. S. CHILTON.

The foreign writers, from whom we have selected, need not be
enumerated; they embrace the principal living masters of literary art;
and we shall continue to avail ourselves of their new productions as
largely as justice to them and the advantage and pleasure of our
readers may seem to justify.

NEW-YORK, December 1, 1851.




CONTENTS:

VOLUME IV. AUGUST TO DECEMBER, 1851.


Alred.--_By Elmina W. Carey_,                                         27

Alexander, Last days of the Emperor.--_A. Dumas_,                    233

America, as Abused by a German,                                      448

American Intercommunication,                                         461

American Literature, Studies of.--_Philarete Chasles_,               163

American and European Scenery Compared.--_By the late J. F. Cooper_, 625

Anacreon. Twentieth Ode of.--_By Mary E. Hewitt_,                     20

Animal Magnetism. Christopher North on,                               27

Ariadne.--_By William C. Bennett_,                                   315

Autumn Ballad, An.--_By W. A. Sutliffe_,                             598

August Reverie.--_By A. Oakey Hall_,                                 477

Art Expression.                                                      401

Arts among the Aztecs and Indians.--_By Thomas Ewbank._ (Ten
Engravings.)                                                         307

_Arts, the Fine._--Monuments to Public Men in Europe and America,
130.--Mosaics for the Emperor of Russia, 130.--Tenarani, the Italian
Sculptor, 131.--Group by Herr Kiss, 131.--English and American
Portrait Painters, 131--Mr. Pyne's English Landscapes, 131.--Paintings
by British Officers in Canada, 131.--Ovation to Rauch at Berlin,
131.--Healy's Picture of Webster's Reply to Hayne,
131.--Newly-discovered Raphael, 131.--Daguerreotypes, 131.--Letter
from Hiram Powers, 279.--Monument to Wordsworth, 279.--Monument to
Weber, 279.--Works of Cornelius, 279.--Greenonga's Group for the
Capital, 279.--The Twelve Virgins of Raphael, 279.--Tributes by Greece
to her Benefactors, 279.--Paul Delaroche, 417.--Winterhalter,
417.--New Scriptures in the Crystal Palace, 417.--London Art-Union,
417.--American Art-Union. 417.--Powers's Eve, 417.--Leutze, 417.--The
London Art-Journal on the Engravings of the American Art-Union.
561.--The Philadelphia Art-Union, 561.--The Western Art-Union,
562.--Mr. Healy's Picture of Webster's Reply to Hayne, 562.--Mr.
Lentze's Washington Crossing the Delaware, 562--Illustrations of
Martin Luther, 562.--Lentze's Washington. 743.--Colossal Statue of
Washington at Munich, 703.--Kaulbach's Frescoes, 703.--Cadame's
Compositions of the Seasons, 703.--Portraits of Bishop White and
Daniel Webster, 703.

_Authors and Books._--The Story of Talns, and the Sardonic Laughter,
by Merehlen, 122.--A German Treatise on Free Trade, 122.--Curious
Medical Works in Germany, 122.--Weiseler on the Theatre,
122.--Woodcuts of celebrated Masters, 123.--Recent German Poetry,
123.--Venedy's Schleswig-Holstein in 1850, 123.--Souvenirs of Early
Germans, 123.--Gutzkow, Reimer, and Gubitz. 123.--Mundi's Macchiavelli
and the Course of European Policy, 123.--New German Novels,
124.--Baner's Documents respecting the Monastery of Arnsburg,
121.--Mss. of Peter Schlemil, 124.--Professor O. L. B. Wohl's Poetic
and Prosaic Home Treasury, 124.--German opinion of Miss Weber,
124.--Professor Zahn at Pompeii, 124.--Barthohl's History of German
Cities, 124.--Cornell on Feurebach, 125.--New Book of the Planets by
Ernst, 125.--Waldmeister's Bridal Tour, 125.--German version of George
Copyway's Book, 125.--German Survey of American Institutions,
125.--Russian Literature, 125.--Jewish Professors in Austria,
125.--Dumas's new Works, 125.--Madame Reybaud, 125.--New Volume of
Thier's History of the Empire, 125.--Mignet's Life of Mary Queen of
Scots, 126.--Cormenin on the Revision of the Constitution,
126.--Literary Episodes in the East, by Marcellus, 126.--Victor Hugo.
126.--Madame Bocarme, 126.--Signatures to Articles in the French
Journals, 126.--Arago's loss of sight, 126.--George Sand to Dumas,
127.--Vacherot on the Philosophical School of Alexandria, 127.--Mss.
of Rousseau, 127.--Unpublished works of Balzac, 127.--M. Nisard,
127.--M. Gautier, 127.--Guizot's History of Representative Government,
127.--Mademoiselle de Belle Isle, 127.--Rev. T. W. Shelton, in
Sharpe's Magazine, 127.--Rev. Charles Kingsley, author of Alton Locke,
127.--Bowring's Translation of Schiller, 128.--New English Poems,
128.--New Novel by Warren, 128.--Judge Woodbury's Works, 128.--The
North American Review, 128--Life of Judge Story, 123.--Contributions
to the History of the West, by Lyman C. Draper, 129.--The Dublin
University Magazine on Streets Frontenac, 129.--Mrs. Southworth in
England. 129.--Return of Mrs. Mowatt, 129.--Miss Beecher's new Work on
the Writings of Women, 129.--Ludwig Feuerback, 268.--August Kopish on
the Monument to Frederic the Great, 269.--The _Janus_ Review,
269.--Franz Kugler on the Theatre, 269.--Von Muller's History of the
Swiss Confederation, 269.--Memoir of Bretschneider, 269.--Dr. Worth,
269.--Herr Christern's Book Store, 269.--German Periodicals, 270.--The
Hungarian Refugees in Turkey, 270.--The Youth of Thorwaldsen,
270.--Old and New Songs and Fables for Children, 270.--Convention of
Sclavic Scholars, 270.--German Translation of Milton's Areopagitica,
270.--Eccentricities of German Medical Literature, 271.--German Poems,
271.--Shakspeare in Sweden, 271.--Neander's Lectures, 271.--George
Sand and her Husband, 271.--New work by Comte, 271.--Lamartine's New
History, 271.--Michelet's _Legendes de la Democratie_, 272.--Guizot's
History of Representative Government, 272.--Prudhon's Idea of
Revolution, 272.--Miss Martineau and her Master, 272.--Rumored
Discoveries of Greek MSS, 272.--Bunsen on the supposed MS. of Origen,
272.--New English Poems, 272.--Herodotus and the Discoveries of
Nineveh, 273.--Sir James Stephen's History of France, 273.--J. S.
Buckingham, 273.--Mrs. Jamieson, 273.--New Books of Travels, 273.--Dr.
Wilkinson and Henry James, 273.--New Novels, 273.--New Books on the
Apocalypse, 274.--Finchman on Ship Building, 274.--The Grenville
Papers, 274.--Sir W. Parish on Buenos Ayres, 274.--Works of Bishop
Whately, 274.--Macaulay's New Volumes, 274.--Poems of Edith May,
274.--Ware's European Capitals, 274.--New Romance by Thomas H. Shreve,
274.--More about American Reviews, 275.--Poem on Woman, by J. W.
Ward, 275.--Novellettes of Musicians, 275.--Dr. Huntington's Alban,
276.--Simms's Poetical Works, 276.--Dr. Tyng and Bickersteth,
276.--Mr. Putnam's forthcoming Souvenir Books, 276.--Kitto's Biblical
Cyclopedia, 276.--Episodes of Insect Life, 276.--History of Oneida
County, 276.--Mrs. Nichols's Poem's, 276.--New Translations of the
Bible, 277.--Sale of Dr. Jarvis's Library, 277.--Ik Marvell's New
Work, 277.--Mr. Longfellow's New Poem, 277.--Books on the Mechanic
Arts, 278.--Dr. Wainwright's Work on Egypt, 278.--Mr. Jefferson's MSS.
Work on Grammar, 278.--Dr. Williams on the Lord's Prayer, 278.--Works
of John Adams, 278.--Publications of James Munroe, 278.--German
Magazines, 403.--German Poets, 403, 405.--Freilegrath, 403.--New
edition of Brockhaus' Lexicon, 403.--German View of Lamartine,
403.--Prutz in a Novel, 403.--Stahl on Paris, 404.--Kohler on Ancient
Cameos, &c., 404.--Children's Picture Books, 404.--Latin Life of
Zumpt, 404.--New work by Robert Remak, 405.--The German Element in
English Language, 405.--Count Blumberg on the Higher Classes,
405.--Auerbach's German Evenings, 405.--Gailhabaud's Monuments of
Architecture, 405.--A Life Spent in Studying Thrushes, 405.--Gust's
Bibliotheca Biographia Lutherana, 405.--New work on Monarchy,
405.--New German Works on the Middle Ages, 406.--Konig and Gelzer on
Luther, 406.--The Bible and the Almanac, 406.--Austrian Biographical
Dictionary, 406.--New Book by Hans Andersen, 406--Zeise, the Danish
Novelist, 407.--Poems of Tegner, 407.--Bohemian Songs, 407.--Italian
Histories of To-day, 407.--Bible Plays by Wiese, 408.--Colins on
Socialism, 408.--Memoirs by Captain Laconte, 408.--Villemarque's
Breton Poems, 408.--Perrymond _vs._ Thiers, 408.--The French Orators,
408.--Histories of the Reformation in France, 408.--M. Guizot,
409.--Jules Janin, 409.--Montbeillard on Spinoza, 409.--Punishment of
a Socialist Dramatist, 409.--Marriage of "Bon Gaultier," 409.--Visits
to De Quincy and Burns's Sister, 410.--The "Baroness Von Beck,"
410.--Thackeray's New Novel, 410.--Literary Pensions in England,
410.--Tributes to James Montgomery, 410.--New editor of the
Westminster Review, 410.--New Lives of Mary, Queen of Scots,
411.--Publications of Moore & Co., of Cincinnati, 411.--Rivers of the
Bible, 411.--Mexican Documents collected by the Abbe Bourbourg,
412.--Mr. Schoolcraft and the Publishers, 412.--Mr. Simms's New
Tragedy, 412.--Dr. Albro's Life of Shepherd, the Puritan, 412.--New
Edition of Fielding, 413.--Theory of Human Progression, 413.--The Nile
Boat, 413.--Kitto's Bible Illustrations, 413.--Poore's Life of
Napoleon, 413.--Indications of the Creator, by George Taylor,
413.--Parkman's History of Pontiac, 413.--De Quiney's Works,
413.--Mrs. Judson, 413.--Hart's Female Prose Writers of America,
414.--Mrs. Lee's Memoirs of Buckminster, 415.--Rochefoucauld,
415.--Dr. Huntington and his Novels, Letters, and Life, 415.--New
Works in Press by the Harpers, 415.--By Redfield, do., 416.--New Work
by Dr. Boardman, 416.--Carl Immerman's Letters on the Theatre,
551.--Kohl's last book of Travels, 551.--L'Eco d'Italia,
551.--Narcissa Zwichowska, 551.--Baron Baerst on Cooking,
551.--Brinckle's-Butterfly Book, 552.--Stein's History of the Social
Movement in France, 552.--Dr. Schleiden's Work on Animalculae,
552.--History of Education, by Kranse, 552.--Handbook of Catholic
Pulpit Eloquence, 552.--Popular Songs of Southern Russia,
552.--Hogarth's Works in Germany, 552.--Dr. Andree's Work on America,
553.--Studies of German Lore, 553.--Hase's New Prophets,
553.--Wanderings in Slavonia, 553.--A reply to the Countess
Hahn-Hahn's last book, 554.--A Review of Lamartine's Parasite History,
554.--Humboldt's Kosmos, 554.--History of Polish Literature,
554.--Russian Archaeology, 554.--Siegfried Weiss on German Trade
Policy, 554.--Periodicals in Asia, 554.--German Translation of
Hawthorne, 554.--The German Universities, 555.--New German Poems,
555.--Literary Statistics of Poland, 555.--Work on Russia by
Tegoborski, 555.--Ritter's History of Philosophy, 555.--De Flotte on
the Sovereignty of the People, 555.--Nineveh, 555.--New Series of
Eugene Sue's Mysteries of the People, 556.--Second Part of Michelet's
History of the French Revolution, 556.--Julian's History of Porcelain
Manufacture, 556.--Felix de Verneihl on the Cologne Cathedral,
556.--Andre Cochat on French Workingmen's Associations, 556.--New
edition of George Sand's Works, 556.--Letter from Alexander Dumas,
556.--Alfred de Musset, 557.--Translations of Comte's Philosophy,
557.--Jules Janin's new Romance, 557.--Ferdinand Hiller, 557.--James
T. Fields, 557.--New Histories of the Mexican War, 557.--Horace Mann
on the Sphere of Woman, 557.--General Morris not guilty of Plagiarism,
558.--Torrey's Translation of Neander, 558.--Translations of Dante,
559.--Alice Carey's Recollections of Our Neighborhood in the West,
559.--Modern Miracles, by Henry Ingalls, 559.--New Novel by Mr. James
and Mr. Field, 559.--History of the German Reformed Church,
559.--Professor Hackett's Commentary on the Acts, 559.--The Whale, by
Herman Melville, 559.--Mr. Herbert's work on Ancient Battles, &c.,
560.--Glances at Europe, by H. Greeley, 560.--Hungary and Kossuth,
560.--Richard B. Kimball, 560.--Mr. Judd's Margaret, 560.--Pendant to
Professor Creasy's _Decisive Battles of the World_,
693.--Correspondence respecting the Thirty Years' War, 693.--German
collection of English Songs, 693.--German Philologists, 693.--Weil's
History of the Califs, 693.--The Germans in Bohemia, 693.--Andree's
Work on America, 694.--Works on Spinoza, 694.--New Goethean
Literature, 694.--The British Empire in Europe, by Meidinger,
694.--The Play of the Resurrection, 694.--German History of French
Literature, 694.--New work on German Knighthood, &c., 694.--German
Romanee in the 18th Century, 695.--Madame Blaze de Bury's New Novel,
695.--Richter's History of the Evangelical German Churches,
695.--German Life of Sir Robert Peel, 695.--Zimmermann on the English
Revolution, 695.--History of Norway, 695.--Reguly, the Hungarian
Traveller, 695.--Political Notabililities of Hungary, 695.--Speeches,
&c., by King William of Prussia, 695.--Pictures from the North,
695.--History of the Swiss Confederation, 695.--Bem's System of
Chronology, by Miss Peabody, 695.--French Almanacs, 695.--M.
Croce-Spinelli's Work on Popular Government, 696.--Works by the Paris
Asiatic Society, 696.--Caesar Daly on Parisian Architecture,
696.--Fignier's Modern Discoveries, 696.--The _Annuaire des Deux
Mondes_, 696.--Calvin's Inedited Letters, 697.--Lacretelle,
697.--Critical Studies of Socialism, 697.--Memoirs of Mademoiselle
Mars, 697.--The Institute of France, 697.--Grille on the War in La
Vendee, 697.--History of the Bourgeoisie of Paris, 697.--_Archives des
Missions Scientifiques_, &c., 697.--Travels in Africa, 698.--Spirit of
New Roman Catholic Literature, 698.--Garcin de Tassy on Mr.
Salisbury's Unpublished Arabic Documents, 699.--New Travels in
Palestine, 698.--The Abaddie Travellers, 699.--French, English, and
American Missionaries, as Scholars, 699.--The Westminster Review,
699.--A Grandson of Robert Burns, 699.--Friends in Council, &c., by
Mr. Helps, 699.--New English Announcements, 700.--New Dissenters'
College, 700.--Sir Charles Lyell and the "Free Thinkers," 700.--Prof.
Wilson, 700.--Miss Kirkland's Evening Book, 700.--Works by Mrs. Lee,
701.--Mr. Boyd's edition of Young's Night Thoughts, 702.--"Injustice
to the South," 702.--Splendid American Gift Books for 1852, 703.--New
American Works in Press, 703, &c. British Humorists.--_By W. M.
Thackeray_, 24

Boker, George II.--_By Bayard Taylor_. (Portrait.)                   156

Bohemian Glass. (Six Engravings.)                                    291

Ballad of Sir John Franklin.--_By George H. Boker_,                  473

Bryant, and his Works, William Cullen. (Portrait.)                   588

Bull Fight at Ronda,                                                 681

Calvin Colton, Rev., and his Works. (Portrait.)                        1

Castle of Belvor: An Incident in the Life of Arago,                   41

Count Monte-Leone. (Concluded),                        42, 202, 327, 500

China, Our Phantom Ship,                                              67

Chest of Drawers.--_By an Attorney_,                                  73

Cicada, The.--_By H. J. Crate_,                                      164

Charlemagne, Times of.--_By Sir Francis Palgrave_,                   169

Calhoun, Private Life of John C.--_By Miss M. Bates_,                173

Copenhagen,                                                          238

Cooper, J. F., Portrait and View of his Residence,       _Frontispiece_.

Cooke, Sketch of Philip Pendleton. (Portrait.)                       300

Chamois Hunting,                                                     344

Cleopatra's Needle,                                                  367

Cheap Postage System,                                                370

Country Gentleman at Home.--_By C. A. Bristed_,                      389

Cooper, Reminiscences of J. Fenimore.--_By Dr. Francis_,             458

Cooper, Public Honors to the Memory of Mr.,                          456

Chimes, The.--_By E. W. Ellsworth_,                                  487

Carlyle's Life of John Sterling,                                     599

Calcutta: Social, Industrial, Political,                             611

Captain and the Negro, The,                                          646

Crebillon, the French AEschylus,                                      520

Dramatic Fragments.--_By R. H. Stoddard_,                             17

Decorative Arts in America,                                          171

Deserted Mansion,                                                    227

Dirge for an Infant--_By R. S. Chilton_,                             487

Death in Youth.--_By H. W. Parker_,                                  598

Dutch Governors of Niew Amsterdam.--_By J. R. Brodhead_,             597

Drinking Experiences: A Temperance Lecture by "Nimrod,"              621

_Deaths, Recent._--General Arbuckle, 139.--Mrs. Thomas Sheridan,
139.--Bishop Carlson, 139.--Sir J. E. Dalzell, 139.--Chevalier Parisot
de Guyrmont, 139.--General James Miller, 140.--General Uminski,
140.--Viscount Melville, 140.--Mr. Dyce Sombre, 140.--Bishop Medrano,
140.--The Earl of Shaftesbury, 141.--Mr. Thomas Wright Hill,
142.--Melchior Boisseree, 142.--Christian Tieck, the Sculptor,
142.--Rev. Stephen Olin, D.D., 282.--Baron de Leideni, 282.--Edward
Quillinan, 282.--Harriet Lee, 282.--Dr. Julius, 282.--Rev. Azariah
Smith, 282.--General Henry A. S. Dearborn, 283.--D. M. Mon, 228,
283.--General Sir Roger Sheafe, 283.--M. Daguerre, (Portrait),
283.--Rev. Dr. Lingard, (Portrait), 285.--Marshal Sebastian, 287.--J.
Fenimore Cooper, 428.--Rev. T. H. Gallaudet, 428.--Judge Beverly
Tucker, 428.--Levi Woodbury, 429.--General McClure, 429.--Lorenz
Ocken, 429.--Count Killmansegge, 430.--H. E. G. Paulus, 430.--Joseph
Rusiecki, 430.--John Gottfried Gruber, 430.--The Earl of Clare,
431.--Sir Henry Jardine, 431.--Mrs. Sherwood, 572.--Rev. James H.
Hotchkiss, 572.--General Henry Whitney, 572.--Commodore Warrington,
572.--Professor Kidd, 573.--The Earl of Donoughmore, 573.--William
Nicol, 574.--Mr. Freeman, the Missionary, 574.--James Richardson,
574.--William Willshire, 574.--J. R. Dubois, 575.--Gustav Carlin,
575.--Archibald Alexander, D. D., 705.--J. Kearney Rogers, M.D.,
705.--Rev. Wm. Croswell, D.D., 706.--Granville Sharpe Pattison, M.D.,
706.--Mr. Stephens, author of _The Manuscripts of Erdeley_, 706.--Mr.
Gutzlaff, the Missionary, 707.--Don Manuel Godoy, the Prince of the
Peace, 708.--George Baker, 708.--M. de Savigny, 708.--Archbishop
Wingard, 708.--Samuel Beaseley, author of _The Roue_, 708.--H. P.
Borrell, 708.--James Tyler, R. D., 708.--Emma Martin, 709.--Yar
Mohammed, 709.--Alexander Lee, 710.--Prince Frederick of Prussia, 710.

Exile's Sunset Song.--_By John R. Thompson_,                          26

Egypt, The last Joseph in,                                           185

English in America.--_By the author of "Sam Slick,"_                 186

Egypt under Abbas Pasha,--_By Bayle St. John_,                       259

Earthquake in Europe, The Last,                                      467

Fleischmann, Herr, on Life in America,                               158

Fallen Genius.--_By Miss Alice Carey_,                               288

Flying Artist,                                                       398

Franklin, Inedited Letter of Dr.,                                    472

Fragments from a New Volume of Poems.--_By Thomas L. Beddoes_,       550

French Flower Girl, The,                                             641

Fragments of a Poem.--_By H. W. Parker_,                             189

Great Fair at Rochester. (Fifteen Engravings.)                       438

Gold-Quartz and Society in California,                               472

Greenwood.--_By Maunsell B. Field_,                                  476

Ghost Story of Normandy,                                             512

Gerard, and the Baron Munchausen, in Africa, M. Jules,               587

German Handbook of America,                                          598

Gondolettas: Two Songs.--_By Alice B. Neal_,                         597

Hahn-Hahn, The Countess Ida,                                          17

History of a Rose,                                                   117

Huntington, Dr., on Copyright,                                       308

Heroines of History: Laura.--_By Mary E. Hewitt_,                    480

Habits of Frederick the Great,                                       528

Herman Melville's New Novel of "The Whale,"                          602

_Historical Review of the Month._--The United States: Elections, &c.,
567.--Foreign Relations, 567.--Mexico, 568.--South American States,
568.--Great Britain, 568.--France, Italy, Russia, &c., 569.--The East,
&c., 569.--The American Elections, 704.--Kossuth in England,
704.--Europe, and the East, 704.

Imaginary Conversations at Warsaw.--_By Walter Savage Landor_,        98

In the Harem.--_By R. H. Stoddard_,                                  164

Illustrations of Motives,                                            280

International Copyright,                                             386

Jules Janin and the Paris Feuilletonistes,                            18

Jungle Recollection.--_By Captain Hardbargain_,                      110

Jews in China,                                                       264

Jefferson, Mr., on the Study of the Anglo-Saxon Language,            468

Landscapes, Swedish.--_By Hans Christian Andersen_,                   20

London, Paris, and New-York,                                         100

Ladies' Fashions. (Illustrated.)                 142, 288, 431, 575, 710

Latham, on the People of the Mosketo Kingdom,                        471

My Novel: or, Varieties in English Life.--_By Sir E. Bulwer
  Lytton_,                                        80, 243, 371, 534, 688

Moir, David Macbeth.--_By George Gilfillan_,                         233

Music.--_By H. W. Parker_,                                           327

Meeting of the Vegetarians,                                          402

Newspaper Poets: Charles Weldon,                                     201

Nauvoo and Deseret: The Mormons. (Six Engravings.)                   577

_Noctes Amicitiae._--English Opinions of the "American Department" in
the Crystal Palace, 563.--Ridiculous Convention of Women, at
Worcester, 563.--Bloomerism in London, 563.--Defenders of the Catholic
Practices, 563.--Anecdote of Tom Cook, 563.--Capital Anecdote of
Charles XII, 564.--A Superfluous Amount of Name, 564.--G. P. R. James
in the Law Courts, 564.--Nursery Rhymes, 564.--The London Printers,
564.--The Japanese and French Civilization, 565.--Extraordinary
Suicides in Paris, 565, &c.

October.--_By Alice Carey_,                                          371

Obelisks of Egypt,                                                   469

Old Man's Death, The.--_By Alice Carey_,                             529

Ottoman History, The Three Eras of,                                  643

Parodies, A Chapter of,                                               23

Passages in the Life of a Dutch Poet,                                 65

Phantasy, A.--_By R. H. Stoddard_,                                   169

Paris, Reminiscences of, from 1817 to 1851,                          182

Poulailler, the Robber,                                              216

Questions from a worn-out Lorgnette.--_By O. A. Hall_,               187

Reminiscence, A.--_By Alice Carey_,                                  360

Remarkable Prophecy,                                                 474

Revolutions in Russia.--_By Alexander Dumas_,                        616

Story Without A Name.--_By G. P. R. James, Esq._,
  (Concluded),                                    28, 189, 316, 487, 604

Stuart of Dunleath,                                                  119

Sailors, Institutions for, in New-York. (Six Engravings.)            145

Scenes in the Old Dominion (Six Engravings.)                         151

Styles of Philosophies.--_By Rev. J. R. Morell_,                     180

Shadow of Lucy Hutchinson,                                           239

Saxe, John G., and his Satires. (Portrait.)                          289

Sandwich Islands To-Day. (Two Engravings.)                           298

Shadow of Margery Paston,                                            363

Saint Escarpacio's Bones.--_From the French_,                        483

Sonnets: Truth--The Future,                                          499

Sliding Scales of Despair,                                           592

Songs of the Cascade.--_By A. Oakey Hall_,                           602

Spendthrift's Daughter: In Six Chapters, The,                        664

_Scientific Discoveries and Proceedings of Learned Societies._--The
British Association, 137.--Asiatic Society, 137.--Paris Geographical
Society, 137.--Royal Society of Literature, 137.--Paris Academy of
Sciences, 138.--London Royal Institution, 138.--Berlin Academy of
Sciences, 138.--Improvements in Photographs, 138.--Colonel Rawlinson
on the last Discoveries of Nineveh and Babylon, 426.--New attempts to
discover Perpetual Motion, 426.--Document respecting the discovery of
Steam Navigation at Venice, 427.--English Athletes, compared with
Greek Statues, 427.--Discoveries at Memphis, 427.--Scientific
Conventions, 427.--The Russian Academy, 571.--Scientific Congress in
France, 571.--Paris Academy of Sciences, 571.--Ethnological Society,
571.

Trot on the Island.--_By C. Astor Bristed_,                           54

To the Author of Eothen.--_By Barry Cornwall_,                       315

The King and the Outlaw.--_By an Old Contributor_,                   482

Verses.--_By R. H. Stoddard_,                                         22

Visit to the "Maid of Athens,"                                       116

Visit to the late Dr. Lingard.--_By Rev. J. C. Richmond_,            172

Veneer, Fraser's Magazine on English,                                306

Visit to the Aberdeen Comb-Works,                                    856

Vagaries of the Imagination,                                         638

Veiled Picture: A Traveller's Story, The,                            648

Watering Places, A Glance at the. (Fifteen Engravings.)                4

Webster, Noah, LL. D. (Portrait and birthplace.)                      12

Waterloo, Tricks on Travellers at,                                   164

Wives of Southey, Coleridge, and Lovell,                             241

Wallace, William Ross. (Portrait.)                                   444

Windsor Castle and its Associations. (Two Engravings.)               585




THE INTERNATIONAL MAGAZINE

_Of Literature, Art, and Science._

Vol. IV. NEW-YORK, AUGUST 1, 1851. No. I.




REV. CALVIN COLTON.

[Illustration]


Mr. Colton is a man of very decided abilities, voluminous and various
in their manifestation, and assiduously cultivated during a long life,
in which he has never failed of the curiosity, ambition, and industry
of a learner. The untiring freshness and hopefulness of his spirit is
shown by his undertaking the study of the French language not more
than three or four years ago, and obtaining such a mastery of it as to
read with delight its most abstruse authors, and to preach in it with
fluency and even with eloquence. It is characteristic of him that he
is always earnest, and that he considers whatever he has to do worthy
of his best abilities, so that in writing of theology, economy,
polity, or manners, he arrays in order for each particular subject all
the forces of his understanding, and makes its discussion their
measure and illustration. He has been in an eminent degree devoted to
literature as a profession, and although he has produced works which
may be deemed unfortunate in design or defective in execution, it must
be admitted that he is entitled to a highly respectable position as a
thinker and as a writer, and that in opinion and in affairs he has
exercised a steady and large influence.

He was born in Long Meadow, Massachusetts, graduated at Yale College
in 1812, studied divinity at Andover, and in 1815 took orders in the
Presbyterian church. For several years he was settled in the village
of Batavia in western New-York, but his voice failing in 1826, he
became a contributor to several of the principal periodicals occupied
with religion and learning, and in the summer of 1831, after an
extended tour through the western states and territories, proceeded to
London, as a correspondent of the New-York Observer.

In England, he led a life of remarkable literary activity. In 1832 he
published a _Manual for Emigrants to America_, which had a large sale
among the middling classes; and _The History and Character of American
Revivals of Religion_, of which there were two or three editions. In
1833, in a volume entitled _The Americans, by an American in London_,
he replied, with an unanswerable display of facts, to the libels on
this country by British travellers and reviewers; and published _The
American Cottager_, a religious narrative. _A Tour of the American
Lakes and among the Indians of the North-West Territory_, in two
volumes, and _Church and State in America_, a vindication of the
religious character of the country and the voluntary principle for the
support of religion, in reply to the Bishop of London, who had
endeavored to show that the United States were going back to paganism
because the church was not here connected with the state.

Returning to New-York, in 1835, he published _Four Years in Great
Britain_, in two volumes, which were soon after reprinted, with some
additions, in a more popular form. In 1836 he gave to the public
anonymously, _Protestant Jesuitism_, a criticism of the constitution,
extreme opinion, and unwise action of many of the benevolent and
religious societies; and having taken orders in the Episcopal church,
_Thoughts on the Religious State of the Country, and Reasons for
preferring Episcopacy_, a work which was much read and the cause of
much critical observation in Great Britain as well as in the United
States.

From that time Mr. Colton has written very little on any subject
intimately connected with religion, but directing his attention to
public affairs, has been as conspicuous in the state as he was
previously in the church. In 1838 he published _Abolition a Sedition_,
and _Abolition and Colonization Contrasted_, in which he contended
with equal earnestness and ability that the entire subject of slavery
is beyond the limits of the proper action of the national government,
and that there is no justification of its discussion, except in the
states where slavery is established, or for the wise and really
philanthropic purpose of promoting African Colonization. In 1839 he
again took up the argument of our social relations with Great Britain,
in a work written in Philadelphia, but published in London, under the
title of _A Voice from America to England, By an American Gentleman_.
The plan was judicious: it was not so much to express opinions as to
state facts which should compel opinions in the adverse audience he
addressed. While mainly defensive, he was at the same time bravely
critical. He contended that in its constitution our government was
republican and not democratic, but that the extraordinary force of
public opinion among us has made it democratic in fact. A large
portion of the work was devoted to the several ecclesiastical polities
existing here, which he treated with singular freedom and originality,
so that the frequent impertinences of ignorant laymen and
obtrusively-meddling women, in the affairs of churches, rendering the
clerical profession humiliating and difficult to a person of manly
character and cultivation, were stated without any hesitation or
attempt at concealment. The entire performance is still attractive for
frequent sound observation upon institutions, judicious criticism of
manners, happy illustration, and good humor, and its opportune
appearance was advantageous to the best fame of the country.

In 1840 he made a more distinct and powerful impression than ever
before, by the publication of _The Crisis of the Country, American
Jacobinism_, and _One Presidential Term_, a series of tracts under the
name of "Junius," which were circulated in all the states by thousands
and hundreds of thousands, and were supposed to have had great
influence in the overthrow of the democratic administration. In 1842
he edited at Washington a paper called _The True Whig_, and in 1843
and 1844 he brought out a second series, embracing ten publications,
still more popular than the first, of the _Junius Tracts_.

In the autumn of the latter year, when the fortunes of the whig party
seemed to be entirely broken, when full half the nation felt a
personal grief for the defeat of a leader, added to the mortification
of political discomfiture, Mr. Colton determined to write the life of
the chief he had followed with unwavering admiration and unfaltering
activity. Casting aside all other cares, so that his every thought
might be given to the work until its completion, he set out for
Kentucky, where he was sure of the friendly assistance of Mr. Clay in
whatever concerned the investigation of facts. In November, 1844, he
reached Lexington, where Mr. Clay laid open to him the stores of his
correspondence, and the documentary history of his career. The work
was finished in the spring of 1846, and published in two large
octavos; and so great was the demand for it, that the first impression
of five thousand copies was sold in six months. It is unquestionably
an able performance, and from the circumstances under which it was
composed and the conclusiveness of some of its arguments it is
probable that it will always be regarded as a valuable portion of the
material for contemporary political history; but, it appears to me
very unequal in execution, and signally unfortunate in design, if
considered either as a biography or a history. For the subjective
rather than the chronological arrangement of the facts in it there is
however this defence, that it rendered the work much more easy of
citation, and therefore more valuable as a magazine for partisan
controversy. The influence it obtained may be illustrated by reference
to a single point: for a quarter of a century the staple of
declamation against Mr. Clay, the opposition which thrice cost him the
presidency, was his supposed bargain with John Quincy Adams; but since
the appearance of Mr. Colton's exposition of this subject any person
in an intelligent society would forfeit the consideration given to a
gentleman who should repeat the charge.

For several years the attention of Mr. Colton had been more and more
attracted to the literature and philosophy of political economy. In
1846 he printed his first work in which it is formally treated, _The
Rights of Labor_, in which he asserted, illustrated, and with
unanswerable logic vindicated the American doctrine of the privileges
and dignity of Industry; and in 1848 he gave to the world his last and
most important work, _Public Economy for the United States_. From the
formation of the first system of society the subjects embraced in this
production have employed the most powerful intellects of all nations.
But though illustrated by the liveliest genius and the profoundest
reflection, they have not until recently assumed even the forms of
science. We cannot tell what formulae of economical truth passed from
existence in the lost books of Aristotle. The father of the
peripatetic philosophy undoubtedly brought to public economics the
severe method which enabled him to construct so much of the
everlasting science of which the history goes back to his times; but
whatever direction he gave to the subject, by the investigation of its
ultimate principles and their phenomena, his successors, and the
writers upon it since the revival of learning, have generally been
guided by empirical laws, which in an especial degree have obtained in
regard to the economy of commerce. Scarcely any of the literature or
reflection upon the subject has gone behind the bold hypotheses of
free trade theorists, which have been as unsubstantial as the fanciful
systems of the universe swept from existence by the demonstrations of
Newton. Not only have economical systems generally been made up of
unproven hypotheses, but they have rarely evinced any such clear
apprehension and constructive ability as are essential in the
formation and statement of principles; and down to the chaos of Mr.
Mills's last essay there is scarcely a volume on political economy
which rewards the wearied attention with any more than a vague
understanding of the shadowy design that existed in the author's
brain.

In the eminently original and scientific work of Mr. Colton we see
economy subjected to fundamental and ultimate methods of investigation
of which the results have a mathematical certainty. We have new facts,
new reasonings, new deductions; and if the paramount ideas are not
altogether original, they are discovered by original processes, and
their previous existence is but an illustration of the truth that the
instinctive perspicacity of the common mind often surpasses the
logical faculty in recognizing laws before they are discovered from
elements and relations. Mr. Colton has not rejected the title
"_political_ economy" because he proposed to enter a different field,
or because the subject and argument have no relation to politics, but
chiefly because the term has been so much abused in the rude agitation
of what are commonly called politics, that he does not think it
comports with the dignity of the theme; and the second part of his
title is adopted from a conviction that the economical principles of
states _are to be deduced from their separate experience and adapted
to their individual condition_. The task which he proposed to himself
is, the exhibition of the merits of the protective and free trade
systems as they apply to the United States. He expresses at the outset
his opinion that the settlement of the question is one of the most
desirable, and will be one of the most important results which remain
to be achieved in the progress of the country; and we can assure him
that the accomplishment of it will be rewarded by the best approval of
these times, and an enduring name. The second chapter of his work is a
statement of the new points which it embraces. By new points he does
not mean that all thus described are entirely original, though many of
them are so; but that on account of the importance of the places he
has assigned them as compared with those they occupy in other works of
the kind, they are entitled to be presented as new. Many of them
involve fundamental and pervading principles that have not hitherto
appeared in speculations on the subject, but which are destined to an
important influence in its discussion. Some of the most prominent are,
that public economy is the application of knowledge, derived from
experience, to given positions, interests and institutions, for the
increase of wealth; that it has never been reduced to a science, and
that the propositions of which it has been for the most part composed,
down to this time, are empirical; that protective duties in the United
States are not taxes, and that a protective system rescues the country
from a system of foreign taxation; that popular education is a
fundamental element of public economy; that freedom is a thing of
commercial value, and that the history of freedom for all time, shows
it to be identical with protection.

Recently the renewal of his voice has enabled Mr. Colton to devote
more attention to the favorite pursuit of his life, and he is a very
frequent preacher, in French or English. He resides in New-York.




A GLANCE AT THE WATERING PLACES.

[Illustration: THE YOUNG MARRIED GENTLEMAN WHO "COULD NOT POSSIBLY GO
TO THE SPRINGS."]


All the gay world of the cities, and even of the villages and country
homes, who can do so, by the first of August are "going," or "gone,"
as Mr. John Keese says of a last invoice, to the watering places, and
other summer resorts, which serve as fairs for the disposal of
valueless time and "remainders" of marriageable daughters. With the
crowds intent on speculation are a few invalids, a few students of
human nature, and the common proportion of mere lookers-on, who have
no purpose but to be amused. Times have changed, manners have changed,
since Paulding gave us his _Mirror for Travellers_, though Saratoga
still maintains the ascendency she was then acquiring, and for certain
inalienable natural advantages is likely to do so for a part at least
of every season.

New-York is the grand rendezvous: once settled in our hotels, the
splendid Astor, the comfortable American, the busy Irving, the gay
New-York, or the quiet Union Place or Clarendon, the stranger has
little desire to go further, until the last and imperative demands of
Fashion compel him to abandon the study of those noble institutions we
described in the last _International_, and to forego the observation
of those great public works in which the energy of our rich men has
flowered, or those appointments of Providence which render New-York a
rival of Dublin, Naples, or Constantinople, in scenic magnificence.

Many indeed who come from distant parts of the country, linger all
summer in the vicinity of the city, in the hottest days quitting
Broadway for a sail or drive, to the Bath House, Rockaway, Coney
Island, New Brighton, Long Branch, or Fort Hamilton, where they dine,
or perhaps stay over night. At Fort Hamilton, indeed, Mr. Clapp is apt
to keep those who venture into his hotel, with its luxurious tables,
pleasant rooms, cool breezes from the ocean, and fair sights in all
directions, for a much longer time; and every one of these places, in
the hot months, has attractions that would make a visitor at the Spas
of France, Germany, or Italy, could he wake in them, think he had
eluded the watchful guard St. Peter keeps at the gateway of another
retirement, to the which, it may be feared, the gay world has far less
anxiety to go.

[Illustration: FORT HAMILTON HOUSE, LONG ISLAND.]

[Illustration: PROPOSED SUMMER HOTEL AT THE HIGHLANDS OF NEVERSINK.]

Ascending the Hudson, from the social metropolis of this continent, to
which all "capitals" of states or nations, from Patagonia to
Greenland, are in some way subject and tributary, the traveller finds
the palace in which he rides, continually near embowered pavilions for
the public, and clusters of private residences, which but add to their
enjoyableness. Cozzens's Hotel at West Point, is perhaps as well
known as any house of the same class in the world, and its picturesque
situation, as well as the admirable manner in which it is kept, will
preserve for it a place in the list of favorite resorts. The Catskill
Mountain House, in the midst of grand and peculiar scenery, on the
verge of a rock two thousand and five hundred feet above the
Hudson--seen with its various fleets at a distance from the long
colonnade--is thronged even more than West Point. There are other
pleasant houses on the river, and many turn from its various points to
visit newer or less crowded places than Saratoga along the lines of
the western railroads, as Trenton Falls, Sharon Springs, or Avon, or
further still, the towns by the borders of the great lakes.

[Illustration: CATSKILL MOUNTAIN HOUSE.]

[Illustration: HOTEL AT TRENTON FALLS.]

Saratoga is now for several weeks the gayest scene of all. At the
United States Hotel, with its fine grounds, are the leaders of
fashion; at Congress Hall, with its clean and quiet rooms and
unsurpassed _cuisine_, are representatives of the substantial families
that have had grandfathers, and in the dozen or twenty smaller houses
about the village are "all sorts and conditions of men," and eke of
women. With drives, dinners, flirtations, drinking of drinks, and,
once in a long while, imbibitions of a little congress water, all goes
merry as a marriage bell--except with ladies of uncertain ages who are
disappointed of that blessed music--until the Grand Ball gives signal
for departure to other places.

[Illustration: SARATOGA SPRINGS.]

[Illustration]

[Illustration: THE NOTCH HOUSE, WHITE MOUNTAINS.]

From Saratoga parties go northward to Lake George, (for which region,
of the most romantic beauty, they should be prepared by a perusal of
Dudley Bean's admirable sketch of its revolutionary history;) and down
the Champlain toward Montreal, whence they return by way of the
Ontario and Niagara Falls (where our engraver Orr's _Pictorial Guide
Book_ is indispensable to the best enjoyment), or go through the
glorious hills of northern Vermont and New Hampshire to the White
Mountains. All the last grand region has been most truthfully and
effectively represented in a small folio volume of drawings from
nature, by Isaac Sprague, described by William Oakes, and published in
Boston by Crosby & Nichols. We commend the book to summer tourists.

[Illustration: NIAGARA FALLS.]

[Illustration: OCEAN HOUSE, NEWPORT.]

A considerable proportion of the guests who are at Saratoga in the
earlier part of the season, proceed to Newport in time for the Fancy
Ball which every year closes the campaign there. Newport increases in
attractions. Its historical associations, fine atmosphere, beautiful
position, and facilities for sea-bathing, fishing, sailing, riding,
and other amusements, are continually drawing to its neighborhood new
families, whose cottages add much to the beauty of the town, as they
themselves to the pleasantness of its society; and for transient
visitors no place in the world has better hotels or boarding-houses.

[Illustration]

[Illustration: WHITE SULPHUR SPRINGS, VIRGINIA.]

After the season closes at Newport, and from her Ocean House the last
unwilling traveller has taken his way, strewn with regrets, many
linger at the more quiet summer haunts scattered through New-England
and New-York, particularly at the rural and luxurious hotel of
Lebanon--a country palace which a king might covet--filled always with
good society; or go southward to the Virginia Springs, which have many
attractions peculiar to themselves, and with their unique pastimes,
their tournaments, field sports, &c., happily vary a summer's life
commenced at the more northern watering places.

[Illustration: COLUMBIA HALL, LEBANON SPRINGS.]

[Illustration: MOULTRIE HOUSE, SULLIVAN'S ISLAND, NEAR CHARLESTON.]

The South Carolinians have this year seceded from the northern
resorts, and those who do not go from Charleston to the up-country or
to Georgia, may well be content with Captain Payne's spacious and
splendid hotel on Sullivan's Island--the coolest and most agreeable
place by the seaside we have visited, north or south, for years. From
the south, and indeed from all parts of the country, parties go more
and more every year to the Mammoth Cave, (of which we have in store a
particular and profusely illustrated account), and up the great rivers
and lakes of the west, all along which, first-class hotels,
steamboats, &c., render travel as easy and delightful as on the old
summer routes in the middle and eastern states.

--Thus we have taken our readers--some of whom haply cannot this
season go by other ways--the circuit of the principal scenes of
enjoyment to which the denizens of the hot cities are intent to escape
through July, August, and September. If any have till this time
hesitated where to go, possibly we have aided them to an election:
certainly, we have led them cheaply along the fashionable tour.

[Illustration: MAMMOTH CAVE HOTEL.]




NOAH WEBSTER.

[Illustration]


The above portrait of the author of _The American Spelling-Book_, of
which there have been sold thirty millions of copies, and of the
_American Dictionary_, of which his publishers have hopes of selling
as great a number, is very life-like; it is from a painting by
Professor Morse, and the last time we saw the veteran scholar and
schoolmaster, he wore the very expression caught by that always
successful artist. Noah Webster's is the most universally familiar
name in our history; every body, from first to second childhood, from
end to end and side to side of the continent, knows it as well as his
own; and he who made it so famous was worthy of his reputation.

Noah Webster was born in Hartford, Connecticut, October 16th, 1758. He
was a descendant, in the fourth generation, of John Webster, one of
the first settlers of Hartford, and afterwards governor of the colony.
In 1774 he was admitted to Yale College. His studies were frequently
interrupted during the Revolution, and for a time he himself served as
a volunteer in the army, with his father and two brothers. He
graduated, with honor, in 1778, in the same class with Joel Barlow,
Oliver Wolcott, Uriah Tracy, and other distinguished men, and
immediately opened a school, residing meanwhile in the family of
Oliver Ellsworth, afterward chief justice of the United States. He
soon commenced the study of the law, and was admitted to the bar in
1781; but the poverty and unsettled state of the country prevented any
immediate success in the courts, and he resumed the business of
instruction in 1782, at Goshen, Orange county, New-York. It was here
that he began the preparation of books for the schools. He was led to
do so in despondency of success in his profession; but it changed the
course of his life. Having exhibited the rude sketch of his initial
effort to Mr. Madison (afterwards President), and Dr. Stanhope Smith,
Professor in Princeton college, he was encouraged by them to publish
the "First Part of a Grammatical Institute of the English Language."
The second and third parts of the series soon followed. A generation
has not passed since some of these books were occasionally seen in New
England. It may be that here and there a copy may still be lurking in
the garret of some ancient family, or on the dusty shelves of a
collector of antiquities. There is no more striking contrast than that
suggested by a comparison of Webster's "Third Part," as it was
familiarly styled, with the admirably printed school books now in
every family. Webster's were the first school books published in the
United States. In 1847 twenty-four million copies of the Spelling Book
had been sold, and for several years the demand for it has been at the
rate of a million a year.

Dr. Webster did not confine his attention to his own publications; but
having learned that a copy of Winthrop's Journal was in the
possession of Governor Trumbull, he caused it to be transcribed and
published at his own risk. In this way was given to the public one of
the most important memorials of our early history, and the first
example furnished of printing the documents, and other materials,
illustrative of our original experience. Mr. Webster was poor, and the
country had never yet evinced any disposition to encourage enterprises
of this sort; but he had always a confidence that it was safe to do
what was right and necessary, and therefore disregarded in this, as in
many other cases, the opinions of his friends that he would incur
inevitable loss.

The peace of 1783 involved the whole country in political agitation,
at certain points of which the calmest and wisest well nigh despaired
of the republic. At that time the influence of the pen was greater
than ever before. It seemed that the decision of principles which were
to last for centuries was dependent on the force of a single argument,
or the earnestness of one appeal. In this conflict the ambitious and
self-relying spirit of Mr. Webster led him to take an active part, and
from the peace till the close of Washington's administration, he was
an industrious and efficient writer. No period in the history of this
country was ever more critical; in none were so many principles
subjected to experiment, in none was discussion more able, exhausting,
and high-toned.

The first topic which engaged Mr. Webster's attention was the decision
of Congress to remunerate the army, then recently disbanded. This
measure was violently opposed in all parts of the country. Meetings
were held to organize resistance to the law, and two-thirds of the
towns of Connecticut were represented in a convention for this
purpose. Mr. Webster was then twenty-five years of age, but he
contributed to the leading paper of the state a series of essays,
signed HONORIUS, which induced a decisive change in the public
feeling; and he received for his important services the thanks of
Governor Trumbull. In the winter of 1784--5 he published a tract,
_Sketches of American Policy_, in which he advanced the doctrine, that
to meet the crisis and secure the prosperity of the whole country, a
government should be organized that would act, not upon the states,
but directly on the people, vesting in Congress full authority to
execute its own acts. A copy of this essay was presented by the author
to Washington, and it is believed that it contained the first distinct
proposal of the new constitution. About the same time, he exerted
himself successfully for what was then called an "International
Copyright" law between the several sovereign states; and at a later
period he spent a winter in Washington, to procure an extension of the
period for which a copyright might be enjoyed. In 1785, he prepared a
series of lectures on the English language, which he delivered in the
larger towns, and in 1789 published, under the title of _Dissertations
on the English Language_. In 1787-8, he spent the winter in
Philadelphia, as a teacher. The convention called to frame the new
constitution was in session during a part of the year, and after its
labors were completed, Mr. Webster undertook to recommend the result
to the then doubtful favor of the people. This he did in a tract,
entitled _An Examination of the Leading Principles of the Federal
Constitution_. In the next year he established in New-York _The
American Magazine_, but it was unsuccessful. In 1789 he opened a
law-office in Hartford, and his reputation, diligence, and abilities,
insured business and profits. He was now married to Miss Greenleaf, of
Boston, and enjoyed the advantage of one of the most brilliant
literary circles of the country, consisting of Joel Barlow, Lemuel
Hopkins, John Trumbull, and others who at that time were eminent for
their capacities.

But the political excitement of 1793, caused by the proclamation of
neutrality, disturbed his plans, and brought him again into the arena
of affairs. The sympathy for the new French republic, natural and
pardonable as it was, overran all limits of reason. The popularity and
influence of Washington were hardly sufficient for the repression of
disorder and violence, and an armed espousal of the cause of the
French. Mr. Webster was solicited to devote himself to the support of
the administration, and means were furnished for the establishment by
him of a daily paper in New-York. He accordingly commenced _The
Minerva_, and soon after, a semi-weekly, _The Herald_, which
ultimately received the names which they now retain, of _The
Commercial Advertiser_, and _The New-York Spectator_.

Another agitation soon followed, if possible, still more
alarming--that which grew out of Jay's Treaty with England. The
discussions to which this gave rise were earnest, often angry and
vituperative, but always able, enlisting the most accomplished men of
the country. In these discussions Mr. Webster was, as might have been
anticipated, remarkably active. A series of papers by him, under the
signature of CURTIUS, had an unquestionable influence on the whole
nation. They were extensively reprinted and afterwards collected in a
volume. Mr. Rufus King said to Mr. Jay, that they had done more than
any others to allay the popular opposition to the treaty. During these
conflicts, Mr. Webster often encountered as an antagonist the
celebrated William Cobbett, at that time conducting a journal in
Philadelphia, distinguished alike for ability and for unscrupulous
violence.

While Mr. Webster lived in New-York, the yellow fever prevailed in
this city and in Philadelphia, and he wrote a minute and comprehensive
_History of Pestilential Diseases_, in two volumes, which was
published in New-York and in London. It attracted much attention in
its time, and was referred to with interest during the subsequent
prevalence of the cholera. He also published in 1802 an able treatise
on _The Rights of Neutral Nations in time of War_, occasioned by the
interference of the French government with the shipping of the world,
and its seizure of American vessels, under the proclamation of a
blockade. He also published _Historical Notices of the Origin and
State of Banking Institutions and Insurance Offices_, a work of
authority and popularity.

In 1798 he removed to New Haven, but retained the direction of his
paper at New-York for several years. After disposing of his interest
in it he devoted the remainder of his life to literary pursuits.

His first work was a _Philosophical and Practical English Grammar_,
printed in 1807. It was in many respects original, acute, and
excellently fitted for the purposes of instruction. It was, however,
only one of the studies for his subsequent and far more important
performance. For more than twenty years he had been a close student of
the elements and sources of the English language; he had gradually, as
his various occupations permitted, accumulated and arranged materials
for its exposition, and he now felt himself at liberty to forego all
other pursuits and ambitions to devote himself for the remainder of
his life to the great labors which have made his name so honorably
eminent in the history of the intellectual advances of his country and
of the Saxon family. The preparation of a Dictionary, under any
circumstances, must be regarded as a very formidable task, involving
even for an enthusiast the most dry and wearying researches,
unenlivened by any of the pleasing excitements which vary the monotony
and relieve the tedium of ordinary literary pursuits. Mr. Webster from
the beginning had a just conception of the duties and difficulties
before him; he was assured that no superficial study or careless
execution would command or in any degree deserve approval, in one who
followed in the track of Johnson. He was not disposed to make the work
of that great man a basis for his own; to be simply an editor, whose
duties should be fulfilled by additions of the new words and new
definitions introduced in seventy years; he determined to make a new
and altogether original work; to study the English language in the
writings of its most distinguished authors, to inquire into its actual
usage in conversation and public discourse, not by loosely gathered
and ill arranged groups of synonymes, but by a clear and precise
statement of meanings, illustrated, whenever it should be necessary,
by various instances. In this work, Johnson had made a beginning; he
first conceived the plan of defining by descriptions, instead of
synonymes; and he had introduced into his larger dictionary quotations
from the best authors. But his work, valuable as it was, was
imperfect, even in regard to the words current in his time, and which
he succeeded in collecting. But, if Johnson had perfectly accomplished
his design, the lapse of seventy years of such extraordinary and
various activity in every department of human action and aspiration,
would have rendered a New Dictionary indispensable. New sciences and
arts had been discovered, which, in their manifold applications to
industry, had changed or wonderfully augmented the technology and
common speech of every class and description of workers. New
experiments had been made in governments; new institutions had been
introduced; literature had assumed new forms; and speculation, with
perfect freedom and gigantic force, had forged new weapons for its new
endeavors. The necessity for a new Dictionary of the English language,
indeed is, demonstrated in the simple fact that the first edition of
Webster's great work contained twelve thousand words not in Johnson;
the second, thirty thousand. This statement does not, however, give a
just impression of the difference between Johnson and Webster, or of
the actual labor which Webster performed. The new definitions, many of
which were fruits, not more of patient research than of nice
discrimination, the arrangement of these definitions, so as to exhibit
the history of words as it had been slowly developed, cost the author
an amount of toil which can with difficulty be measured. We hazard
little concerning the importance or difficulties of the work, when we
quote the remark of Coleridge, that the history of a word is often
more important than that of a campaign.

The etymology of the language, was a subject to which he devoted much
attention, and in which he made great advances. To qualify himself for
tracing the derivations of English words, he studied some twenty
languages, and wrote out a synopsis of the leading words of each, and
incorporated the chief results of this extraordinary investigation in
the very full and instructive statement of words of similar imports,
which in the larger Dictionary is prefixed to English words, and which
he prepared for the press also, as a separate work, of about half the
size of the _American Dictionary_, entitled "_A Synopsis of Words in
Twenty Languages_," which is still unpublished.

In 1812, he removed to Amherst, in Massachusetts, where he devoted ten
years entirely to these labors. He returned to New Haven in 1822; in
the following year he received from Yale College the degree of LL. D.,
and in the spring of 1824 he proceeded to Paris to consult in the
_Bibliotheque du Roi_ some works not accessible in this country, and
then went to England and passed eight months in the libraries of the
University of Cambridge.

Returning to America, he made arrangements for the publication of his
great work, and it finally appeared, near the end of 1826, in an
edition of twenty-five hundred copies, in two quarto volumes, which
were sold at twenty dollars per copy. An edition of three thousand
copies was soon after printed in England.

Dr. Webster was now seventy years of age, and he considered his
life-task accomplished; but habits of literary occupation had become
fixed and necessary, and after a few months he began to rewrite his
_History of the United States for Schools_. In 1840 he published a
second edition of the _Dictionary_, in two octavo volumes; in 1843, _A
Collection of Papers, on Political, Literary and Moral Subjects_,
selected from his various writings in early life; and in 1847 another
edition of the _American Dictionary_ appeared, after a thorough
revision of it by Professor Goodrich, of Yale College. In this edition
very large additions were made, amounting to a fifth of the whole
work. There were new words, and new definitions, when needed; careful
attention was bestowed on technical terms of science and art; and it
was made a general cyclopaedia of knowledge. Yet by employing a finer
type, and adopting a close yet clear style of printing, the original
work, with all these copious additions, was brought within the compass
of a single quarto, which has been styled the finest specimen of
book-manufacture ever produced in America. A revised edition of the
abridgement was issued at the same time, and both volumes have had a
circulation which evinces the general appreciation of their value.
Several of the New England states, we believe, have furnished a copy
of the quarto Dictionary to every school district within their limits,
and the legislature of New-York, during its recent session, passed a
law for the distribution of some thousands of copies in the school
districts of this state also. Whatever may be said of the Dictionary
by Dr. WEBSTER, it will not be questioned by the disinterested scholar
that it is one of the most extraordinary and honorable monuments of
well-directed intellectual labor of which we have any account in the
histories of literature or learning. It is as great an advance from
the work of Dr. Johnson, as that was from the wretched vocabularies of
the English language which existed before his time; and so accurate
and exhausting has been the investigation which it displays that no
rival work is likely to take its place until sufficient time has
elapsed for the language itself to pass into a new condition.

[Illustration: THE BIRTHPLACE OF NOAH WEBSTER.]

Much has been said of Dr. Webster's innovations, but for the most
part, by persons altogether ignorant of the philosophy of languages in
general, as well as of the character and condition of the English
language. Dr. Webster attempted, and with eminent success, to reduce
the English language to order, and to subject it to the operation of
principles. The changes which he made, though in a few instances,
necessary for consistency, striking, are much less numerous than is
commonly supposed, and even to scholars, with whom the study of
languages is not a _specialite_, they would not be very apparent but
for the frequent attempts which are made to prejudice the public
against the work. An amusing illustration of this fact occurred a few
years ago, when, a concerted assault upon the Dictionary having been
made, and sustained for some time, a distinguished author who had a
new book in the press of the Harpers, was alarmed by intelligence that
they intended to adopt for it Webster's orthography. He wrote to
these publishers his apprehensions that the success of his
performance and his own good reputation could not fail of exceeding
injury, if their design should be executed, and begged them to adopt
some other work as a medium for the display of the Websterian
innovations. The Harpers replied that he might select his own
standard; they believed he had, perhaps unconsciously, followed
Webster in his _manuscript_, and that the several productions of his
which they had published in previous years had all been printed
according to Webster's Dictionary, which was the guide used in their
printing offices.

The incidents of Dr. Webster's life after the publication of the
second edition of his Dictionary, in 1840, were few and unimportant.
Indeed, with that effort he regarded his public life as brought to a
close. He passed through a serene old age, which was terminated by a
peaceful death, on the twenty-eighth of May, 1843, when he was in the
eighty-fifth year of his age.




DR. MERLE D'AUBIGNE AND THE ENGLISH CHURCH.


The celebrated German historian, Dr. MERLE D'AUBIGNE, is now in
England, and in consequence of certain proceedings growing out of his
occupation of an Episcopal pulpit recently, he has published a letter
to the Archbishop of Canterbury concerning the general subject of the
exclusion of continental Protestant ministers from the pulpits of
English churches. He is aware that, in consequence of the Act of
Uniformity, there are churches which cannot be opened to those
ministers, but he hopes that this law of exclusion will be repealed.
"It is no longer in harmony with the spirit and the wants of the
church in the age in which we live." The Calvinistic historian
expresses his conviction that the reestablishment of the Annual
Convocation would not reform the Church. The Convocation has been for
more than a century deprived of its powers, and it is to Parliament
that the question now belongs. He says:

     "Why should I not express to you, my lord, a desire which I
     have long had in my heart? This desire is, that being
     surrounded by ministers and members of the Church the most
     enlightened and most devoted to God and to his word, you
     should digest and present to Parliament a plan, not to
     _effect_ (_sic_) a reform of the Church, but to _establish
     the authority_ (_sic_) which should be charged with its
     reform and government. It seems to me that the best way
     would be to establish a body similar to that which governs
     the Episcopal church of America, composed of three chambers,
     that of the bishops, that of the presbyters, and that of the
     members of the Church, the two latter being ordinarily
     united in one. The Americans of the United States have
     received so much from you (they have received every thing,
     even their very existence), why should you not take
     something from them? I am convinced that sooner or later a
     reform _must_ take place in the government of the Church of
     England: it is important that it should be done well. I
     think that there would be some hope of its being
     accomplished in a good sense, if it were done while you, my
     lord, are Primate of the Church, and while Victoria is Queen
     of England."

Every thing seems to tend to an entire revolution in the British
ecclesiastical system, and the cooeperation of Dr. Merle and other
continental writers with those who are agitating the subject in
England--demanding the separation of the church from the state--makes
the prospect of such a separation more imminent than it has ever been
hitherto.




THE EXILE'S SUNSET SONG.

WRITTEN FOR THE INTERNATIONAL MAGAZINE

BY J. R. THOMPSON.


    When from thy side, love,
      In silence and gloom,
        Half broken-hearted
          Fate tore me away,
    All humbled in pride, love,
      I thought in my doom,
        That Hope had departed
          For ever and aye!

    But Fate may not banish
      From memory's store,
        That blissful communion
          Of years that are flown,
    Nor make yet to vanish
      The lustre which o'er
        Our fond thoughts of union,
          So tenderly shone.

    And still o'er the ocean
      My fancy takes flight,
        Where oft I see gleaming
          Thy figure afar;
    And I think with emotion,
      That sometimes at night,
        We watch the same beaming
          And tremulous star.

    The sunsets so golden.
      That stream round me here,
        But call up thy shadow
          The landscape between:
    And when in the olden
      Dim season so dear,
        It tripped o'er the meadow
          With step of a queen.

    As the light of the moon, love,
      Like snow softly falls,
        And rests on the mountain,
          And silvers the sea,
    That midnight in June, love,
      My mem'ry recalls,
        When up to the fountain
          I clambered with thee.

    How sweetly the river
      Reflected the ray
        Of moon through the willows
          Or sun o'er the hill:
    Does the moonbeam there quiver,
      The sunset there play,
        Upon its gay billows
          As splendidly still?

    My spirit is weary--
      An exile I grieve,
        When morn's early voices
          A glad song proclaim,
    And the faint Miserere
      Of nature at eve,
        To me but rejoices
          To murmer thy name.

    Yet Hope, reappearing,
      A vision unfolds,
        Of rapture together
          In joy's happy reign,
    When love all endearing
      The full eye beholds,
        We'll walk o'er the heather
          At sunset again.

RICHMOND, Va.




DRAMATIC FRAGMENTS.

WRITTEN FOR THE INTERNATIONAL MAGAZINE,

BY R. H. STODDARD.


THE GAME OF CHESS.

    We played at chess, Bianca and myself,
    One afternoon, but neither won the game,
    Both absent-minded, thinking of our hearts
    Moving the ivory pawns from black to white,
    Shifted to little purpose round the board;
    Sometimes we quite forgot it in a sigh
    And then remembered it, and moved again;
    Looking the while along the slopes beyond,
    Barred by blue peaks, the fountain, and the grove
    Where lovers sat in shadow, back again,
    With sideway glances in each other's eyes;
    Unknowingly I made a lucky move,
    Whereby I checked my mate, and gained a queen;
    My couch drew nearer hers, I took her hand--
    A soft white hand that gave itself away--
    Told o'er the simple story of my love,
    In simplest phrases which are always best,
    And prayed her if she loved me in return--
    A fabled doubt--to give her heart to me;
    And then, and there, above that game of chess,
    Not finished yet, in maiden trustfulness,
    She gave me, what I knew was mine, her heart!


FROM A PLAY.

    Alas! I think of you the live-long day,
    Plying my needle by the little stand,
    And wish that we had never, never met,
    Or I were dead, or you were married off,
    Though that would kill me; I lay down my work,
    And take the lute you gave me, but the strings
    Have grown so tuneless that I cannot play;
    I sing the favorite airs we used to sing,
    The sweet old tunes we love, and weep aloud!
    I sought forgetfulness, and tried to-day
    To read a chapter in the Holy Book;
    I could not see a line, I only read
    The solemn sonnets that you sent to me:
    Nor can I pray as I was wont to do,
    For you come in between me and the Lord,
    And when I strive to lift my soul above,
    My wits are wandering, and I sob your name!
    And nights, when I am lying on my bed,
    (I hope such thoughts are not unmaidenly,)
    I think of you, and fall asleep, and dream
    I am your own, your wedded, happy wife,--
    But that can never, never be on earth!




THE COUNTESS IDA HAHN-HAHN.


We gave in the last _International_ a short notice of "_Von Babylon
nach Jerusalem_" (A Journey from Babylon to Jerusalem), by Ida,
Countess of Hahn-Hahn, in which she declares her conversion to
Christianity and Catholicism. What the Germans themselves think of
this work may be gathered from the following brief review, which has
just fallen under our notice in the _Central Blatt_. The article is
curious, from the "intensely German" style and spirit in which it is
written, though we cannot very warmly commend either.

"The above-mentioned work," which contains an account of the
conversion of its celebrated authoress to the Catholic belief, says
the critic, "presents a sad picture of the complete decay and
dissolution of a _void subjectivity_ (a vacant mind).

"The writer falls a sacrifice to her exclusive, aristocratic position
in society. Without occupying any place in the world, won and
maintained by personal ability, and consequently without a
well-grounded moral standard, she wanders like a homeless being from
land to land, every where influenced, 'as far as it agreed with her
disposition,' by her momentary interests, and thus rendering apparent
the barrenness of her soul. But this had been developed at an early
period. 'That this feeling (that of joy) was occasionally accompanied
by the deepest discontent, appearing as an unearthly _ennui_--and that
over it swept the darkest melancholy, will be readily intelligible to
every one, for they are the twin sisters of the fortune of this
world.' 'And occasionally it was a kind of heroism, in that I sat
myself down, and--wrote a romance. Was it finished, I travelled--did I
return, I described the tour--was there a time when the book was
complete and circumstances did not permit of travelling, I took with
raging appetite to reading--and when I no longer wrote, no longer
travelled, and could no longer read for any determined
purpose--because I had none--I knew not what to do with my time. I
could not create illusions, and say to myself, Try this! try that!
perhaps the world hath yet somewhat hidden for thee--the call of
Knowledge is incessant. No, no! she hath nothing. Well--what then?
God? There stood the Word, the One, the Eternal.' Thereupon she reads
the greater and lesser catechisms of Luther, the creeds of the
evangelic reformed church, and the decrees and canons of the Council
of Trent. 'But only the Catholic church hath under roof and proof
brought her dogma-buildings to a tower, provided with the
lightning-rod of authority.' Thereupon she determines, 'I asked no
human being for explanation, information, or counsel--not even
myself.' Three months after, on the first day of January, 1850, she
wrote to the Cardinal Prince-Bishop of Breslau, to beg of him aid in
her entrance to the church.

"The moral vacancy displayed in these quotations corresponds with the
shallow manner and half romantic, half French style of the book.
Though the first part be written in a fresher and livelier style than
the second, there is still not to be found in the whole a single
well-determined and clearly-impressed thought, and whenever we imagine
that we have hit upon such a thing, straightway we find whirling forth
the dust-clouds of an obscure, phrase-laden, highly affected
sentimental feeling, which, without any real energy, stirs itself up
with repeated 'ohs!' and 'ahs!' and other forced sighs and artificial
aids. In place of such thoughts we find a shallow and occasionally
insupportably wearisome speech on the ideal of Catholicism, or 'the
heathenish abomination in art and literature, which, after the fall of
Byzantium was transported thence to Italy, and there received with
that love which impels sensuous mortals to joyfully draw into the
sphere of his life the new and glittering, because it promises fresh
and shining pleasures.'(!) In another place she speaks of the
reformers as 'miserable, narrow-minded heads, who should have chosen
other ground whereon to exercise their love of quarrelling;' while
the second half of her book is confined almost exclusively to the
democrats, and the events which took place from 1847 to 1849. In this
part the authoress displays the greatest want of intellect, and is
sadly wearisome; but her frivolity of manners and morals appears most
repulsive in her account of the Reformation. None of the
Catholics--not even Cochlaeus himself--has so far degraded himself as
to interpret in such a vulgar manner the deeds of the reformers (more
particularly Luther's) as is here done by--a lady!

"If the Countess places at the conclusion of her work the words 'Soli
Deo Gloria,' this is merely in accordance with a Catholic custom, and
by no means meant in earnest, since the work is more particularly
adapted to flatter the vanity and self-conceit of its composer, who
cannot imagine why she should suffer the disgrace to belong to the
German nation. A vain, coquettish self-regard, an affected,
aristocratic-noble nonchalance, and a contradicting, heresy-accusing
confidence of judgment, meet us on every side, and render us
completely opposed to the pretence and moral vacancy of this book."

These are bitter words, and bitterly spoken, when thus applied to a
woman. The reader will in their perusal remember that the writer is
evidently influenced by a deep feeling against all that savors of
conservatism in politics, and shares in an unusual degree the popular
German feeling against _emancipiste Frauen_, or women who strive
against the bonds which the customs of society have imposed on the
sex,--a feeling, which, however creditable it may be when applied to
undue extravagances of manners or morals, should be carefully guarded
against when it threatens an unconditional restraint of every exertion
of feminine genius and talent.




JULES JANIN, AND THE PARIS FEUILLETONISTES.


Jules Janin, whose name, of so constant recurrence in the contemporary
history of light literature, artistic criticism, and _feuilleton_, is
the Prince Royal of the brilliant court of gifted, tasteful, witty and
_spirituel_ writers, who compose the body of Parisian
_feuilletonistes_. These are men who write, not because they have any
thing especial to say--for their peculiar function is to say nothing,
in a pointed and brilliant manner--but because they love leisure and
luxury, the opera, pictures, and beautiful ballet girls, and must
themselves make the golden lining to their purses, which they can do
by the very simple process of weaving the similar lining of their
brains into a _feuilleton_. They are often scholars, men of fine
cultivation and genius, whose tastes however are so imperious, and who
enjoy so much the ease thus facilely achieved, that they accomplish no
great work, win no lasting name. Of course the _feuilletonist_ proper
is to be distinguished from the author or novelist who publishes a
work in the _Feuilleton_, as Lamartine his _Confidences_, and Sue and
Dumas and George Sand, their romances. We propose now to follow
briefly the sparkling career of JULES JANIN as the type of the life,
character, and success of the _feuilletonistes_.

He came to Paris, a Jew: as Meyerbeer, Heine, Grisi, Rachel, and the
long luminous list of contemporary artists who have made fame in
Paris, are Jews. He supported himself by teaching--doing nothing, but
very conscious that he could do something--at all events he could
lecture upon the Syrian language, if for a week he could prepare
himself. Then he wrote in little theatrical papers, and received
twenty-five francs a month. But in 1830 he happily succeeded to his
present position in the _Journal des Debats_. He is now a rich man. He
gives splendid soirees in his saloons glittering with oriental luxury,
and artists and authors bow before him. Like Henry Heine, his
contemporary, whom he as much resembles in talent as in manner, he
declared now for the Republic and Freedom, now for the Church and
King, until his connection with the _Debats_ impressed upon him the
conservative seal. He since loudly declaims for public
morality--against the prostitution of the press; but his early works
were the most licentious of any that have swarmed from the fertile
French genius of social protestantism. His first novel, published in
1829, _The Dead Donkey and the Guillotined Woman_, is the history of a
prostitute, from the brothel, to the murder of her child, and her
execution, garnished with Byronic sentimentalities upon the
transitoriness of things temporal.

Jules Janin's next work was one of the most instructive illustrations
of the character of French romance at that period when literary
feeling and taste seemed to reach the artificial point that is
artistically achieved by the melo-dramas of Chatham-street and the
Strand. We record it as a literary curiosity, as the work of a "fast"
Frenchman, a Parisian Vivian Grey, on a small scale. It is called _The
Penitent_, and was published in 1830. It opens with a marriage. The
bride, who has been violently dancing, retires, overcome with sleep,
and the husband in his rage at her sleepiness smothers her. It is
nominally supposed that she has been stricken with apoplexy, but a
Jesuit, who meditates many mysteries, understands the whole matter,
yet observes the most discreet silence. The young man, who is somewhat
conscience-pricked, still persists in profligacy, until he is
overwhelmed by remorse, and rushes to the church to receive
absolution. He seeks a trusty confessor, and of course finds the old
Jesuit; but as he finds it difficult to obtain access to him, makes
the acquaintance of a girl, with whom the Jesuit has some kind of
relation, and in order to win her to his will, seduces her! Then comes
the Jesuit and begins to fulminate excommunications and damnations.
But the youth bursts into a passionate strain of repentance, and is
told by the old Jesuit, that the difficulty in his case, is a
religious one, that in fact the murder was "a circumstance" arising
from his irreligious state, and that by genuine repentance the matter
will be arranged. _Presto_: The youth repents and enters the church,
is made Bishop and proceeds through an endless course of fat capon and
Chateau Margaux to an edifying end!

The boldest efforts of young France and young Germany, are feeble by
the side of this extraordinary effort. His earlier tales, which are
somewhat in the style of Hoffmann, Jules Janin published in the year
1833, under the title of _Fantastic Tales_, and a series of works of
less size and importance followed, until the series of papers, half
fiction, half fact, which, in the novel form, treated a great variety
of historico-literary subjects. His last romance is the _Nun of
Toulouse_, written during the revolution of '48. It sparkles with the
same sprightly skepticism and spiritual coquetry that distinguished
his earlier works, yet he celebrates in it those beautiful times, the
"old times," in which the serenity of faith was never ruffled by
impertinent thought; and in his recent letters from the Great
Exhibition, he indulges in the same strain, and sighs for the
magnificence of the monarchy.

But his weekly contributions to the _Debats_, the rapid dashing review
of the dramatic novelties and incidents in a metropolis where alone a
living drama survives, and which he serves up garnished with the most
felicitous verbal graces and the most charming intellectual conceits,
every Monday morning--these are the flowers whence the brilliant Jules
Janin builds the honey hive of his reputation. He has decreed the
fashion of the _Feuilleton_, and the other Parisian critics flash and
snap and sparkle, as much like Jules Janin as possible. Their articles
are the streak of _light_ in the dimness of the preponderating
political literature of the week. They hold high holiday at the bottom
of the page, although the history of revolutions, and woes, and the
rumors of wars and impending millenniums may throw their sombre
shadows along the columns above. They raise their banner of a
butterfly's wing, emblazoned with _Vive la Bagatelle_, and march on to
the tournament of wit and beauty. They belong to France; their game is
the gambol of the exuberance of French genius. They are more than
witty, they are _spirituel_; and they have more than talent, they have
taste.

In a day of such rapid and facile printing as ours, this department of
literary labor was a necessity. Every man who has a conceit and can
write, may parade it before the world. In the mass of pleasant
common-place, what is _bizarre_ may supplant the symmetrically
beautiful. To seize therefore what every man saw, and with nimble
fingers to weave a transparent tissue of gorgeous words through which
every man's impressions of what he saw look large and graceful and
piquant--to sum up a vaudeville in a _bon mot_, and a ballet in a
voluptuous trope,--_voila! c'est fait_, you have the recipe of a
successful _feuilletoniste_. Hence, the influence of these writers,
upon _words_, has been remarkable. The French language, long so
precise, is now among the most dissolute of tongues. It reels through
the columns of a _feuilleton_, drunk and dim-eyed with expletives and
exaggerations and beatified adjectives, so that, fascinated with the
casket, you quite forget the jewel. The language of dramatic and
operatic criticism in Paris is now inexplicable to any one but an
_habitue_. If you should tell John Bull, who wishes to go to the
opera, that Alboni's singing is _pyramidale_, he would expect to see
the fair and fat contralto sharpened to a point at top,--but, I grant,
if you should call it "jolly" or "stunning," he would entirely
comprehend that you meant to express your admiration in superlatives.

I must not longer gossip as these gay gossips do, these fanciful
_feuilletonistes_, nor seek more deeply to draw the outline of these
rainbow bubbles upon the stream of the time, whether it flow turbid or
transparent. One cannot live upon sugar and nutmeg, or even upon
allspice. But our friends are a literary phenomenon not to be omitted,
and if you love the Muses, you will not omit to snuff the azure
incense offered weekly by the _feuilletonistes_.

Jules Janin shall show us out of this article as he ushered us in. The
Great Mogul of the _Feuilleton_ had purchased a carriage whose luxury,
and taste of appointment, and perfection of footman, was unsurpassed
in the Champs Elysee. But the gods are jealous and the
_feuilletonistes_ have thus the highest authority for jealousy. So, on
one evening when the exquisite equipage awaited its master at the
grand opera, a crowd of lesser critical luminaries gathered around it,
and both reviled and envied the fortunate owner. While they were thus
engaged, the great critic came out of the opera house and saw his
contemporaries engaged in longing and envious remark. Now tact is the
sublimest secret of success--and smilingly Jules Janin advanced
cheerily, greeted his friends cordially, and piled into the carriage
all of them who lived in his neighborhood.

They naturally reserved the seat of honor for the owner, but this
great General seizing the most inimical of all the party who lived in
a quarter of the city farthest from his own home, pushed him into the
vacant seat, ordered his coachman to set him down first, and then
humming the finale of the opera, lighted a cigar and sauntered
leisurely down the street. It was like Jules Janin to make his own
marriage the subject of a _Feuilleton_. In his case the man and the
_feuilletoniste_ are the same.




ODE XX. OF ANACREON.

TRANSLATED FROM THE FRENCH OF MADAME DACIER FOR THE INTERNATIONAL
MAGAZINE,

BY MARY E. HEWITT.


    Niobe, maddened by her woes, of yore.
      The gods in pity turned to marble fair;
    And wretched Progne, doomed for evermore,
      Changed to a swallow wings the upper air.

    But ah! would Love, whom I, enslaved, obey,
      By his sweet power transform me, I would be
    The mirror in thy hand, if thus, alway,
      Thy gentle eyes would fondly turn on me.

    Or, I would be the perfume that reveals
      Its fragrance 'mid the tresses of thy hair;
    Or, that soft veil which o'er thy bosom steals,
      And jealous, hides the ivory treasure there.

    Or I would be the robe that round thee flows,
      The zone that circles thee with fond caress;
    The rivulet that with thy beauty glows,
      And to its breast enclasps thy loveliness.

    Or I were blest those envied pearls to be
      That closely thus thy swan-white neck entwine;
    Or e'en to be the sandal, pressed by thee,
      Were, for thy lover, destiny divine.




SWEDISH LANDSCAPES: BY HERR ANDERSEN.


In the last _International_ we gave some characteristic historical
sketches from Hans Christian Andersen's latest and most delightful
book, the _Pictures of Sweden_; but the inspiration of nature is more
powerful with him than that of history, and he is never so felicitous
as when painting the scenery of his native country, though he has
certainly indulged, to a greater extent than a sober taste can
approve, in that passion for the fantastic and visionary, which has
been but too visibly manifested in some of his later and slighter
works. Our readers, however, shall judge for themselves. The forests
of Sweden and its rivers give the most noticeable features to its
landscape. This is how they appeared to Andersen--the forest first:

     "We are a long way over the elv. We have left the
     corn-fields behind, and have just come into the forest,
     where we halt at that small inn which is ornamented over the
     doors and windows with green branches for the midsummer
     festival. The whole kitchen is hung round with branches of
     birch and the berries of the mountain ash; the oat cakes
     hang on long poles under the ceiling; the berries are
     suspended above the head of the old woman who is just
     scouring her brass kettle bright.

     "The tap-room, where the peasants sit and carouse, is just
     as finely hung round with green. Midsummer raises its leafy
     arbor every where, yet it is most flush in the forest which
     extends for miles around. Our road goes for miles through
     that forest, without seeing a house, or the possibility of
     meeting travellers, driving, riding, or walking. Come! The
     ostler puts fresh horses to the carriage; come with us into
     the large woody desert: we have a regular trodden way to
     travel, the air is clear, here is summer's warmth and the
     fragrance of birch and lime. It is an up-and-downhill road,
     always bending, and so, ever changing, but yet always
     forest-scenery--the close, thick forest. We pass small
     lakes, which lie so still and deep, as if they concealed
     night and sleep under their dark, glassy surfaces.

     "We are now on a forest plain, where only charred stumps of
     trees are to be seen; this long tract is black, burnt, and
     deserted, not a bird flies over it. Tall, hanging birches
     now greet us again; a squirrel springs playfully across the
     road, and up into the tree; we cast our eyes searchingly
     over the wood-grown mountain side, which slopes so far, far
     forward, but not a trace of a house is to be seen: nowhere
     does that bluish smoke-cloud rise, that shows us, here are
     fellow-men. The sun shines warm; the flies dance around the
     horses, settle on them, fly off again, and dance as though
     it were to qualify themselves for resting and being still.
     They perhaps think, 'Nothing is going on without us: there
     is no life while we are doing nothing.' They think, as many
     persons think, and do not remember that time's horses always
     fly onward with us!

     "How solitary is it here! so delightfully solitary! one is
     so entirely alone with God and one's self. As the sunlight
     streams forth over the earth, and over the extensive
     solitary forests, so does God's Spirit stream over and into
     mankind; ideas and thoughts unfold themselves--endless,
     inexhaustible, as He is--as the magnet which apportions its
     powers to the steel, and itself loses nothing thereby. As
     our journey through the forest scenery here along the
     extended solitary road, so, travelling on the great high
     road of thought, ideas pass through our head. Strange, rich
     caravans pass by from the works of poets, from the home of
     memory, strange and novel; for capricious fancy gives birth
     to them at the moment. There comes a procession of pious
     children with waving flags and joyous songs; there come
     dancing Menades, the blood's wild Bacchantes. The sun pours
     down hot in the open forest; it is as if the Southern summer
     had laid itself up here to rest in Scandinavian forest
     solitude, and sought itself out a glade where it might lie
     in the sun's hot beams and sleep; hence this stillness as if
     it were night. Not a bird is heard to twitter, not a pine
     tree moves. Of what does the Southern summer dream here in
     the North, amongst pines and fragrant birches?

     "In the writings of the olden time, from the classic soil of
     the South, are sagas of mighty fairies, who, in the skins of
     swans, flew towards the North, to the Hyperboreans' land, to
     the east of the north winds; up there, in the deep still
     lakes, they bathed themselves, and acquired a renewed form.
     We are in the forest by these deep lakes; we see swans in
     flocks fly over us, and swim upon the rapid elv and on the
     still waters...."

     "Woodland solitude! what images dost thou not present to our
     thoughts! Woodland solitude! through thy vaulted halls
     people now pass in the summer time with cattle and domestic
     utensils; children and old men go to the solitary pasture
     where echo dwells, where the national song springs forth
     with the wild mountain flower! Dost thou see the procession?
     Paint it if thou canst! The broad wooden cart, laden high
     with chests and barrels, with jars and with crockery. The
     bright copper kettle and the tin dish shine in the sun. The
     old grandmother sits at the top of the load, and holds her
     spinning wheel, which complete the pyramid. The father
     drives the horse, the mother carries the youngest child on
     her back, sewed up in a skin, and the procession moves on
     step by step. The cattle are driven by the half-grown
     children; they have stuck a birch branch between one of the
     cows' horns, but she does not appear to be proud of her
     finery; she goes the same quiet pace as the others, and
     lashes the saucy flies with her tail. If the night becomes
     cold on this solitary pasture, there is fuel enough; here
     the tree falls of itself from old age, and lies and rots.

     "But take especial care of the fire--fear the fire-spirit in
     the forest desert! He comes from the unextinguishable pile;
     he comes from the thunder-cloud, riding on the blue
     lightning's flame, which kindles the thick, dry moss of the
     earth: trees and bushes are kindled; the flames run from
     tree to tree, it is like a snow-storm of fire! the flames
     leap to the tops of the trees. What a crackling and roaring,
     as if it were the ocean in its course! The birds fly upward
     in flocks, and fall down suffocated by the smoke; the
     animals flee, or, encircled by the fire, are consumed in it!
     Hear their cries and roars of agony! The howling of the wolf
     and the bear, dost thou know it? A calm rainy day, and the
     forest-plains themselves alone are able to confine the fiery
     sea, and the burnt forest stands charred, with black trunks
     and black stumps of trees, as we saw them here in the forest
     by the broad high-road. On this road we continue to travel,
     but it becomes worse and worse; it is, properly speaking, no
     road at all, but it is about to become one. Large stones lie
     half dug up, and we drive past them; large trees are cast
     down, and obstruct our way, and therefore we must descend
     from the carriage. The horses are taken out, and the
     peasants help to lift and push the carriage forward over
     ditches and opened paths. The sun now ceases to shine; some
     few rain-drops fall, and now it is a steady rain. But how it
     causes the birch to shed its fragrance! At a distance there
     are huts erected of loose trunks of trees and fresh green
     boughs, and in each there is a large fire burning. See where
     the blue smoke curls through the green leafy roof; peasants
     are within at work, hammering and forging; here they have
     their meals. They are now laying a mine in order to blast a
     rock, and the pine and birch emit a finer fragrance. It is
     delightful in the forest."

So say we. It is delightful in the forest; not less so on the
torrent-river of Scandinavia:

     "Before Homer sang, there were heroes; but they are not
     known, no poet celebrated their fame. It is just so with the
     beauties of nature; they must be brought into notice by
     words and delineations, be brought before the eyes of the
     multitude; get a sort of world's patent for what they are.
     The elvs of the North have rushed and whirled along for
     thousands of years in unknown beauty. The world's great
     high-road does not take this direction; no steam-packet
     conveys the traveller comfortably along the streams of the
     Dal-elvs; fall on fall makes sluices indispensable and
     invaluable. Schubert is, as yet, the only stranger who has
     written about the magnificence and southern beauty of
     Dalecarlia, and spoken of its greatness.

     "Clear as the waves of the sea does the mighty elv stream in
     endless windings through forest deserts and varying plains,
     sometimes extending its deep bed, sometimes confining it,
     reflecting the bending trees and the red-painted
     block-houses of solitary towns, and sometimes rushing like a
     cataract over immense blocks of rock.

     "Miles apart from one another, out of the ridge of mountains
     between Sweden and Norway, come the east and west Dal-elvs,
     which first become confluent and have one bed above Balstad.
     They have taken up rivers and lakes in their waters. Do but
     visit this place! here are pictorial riches to be found: the
     most picturesque landscapes, dizzyingly grand, smilingly
     pastoral, idyllic; one is drawn onward up to the very source
     of the elv, the bubbling well above Finman's hut; one feels
     a desire to follow every branch of the stream that the river
     takes in.

     "The first mighty fall, Njupesker's Cataract, is seen by the
     Norwegian frontier in Semasog. The mountain stream rushes
     perpendicularly from the rock to a depth of seventy fathoms.

     "We pause in the dark forest, where the elv seems to collect
     within itself nature's whole deep gravity. The stream rolls
     its clear waters over a porphyry soil, where the mill-wheel
     is driven, and the gigantic porphyry bowls and sarcophagi
     are polished.

     "We follow the stream through Siljan's lake, where
     superstition sees the water-sprite swim like the sea-horse,
     with a mane of green seaweed; and where the aerial images
     present visions of witchcraft in the warm summer day.

     "We sail on the stream from Siljan's lake under the weeping
     willows of the parsonage, where the swans assemble in
     flocks; we glide along slowly with horses and carriages on
     the great ferry-boat, away over the rapid current under
     Balstad's picturesque shore. Here the elv widens and rolls
     its billows majestically in a woodland landscape, as large
     and extended as if it were in North America.

     "We see the rushing, rapid stream under Avista's yellow clay
     declivities; the yellow water falls, like fluid amber, in
     picturesque cataracts before the copper works, where
     rainbow-colored tongues of fire shoot themselves upwards,
     and the hammer's blow on the copper-plates resound to the
     monotonous, roaring rumble of the elv-fall."

And so on, past the famous fall down which the waters gush, ere they
lose themselves in the waters of the Baltic. One glimpse more ere they
reach their resting-place. We take them up as they are circling the
garden of a trim Swedish manor-house:

     "The garden itself was a piece of enchantment. There stood
     three transplanted beech trees, and they throve well. The
     sharp north wind had rounded off the tops of the wild
     chestnut trees of the avenue in a singular manner; they
     looked as if they had been under the gardener's shears.
     Golden yellow oranges hung in the conservatory; the splendid
     Southern exotics had to-day got the windows half open, so
     that the artificial warmth met the fresh, warm, sunny air of
     the Northern summer.

     "The branch of the Dal-elv which goes round the garden is
     strewn with small islands, where beautiful hanging birches
     and fir-trees grow in Scandinavian splendor. There are small
     islands with green, silent groves; there are small islands
     with rich grass, tall brakens, variegated bell flowers, and
     cowslips. No Turkey carpet has fresher colors. The stream
     between these islands and holmes is sometimes rapid, deep,
     and clear; sometimes like a broad rivulet with silky green
     rushes, water lilies, and brown feathered reeds; sometimes
     it is a brook with a stony ground, and now it spreads itself
     out in a large, still mill-dam.

     "Here is a landscape in midsummer for the games of the
     river-sprites, and the dancers of the elves and fairies!
     There, in the lustre of the full moon, the dryads can tell
     their tales, the water-sprites seize the golden harp, and
     believe that one can be blessed, at least for one single
     night, like this.

     "On the other side of Ens Bruck is the main stream--the full
     Dal-elv. Do you hear the monotonous rumble? It is not from
     Elvkarleby Fall that it reaches hither; it is close by; it
     is from Laa Foss in which lies Ash Island: the elv streams
     and rushes over the leaping salmon.

     "Let us sit here, between the fragments of rock by the
     shore, in the red evening sunlight, which sheds a golden
     lustre on the waters of the Dal-elv.

     "Glorious river! But a few seconds' work hast thou to do in
     the mills yonder, and thou rushest foaming on over
     Elvkarleby's rocks, down into the deep bed of the river,
     which leads thee to the Baltic--thy eternity."

We could fill half our number with passages just as beautiful; but
will leave the rest of the poet's landscapes till some American
publisher brings out the book. We must nevertheless quote one picture
of a different kind. "One touch of nature makes the whole world kin;"
and the sorrows of the palace and the cottage alike find their level
and their rest in the grave. The "Mute Book" speaks with a moving
eloquence to those who can read it aright:

     "By the high-road into the forest there stood a solitary
     farm-house. One way lay right through the farm-yard; the sun
     shone; all the windows were open; there was life and bustle
     within, but in the yard, in an arbor of flowering lilacs,
     there stood an open coffin. The corpse had been placed out
     here, and it was to be buried that forenoon. No one stood
     by, and wept over that dead man; no one hung sorrowfully
     over him. His face was covered with a white cloth, and under
     his head there lay a large, thick book, every leaf of which
     was a whole sheet of gray paper, and, between each, lay
     withered flowers, deposited and forgotten,--a whole
     herbarium, gathered in different places. He himself had
     requested that it should be laid in the grave with him. A
     chapter of his life was blended with every flower! 'Who is
     that dead man?' we asked, and the answer was, 'The old
     student from Upsala. They say he was once very clever; he
     knew the learned languages, could sing and write verses too;
     but then there was something that went wrong, and so he gave
     both his thoughts and himself up to drinking spirits, and,
     as his health suffered by it, he came out here into the
     country, where they paid for his board and lodging. He was
     as gentle as a child when the dark humor did not come over
     him, for then he was strong, and ran about in the forest
     like a hunted deer; but when we got him home, we persuaded
     him to look into the book with the dry plants. Then he would
     sit the whole day, and look at one plant, and then at
     another, and many a time the tears ran down his cheeks. God
     knows what he then thought! But he begged that he might have
     the book with him in his coffin; and now it lies there, and
     the lid will soon be fastened down, and then he will take
     his peaceful rest in the grave!'

     "They raised the winding sheet. There was peace in the face
     of the dead. A sunbeam fell on it; a swallow, in its
     arrow-flight, darted into the new-made arbor, and in its
     flight circled twittering over the dead man's head.

     "How strange it is!--we all assuredly know it--to take out
     old letters from the days of one's youth, and read them: a
     whole life, as it were, then rises up, with all its hopes
     and all its troubles. How many of those with whom we, in
     their time, lived so devotedly, are now even as the dead to
     us, and yet they still live! But we have not thought of them
     for many years--them whom we once thought we should always
     cling to, and share our mutual joys and sorrows with!

     "The withered oak-leaf in the book here, is a memorial of
     the friend--the friend of his school days--the friend for
     life. He fixed this leaf on the student's cap, in the
     greenwood, when the vow of friendship was concluded for the
     whole life. Where does he now live? The leaf is preserved;
     friendship forgotten. Here is a foreign conservatory plant,
     too fine for the gardens of the North. It looks as if there
     still were fragrance in it. _She_ gave it to him--she, the
     lady of that noble garden!

     "Here is the marsh-lotus, which, he himself has plucked and
     watered with salt tears--the marsh-lotus from the fresh
     waters! And here is a nettle; what do its leaves say! What
     did he think on plucking it?--on preserving it? Here are
     lilies of the valley, from the woodland solitudes; here are
     honeysuckles from the village ale-house flower-pot; and here
     the bare, sharp blade of grass. The flowering lilac bends
     its fresh, fragrant clusters over the dead man's head; the
     swallow again flies past--'qui-vit! qui-vit!' Now the men
     come with nails and hammer; the lid is placed over the
     corpse, whose head rests on the 'Mute
     Book'--preserved--forgotten!"

The book, to those who are not repelled by a certain quaintness of
manner from the enjoyment of a work of true genius, will form a
permanent and delightful addition to those pictures of many lands
which the enterprise and accomplishment of modern travellers is
creating for the delight of those whose range of locomotion is bounded
by the limits of their own country, or by the four walls of a sick
chamber.

Andersen has grown old in years, and with age he has increase of art,
but he was never younger in spirit, and his genius never blossomed
with more freshness and beauty.




VERSES

WRITTEN FOR THE INTERNATIONAL MAGAZINE,

BY R. H. STODDARD.


    My desk is heaped with niceties
      From tropic lands divine,
    But this is braver far than all--
      A flask of Chian wine!

    Brim up my golden drinking-cup,
      And reach a dish of fruit,
    And then unlock my cabinet,
      And hand me out my lute;

    For when these luxuries have fed
      And filled my brain with light,
    I must compose a nuptial song,
      To suit my bridal night!




A CHAPTER OF PARODIES.


Parodies have been much in vogue in almost every age; among the
Greeks, Latins, Germans, French, and English, it has been among the
commonest of literary pleasantries to turn verses into ridicule by
applying them to a purpose never dreamed of by their authors, or to
burlesque serious pieces by affecting to observe the same rhymes,
words, and cadences. The wicked arts of Charles the Second's time thus
made fun of the hymns of the Roundheads, and pious people have since
turned the tables by adapting to good uses the profane airs and
sensual songs of the opera house. Of the class of puns, parodies have
in the scale of art a much higher rank, and occasionally they furnish
specimens of genuine poetry. Among the best we have ever seen are a
considerable number attributed to Miss Phebe Carey, of Ohio; they are
rich in quaint and natural humor, and as a London critic describes
them, "wonderfully American." In its way, we have seen nothing better
than this reflex of Bayard Taylor's poem of "Manuela."


MARTHA HOPKINS.

A BALLAD OF INDIANA.

    From the kitchen, Martha Hopkins, as she stood there making pies,
    Southward looks along the turnpike, with her hand above her eyes;
    Where along the distant hill-side, her yearling heifer feeds,
    And a little grass is growing in a mighty sight of weeds.

    All the air is full of noises, for there isn't any school,
    And boys, with turned-up pantaloons, are wading in the pool;
    Blithely frisk, unnumbered chickens cackling for they cannot laugh,
    Where the airy summits brighten, nimbly leaps the little calf.

    Gentle eyes of Martha Hopkins! tell me wherefore do ye gaze
    On the ground that's being furrowed for the planting of the maize?
    Tell me wherefore down the valley, ye have traced the turnpike's way,
    Far beyond the cattle pasture, and the brick-yard with its clay?

    Ah! the dog-wood tree may blossom, and the door-yard grass may shine,
    With the tears of amber dropping from the washing on the line;
    And the morning's breath of balsam, lightly brush her freckled cheek,--
    Little recketh Martha Hopkins of the tales of spring they speak.

    When the summer's burning solstice on the scanty harvest glowed,
    She had watched a man on horseback riding down the turnpike road;
    Many times she saw him turning, looking backward quite forlorn,
    Till amid her tears she lost him, in the shadow of the barn.

    Ere supper-time was over, he had passed the kiln of brick,
    Crossed the rushing Yellow River and had forded quite a creek,
    And his flat-boat load was taken, at the time for pork and beans,
    With the traders of the Wabash, to the wharf at New Orleans.

    Therefore watches Martha Hopkins--holding in her hands the pans,
    When the sound of distant footsteps seems exactly like a man's;
    Not a wind the stove-pipe rattles, nor a door behind her jars,
    But she seems to hear the rattle of his letting down the bars.

    Often sees she men on horseback, coming down the turnpike rough,
    But they come not as John Jackson, she can see it well enough;
    Well she knows the sober trotting of the sorrel horse he keeps,
    As he jogs along at leisure with his head down like a sheep's.

    She would know him 'mid a thousand, by his home-made coat and vest;
    By his socks, which were blue woollen, such as farmers wear out west;
    By the color of his trousers, and his saddle, which was spread
    By a blanket which was taken for that purpose from the bed.

    None like he the yoke of hickory, on the unbroke ox can throw,
    None amid his father's corn-fields use like him the spade and hoe;
    And at all the apple-cuttings, few indeed the men are seen,
    That can dance with him the polka, touch with him the violin.

    He has said to Martha Hopkins, and she thinks she hears him now,
    For she knows as well as can be, that he meant to keep his vow,
    When the buck-eye tree has blossomed, and your uncle plants his corn,
    Shall the bells of Indiana usher in the wedding morn.

    He has pictured his relations, each in Sunday hat and gown,
    And he thinks he'll get a carriage, and they'll spend a day in town;
    That their love will newly kindle, and what comfort it will give,
    To sit down to the first breakfast, in the cabin where they'll live.

    Tender eyes of Martha Hopkins! what has got you in such scrape,
    'Tis a tear that falls to glitter on the ruffle of her cape,
    Ah! the eye of love may brighten, to be certain what it sees,
    One man looks much like another, when half hidden by the trees.

    But her eager eyes rekindle, she forgets the pies and bread,
    As she sees a man on horseback, round the corner of the shed.
    Now tie on another apron, get the comb and smooth your hair,
    'Tis the sorrel horse that gallops, 'tis John Jackson's self that's there!

Here is one scarcely less happy upon Mr. Willis's "Better Moments:"


WORSER MOMENTS.

    That fellow's voice! how often steals
      Its cadence o'er my lonely days!
    Like something sent on wagon wheels,
      Or packed in an unconscious chaise.
    I might forget the words he said
      When all the children fret and cry,
    But when I get them off to bed,
      His gentle tone comes stealing by--
    And years of matrimony flee,
    And leave me sitting on his knee.

    The times he came to court a spell,
      The tender things he said to me,
    Make me remember mighty well
      My hopes that he'd propose to me.
    My face is uglier, and perhaps
      Time and the comb have thinned my hair;
    And plain and common are the caps,
      And dresses that I have to wear--
    But memory is ever yet
    With all that fellow's flat'ries writ.

    I have been out at milking-time
      Beneath a dull and rainy sky,
    When in the barn 'twas time to feed,
      And calves were bawling lustily--
    When scattered hay, and sheaves of oats,
      And yellow corn-ears, sound and hard,
    And all that makes the cattle pass
      With wilder richness through the yard--
    When all was hateful, then have I,
      With friends who had to help me milk,
    Talked of his wife most spitefully,
      And how he kept her dressed in silk;
    And when the cattle, running there,
      Threw over me a shower of mud,
    That fellow's voice came on the air,
      Like the light chewing of the cud--
    And resting near some spreckled cow,
      The spirit of a woman's spite,
    I've poured a low and fervent vow,
      To make him, if I had the might,
    Live all his life-time just as hard,
    And milk his cows in such a yard.

    I have been out to pick up wood
      When night was stealing from the dawn,
    Before the fire was burning good,
      Or I had put the kettle on
    The little stove--when babes were waking
      With a low murmur in the beds,
    And melody by fits was breaking
      Above their little yellow heads--
    And this when I was up perhaps
    From a few short and troubled naps--
      And when the sun sprang scorchingly
    And freely up, and made us stifle,
      And fell upon each hill and tree
    The bullets from his subtle rifle--
      I say a voice has thrilled me then,
    Hard by that solemn pile of wood,
      Or creeping from the silent glen,
    Like something on the unfledged brood,
      Hath stricken me, and I have pressed
    Close in my arms my load of chips,
      And pouring forth the hatefulest
    Of words that ever passed my lips,
      Have felt my woman's spirit rush
    On me, as on that milking night,
      And, yielding to the blessed gush
    Of my ungovernable spite,
      Have risen up, the wed, the old,
      Scolding as hard as I could scold.

And in the same vein "The Annoyer," in which is imitated one of the
most delicate pieces of sentiment and fancy which Willis has given us:


THE ANNOYER.

          "Common as light is love,
    And its familiar voice wearies not ever."--SHELLEY.

    Love knoweth every body's house,
      And every human haunt,
    And comes unbidden, every where,
      Like people we don't want.
    The turnpike roads and little creeks
      Are written with love's words,
    And you hear his voice like a thousand bricks
      In the lowing of the herds.

    He peeps into the teamster's heart,
      From his Buena Vista's rim,
    And the cracking whips of many men
      Can never frighten him.
    He'll come to his cart in the weary night,
      When he's dreaming of his craft;
    And he'll float to his eye in the morning light,
      Like a man on a river raft.

    He hears the sound of the cooper's adz,
      And makes him too his dupe,
    For he sighs in his ear from the shaving pile
      As he hammers on the hoop.
    The little girl, the beardless boy,
      The men that walk or stand,
    He will get them all in his mighty arms
      Like the grasp of your very hand.

    The shoemaker bangs above his bench,
      And ponders his shining awl,
    For love is under the lap-stone hid,
      And a spell is on the wall.
    It heaves the sole where he drives the pegs,
      And speaks in every blow,
    'Till the last is dropped from his crafty hand,
      And his foot hangs bare below.

    He blurs the prints which the shopmen sell,
      And intrudes on the hatter's trade,
    And profanes the hostler's stable-yard
      In the shape of a chamber-maid.
    In the darkest night, and the bright daylight,
      Knowing that he can win,
    In every home of good-looking folks
      Will human love come in.

The next is from Poe's "Annabel Lee:"


SAMUEL BROWN.

    It was many and many a year ago,
      In a dwelling down in town,
    That a fellow there lived whom you may know
      By the name of Samuel Brown;
    And this fellow he lived with no other thought
      Than to our house to come down.

    I was a child and he was a child,
      In that dwelling down in town,
    But we loved with a love that was more than love,
      I and my Samuel Brown--
    With a love that the ladies coveted,
      Me and Samuel Brown.

    And this was the reason that, long ago,
      To that dwelling down in town,
    A girl came out of her carriage, courting
      My beautiful Samuel Brown;
    So that her high-bred kinsman came
      And bore away Samuel Brown,
    And shut him up in a dwelling-house,
      In a street quite up in town.

    The ladies, not half so happy up there,
      Went envying me and Brown;
    Yes! that was the reason, (as all men know,
      In this dwelling down in town,)
    That the girl came out of the carriage by night
      Coquetting and getting my Samuel Brown.

    But our love is more artful by far than the love
      Of those who are older than we--
      Of many far wiser than we--
    And neither the girls that are living above,
      Nor the girls that are down in town,
    Can ever discover my soul from the soul
      Of the beautiful Samuel Brown.

    For the morn never shines without bringing me lines
      From my beautiful Samuel Brown;
    And the night is never dark, but I sit in the park
      With my beautiful Samuel Brown.
    And often by day, I walk down in Broadway,
    With my darling, my darling, my life, and my stay,
      To our dwelling down in town,
    To our house in the street down town.

The two poems that have been most parodied in this country are the
"Woodman spare that tree," of General Morris, and Poe's "Raven." There
have been an incredible number of burlesques of the former, and of the
latter we have seen a collection of seventeen, some of which are
scarcely less clever than the original performance.




THE BRITISH HUMORISTS: DESCRIBED

BY MR. THACKERAY.


In the last _International_, we gave sketches of the first and second
of the series of lectures Mr. Thackeray is now delivering in London, a
series which we may regard with more interest because it is to be
repeated in Boston, New-York, and other American cities. The subjects
of the lectures already noticed were SWIFT, CONGREVE, and ADDISON. The
third lecture was upon

     SIR RICHARD STEELE.

     "Having," says the _Times_, "to deal with a personage whose
     character was any thing but perfection, Mr. Thackeray
     started with a good-humored declamation against perfection
     in general. A perfect man would be intolerable--he could not
     laugh and he could not cry, neither could he hate nor even
     love, for love itself implied an unjust preference of one
     person over another, which was so far an imperfection. The
     interest which a man takes in the progress of his own boy at
     school, while he is indifferent about other boys who are
     probably better and more clever, his choice that a death
     should occur in his neighbor's house rather than in his own,
     and various traits of a similar kind, are all so many
     manifestations of selfishness, and therefore so many removes
     from perfection.

     "After this preface, Mr. Thackeray discoursed upon Steele's
     career at school. At the Charter-house he distinguished
     himself as a good-natured _mauvais sujet_--idle beyond the
     average mark. By his scholastic acquisitions he gave little
     satisfaction to his masters, and was flogged more frequently
     than any boy in the school. Moreover, he was in debt to all
     the vendors of juvenile delicacies in the neighborhood; and,
     if any boy came to school with money to lend, Dick Steele
     was certain to appear as the person to borrow. These facts,
     given with much minuteness, were followed by an assertion on
     the part of the lecturer that he had no authority for them
     whatever. It was an admitted truth that 'the child is the
     father of the man,' and on this principle he felt he had a
     right, from his intimate knowledge of Captain Steele, to
     deduce what sort of a personage Master Dicky Steele was
     likely to be.

     "This bit of mock biography gave the key-note to the entire
     lecture. While Mr. Thackeray admitted that Steele was a far
     less brilliant man than any who had formed the subjects of
     the preceding discourses, and far less entitled to
     admiration than Addison, he spoke of him in a tone of warmer
     affection than he had displayed when talking of the great
     Joseph. He dilated with unction on Steele's many follies and
     vices--his strange medley of piety and debauchery, his
     inordinate love of dress, his insensibility as to the duty
     of meeting pecuniary obligations; he even read an
     ill-natured description by John Dennis, remarking that it
     was substantially true, but at the same time he constantly
     kept before the minds of his hearers the kindliness of
     Steele's heart. He did not call upon them to worship him as
     a moral being or as a talent, aware that many others much
     more deserved such honor, but he exhorted them to love him
     as a friend: 'If Steele is not a friend, he is nothing.'

     "The great number of letters which Steele wrote to his wife,
     and which are still extant, furnished Mr. Thackeray with
     much of the knowledge he possessed as to the character of
     his hero. With these he could pursue him through every
     variety of joy and sorrow, difficulty and triumph, and, as
     they were evidently written for none but her to whom they
     were addressed, he could be sure that the writer spoke from
     his own heart. On the literary productions of Steele, Mr.
     Thackeray dwelt very little, but he pointed out in them this
     peculiarity, that the author showed a reverence for woman
     unknown to his contemporaries. Swift hated women just as he
     hated men; Congreve regarded them as so many fortresses to
     be conquered by a superior general; even Addison sneered at
     them with a gentle sneer; but Steele really spoke of them in
     a tone of affectionate respect, and this gives a charm to
     his comedies not to be found in more brilliant productions.

     "Mr. Thackeray took occasion to illustrate by these extracts
     the characteristic differences of Swift, Addison, and
     Steele. He had already drawn a ludicrous picture of the
     relative positions of Steele and Addison, remarking that the
     latter had been through life to the former what a 'head boy'
     is to an inferior boy at school. Now by Swift's poem on the
     'Day of Judgment'--an extract from the _Spectator_,
     containing Addison's reflections in Westminster Abbey--and a
     passage from Steele, he showed how the subject of Death was
     treated by the three writers. Swift's poem savagely treats
     as fools all who pretend to know any thing beyond the grave,
     including the teachers of the several sects. Addison's tone
     was kinder, but, while he was benevolent in his skepticism,
     he came to nearly the same result as the ferocious Dean.
     Steele, on the other hand, was content to remember, as his
     first grief, the death of his father, when he was five years
     old, and the dignified sorrow of his mother.

     "By way of an additional comical apology for the foibles of
     Steele, Mr. Thackeray concluded his lecture by remarking on
     the atrocities of the age when poor Dick lived,--an age when
     young ladies, at dinner, actually put their knives into
     their mouths. The social peculiarities of the period he
     illustrated by a sort of summary of Swift's _Polite
     Conversation_, which led up to an ironical praise of the
     nineteenth century, as a century whose anomalies are
     unknown."

The fourth lecture on the humorists was of Prior, Gay, and Pope, Mr.
Thackeray choosing to consider Pope, who was not a humorist, but a
wit, the greatest humorist of all:

     MATHEW PRIOR.

     "Prior he characterizes as the foremost of lucky wits,
     abounding in good nature and acuteness. He loved--he
     drank--he sang. Some verses at Cambridge first rendered him
     an object of notice, and by the 'City Mouse and Country
     Mouse,' which, jointly with Montague, he wrote against
     Dryden, and which, Mr. Thackeray ironically asserted, all
     his hearers knew, of course, by heart, he gained the post of
     Secretary to the Embassy at the Hague, in accordance with
     the usage then prevalent of rewarding a talent for correct
     alcaics or biting epigrams with important diplomatic
     appointments. However, his fortune was but transient, since
     he fell with his patron Montague. As a poet, Mr. Thackeray
     praised Prior highly, calling him the most charming of
     English lyrists, and comparing him with Horace on one side
     and Moore on the other. At the same time he referred to a
     certain statement that Prior, after he had spent the evening
     with the first men of the day, would retire to Long-acre to
     smoke a pipe with two very intimate acquaintances--a soldier
     and his wife--adding that many of his writings seemed to be
     under the influence of his Long-acre friends."


     JOHN GAY.

     "Gay was pointed out as a remarkable instance of kindliness
     and good humor, gaining the love even of the most savage
     wits of the day, and incurring the hatred of none. The
     ferocious giant Swift loved him as the Brobdignag loved
     Gulliver, and was afraid to open the packet which contained
     the tidings of his death. This kindliness is an especial
     feature in Gay's writings, even in his _Beggars' Opera_, and
     as Rubini was said to have, 'une larme dans la voix,' so was
     there in all that Gay produced a tone of the gentlest
     pathos. This peculiarity he illustrated by reading the well
     known story of the two devoted lovers struck dead by
     lightning. As for Gay's life, it was easy enough. He failed,
     indeed, to make his fortune, but he led a comfortable
     existence with his noble patrons the Duke and Duchess of
     Queensbury, living like a little round French _abbe_, eating
     and drinking well and growing more melancholy as he
     increased in fat."


     ALEXANDER POPE.

     "For a guaranty of Pope's merits, Mr. Thackeray especially
     referred to the _Rape of the Lock_ and the _Dunciad_. He
     insisted on his claims to admiration as a great literary
     artist, always bent on the perfection of his work and gladly
     adopting the thoughts of others if they would serve to
     complete his own. This peculiarity of carefulness was early
     shown in the fact that Pope began by imitation. The five
     happiest years of his life were devoted to the study of the
     best authors, especially poets, and the intellectual
     enjoyment was heightened by the feeling that genius was
     throbbing in his heart and awakening within him dreams of
     future glory. He too should sing--he too should love. Of
     love, indeed, Pope did not make a great deal, and as his
     addresses to Lady Wortley Montague were a failure, so was
     his first amour a sham love for a sham mistress. A
     particular pleasure in reading the works of Pope consists in
     the fact that they bring the reader into the very best
     company--a company whose manners are, to be sure, a little
     stiff and stately, and whose voices are pitched somewhat
     beyond the ordinary conversation key, but there is something
     ennobling about them. _Apropos_ of this peculiarity, Mr.
     Thackeray took occasion to dwell with great unction on the
     advantages of high society, and said, for the benefit of any
     young hearer who might be present, 'Young hearer, keep
     company with your betters.' Addison, as we have seen, is Mr.
     Thackeray's moral hero. He considers, however, that he has
     one great blemish in his dislike of Alexander Pope. The
     young poet was too conscious of his own powers to be a mere
     attendant at the Court of King Joseph, and King Joseph did
     not like this independence. The support given by the Addison
     _clique_ to Tickell's translation of Homer might naturally
     enough be construed by the Pope faction as proceeding from
     an ungenerous wish to depreciate their chieftain's version,
     and they might easily suppose that what was emulation in
     Tickell was envy in Addison. The verses which Pope wrote on
     this occasion and sent to Addison, had the satisfactory
     effect that the great Joseph was civil ever afterwards. But
     still Mr. Thackeray surmised that their sting was never
     forgotten, and that the saintly Addison might be painted as
     a Sebastian, with this one arrow sticking in him.

     "The causes that led to the writing of the _Dunciad_ were
     laid down, chiefly with a view of justifying the author,
     though Mr. Thackeray admitted that Pope's arrows are so
     sharp, and his slaughter so wholesale, that the reader's
     sympathies are often enlisted on the side of the devoted
     inhabitants of Grub-street. The vile jokes and libels that
     were aimed against the illustrious poet, and the paltry
     allusions to his personal defects, were brought forward as
     sufficient motives; and the lecturer dwelt with admiration
     on the personal courage which the "gallant little cripple"
     displayed when the indignant dunces threatened him with
     corporeal chastisement. At the same time, he declared it his
     conviction that the _Dunciad_ had done the greatest possible
     harm to the literary profession. Prior to its publication
     there were great prizes for literary men in the shape of
     government appointments and the like; but Pope, a lover of
     high society--a man so refined that he kept thin while his
     friends grew fat--hated the rank and file of literature, and
     if there was one point in his assailants on which he dwelt
     with savage partiality, it was their abject poverty. He it
     was who brought the notion of a vile Grub-street before the
     minds of the general public; he it was who created such
     associations as author and rags--author and dirt--author and
     gin. The occupation of authorship became ignoble through his
     graphic descriptions of misery, and the literary profession
     was for a long time destroyed.

     "Pope's well known affection for his mother, on which Mr.
     Thackeray feelingly expatiated, and the love which his
     friends entertained for him, were introduced as a
     sentimental relief in describing the character of a man
     whose career Mr. Thackeray compared to that of a great
     general, obtaining his end by a series of brilliant
     conquests."


     HOGARTH, SMOLLETT, AND FIELDING.

     "In his fifth lecture," says the _Leader_, "Mr. Thackeray
     dwelt at great length on Hogarth, and pointed out how much
     of his success lay in the simple conventional morals of his
     works; gave a graphic analysis of the _Marriage a la Mode_
     and the _Idle and Industrious Apprentices_; and humorously
     set forth Hogarth's pretensions to the sublime in historical
     painting. Smollett was dismissed in a few pleasant
     paragraphs. Fielding called out the hearty admiration of the
     author of _Vanity Fair_; and amidst the panegyric there were
     some admirable passages, notably one on the scorn and hatred
     Richardson and Fielding unaffectedly felt for each other,
     and the sincerity which may animate even the most
     contemptuous criticism. The opinions Thackeray stamps with
     his authority, we constantly find open to question; but it
     is not as a Course of Criticism that these Lectures have
     their inexpressible charm, and it would be possible for a
     man to dissent _in toto_ from the views put forth, while at
     the same time he held them to be among the most delightful
     lectures he ever listened to."


     STERNE AND GOLDSMITH.

     In the sixth and last lecture of the course, Mr. Thackeray's
     subjects were Sterne and Goldsmith. He stigmatized severely
     all Sterne's relations with women, showed up the sham
     sensibility which wept through his writings, dwelt on the
     perilous thing it was to make a market of one's sorrows, and
     sell the deepest experiences of one's life at so much per
     volume, and wound up with an emphatic condemnation of the
     pruriency of Sterne's writings, contrasting that pruriency
     with the purity of Dickens. All the generosity, sweetness,
     and improvidence of Goldsmith's Irish nature were earnestly
     and genially presented.

This course of lectures has been described as "a review of the
humorists, by their master," but Mr. Thackeray is not a humorist--at
least humor is not his distinguishing quality; he is a cold satirist,
sneering at humanity, and in all his writings never exhibiting a spark
of the genial fire which should commend an author to the affections of
his readers. Gentlemen may be amused by him--he may be even
punctilious and sincere in the observance of all honorable
conduct--but judging him by his works, he is one of the last men
living whom any person with the instincts of a gentleman would admit
to his friendship. Some of his books are amazingly clever, but others,
as the _Kickleburys on the Rhine_, are but unredeemable vulgarity. He
has been taken up very much by the snobs--a class somewhat remarkable
for misapprehensions of their real relations--and we find the snobs of
this country as well as of England lauding the satirist as an enemy of
their own peculiar caste. This is a mistake: Mr. Thackeray has painted
to the life the sentimental snob, indeed, but he is himself a chief of
a different and far less endurable class in this division of the
race--_the snob cynical and supercilious_.




ALRED.

WRITTEN FOR THE INTERNATIONAL MAGAZINE,

BY ELMINA WALDO CAREY.


    Do you remember, Alred dear,
      The peach-tree's cool and ample shade,
    Where first our hearts learned love and fear,
      And vows of constancy were made?

    The peach-tree stands there, now as then,
      Its shadow just as dim and mild,
    And over all the sacred glen
      The vines of strawberries run wild.

    Still all about the water's edge
      Beds of green flags in beauty lie,
    And, sloping towards the elder-hedge,
      Are fields of graceful waving rye.

    But, Alred dear, not by our feet
      Will the round clover-heads be pressed,
    For years must pass before we meet
      In that dear valley of the west.

    Sometimes my heart is filled with fear,
      Yet if not, Alred, in that land,
    'Tis bliss to know, in some bright sphere
      You'll wait to take my trembling hand.




CHRISTOPHER NORTH ON ANIMAL MAGNETISM.


The July number of _Blackwood's Magazine_ has a long paper under the
title of _What is Mesmerism?_ in which the question is discussed with
ingenuity, apparent candor, and occasional eloquence. The editor,
however, does not altogether agree with his contributor, and adds to
the article the following postscript. Undoubtedly a large proportion
of the "professors of magnetism" are mere mountebanks, and the
pretenders to clairvoyance may in all cases probably be set down as
knaves, or as very ignorant or feeble-minded persons. Nevertheless, we
cannot quite agree with Professor Wilson in all his propositions:

     WHAT IS MESMERISM?

     "It must be admitted that our excellent correspondent has
     set forth the claims of 'Adolphe' and 'Alexis,' and similar
     interesting abstractions, to the powers of omnipresence and
     omniscience, with great candor and becoming gravity. We are
     sorry that we cannot follow what many of our readers may
     consider so excellent an example. We have no faith in those
     dear creatures without surnames: we have no faith in animal
     magnetism, either in its lesser or in its larger
     pretensions; but we have an unbounded faith in the
     imbecility, infatuation, vanity, credulity, and knavery of
     which human nature is capable. And we are of opinion that
     there is not a single well-authenticated mesmeric phenomenon
     which is not fully explicable by the operation of one or
     more of these causes, or of the whole of them taken in
     conjunction.

     "The question in regard to mesmerism is two-fold: _first_,
     how is the mesmeric prostration to be accounted for? and
     _secondly_, how is it to be disposed of? It may be accounted
     for, we conceive, by the natural tendencies just recited,
     without its being necessary to postulate any new or unknown
     agency; it may be disposed of by the influence of public
     opinion, which would very soon put a stop to these pitiable
     exhibitions, and very soon extinguish the magnetizer's power
     and the patient's susceptibility, if it were but to visit
     the performers with the contempt and reprobation they
     deserve. A few words on each of these heads may not be out
     of place, as a qualifying postscript to the foregoing
     letter, which, in our opinion, treats the mesmeric
     superstition with far too much indulgence.

     "I. The existence of any physical force or fluid in man or
     in nature, by which the mesmeric phenomena are induced, has
     been distinctly disproved by every carefully conducted
     experiment. _No person was ever magnetized when totally
     unsuspicious of the operation of which he was the subject._
     This is conclusive; because a physical agent, which never
     does, _of itself_ and unheralded, produce any effect, is no
     physical agent at all. Then, again, let certain persons be
     prepared for the magnetic condition, and aware of what is
     expected of them, and the effects are equally produced,
     whether the intended influence be exerted or not. It seems
     simply ridiculous to postulate an _odylic_ (we should like
     to be favored with the derivation of this word) fluid to
     account for phenomena which show themselves just as
     conspicuously when no such fluid is or can be in operation.

     "But it is argued by some of the advocates of mesmeric
     influence, that their agent, though perhaps not physical, is
     at any rate moral--that the will, or some spiritual energy
     on the part of the mesmerist, is the power by which his
     victims are entranced and rendered obedient to his bidding.
     Here, too, all the well-authenticated cases establish a
     totally different conclusion. They prove that the will or
     spiritual power of the mesmerist has _of itself_ no
     ascendency or control whatsoever over the body or mind of
     his victim. Every well-guarded series of experiments has
     exhibited the mesmerist and his patient at cross-purposes
     with each other--the patient frequently doing those things
     which the mesmerist was desirous he should not do, and not
     doing those things which the operator was desirous he should
     do. As for the buffoonery begotten by mesmerism on
     phrenology, this exhibition can scarcely be expected to
     provoke much astonishment, or credence, or comment, except
     among professional artists themselves--

    'Like Katterfelto, with their hair on end,
    At their own wonders, _wondering for their bread_!'

     "The true explanation of mesmerism is to be found, as we
     have said, in the weakness or infatuation of human nature
     itself. No other causes are at all necessary to account for
     the mesmeric prostration. There is far more craziness, both
     physical and moral, in man than he usually gives himself
     credit for. The reservoir of human folly may be in a great
     measure occult, but it is always full; and all that
     silliness, whether of body or mind, at any time wants, is
     _to get its cue_.

     "These general remarks are of course more applicable to some
     individuals than they are to others. In soft and weak
     natures, where the nervous system is subject to cataleptic
     seizures, mental and bodily prostration is frequently almost
     the normal condition. Such of our readers as may have
     frequented mesmeric exhibitions must have observed a kind of
     _semi-humanity_ visible in the expression and demeanor of
     most of the subjects whom the professional operators carry
     about with them. These poor creatures are at all times ready
     to imbibe the magnetic stupefaction, because it is only by
     an effort that they are ever free from it. There is always
     at work within them an occult tendency to
     self-abandonment--an unintentional proclivity to
     aberration, imitation, and deceit, which only requires a
     signal to precipitate its morbid deposits. This
     constitutional infirmity of body and of mind furnishes to
     the mesmerist a basis for his operations, and is the source
     of all the wonders which he works.

     "It is only in the case of individuals who, without being
     fatuous, are hovering on the verge of fatuity, that the
     magnetic phenomena and the mesmeric prostration can be
     admitted to be in any considerable degree real. Real to a
     certain extent they may be; marvellous they certainly are
     not. Imbecility of the nervous system, a ready abandonment
     of the will, a facility in relinquishing every endowment
     which makes man _human_--these intelligible causes, eked out
     by a vanity and cunning which are always inherent in natures
     of an inferior type, are quite sufficient to account for the
     effects of the mesmeric manipulations on subjects of
     peculiar softness and pliancy.

     "In those persons of a better organized structure, who yield
     themselves up to the mesmeric degradation, the physical
     causes are less operative; but the moral causes are still
     more influential. In all cases the prostration is
     self-induced. But in the subjects of whom we have spoken, it
     is mainly induced by physical depravity, although moral
     frailties concur to bring about the condition. In persons of
     a superior type, the condition is mainly due to moral
     causes, although physical imbecility has some share in
     facilitating the result. These people have much vanity, much
     curiosity, and much credulity, together with a _weak_
     imagination--that is to say, an imagination which is easily
     excited by circumstances which would produce no effect upon
     people of stronger imaginative powers. Their vanity shows
     itself in the desire _to astonish others_, and get
     themselves talked about. They think it rather creditable to
     be susceptible subjects. It is a point in their favor! Their
     credulity and curiosity take the form of a powerful wish _to
     be astonished themselves_. Why should they be excluded from
     a land of wonders which others are permitted to enter? The
     first step is now taken. They are ready for the sacrifice,
     which various motives concur to render agreeable. They
     resign themselves passively, mind and body, into the hands
     of the manipulator; and by his passes and grimaces, they are
     cowed pleasurably, bullied delightfully, into _so much_ of
     the condition which their inclinations are bent upon
     attaining, as justifies them, they think, in laying claim to
     the _whole_ condition, without bringing them under the
     imputation of being downright impostors. _Downright_
     impostors they unquestionably are not. We believe that their
     condition is frequently, though to a very limited extent,
     _real_. We must also consider, that, in a matter of this
     kind, which is so deeply imbued with the ridiculous, a
     mesmeric patient may, and doubtless often does, justify to
     his own conscience a considerable deviation from the truth,
     on the ground of waggery or hoaxing. Why should an audience,
     which has the patience to put up with such spectacles, not
     be fooled to the top of its bent?

     "II. How, then, is the miserable nonsense to be disposed of?
     It can only be put a stop to by the force of public opinion,
     guided of course by reason and truth. Let it be announced
     from all authoritative quarters that the magnetic
     sensibility is only another name for an unsound condition of
     the mental and bodily functions--that it may be always
     accepted as an infallible index of the position which an
     individual occupies in the scale of humanity--that its
     manifestation (when real) invariably betokens a _physique_
     and a _morale_ greatly below the average, and a character to
     which no respect can be attached. Let this
     announcement--which is the undoubted truth--be made by all
     respectable organs of public opinion, and by all who are in
     any way concerned in the diffusion of knowledge, or in the
     instruction of the rising generation, and the magnetic
     superstition will rapidly decline. Let this--the correct and
     scientific explanation of the phenomena--be understood and
     considered carefully by all young people of both sexes, and
     the mesmeric ranks will be speedily thinned of their
     recruits. Our young friends who may have been entrapped into
     this infatuation by want of due consideration, will be wiser
     for the future. If they allow themselves to be experimented
     upon, they will at any rate take care not to disgrace
     themselves by yielding to the follies to which they may be
     solicited both from within and from without; and we are much
     mistaken if, when they know what the penalty is, they will
     abandon themselves to a disgusting condition which is
     characteristic only of the most abject specimens of our
     species."




A STORY WITHOUT A NAME.[1]

WRITTEN FOR THE INTERNATIONAL MONTHLY MAGAZINE,

BY G. P. R. JAMES, ESQ.


CHAPTER XXXIV.

John Ayliffe, as we may now once more very righteously call him, was
seated in the great hall of the old house of the Hastings family. Very
different indeed was the appearance of that large chamber now from
that which it had presented when Sir Philip Hastings was in
possession. All the old, solid, gloomy-looking furniture, which
formerly had given it an air of baronial dignity, and which Sir Philip
had guarded as preciously as if every antique chair and knotted table
had been an heir-loom, was now removed, and rich flaunting things of
gaudy colors substituted. Damask, and silk, and velvet, and gilt
ornaments in the style of France, were there in abundance, and had it
not been for the arches overhead, and the stone walls and narrow
windows around, the old hall might have passed for the saloon of some
newly-enriched financier of Paris.

The young man sat at table alone--not that he was by any means fond of
solitude, for on the contrary he would have fain filled his house with
company--but for some reason or another, which he could not divine, he
found the old country gentlemen in the neighborhood somewhat shy of
his society. His wealth, his ostentation, his luxury--for he had begun
his new career with tremendous vehemence--had no effect upon them.
They looked upon him as somewhat vulgar, and treated him with mere
cold, supercilious civility as an upstart. There was one gentleman of
good family, indeed, at some distance, who had hung a good deal about
courts, had withered and impoverished himself, and reduced both his
mind and his fortune in place-hunting, and who had a large family of
daughters, to whom the society of John Ayliffe was the more
acceptable, and who not unfrequently rode over and dined with
him--nay, took a bed at the Hall. But that day he had not been over,
and although upon the calculation of chances, one might have augured
two to one John Ayliffe would ultimately marry one of the daughters,
yet at this period he was not very much smitten with any of them, and
was contemplating seriously a visit to London, where he thought his
origin would be unknown, and his wealth would procure him every sort
of enjoyment.

Two servants were in the Hall, handing him the dishes. Well-cooked
viands were on the table, and rich wine. Every thing which John
Ayliffe in his sensual aspirations had anticipated from the possession
of riches was there--except happiness, and that was wanting. To sit
and feed, and feel one's self a scoundrel--to drink deep draughts,
were it of nectar, for the purpose of drowning the thought of our own
baseness--to lie upon the softest bed, and prop the head with the
downiest pillow, with the knowledge that all we possess is the fruit
of crime, can never give happiness--surely not, even to the most
depraved.

That eating and drinking, however, was now one of John Ayliffe's chief
resources--drinking especially. He did not actually get intoxicated
every night before he went to bed, but he always drank to a sufficient
excess to cloud his faculties, to obfuscate his mind. He rather liked
to feel himself in that sort of dizzy state where the outlines of all
objects become indistinct, and thought itself puts on the same hazy
aspect.

The servants had learned his habits already, and were very willing to
humor them; for they derived their own advantage therefrom. Thus, on
the present occasion, as soon as the meal was over, and the dishes
were removed, and the dessert put upon the table--a dessert consisting
principally of sweetmeats, for which he had a great fondness, with
stimulants to thirst. Added to these were two bottles of the most
potent wine in his cellar, with a store of clean glasses, and a jug of
water, destined to stand unmoved in the middle of the table.

After this process it was customary never to disturb him, till, with a
somewhat wavering step, he found his way up to his bedroom. But on the
night of which I am speaking, John Ayliffe had not finished his fourth
glass after dinner, and was in the unhappy stage, which, with some
men, precedes the exhilarating stage of drunkenness, when the butler
ventured to enter with a letter in his hand.

"I beg pardon for intruding, sir," he said, "but Mr. Cherrydew has
sent up a man on horseback from Hartwell with this letter, because
there is marked upon it, 'to be delivered with the greatest possible
haste.'"

"Curse him!" exclaimed John Ayliffe, "I wish he would obey the orders
I give him. Why the devil does he plague me with letters at this time
of night?--there, give it to me, and go away," and taking the letter
from the man's hand, he threw it down on the table beside him, as if
it were not his intention to read it that night. Probably, indeed, it
was not; for he muttered as he looked at the address, "She wants more
money, I dare say, to pay for some trash or another. How greedy these
women are. The parson preached the other day about the horse-leech's
daughter. By ---- I think I have got the horse-leech's mother!" and he
laughed stupidly, not perceiving that, the point of his sarcasm
touched himself.

He drank another glass of wine, and then looked at the letter again;
but at length, after yet another glass, curiosity got the better of
his moodiness, and he opened the epistle.

The first sight of the contents dispelled not only his indifference
but the effects of the wine he had taken, and he read the letter with
an eager and a haggard eye. The substance was as follows:

"MY DEAREST BOY:

"All is lost and discovered. I can but write you a very short account
of the things that have been happening here, for I am under what these
people call the surveillance of the police. I have got a few minutes,
however, and I will pay the maid secretly to give this to the post.
Never was such a time as I have had this morning. Four men have been
here, and among them Atkinson, who lived just down below at the
cottage with the gray shutters. He knew me in a minute, and told
everybody who I was. But that is not the worst of it, for they have
got a commissioner of police with him--a terrible looking man, who
took as much snuff as Mr. Jenkins, the justice of peace. They had got
all sorts of information in England about me, and you, and every body,
and they came to me to give them more, and cross-questioned me in a
terrible manner; and that ugly old Commissioner, in his black coat and
great wig, took my keys, and opened all the drawers and places. What
could I do to stop them? So they got all your letters to me; because I
could not bear to burn my dear boy's letters, and that letter from old
Sir John to my poor father, which I once showed you. So when they got
all these, there was no use of trying to conceal it any more, and,
besides, they might have sent me to the Bastile or the Tower of
London. So every thing has come out, and the best thing you can do is
to take whatever money you have got, or can get, and run away as fast
as possible, and come over here and take me away. One of them was as
fine a man as ever I saw, and quite gentleman, though very severe.

"Pray, my dear John, don't lose a moment's time, but run away before
they catch you; for they know every thing now, depend upon it, and
nothing will stop them from hanging you or sending you to the colonies
that you can do; for they have got all the proofs, and I could see by
their faces that they wanted nothing more; and if they do, my heart
will be quite broken, that is, if they hang you or send you to the
colonies, where you will have to work like a slave, and a man standing
over you with a whip, beating your bare back very likely. So run away,
and come to your afflicted mother."

She did not seem to have been quite sure what name to sign, for she
first put "Brown," but then changed the word to "Hastings," and then
again to "Ayliffe." There were two or three postscripts, but they were
of no great importance, and John Ayliffe did not take the trouble of
reading them. The terms he bestowed upon his mother--not in the
secrecy of his heart, but aloud and fiercely--were any thing but
filial, and his burst of rage lasted full five minutes before it was
succeeded by the natural fear and trepidation which the intelligence
he had received might well excite. Then, however, his terror became
extreme. The color, usually high, and now heightened both by rage and
wine, left his cheeks, and, as he read over some parts of his mother's
letter again, he trembled violently.

"She has told all," he repeated to himself, "she has told all--and
most likely has added from his own fancy. They have got all my letters
too, which the fool did not burn. What did I say, I wonder? Too
much--too much, I am sure. Heaven and earth, what will come of it!
Would to God I had not listened to that rascal Shanks! Where should I
go now for advice? It must not be to him. He would only betray and
ruin me--make me the scape-goat--pretend that I had deceived him, I
dare say. Oh, he is a precious villain, and Mrs. Hazleton knows that
too well to trust him even with a pitiful mortgage--Mrs. Hazleton--I
will go to her. She is always kind to me, and she is devilish clever
too--knows a good deal more than Shanks if she did but understand the
law--I will go to her--she will tell me how to manage."

No time was to be lost. Ride as hard as he could it would take him
more than an hour to reach Mrs. Hazleton's house, and it was already
late. He ordered a horse to be saddled instantly, ran to his bedroom,
drew on his boots, and then, descending to the hall, stood swearing at
the slowness of the groom till the sound of hoofs made him run to the
door. In a moment he was in the saddle and away, much to the
astonishment of the servants, who puzzled themselves a little as to
what intelligence their young master could have received, and then
proceeded to console themselves according to the laws and ordinances
of the servants' hall in such cases made and provided. The wine he had
left upon the table disappeared with great celerity, and the butler,
who was a man of precision, arrayed a good number of small silver
articles and valuable trinkets in such a way as to be packed up and
removed with great facility and secrecy.

In the meanwhile John Ayliffe rode on at a furious pace, avoiding a
road which would have led him close by Mr. Shanks's dwelling, and
reached Mrs. Hazleton's door about nine o'clock.

That lady was sitting in a small room behind the drawing-room, which I
have already mentioned, where John Ayliffe was announced once more as
Sir John Hastings. But Mrs. Hazleton, in personal appearance at least,
was much changed since she was first introduced to the reader. She was
still wonderfully handsome. She had still that indescribable air of
calm, high-bred dignity which we are often foolishly inclined to
ascribe to noble feelings and a high heart; but which--where it is not
an art, an acquirement--only indicates, I am inclined to believe, when
it has any moral reference at all, strength of character and great
self-reliance. But Mrs. Hazleton was older--looked older a good
deal--more so than the time which had passed would alone account for.
The passions of the last two or three years had worn her sadly, and
probably the struggle to conceal those passions had worn her as much.
Nevertheless, she had grown somewhat fat under their influence, and a
wrinkle here and there in the fair skin was contradicted by the
plumpness of her figure.

She rose with quiet, easy grace to meet her young guest, and held out
her hand to him, saying, "Really, my dear Sir John, you must not pay
me such late visits or I shall have scandal busying herself with my
good name."

But even as she spoke she perceived the traces of violent agitation
which had not yet departed from John Ayliffe's visage, and she added,
"What is the matter? Has any thing gone wrong?"

"Every thing is going to the devil, I believe," said John Ayliffe, as
soon as the servant had closed the door. "They have found out my
mother at St. Germain."

He paused there to see what effect this first intelligence would
produce, and it was very great; for Mrs. Hazleton well knew that upon
the concealment of his mother's existence had depended one of the
principal points in his suit against Sir Philip Hastings. What was
going on in her mind, however, appeared not in her countenance. She
paused in silence, indeed, for a moment or two, and then said in her
sweet musical voice, "Well, Sir John, is that all?"

"Enough too, dear Mrs. Hazleton!" replied the young man. "Why you
surely remember that it was judged absolutely necessary she should be
supposed dead--you yourself said, when we were talking of it, 'Send
her to France.' Don't you remember?"

"No I do not," answered Mrs. Hazleton, thoughtfully; "and if I did it
could only be intended to save the poor thing from all the torment of
being cross-examined in a court of justice."

"Ay, she has been cross-examined enough in France nevertheless," said
the young man bitterly, "and she has told every thing, Mrs.
Hazleton--all that she knew, and I dare say all that she guessed."

This news was somewhat more interesting than even the former; it
touched Mrs. Hazleton personally to a certain extent, for all that
Jane Ayliffe knew and all that she guessed might comprise a great deal
that Mrs. Hazleton would not have liked the world to know or guess
either. She retained all her presence of mind however, and replied
quite quietly "Really, Sir John, I cannot at all form a judgment of
these things, or give you either assistance or advice, as I am anxious
to do, unless you explain the whole matter fully and clearly. What has
your mother done which seems to have affected you so much? Let me hear
the whole details, then I can judge and speak with some show of
reason. But calm yourself, calm yourself, my dear sir. We often at the
first glance of any unpleasant intelligence take fright, and thinking
the danger ten times greater than it really is, run into worse dangers
in trying to avoid it. Let me hear all, I say, and then I will
consider what is to be done."

Now Mrs. Hazleton had already, from what she had just heard,
determined precisely and entirely what she would do. She had divined
in an instant that the artful game in which John Ayliffe had been
engaged, and in which she herself had taken a hand, was played out,
and that he was the loser; but it was a very important object with her
to ascertain if possible how far she herself had been compromised by
the revelations of Mrs. Ayliffe. This was the motive of her gentle
questions; for at heart she did not feel the least gentle.

On the other hand John Ayliffe was somewhat angry. All frightened
people are angry when they find others a great deal less frightened
than themselves. Drawing forth his mother's letter then, he thrust it
towards Mrs. Hazleton, almost rudely, saying, "Read that, madam, and
you'll soon see all the details that you could wish for."

Mrs. Hazleton did read it from end to end, postscript and all, and she
saw with infinite satisfaction and delight, that her own name was
never once mentioned in the whole course of that delectable epistle.
As she read that part of the letter, however, in which Mrs. Ayliffe
referred to the very handsome gentlemanly man who had been one of her
unwished for visitors, Mrs. Hazleton said within herself, "This is
Marlow; Marlow has done this!" and tenfold bitterness took possession
of her heart. She folded up the letter with neat propriety, however,
and handed it back to John Ayliffe, saying, in her very sweetest
tones, "Well, I do not think this so very bad as you seem to imagine.
They have found out that your mother is still living, and that is all.
They cannot make much of that."

"Not much of that!" exclaimed John Ayliffe, now nearly driven to
frenzy, "what if they convict me of perjury for swearing she was
dead?"

"Did you swear she was dead?" exclaimed Mrs. Hazleton with an
exceedingly well assumed look of profound astonishment.

"To be sure I did," he answered. "Why you proposed that she should be
sent away yourself, and Shanks drew out the affidavit."

A mingled look of consternation and indignation came into Mrs.
Hazleton's beautiful face; but before she could make any reply he went
on, thinking he had frightened her, which was in itself a satisfaction
and a sort of triumph.

"Ay, that you did," he said, "and not only that, but you advanced me
all the money to carry on the suit, and I am told that that is
punishable by law. Besides, you knew quite well of the leaf being torn
out of the register, so we are in the same basket I can tell you, Mrs.
Hazleton."

"Sir, you insult me," said the lady, rising with an air of imperious
dignity. "The charity which induced me to advance you different sums
of money, without knowing what they were to be applied to--and I can
prove that some of them were applied to very different purposes than a
suit at law--has been misunderstood, I see. Had I advanced them to
carry on this suit, they would have been paid to your and my lawyer,
not to yourself. Not a word more, if you please! You have mistaken my
character as well as my motives, if you suppose that I will suffer you
to remain here one moment after you have insulted me by the very
thought that I was any sharer in your nefarious transactions." She
spoke in a loud shrill tone, knowing that the servants were in the
hall hard by, and then she added, "Save me the pain, sir, of ordering
some of the men to put you out of the house by quitting it directly."

"Oh, yes, I will go, I will go," cried John Ayliffe, now quite
maddened, "I will go to the devil, and you too, madam," and he burst
out of the room, leaving the door open behind him.

"I can compassionate misfortune," cried Mrs. Hazleton, raising her
voice to the very highest pitch for the benefit of others, "but I will
have nothing to do with roguery and fraud," and as she heard his
horse's feet clatter over the terrace, she heartily wished he might
break his neck before he passed the park gates. How far she was
satisfied, and how far she was not, must be shown in another chapter.


CHAPTER XXXV.

John Ayliffe got out of the park gates quite safely, though he rode
down the slope covered with loose stones, as if he had no
consideration for his own neck or his horse's knees. He was in a state
of desperation, however, and feared little at that moment what became
of himself or any thing else. With fierce and angry eagerness he
revolved in his own mind the circumstances of his situation, the
conduct of Mrs. Hazleton, the folly, as he was pleased to term it, of
his mother, the crimes which he had himself committed, and he found no
place of refuge in all the dreary waste of thought. Every thing around
looked menacing and terrible, and the world within was all dark and
stormy.

He pushed his horse some way on the road which he had come, but
suddenly a new thought struck him. He resolved to seek advice and aid
from one whom he had previously determined to avoid. "I will go to
Shanks," he said to himself, "he at least is in the same basket with
myself. He must work with me, for if my mother has been fool enough to
keep my letters, I have been wise enough to keep his--perhaps
something may be done after all. If not, he shall go along with me,
and we will try if we cannot bring that woman in too. He can prove all
her sayings and doings." Thus thinking, he turned his horse's head
towards the lawyer's house, and rode as hard as he could go till he
reached it.

Mr. Shanks was enjoying life over a quiet comfortable bowl of punch in
a little room which looked much more tidy and comfortable, than it had
done twelve or eighteen months before. Mr. Shanks had been well paid.
Mr. Shanks had taken care of himself. No small portion of back rents
and costs had gone into the pockets of Mr. Shanks. Mr. Shanks was all
that he had ever desired to be, an opulent man. Moreover, he was one
of those happily constituted mortals who knew the true use of
wealth--to make it a means of enjoyment. He had no scruples of
conscience--not he. He little cared how the money came, so that it
found its way into his pocket. He was not a man to let his mind be
troubled by any unpleasant remembrances; for he had a maxim that every
man's duty was to do the very best he could for his client, and that
every man's first client was himself.

He heard a horse stop at his door, and having made up his mind to end
the night comfortably, to finish his punch and go to bed, he might
perhaps have been a little annoyed, had he not consoled himself with
the thought that the call must be upon business of importance, and he
had no idea of business of importance unconnected with that of a large
fee.

"To draw a will, I'll bet any money," said Mr. Shanks to himself; "it
is either old Sir Peter, dying of indigestion, and sent for me when
he's no longer able to speak, or John Ayliffe broken his neck leaping
over a five-barred gate--John Ayliffe, bless us all, Sir John Hastings
I should have said."

But the natural voice of John Ayliffe, asking for him in a loud
impatient tone, dispelled these visions of his fancy, and in another
moment the young man was in the room.

"Ah, Sir John, very glad to see you, very glad to see you," said Mr.
Shanks, shaking his visitor's hand, and knocking out the ashes of his
pipe upon the hob; "just come in pudding time, my dear sir--just in
time for a glass of punch--bring some more lemons and some sugar,
Betty. A glass of punch will do you good. It is rather cold to-night."

"As hot as h--l," answered John Ayliffe, sharply; "but I'll have the
punch notwithstanding," and he seated himself while the maid proceeded
to fulfil her master's orders.

Mr. Shanks evidently saw that something had gone wrong with his young
and distinguished client, but anticipating no evil, he was led to
consider whether it was any thing referring to a litter of puppies, a
favorite horse, a fire at the hall, a robbery, or a want of some more
ready money.

At length, however, the fresh lemons and sugar were brought, and the
door closed, before which time John Ayliffe had helped himself to
almost all the punch which he had found remaining in the bowl. It was
not much, but it was strong, and Mr. Shanks applied himself to the
preparation of some more medicine of the same sort. John Ayliffe
suffered him to finish before he said any thing to disturb him, not
from any abstract reverence for the office which Mr. Shanks was
fulfilling, or for love of the beverage he was brewing, but simply
because John Ayliffe began to find that he might as well consider his
course a little. Consideration seldom served him very much, and in the
present instance, after he had labored hard to find out the best way
of breaking the matter, his impetuosity as usual got the better of
him, and he thrust his mother's letter into Mr. Shanks's hand, out of
which as a preliminary he took the ladle and helped himself to another
glass of punch.

The consternation of Mr. Shanks, as he read Mrs. Ayliffe's letter,
stood out in strong opposition to Mrs. Hazleton's sweet calmness. He
was evidently as much terrified as his client; for Mr. Shanks did not
forget that he had written Mrs. Ayliffe two letters since she was
abroad, and as she had kept her son's epistles, Mr. Shanks argued that
it was very likely she had kept his also. Their contents, taken alone,
might amount to very little, but looked at in conjunction with other
circumstances might amount to a great deal.

True, Mr. Shanks had avoided, as far as he could, any discussions in
regard to the more delicate secrets of his profession in the presence
of Mrs. Ayliffe, of whose discretion he was not as firmly convinced as
he could have desired; but it was not always possible to do so,
especially when he had been obliged to seek John Ayliffe in haste at
her house; and now the memories of many long and dangerous
conversations which had occurred in her presence, spread themselves
out before his eyes in a regular row, like items on the leaves of a
ledger.

"Good God!" he cried, "what has she done?"

"Every thing she ought not to have done, of course!" replied John
Ayliffe, replenishing his glass, "but the question now is, Shanks,
what are we to do? That is the great question just now."

"It is indeed," answered Mr. Shanks, in great agitation; "this is very
awkward, very awkward indeed."

"I know that," answered John Ayliffe, laconically.

"Well but, sir, what is to be done?" asked Mr. Shanks, fidgeting
uneasily about the table.

"That is what I come to ask you, not to tell you," answered the young
man; "you see, Shanks, you and I are exactly in the same case, only I
have more to lose than you have. But whatever happens to me will
happen to you, depend upon it. I am not going to be the only one,
whatever Mrs. Hazleton may think."

Shanks caught at Mrs. Hazleton's name; "Ay, that's a good thought," he
said, "we had better go and consult her. Let us put our three heads
together, and we may beat them yet--perhaps."

"No use of going to her," answered John Ayliffe, bitterly; "I have
been to her, and she is a thorough vixen. She cried off having any
thing to do with me, and when I just told her quietly that she ought
to help me out of the scrape because she had a hand in getting me into
it, she flew at my throat like a terrier bitch with a litter of
puppies, barked me out of the house as if I had been a beggar, and
called me almost rogue and swindler in the hearing of her own
servants."

Mr. Shanks smiled--he could not refrain from smiling with a feeling of
admiration and respect, even in that moment of bitter apprehension, at
the decision, skill, and wisdom of Mrs. Hazleton's conduct. He
approved of her highly; but he perceived quite plainly that it would
not do for him to play the same game. A hope--a feeble hope--light
through a loop-hole, came in upon him in regard to the future,
suggested by Mrs. Hazleton's conduct. He thought that if he could but
clear away some difficulties, he too might throw all blame upon John
Ayliffe, and shovel the load of infamy from his own shoulders to those
of his client; but to effect this, it was not only necessary that he
should soothe John Ayliffe, but that he should provide for his safety
and escape. Recriminations he was aware were very dangerous things,
and that unless a man takes care that it shall not be in the power or
for the interest of a fellow rogue to say _tu quoque_, the effort to
place the burden on his shoulders only injures him without making our
own case a bit better. It was therefore requisite for his purposes
that he should deprive John Ayliffe of all interest or object in
criminating him; but foolish knaves are very often difficult to deal
with, and he knew his young client to be eminent in that class.
Wishing for a little time to consider, he took occasion to ask one or
two meaningless questions, without at all attending to the replies.

"When did this letter arrive here?" he inquired.

"This very night," answered John Ayliffe, "not three hours ago."

"Do you think she has really told all?" asked Mr. Shanks.

"All, and a great deal more," replied the young man.

"How long has she been at St. Germain?" said the lawyer.

"What the devil does that signify?" said John Ayliffe, growing
impatient.

"A great deal, a great deal," replied Mr. Shanks, sagely. "Take some
more punch. You see perhaps we can prove that you and I really thought
her dead at the time the affidavit was made."

"Devilish difficult that," said John Ayliffe, taking the punch. "She
wrote to me about some more money just at that time, and I was obliged
to answer her letter and send it, so that if they have got the letters
that won't pass."

"We'll try at least," said Mr. Shanks in a bolder tone.

"Ay, but in trying we may burn our fingers worse than ever," said the
young man. "I do not want to be tried for perjury and conspiracy, and
sent to the colonies with the palm of my hand burnt out, whatever you
may do, Shanks."

"No, no, that would never do," replied the lawyer. "The first thing to
be done, my dear Sir John, is to provide for your safety, and that can
only be done by your getting out of the way for a time. It is very
natural that a young gentleman of fortune like yourself should go to
travel, and not at all unlikely that he should do so without letting
any one know where he is for a few months. That will be the best plan
for you--you must go and travel. They can't well be on the look-out
for you yet, and you can get away quite safely to-morrow morning. You
need not say where you are going, and by that means you will save both
yourself and the property too; for they can't proceed against you in
any way when you are absent."

John Ayliffe was not sufficiently versed in the laws of the land to
perceive that Mr. Shanks was telling him a falsehood. "That's a good
thought," he said; "if I can live abroad and keep hold of the rents we
shall be safe enough."

"Certainly, certainly," said Mr. Shanks, "that is the only plan. Then
let them file their bills, or bring their actions or what not. They
cannot compel you to answer if you are not within the realm."

Mr. Shanks was calling him all the time, in his own mind, a
jolter-headed ass, but John Ayliffe did not perceive it, and replied
with a touch of good feeling, perhaps inspired by the punch, "But what
is to become of you, Shanks?"

"Oh, I will stay and face it out," replied the lawyer, "with a bold
front. If we do not peach of each other they cannot do much against
us. Mrs. Hazleton dare not commit us, for by so doing she would commit
herself; and your mother's story will not avail very much. As to the
letters, which is the worst part of the business, we must try and
explain those away; but clearly the first thing for you to do is to
get out of England as soon as possible. You can go and see your mother
secretly, and if you can but get her to prevaricate a little in her
testimony it will knock it all up."

"Oh, she'll prevaricate enough if they do but press her hard," said
John Ayliffe. "She gets so frightened at the least thing she does'nt
know what she says. But the worst of it is, Shanks, I have not got
money enough to go. I have not got above a hundred guineas in the
house."

Mr. Shanks paused and hesitated. It was a very great object with him
to get John Ayliffe out of the country, in order that he might say any
thing he liked of John Ayliffe when his back was turned, but it was
also a very great object with him to keep all the money he had got. He
did not like to part with one sixpence of it. After a few moments'
thought, however, he recollected that a thousand pounds' worth of
plate had come down from London for the young man within the last two
months, and he thought he might make a profitable arrangement.

"I have got three hundred pounds in the house," he said, "all in good
gold, but I can really hardly afford to part with it. However, rather
than injure you, Sir John, I will let you have it if you will give me
the custody of your plate till your return, just that I may have
something to show if any one presses me for money."

The predominant desire of John Ayliffe's mind, at that moment, was to
get out of England as fast as possible, and he was too much blinded by
fear and anxiety to perceive that the great desire of Mr. Shanks was
to get him out. But there was one impediment. The sum of four hundred
pounds thus placed at his command would, some years before, have
appeared the Indies to him, but now, with vastly expanded ideas with
regard to expense, it seemed a drop of water in the ocean. "Three
hundred pounds. Shanks," he said, "what's the use of three hundred
pounds? It would not keep me a month."

"God bless my soul!" said Mr. Shanks, horrified at such a notion, "why
it would keep me a whole year, and more too. Moreover, things are
cheaper there than they are here; and besides you have got all those
jewels, and knick-knacks, and things, which cost you at least a couple
of thousand pounds. They would sell for a great deal."

"Come, come, Shanks," said the young man, "you must make it five
hundred guineas. I know you've got them in your strong box here."

Shanks shook his head, and John Ayliffe added sullenly, "Then I'll
stay and fight it out too. I won't go and be a beggar in a foreign
land."

Shanks did not like the idea of his staying, and after some farther
discussion a compromise was effected. Mr. Shanks agreed to advance
four hundred pounds. John Ayliffe was to make over to him, as a
pledge, the whole of his plate, and not to object to a memorandum to
that effect being drawn up immediately, and dated a month before. The
young man was to set off the very next day, in the pleasant gray of
the morning, driving his own carriage and horses, which he was to sell
as soon as he got a convenient distance from his house, and Mr. Shanks
was to take the very best possible care of his interests during his
absence.

John Ayliffe's spirits rose at the conclusion of this transaction. He
calculated that with one thing or another he should have sufficient
money to last him a year, and that was quite as far as his thoughts or
expectations went. A long, long year! What does youth care for any
thing beyond a year? It seems the very end of life to pant in
expectation, and indeed, and in truth, it is very often too long for
fate.

"Next year I will"--Pause, young man! there is a deep pitfall in the
way. Between you and another year may be death. Next year thou wilt do
nothing--thou wilt be nothing.

His spirits rose. He put the money into his pocket, and, with more wit
than he thought, called it "light heaviness," and then he sat down and
smoked a pipe, while Mr. Shanks drew up the paper; and then he drank
punch, and made more, and drank that too, so that when the paper
giving Mr. Shanks a lien upon the silver was completed, and when a
dull neighbor had been called in to see him sign his name, it needed a
witness indeed to prove that that name was John Ayliffe's writing.

By this time he would very willingly have treated the company to a
song, so complete had been the change which punch and new prospects
had effected; but Mr. Shanks besought him to be quiet, hinting that
the neighbor, though as deaf as a post and blind as a mole, would
think him as the celebrated sow of the psalmist. Thereupon John
Ayliffe went forth and got his horse out of the stable, mounted upon
his back, and rode lolling at a sauntering pace through the end of
the town in which Mr. Shanks's house was situated. When he got more
into the country he began to trot, then let the horse fall into a walk
again, and then he beat him for going slow. Thus alternately
galloping, walking, and trotting, he rode on till he was two or three
hundred yards past the gates of what was called the Court, where the
family of Sir Philip Hastings now lived. It was rather a dark part of
the road, and there was something white in the hedge--some linen put
out to dry, or a milestone. John Ayliffe was going at a quick pace at
that moment, and the horse suddenly shied at this white
apparition--not only shied, but started, wheeled round, and ran back.
John Ayliffe kept his seat, notwithstanding his tipsiness, but he
struck the furious horse over the head, and pulled the rein violently.
The animal plunged--reared--the young man gave the rein a furious tug,
and over went the horse upon the road, with his driver under him.


CHAPTER XXXVI.

There was a man lay upon the road in the darkness of the night for
some five or six minutes, and a horse galloped away snorting, with a
broken bridle hanging at his head, on the way towards the park of Sir
Philip Hastings. Had any carriage come along, the man who was lying
there must have been run over; for the night was exceedingly dark, and
the road narrow. All was still and silent, however. No one was seen
moving--not a sound was heard except the distant clack of a water-mill
which lay further down the valley. There was a candle in a cottage
window at about a hundred yards' distance, which shot a dim and feeble
ray athwart the road, but shed no light on the spot where the man lay.
At the end of about six minutes, a sort of convulsive movement showed
that life was not yet extinct in his frame--a sort of heave of the
chest, and a sudden twitch of the arm; and a minute or two after, John
Ayliffe raised himself on his elbow, and put his hand to his head.

"Curse the brute," he said, in a wandering sort of way, "I wonder,
Shanks, you don't--damn it, where am I?--what's the matter? My side
and leg are cursed sore, and my head all running round."

He remained in the same position for a moment or two more, and then
got upon his feet; but the instant he did so he fell to the ground
again with a deep groan, exclaiming, "By ----, my leg's broken, and I
believe my ribs too. How the devil shall I get out of this scrape?
Here I may lie and die, without any body ever coming near me. That is
old Jenny Best's cottage, I believe. I wonder if I could make the old
canting wretch hear," and he raised his voice to shout, but the pain
was too great. His ribs were indeed broken, and pressing upon his
lungs, and all that he could do was to lie still and groan.

About a quarter of an hour after, however, a stout, middle-aged
man--rather, perhaps, in the decline of life--came by, carrying a
hand-basket, plodding at a slow and weary pace as if he had had a long
walk.

"Who's that? Is any one there?" said a feeble voice, as he approached;
and he ran up, exclaiming, "Gracious me, what is the matter? Are you
hurt, sir? What has happened?"

"Is that you, Best?" said the feeble voice of John Ayliffe, "my horse
has reared and fallen over with me. My leg is broken, and the bone
poking through, and my ribs are broken too, I think."

"Stay a minute, Sir John," said the good countryman, "and I'll get
help, and we'll carry you up to the Hall."

"No, no," answered John Ayliffe, who had now had time for thought,
"get a mattress, or a door, or something, and carry me into your
cottage. If your son is at home, he and you can carry me. Don't send
for strangers."

"I dare say he is at home, sir," replied the man. "He's a good lad,
sir, and comes home as soon as his work's done. I will go and see. I
won't be a minute."

He was as good as his word, and in less than a minute returned with
his son, bringing a lantern and a straw mattress.

Not without inflicting great pain, and drawing forth many a heavy
groan, the old man and the young one placed John Ayliffe on the
paliasse, and carried him into the cottage, where he was laid upon
young Best's bed in the back room. Good Jenny Best, as John Ayliffe
had called her--an excellent creature as ever lived--was all kindness
and attention, although to say truth the suffering man had not shown
any great kindness to her and hers in his days of prosperity. She was
eager to send off her son immediately for the surgeon, and did so in
the end; but to the surprise of the whole of the little cottage party,
it was not without a great deal of reluctance and hesitation that John
Ayliffe suffered this to be done. They showed him, however, that he
must die or lose his limb if surgical assistance was not immediately
procured, and he ultimately consented, but told the young man
repeatedly not to mention his name even to the surgeon on any account,
but simply to say that a gentleman had been thrown by his horse, and
brought into the cottage with his thigh broken. He cautioned father
and mother too not to mention the accident to any one till he was well
again, alluding vaguely to reasons that he had for wishing to conceal
it.

"But, Sir John," replied Best himself, "your horse will go home,
depend upon it, and your servants will not know where you are, and
there will be a fuss about you all over the country."

"Well, then, let them make a fuss," said John Ayliffe, impatiently. "I
don't care--I will not have it mentioned."

All this seemed very strange to the good man and his wife, but they
could only open their eyes and stare, without venturing farther to
oppose the wishes of their guest.

It seemed a very long time before the surgeon made his appearance, but
at length the sound of a horse's feet coming fast, could be
distinguished, and two minutes after the surgeon was in the room. He
was a very good man, though not the most skilful of his profession,
and he was really shocked and confounded when he saw the state of Sir
John Hastings, as he called him. Wanting confidence in himself, he
would fain have sent off immediately for farther assistance, but John
Ayliffe would not hear of such a thing, and the good man went to work
to set the broken limb as best he might, and relieve the anguish of
the sufferer. So severe, however, were the injuries which had been
received, that notwithstanding a strong constitution, as yet but
little impaired by debauchery, the patient was given over by the
surgeon in his own mind from the first. He remained with him, watching
him all night, which passed nearly without sleep on the part of John
Ayliffe; and in the course of the long waking hours he took an
opportunity of enjoining secrecy upon the surgeon as to the accident
which had happened to him, and the place where he was lying. Not less
surprised was the worthy man than the cottager and his wife had been
at the young gentleman's exceeding anxiety for concealment, and as his
licentious habits were no secret in the country round, they all
naturally concluded that the misfortune which had overtaken him had
occurred in the course of some adventure more dangerous and
disgraceful than usual.

Towards morning John Ayliffe fell into a sort of semi-sleep, restless
and perturbed, speaking often without reason having guidance of his
words, and uttering many things which, though disjointed and often
indistinct, showed the good man who had watched by him that the mind
was as much affected as the body. He woke confused and wandering about
eight o'clock, but speedily returned to consciousness of his
situation, and insisted, notwithstanding the pain he was suffering,
upon examining the money which was in his pockets to see that it was
all right. Vain precaution! He was never destined to need it more.

Shortly after the surgeon left him, but returned at night again to
watch by his bedside. The bodily symptoms which he now perceived would
have led him to believe that a cure was possible, but there was a deep
depression of mind, a heavy irritable sombreness, from the result of
which the surgeon augured much evil. He saw that there was some
terrible weight upon the young man's heart, but whether it was fear or
remorse or disappointment he could not tell, and more than once he
repeated to himself, "He wants a priest as much as a physician."

Again the surgeon would often argue with himself in regard to the
propriety of telling him the very dangerous state in which he was. "He
may at any time become delirious," he said, "and lose all power of
making those dispositions and arrangements which, I dare say, have
never been thought of in the time of health and prosperity. Then,
again, his house and all that it contains is left entirely in the
hands of servants--a bad set too, as ever existed, who are just as
likely to plunder and destroy as not; but on the other hand, if I tell
him it may only increase his dejection and cut off all hope of
recovery. Really I do not know what to do. Perhaps it would be better
to wait awhile, and if I should see more unfavorable symptoms and no
chance left, it will then be time enough to tell him his true
situation and prepare his mind for the result."

Another restless, feverish night passed, another troubled sleep
towards morning, and then John Ayliffe woke with a start, exclaiming,
"You did not tell them I was here--lying here unable to stir, unable
to move--I told you not, I told you not. By ----" and then he looked
round, and seeing none but the surgeon in the room, relapsed into
silence.

The surgeon felt his pulse, examined the bandages, and saw that a
considerable and unfavorable change had taken place; but yet he
hesitated. He was one of those men who shrink from the task of telling
unpleasant truths. He was of a gentle and a kindly disposition, which
even the necessary cruelties of surgery had not been able to harden.

"He may say what he likes," he said, "I must have some advice as to
how I should act. I will go and talk with the parson about the matter.
Though a little lacking in the knowledge of the world, yet Dixwell is
a good man and a sincere Christian. I will see him as I go home, but
make him promise secrecy in the first place, as this young baronet is
so terribly afraid of the unfortunate affair being known. He will die,
I am afraid, and that before very long, and I am sure he is not in a
fit state for death." With this resolution he said some soothing words
to his patient, gave him what he called a composing draught, and sent
for his horse from a neighboring farm-house, where he had lodged it
for the night. He then rode at a quiet, thoughtful pace to the
parsonage house at the gates of the park, and quickly walked in. Mr.
Dixwell was at breakfast, reading slowly one of the broad sheets of
the day as an especial treat, for they seldom found their way into his
quiet rectory; but he was very glad to see the surgeon, with whom he
often contrived to have a pleasant little chat in regard to the
affairs of the neighborhood.

"Ah, Mr. Short, very glad to see you, my good friend. How go things
in your part of the world? We are rather in a little bustle here,
though I think it is no great matter."

"What is it, Mr. Dixwell?" asked the surgeon.

"Only that wild young man, Sir John Hastings," said the clergyman,
"left his house suddenly on horseback the night before last, and has
never returned. But he is accustomed to do all manner of strange
things, and has often been out two or three nights before without any
one knowing where he was. The butler came down and spoke to me about
it, but I think there was a good deal of affectation in his alarm, for
when I asked him he owned his master had once been away for a whole
week."

"Has his horse come back?" asked the surgeon.

"Not that I know of," replied Mr. Dixwell. "I suppose the man would
have mentioned it if such had been the case. But what is going on at
Hartwell?"

"Nothing particular," said the surgeon, "only Mrs. Harrison brought to
bed of twins on Saturday night at twenty min

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