Chapter IX: Part 9

How stood the matter? The central cantons, strong in their mountain fastnesses, and on the borders of their sublime lakes, have maintained, under republican forms, the true aristocratic spirit, and the ancient religion of Switzerland. Those encircling these central states, the dwellers in the champaign country and in the cities, have gone into the follies of democracy, and have abandoned more or less the dignity of the old Swiss character, to ape the vices, political and social, of the neighbouring people, whether French or German. Ever since the factious burst of pseudo-patriotism, during the _in_glorious "Three days" of 1830, the inhabitants of the northern Swiss towns have had their heads running on the visionary schemes that have distracted Frenchmen's brains; and like daws in peacocks' feathers, or servants in their masters' cast-off clothes, have been trying to imitate the "virtues," political and social, of the Gallic people. Hence has arisen the Radical party in the larger cantons; hence has arisen the crowds of infidels and debauchees which have latterly disgraced the petty capitals of those cantons; hence the Catholics have been persecuted and robbed in Argau, and the respectable people of Geneva ousted out of the government by the rabble of that city. Hence came the outcry against the Jesuits, and the former quarrel with Lucerne, in which, however, that city came the best out of the struggle: hence an infinity of petty jealousies and heartburnings, and acts of oppression, on the part of the Radical majority against the Catholic minority, and hence finally the recent resort to arms. The Radical and the stronger cantons have considered it injurious to their own interests, and derogatory to their own dignity, that the freedom of opinion which they claim for themselves should exist in its full integrity among their Catholic and less powerful brethren. They have insisted on the abolition of certain religious orders of men within the limits of their territories; and, because the others have claimed the liberty guaranteed by the Federal compact, they have envenomed the quarrel so far, as to bring it to the decision of might rather than of right. It is in fact, however, a struggle of the democratic against the aristocratic party, of which the Catholic question is only a particular phase; the real bone of contention was, whether the Democrats or Radicals should be endangered in their predominance in the Diet, by the compact votes of the Aristocrats or Catholics. The expulsion of the Jesuits was only a very subordinate part of the question; and, as it now stands decided, the supremacy of the Radical and Democratic faction is firmly established.

It appears to us that, had the cantons of the Sonderbund been governed by clear-headed men, and their armies led by men of talent, not only the political, but also the military, result of the contest would have been essentially different. The cantons cannot have been united by any very strong tie, or they never would have broken off from each other, and made their separate submission, so speedily after the fall of Lucerne. The forces of the Sonderbund cannot have been very confident in their leaders' abilities, or they never would have given up the fight while all the country on the south and east of the Lake of Lucerne remained in their possession. And yet if they were able only to carry on the war for ten days or a fortnight, they were very blameable for having allowed things to come so rapidly to a crisis. It was a political mistake of no small gravity to form the Sonderbund, and to talk so largely of their separate existence, unless they intended to make a more stout stand in defence of their liberties. Although the Radicals were, like all democrats, the aggressors, still the aristocrats should not have defied them so loudly, unless they had better grounds for showing such confidence. The little boy who squares his fists even at the bigger one that bullies him, deserves a sound thrashing for his impudence, if he is ready to give up at the end of the first round.

We believe the policy of the French government to have been the true one on this occasion: it coincided, indeed, pretty nearly with that of the Austrian cabinet. In fact, any government, that wishes to stand, should be prepared to take the side of the Conservative party, wherever that party, in the true sense of the term "Conservative," exists. It must be prepared, at all times, to support the cause of order and religion against that of anarchy and infidelity; and, though the French cabinet is not overburdened with feelings of honour and delicacy, it has a sufficiently strong instinct of self-preservation, to induce it to side with its friends rather than with its enemies. The policy of the Austrian government could not be for a moment doubtful. Austria has always been the friend of order and of rational liberty; and it was her duty, no less than her interest, to take a decided step in favour of the Forest Cantons. We can conjecture no other reason for these two great powers not having interfered sooner, than that they must have been in uncertainty as to the intentions of the Whig cabinet on our side of the channel, and that they were checked in their action by the certainty that Prussia must take part in the contest, in virtue of the principality of Neufchatel. And yet we doubt not that both France and Austria will be sufferers from the impulse given to Radicalism, by the recent petty triumph of its principles within a day's journey of their respective frontiers. A French regiment in Geneva, and an Austrian one in the Grisons, would have restored the balance of parties, and would have brought back the Radicals to their proper dimensions. It may now be confidently expected that Switzerland will become a little focus of agitation for the discontented in both countries; and that it will exist as a political nuisance under the nose of each of its powerful neighbours, loudly calling for abatement.

England, which, as represented by the present tenants of Downing Street, is no doubt inclined to intrigue with the Radicals rather than with the Catholic party in Switzerland, may lay her account to profit by the stagnation which this contest will occasion in Swiss manufacturing and commercial operations; and may calculate on enriching some of our great exporting houses at the expense of the manufacturers of Zurich and Basle. That she intended or foresaw this result, we more than doubt; but it will very probably be a consequence of her tardy offer of mediation.

As it is, the dignity of position lies altogether on the side of the Federal Diet: they have employed force successfully. Whatever be the merits of their pretensions, they have imposed their claims on their opponents both promptly and efficaciously; and, more by the faint-heartedness and disunion of their enemies than by their own valour and concert, they have established their sway in undisputed tyranny over the whole Federation. The president of the Diet predicted this result, and his words have come true. As in the case of the United States and Mexico, it is the unrighteous cause that has triumphed; and the glory, if there be any, is all on one side. But the ultimate consequences of this state of things may be expected to bring about the decay of the national character, and therefore to undermine the last remaining foundations of Swiss nationality. Whenever a European war again occurs, Helvetia will fall as an easy spoil to be partitioned by France and Austria; and what is more, she will fall unregretted. Her mountains, her lakes and valleys, her forests and her glaciers, will still remain grand and beautiful, till time itself shall be no more; but the old Switzers will have become degenerate, and will have forgotten the glories of their former history. Some of them will be affiliated to the restless family of the Gauls, while the remainder will be learning over again the first rudiments of agricultural and rural prosperity, under the sceptre of the Ostrogoths. Swiss freedom and Swiss commerce will have disappeared from the land; and English manufacturers will be rejoicing at the bankruptcy of one class of their competitors in European or American markets.

In Italy, it is devoutly believed by all English politicians that the genius of catholicism is destructive of the national spirit; and that the long subjugation of that peninsula to the northern conqueror is to be attributed to a prostration of moral vigour arising from the trammels of superstition. And yet, what has happened? A new spiritual chief ascends the throne at Rome, by accident rather than by design; he pronounces a few magic words, and in an instant the sacred fire of liberty, and the desire of resisting foreign oppression, pervade the whole land. Nor are the people only affected by this universal enthusiasm: even monarchs are carried away by the stream of popular opinion. The King of Sardinia and the Grand Duke of Tuscany come forward as the promoters and defenders of Italian liberty; the King of Naples advances in the same path, though not so rapidly as the revolutionists of his dominions could wish; and all but Lombardy is thrown into the vortex of political reform. To Pius IX., and to the noble conceptions of his prudent mind, the whole of the recent movements in Italy may be fairly attributed. Not but that the public mind was anxious for change: there have long been evils enough rankling in the Italian breast to make change desirable. Yet had it not been for the circumstance of a potentate, the father of his people, and the head of the Roman Catholic religion, coming forward and proclaiming himself favourable to a political change, the whole impulse that now has been given to the various races of Italy would have been altogether wanting.

It would be, perhaps, idle at the present moment to speculate upon the positive direction which this resuscitation of Italian freedom may take; the events of a few months are not to be trusted, as affording any very certain or fixed indication of how the current of the national fortunes is destined to run. The Italians may, perhaps, arrive at a gradual and moderate degree of freedom, such as may conduce to the improvement and elevation of their national character, and to the raising of Italy in the scale of European powers; or, on the other hand, they may run wild into the theory and practice of revolutionary wickedness, and may become the pest and the abhorrence of all Europe, while they sink down to a lower and still a lower depth in the abyss of political degradation. We hope for the former of these results, but we know that the latter is by no means improbable; and in order to point out where the danger of tending towards it lies, we append the following remarks:--

In the first place, it must be sufficiently obvious to any one, ever so little acquainted with the character of the Italian people, that the different nations and tribes of that peninsula are by no means all in the same degree of preparation and advancement for receiving the boon of constitutional government. There is a very wide difference between the inhabitants of Milan and those of Naples, between the denizens of the Bolognese and the shepherds of the Abruzzi, and generally between the dwellers in Italian cities and the agricultural population in the bosom, or on the skirts, of the Apennines. But to apply the same kind of political institutions to all the inhabitants of a district, without regard to their various degrees of moral preparation for it, is to confer on them a punishment rather than a boon, and to do them evil rather than good. We have too melancholy an example of it at our own doors, where the exaggerated philanthropy of Englishmen has given to the Irish the same political privileges as they enjoy themselves, to wish that such a fruitful source of evil should fall to the lot of any other people. And so it would be with nine-tenths of the people of Italy: however advanced may be the notions of the upper classes, however ripe for political freedom may be the citizens of Florence or Rome, the peasants of Lombardy and Campania would not know how to use the advantages put within their reach, and they would but change the rule of the few for the more terrible despotism of the many.

Before the Italians can, as a nation, be fit for what we call a free government, they must be better educated, and better fitted by their moral and social organisation to understand its nature and advantages. But in order to this, we must first of all see the education of the people taken up as a national object by the national clergy; and we must further see the morals of the people made a point of all-paramount importance by the same body of men, and brought forward into a place of greater prominence than the mere practices of devotion. Can it be any boon to confer the political rights of election and self-government on men who are still plunged in the depths of complete ignorance? Can it be of any use to call upon a nation for the exercise of public virtues, when social and domestic virtues do not exist among them? Before the Italians can be constituted as a nation of freemen, they must be formed into families of virtuous citizens, in which decency and the natural exercise of the affections may be firmly established. For if there be one political axiom more fully demonstrated by the voice of history than another, it is this, that public freedom can never exist where private vice preponderates over private virtue; and where the sacred ties of domestic virtue do not prevail, it is in vain to look for the bonds of public good. It was the domestic vices of the ancient Romans that first weakened the empire; and until their degenerate descendants shall have awakened from their moral lethargy, that empire, that national power, shall not rise again. It is, therefore, a favourable indication for Italy, that the movement should have commenced with the head of the national religion; for it may be hoped that a proper course will be adopted by the ecclesiastical authorities, and that the amelioration of all ranks and orders of men, clerical as well as lay, will precede and accompany the dawn of Italian independence. As long as the Italians remain in the state of moral weakness which, for so many centuries, they have exhibited, they need never expect to escape from the sway of the more virtuous nations of the north: they will never be able to face the Germans, whether in the cabinet or the field, until they learn to emulate them in the purity of their national character.

It may very well be doubted whether any of the Italians, and, indeed, any of their Transmontane admirers, know what is really fitted for them in political institutions--what will really do them good--what is really suited to the genius of the people and the requirements of the country. Political institutions are like plants that cannot always bear transferring from one region to another: they require the process of becoming acclimatised, and, on their first introduction into a new country, demand the fostering shelter of the hot-house and the gardener's constant care. Because a representative constitution is supposed to be the acme of human wisdom in the latitude of Great Britain, it does not therefore follow that it will flourish so far south as Naples; and because a national guard is reckoned the _ne plus ultra_ of national institutions at Paris, we are by no means sure that, it would produce any good results at Rome. It seems, in fact, to us to be one of the monomanias of the present age, that the same Procrustean bed of representative government is laid out for all people that think they require more political liberty than they are at present in possession of; and should the inhabitants of Timbuctoo, of Canton, of Tobolsk, of Alexandria, and of Morocco, take it into their heads, some fine day, to send deputations to the united _quidnuncs_ of London and Paris, requesting the transmission of constitutions for their several states, we have no doubt that a couple of legislative houses, and a corps of national guards, _à pied et à cheval_, would be immediately recommended, as equally applicable to their several wants. It seems to be the privilege of civilised Europeans to think that the right of governing themselves is the essence of civil freedom: far more true, in the vast majority of cases, would it be to say, that it constituted the essence of political thraldom. It is a social truth, most unpalatable to ninety-nine-hundredths of mankind, but not therefore the less true, that ninety-nine men out of a hundred are not fit to govern themselves, even in the relations of social life, and far less in those of political. And so it is with nations: for one nation that has really prospered under the plan of self-government, there are ninety-nine that have brought on themselves evils which, under a less popular system, they would have avoided. If the physical and social condition of a people be taken as a test; if the durability of their institutions, if the dignity and influence of their government, be quoted, as proofs of the advantages of their several forms of political institutions, we really know not any constitutional form to which, _ceteris paribus_, we could appeal as deciding the question against those of a monarchical tendency. If the privilege of taxing themselves to an amount that defies all power of redemption, and cripples the resources of the nation to a point that menaces its existence as an independent power, in the struggle of nations; if the freedom of conducting commercial affairs in such a manner that every seventh year shall bring the whole trading interests of a country to the very verge of bankruptcy; if the balancing of the influence of the several classes so badly, that at length the lower threaten to swallow up the upper in a wild flood of irreligion and anarchical spoliation; if the system of "_propter vitam vivendi perdere causas_" be adopted as the acme of perfection--if all this be considered fit and proper, then let a constitutional monarchy be preached up as the model for every nation under the sun. But we cannot wish so ill to any of our fellow-men as to advise them to relinquish present good, however small, for the prospect of such evil, however seductive. We do not approve of plying the poor Red man with fiery liquors till his tribe becomes exterminated; and in the same way we would withhold the intoxicating draught of self-government from the lips of those people who hitherto have sucked in their milk, as babes, at the hands of others.

To us it is a bad sign that the Italians should be calling out for representative assemblies, and for national guards. They are not fit for the former, nor can they be so for the next hundred years--we should not congratulate them even if they obtained these dangerous tools, wherewith to play at the hazardous game of legislation: and as for national guards, they do not want them, inasmuch as nobody is going to invade them; and if an invasion were made by a northern nation, we know, by long experience, that the national guard would be perfectly useless. The Italians "don't fight;" they bluster and talk big, like the Spaniards, and run away ere the first shot is fired. Ten thousand Germans or Frenchmen, may march from one end of Italy to the other without meeting any man that dares fire at them, except from behind a rock or a stone wall. The Italians must be made of sterner stuff, before they take upon themselves the responsibility of bearing arms.

The position of the several sovereigns in Italy is such, that their opposition to the wishes of Austria, if that opposition be real, creates in us some surprise. The King of Sardinia ought to know, by the long and sad experience of those who have preceded him on his slippery throne, that there is no chance of safety for him in a European struggle, unless he depends on the House of Austria. France always has been, and always will be, a treacherous neighbour to Piedmont; and she will never cease coveting Savoy until she has made it her own, or has been deprived even of the power of envy. The Grand Duke of Tuscany is so closely related to the Emperor that family interests alone ought to make their policy identical; and the King of Naples, like the King of Sardinia, has no firmer support for his foreign power than the friendship and countenance of the Court of Schönbrunn. The Pope is certainly an independent prince, and at his wish to keep the Holy See free from all foreign influence we cannot feel surprised: it is the healthiest, because the least unnatural, symptom of the whole crisis.

For Austria, we can well conceive that the prudent and cautious policy of that ably conducted monarchy must dictate excessive jealousy and suspicion of these popular movements. Austria, more than any other power in Europe, has the truest cause to pride itself on the good results of its peculiar system of government, as demonstrated by the solid and practical wellbeing of the States under its paternal sway. As much as any state of the Continent has it cause to abhor those systems of anarchy which, under the guise of patriotism, lead only to revolution and misery: and as one of the great conservators of the monarchical principle in politics, it is called upon, by its very station and dignity, to check rather than to encourage what may very possibly prove to be only a spurious attempt to gain licentiousness, rather than freedom. Lombardy, no doubt, is allied to its illustrious rulers most unwillingly; but it does not therefore follow that it would be in the least degree more prosperous and happy if left to itself. On the contrary, we have no doubt that, could Lombardy receive at once the full license to establish its own form of government, it would split into as many petty states as there are large cities in it, and would be plunged into all the horrors of civil contest. It is a most fortunate thing for the north of Italy that it is under the strong hand of the most steady and respectable power in Europe--one whose rulers will never set it a bad example, who are able to protect it from all aggression, and who watch over its social and internal progress with unceasing care. The Lombards, like the Irish agitators, may cry out for "Repeal of the Union;" but the granting of that repeal would be the signing of the death-warrant of national prosperity. Austria is no enemy to rational, well-balanced liberty: there is no country in the world where _real_ liberty and happiness are more widely diffused, or more intensely felt. Its people are free from the clamours of noisy and frothy patriotism, which, when stripped of its false clothing, proves nothing more than vulgar and self-interested ambition. They enjoy all the blessings of good government, and are able each man to sit under his own fig tree, and to see all around him in a state of unmixed prosperity. Such a power as this will not readily give way to the declamations and "pronunciations" of the rabble; it will rather wait for the amelioration of the national character; and, when it finds its subjects fit for some of the introductory processes of self-government, it will concede them.

We could wish to see the other powers of Italy taking advice from Austria, and not hastening onwards too rapidly along that path, wherein a return is so unpleasant and so difficult. Far better would it be for them to be too slow than too hasty with political innovation: the safety of such a retardatory course is certain, whereas the success of a more rapid advance is exceedingly problematical.

As for England, whatever tends to the real benefit of Italy must tend also to her advantage. She has so many commercial, if not political relations with that country, that the well-being of a considerable class of her customers cannot but promote the interests of her own traders. But Italy revolutionised will not be the Italy that now imports large quantities of our goods, and that pays for them in valuable products of first-rate necessity to the English consumer. Italy, well governed and prosperous, will always offer a good mart for British goods; and therefore, upon this ground alone, Great Britain is especially concerned to see that the Peninsula remains quiet and healthy. But, to take a higher view of the state of things, it is the true interest of England--whatever Radical orators and Whig statesmen may think--to ally herself with the friends of order in Europe, and to avoid all connexion with the promoters of wars and tumults. France would be delighted at seeing Italy convulsed from one end to the other, were not the crafty occupant of her throne afraid of thereby injuring the solidity of his own dynasty. But for England, there can be no second course to pursue; and having gained her own freedom through the long experience and the severe trials of centuries, she can never honestly encourage other nations to hope for similar results by the proceedings of a few months and weeks. If she does, or rather if her ministers tamper with the revolutionary party in Italy, or elsewhere, instead of supporting the cause of steady government, she abdicates the high position she holds in the European family, and deserves to lose those multifarious advantages,--those numerous possessions, which she holds only on the tenure of being the great supporter of reasonable freedom, and international justice.

THE PERIODICAL LITERATURE OF AMERICA.

BRITISH readers are not unacquainted with the American newspaper press, as, not to mention the numerous extracts from transatlantic papers in the columns of London journals, the merits of that press formed, but a few years ago, a topic of controversy between two London Quarterlies. But of American magazines and reviews they seldom hear any thing. This is certainly in no degree owing to the scarcity of these publications, for they are as numerous, in comparison, as the newspapers, have a very respectable circulation, (in some cases nearly four thousand,) and that at the not remarkably low price of four or five dollars _per annum_. Neither is it to their insignificance at home, for their editors make a considerable figure in the literary world, and their contributors are sufficiently vain of themselves, as their practice of signing or heading articles with their names in full would alone show.[47] Indeed Willis's idea (so ridiculed by the _Edinburgh_,) of a magazine writer becoming a great lion in society, is not so very great an absurdity if applied to American society. Nor is this due to the fact that their topics are exclusively local; for there is scarcely a subject under heaven of which they do not treat, and a European might derive some very startling information from them. The _Democratic Review_, for example, has a habit of predicting twice or thrice a-year that England is on the point of exploding utterly, and going off into absolute chaos.[48]

"Perhaps," interrupts an impatient non-admirer of things American generally, "it is because they are not worth hearing any thing about." And this suggestion is not so far from truth as it is from politeness. Considering the great demand for periodical literature in the New World, one is surprised to find it so bad in point of quality. Not that the monthly and quarterly press is disfigured by the violence and exaggeration that too often deform the daily. Over-spiciness is the very last fault justly chargeable upon it. In slang language, it would rather be characterised by the terms "slow," "seedy," "remarkably mild," and the like. Crude essays filled with commonplaces, truisms, verses of the true _non Di non homines_ cast, tales such as shop-boys and milliners' girls delight in, and "critical notices" all conceived in the same spirit of indiscriminating praise, make up the columns of the monthlies; while the one or two more pretending publications which now represent the quarterly press, are of a uniformly subdued and soporific character.

Now the first phenomenon worthy of notice is, that this has not always been the case. It was very different eight or nine years ago. The three leading cities of the north, New York, Boston, and Philadelphia, had each its Quarterly: the _Knickerbocker_, a New York magazine, boasted a brilliant list of contributors, headed by Irving and Cooper, and its articles were frequently copied (sometimes without acknowledgment,) into English periodicals. This change for the worse is worth investigating, at least as a matter of curiosity.

"I don't know that it _is_ a change for the worse," says a prim personage in spectacles. "If your periodical literature dies out entirely, you need not be very sorry. I shouldn't be if ours did." And then come some murmurs of "light," "superficial," "unsound," and more to the same effect.

"My good sir, this in the face of Maga! not to mention the _Quarterly_ and the _Edinburgh_. With such _faits accomplis_ against you, what _can_ you say?"

"I don't believe in _faits accomplis_. They are the excuse of the timid man, and the capital of the unprincipled man. _Fait accompli_ means, in plain English, that 'because it is so, therefore it ought to be so'--a doctrine which I, for one, will never assent to."

"Well, there is something in that last position of yours. We will condescend, therefore, to argue the question. Let me ask you, then,

"_First_, Do you see any _primâ facie_ improbability in supposing that a man may write a very good essay, who could not write two good volumes octavo; or a racy and interesting sketch, who could not put together a readable novel; or a few graceful poems, without having matter enough for a volume of poetry?

"_Secondly_, Is a treatise necessarily profound, because it is long; or superficial, because it is of practicable dimensions?

"_Thirdly_, When you use the term 'superficial,' do you really believe and mean to imply that periodical writers are in the habit of discussing subjects which they do not understand? Would you say, for instance, that Macaulay's reviews denote a man ignorant of history, or that Sedgwick knows less geology than the man who wrote the _Vestiges of Creation_, or that Mitchell knew less Greek than Lord Brougham?

"But perhaps it is the literary criticism to which you object. You are an author yourself, perhaps, though we have not the pleasure of recollecting you. You have written a good-sized volume of _Something, and Other Poems_, and cannot bear that your thoughts and rhymes should be scrutinised and found fault with by a reviewer--that your immortal fire should be tested in so earthy a crucible. In that case you will find many more or less distinguished names to sympathise with and encourage you. There is Bulwer, with whom the word critic is an exponent of every thing that is low, and mean, and contemptible; and on our side of the water (sorry are we to say it) a much milder man than Bulwer--Washington Irving--has spoken of the critical tribe as having little real influence, and not deserving more influence than they have; while of the small fry of authorlings, there is no end of those who are ready to rate the reviewer roundly for 'finding fault with his betters.' One cannot even condemn an epic of impracticable length and hopeless mediocrity--nay, not so much as hint that verses are not necessarily poetry--without being assailed by an unceremonious _argumentum ad hominem_--'You couldn't make better.'[49] And perhaps the critic could not. It is more reasonable to suppose that he wouldn't if he could, entertaining the commendable conviction, that to spend a day, much more a month or a year, in writing middling verse, is an awful waste of time. But what an absurd irrelevancy of counter-charge! Suppose Brummell had found fault with the (Nug ee?) or Buckmaster of his day for misfitting him, and the schneider had replied, 'Mr Brummell, you couldn't make as good a coat in a year.' 'Very probably not,' the beau might have retorted; 'but my business is to wear the coat, and yours to make it.' Must a man be able to concoct a _bisque d'écrevisse_ himself, before he can venture to hazard an opinion on the respective merits of the _Trois Frères_ and the _Café Anglais_? Or shall he be denied the right of giving a decided vote and holding a decided opinion in politics, because he has not ability or opportunity to become a cabinet minister to-morrow? In seeking to put down, or affecting to despise criticism, the author makes a claim which no other distinguished character ventures. The artist does not insist on controlling the judgment of his contemporaries,[50] still less the statesman. Did a premier fulminate his dictum to the effect that no journalist had a right to find fault with his measures, he would raise a pretty swarm of hornets about his ears. By what precedent or analogy, then, can the poet, or novelist, or historian, set himself up as autocrat in that realm of letters, which is proverbially a republic?

"Besides, suppose for a moment that all professional critics were Sir-Peter-Lauried in the most complete manner, who should help to guide the popular mind in determining on the merits of a work? Are we to trust the written puffs of the author's publisher, or the spoken puffs of his friends? Or are _authors_ only to judge of authors, and is it quite certain that in this way we shall always obtain unprejudiced and competent judgments? Or shall we make an ultimate appeal to the public themselves, and decide a book's merits by its sale--a test that would put Jim Crow infinitely before Philip Van Artevelde? No doubt a _bad_ critic is a very bad thing; but it is not a remarkably equitable proceeding to judge of any class by the worst specimens of it; and surely it is no fairer to condemn critics _en masse_, because some of them have formed erroneous judgments or uttered predictions which time has falsified, than it would be to condemn authors _en masse_, because many of them have written stupid or dangerous books. Let us ask ourselves soberly what a critic is--not the caricature of one that Bulwer would draw, but such an idea of one as any dispassionate and well-informed man would conceive. In the first place, criticism depends very much on taste, and taste is of all faculties that which is founded on and supported by education and cultivation. Therefore the critic must be a liberally educated man in the highest sense of the term. And as he has to be conversant with niceties of thought and expression, philology and the classics should have formed a prominent element in his education. We should be very suspicious of that man's critical capacity, who had not thoroughly studied (by which we do _not_ mean being able to speak) at least one language besides his own. Then, as a matter of course, before beginning to write about books, he must have read many books of all sorts, and not only read, but studied and comprehended them. All which will help us to see why the professional critic is likely to be a better judge of books than the professional author, because the preparation of the former renders him eminently eclectic; while the latter is apt to have a bias toward peculiarities of his own, and thus to judge of others by a partial standard.

"Next, the critic must be a courageous and independent man. His judgment upon a book must be entirely irrespective of any popular outcry for or against it. If he is at all apt to float with the opinions of others, he cannot be the adviser and assistant of the public, but will only encourage accidental error or premeditated deception. For a similar reason, he will keep all personal and private considerations out of view. He must not be supposed to know the author, except as exhibited in his works. But while personality is the bane of criticism, partisanship, moral or political, is so far from being a hinderance to the critic, that it is actually an aid to him. If he has legitimate grounds for praising a coadjutor or condemning an opponent, he will write all the better for his partisanship; for, indulging that partisanship, he feels himself, if he be an honest partisan, to be also serving the public. We do not pretend to have enumerated all the requisites for a critic. There are some natural qualities, which, if not indispensable, are at least a great assistance. Thus we find men who have the same immediate perception of styles that portrait painters have of countenances, and can immediately assign to any anonymous writing its author, though the peculiarities which distinguish that author be so slight that it is not easy to illustrate, much less to explain them. And thus, if you ask such a man, 'How do you know that ---- wrote this? What turn of expression or traits of style can you point to?' He will reply, 'I can't give you any reason, only I am sure it is so;' and so you will find it to be. He knows it, as it were, by intuition." But we have already said quite enough on the general question; so let us leave our friend to wipe his spectacles, and come back to our particular case.

In examining the causes of the inferiority of American periodical literature, the most readily assignable, and generally applicable is, that its contributors are mostly unpaid. It is pretty safe to enunciate as a general rule, that, when you want a good thing, you must pay for it. Now the reprints of English magazines can be sold for two dollars _per annum_, whereas a properly supported home magazine or review cannot be afforded for less than four or five. Hence no one will embark a large capital in so doubtful an undertaking; and periodical editorship is generally a last resource or a desperate speculation. One of the leading magazines in New York--perhaps, on the whole, the most respectable and best conducted--was started with a _borrowed_ capital of 300 dollars, (say £65.) But it is hardly necessary to remark that the proprietors of a periodical should have a fair sum in hand to begin with, that they may secure the services of able and eminent men to make a good start. The syllogistic conclusion is obvious. At the same time, the editor finds at his disposal a most tempting array (so far as quantity and variety are concerned) of gratuitous contributions; for there is in America a mob of--not "gentlemen" altogether--men and women who "write with ease," and whose "easy writing" seldom escapes the correlative proverbially attached to easy writing. This is, in a great measure, owing to the system of school and collegiate education, which, by working boys and girls of fourteen and upwards at "compositions" and "orations" about as assiduously as Etonians are worked at "longs and shorts," makes them "writers" before they know how to read, and gives them a manner before they can have acquired or originated matter. Most of these people are content to write for nothing; they are sufficiently paid by the glory of appearing in print; many of them could write no better if they were paid. And it certainly is a temptation to be offered a choice gratis among a variety of articles not absolutely unreadable, while you would be compelled to pay handsomely for one good one.

But the specific evils of such a system are numerous. In the first place, it prevents the editor from standing on a proper footing towards his contributors. Many a man who is not so engrossed with business but that he can _afford_ to write for nothing, would nevertheless find an occasional payment of forty or fifty dollars a very timely addition to his income, and would prefer that way of making money to many others. But, in comparison with the editor, he appears positively a rich man, and as such is ashamed to ask for any pecuniary recompense. He feels, therefore, as if he were doing a charitable and patronising, or at least a very friendly act, in contributing, and will be apt to take less and less trouble with his contributions, and write chiefly for his own amusement; while the editor, on his part, does not like to run the chance of offending a man who can write him good articles occasionally, and feels a delicacy about declining to insert whatever the other writes.

Next, it often stands in the way of honest criticism. Men can be paid in flattery as well as in dollars, and the former commodity is more easily procurable than the latter. If the editor eulogises the author of "---- and other Poems," as at least equal to Tennyson, there is a chance that some of the "other poems," may come his way occasionally. Of course, if he were able and willing to pay for good articles, he could always command the services of good contributors, and need not stoop to so unworthy a practice.

Thirdly, it destroys all homogenousness and unity of tone in the periodical, by preventing it from having any permanent corps of writers. The editors must furnish good articles now and then, to carry off their ordinary vapid matter; and, accordingly, they are sometimes under the disagreeable necessity of paying for them;[51] but not sufficiently often to make it worth the while of a writer to whom the pecuniary consideration is an object, to attach himself permanently to any of their concerns. Hence, those men who expect to derive any appreciable part of their income from writing in periodicals, are continually changing their colours, and essentially migratory. And as the principal attraction of the unpaid writers is their variety, which is best provided for by frequently changing the supply of them, while one great inducement to themselves is the gratification of their vanity, which is best promoted by their appearing in the greatest number of periodicals, they also become migratory and without permanent connexion. Accordingly it is not uncommon for a periodical to change its opinions on men and things three or four times a-year. Frequently, too, these changes are accompanied by disputes about unsettled accounts and other private matters, which have an awkward tendency to influence the subsequent critical and editorial opinions of both parties. Now and then they lead to libel suits,--sometimes to still greater extremities. Mr Colton, editor of the _American Review_, had occasion to dispense with the services of a young Kentuckian with whom he was at first connected. (It is but justice to the former gentleman to say, that there were no short-comings on his part; his only error seems to have been entangling himself with an unworthy assistant in the first place.) The discharged assistant forthwith issued a pamphlet against Mr Colton, of which that gentleman had the good sense to take not the slightest notice, and his example was pretty generally followed. Furious at this contempt, the Southerner attacked his late principal in the street with a life-preserver. Fortunately Mr Colton possessed a fair share of what never comes amiss with an editor, especially an American editor,--personal prowess. In the scuffle which ensued, he upset his assailant, and carried off the _spolia opima_ in the shape of the bludgeon aforesaid.

But the worst consequence of all is, the suspicion cast upon all offers from periodicals to really eminent writers, by the failure of editors, (through bad faith, or inability, or both,) to fulfil promises made to their contributors. Some of these cases are positively startling. In one instance a distinguished author was promised, _or given to understand, that he would have_ as much as one thousand dollars a-year. He wrote for two years steadily, and never received two cents. Another case occurred very recently. A comic or would-be-comic, periodical was started in imitation of _Punch_, and the proprietors offered ten dollars a page for all accepted articles. This they paid for a few weeks, and then, having secured on credit a supply for some time longer, deliberately broke their word, and would at this very time, if solvent, owe to a number of small litterateurs in New York, small sums of five and ten dollars. In this case, retribution was speedy, for the whole affair broke down in less than a year.

We see, then, one great radical cause of inferiority in American periodical literature, affecting it in all its departments. But there are other influences which especially conspire to pervert and impede _criticism_. Some of these will be obvious, on referring back to our hints at the requisites for a critic. We said that he should be in the highest sense of the term a liberally educated man. Now this is what very few of the American periodical writers, professed or occasional, are. The popular object of education in the new world is to make men speak fluently and write readily about any thing and every thing--speaking and writing which, from their very fluency and readiness, tend to platitude and commonplace. Those studies which depend on and form a taste for verbal criticism, are pursued in a very slovenly and unsatisfactory manner; the penchant being for mathematics, from their supposed practical tendencies.[52] Men read much, but they do not "mark, learn, and inwardly digest." Their reading is chiefly of new books, a most uncritical style of reading, to which the words _reference_, _comparison_, _illustration_, are altogether foreign. Again, we said that our critic must not only be able to form, but ready to express his own opinion--in short, that he must be bold and independent. Now this is no easy or common thing in America, not so much from want of spirit and fear of the majority as from want of _habit_; the democratic influence moulding all minds to think alike. At the same time, it must be admitted that a spurious public opinion does often exercise a directly repressing influence. Cooper says, in his last novel, that the government of the United States ought to be called the _Gossipian_, and certainly Mrs Grundy is a very important estate in the republic. Then there are many powerful interests all ready to take offence and cry out. The strongest editor is afraid of some of these. Thus the _Courier_ and _Enquirer_, which, all things considered, must be said to stand at the head of the New York daily press, is completely under the dictation of John Hughes and the Papist faction in that city. By _under the dictation_, we mean that it never inserts any thing in favour of Protestantism, nor omits any opportunity of saying something in favour of Romanism.[53] And if these influences have such power over a newspaper which has mercantile intelligence, advertisements, and other great sources of support, much more must they affect a magazine or review. One great aim of an American magazine, therefore, is to tread on nobody's moral toes, or, as their circulars phrase it, "to contain nothing which shall offend the most fastidious"--be the same Irish renegade, repudiator, or Fourierite. Accordingly, nearly all the magazines and reviews profess and practise political neutrality; and the two or three exceptions depend almost entirely on their political articles and partisan circulation. It was once mentioned to us by the editor of a Whig (Conservative) Review, that he had _one_ Democratic subscriber. And we know another editor who is continually apologising to his subscribers, and one half of his correspondents, for what the other half write. This has not always been the case. The _Southern Literary Messenger_ was established to write up "the peculiar institution," and therefore only suited to and intended for the southern market; but there was a time when, under the management of Mr E. A. Poe, an erratic and unequal, but occasionally very brilliant writer, it had considerable circulation in the north. And the "Democratic Review," while it contained and paid for good articles, was subscribed to and even written for by many Whigs.

Another enemy of true criticism in America is _provincialism_. There is no literary metropolis which can give decisive opinions, and the country is parcelled out among small cliques, who settle things their own way in their own particular districts. Thus, there are shining lights in Boston, who are "small potatoes" in New York; and "most remarkable men" in the West, whom no one has remarked in the East. Sometimes, indeed, these cliques continue to ramify and extend their influence into other places. This is effected by a regular system of flattery,--"tickle me and I'll tickle you;" nor is there even an endeavour to conceal this. For instance, when the classical lion of a certain clique had been favourably reviewed by a gentleman in another city, whose opinion was supposed to be worth something, the periodical organ of the clique publicly expressed its thanks for the favour, and in return, dug up a buried novel of the critic's, and did its best to resuscitate it by a vigorous puff. Here was a fair business transaction with prompt payment. We have observed that the tendency of American reviewing is to indiscriminate praise. The exceptions to this, (setting aside some rare extravagances which resemble the efforts of a bashful man to appear at ease, attempts to annihilate Cooper, or Warren, or Tennyson, for instance) usually spring from some of the private misunderstandings we have alluded to; _e.g._ two _litterateurs_ quarrel, one of them is kicked out of doors, and then they begin to _criticise_ each other's writings. And the consequence is, that it is next to impossible to pass an unfavourable opinion upon any thing, without having personal motives attributed to you, and getting into a personal squabble about it. When an author, or an artist,[54] or an institution is condemned, the first step is to find out, if possible, the writer of the review, and the next to assail him on private grounds. Indeed, the author's friends do not always stop at pen and paper. Some years ago, an English magazinist charged a fair versifier of the West with having "realised" some of his inspirations,--a very absurd claim by the way, as there was nothing in the disputed stanzas which would have done any man much credit. Soon after, the Kentucky papers announced that a friend of the lady had gone out express by the last steamer, for the purpose of "regulating" the Englishman. What the result was we have never heard.

Such are some of the causes which militate against the attainment of a high standard in American periodical literature. For some years it went on very swimmingly _on credit_; but it is exceedingly doubtful, to say the least, if the experiment could be successfully repeated. We have seen that many of these obstacles are directly referable to the fact that the editorship of Monthlies and Quarterlies does not tempt men of capital into it; and it is not difficult to perceive that such of the others as are surmountable, can be most readily overcome by remunerating those engaged in the business. If good critics are well paid, it will be worth men's while to study to become good critics; and if a periodical is supported with real ability, it will make its way in spite of sectional or party prejudices, as we have seen was the case in some instances. And since it is plain that the republication of English magazines must interfere with the home article, the conclusion seems inevitable that the passing of an International Copyright Law would be the greatest benefit that could be conferred on American periodical literature.

IRELAND AND THE MINISTERIAL MEASURES.

IT is unnecessary to remind our readers, that on more than one occasion we pointed out to the late so-called Conservative administration the dangers to which they were exposing the country, and the misfortunes which were sure to arise from the fatal policy which they had adopted for the government of Ireland. We told them on those occasions, that the lax manner in which the laws were administered, and the indecisive conduct of the Executive, would lead to the state of things which we then foresaw, and which all parties now deplore. We warned them, that tampering with the incipient evil, instead of boldly striking at its root, would advance its growth instead of diminishing its power; and that the welfare of all classes imperatively demanded at their hands the repression not only of crime itself, but of those causes to which the origin of crime was clearly traceable. Unhappily our advice was unheeded. The Peel government persevered in the same course which its Whig predecessors had pursued, augmented the obstacles which impeded the due administration of the laws, and retarded the pacification of the country by the culpable lenity which marked their proceedings against those who perpetrated crime, as well as towards those, still more criminal, who countenanced and abetted its commission.