Chapter VIII: Act I: Scene IV (3)

Is not that a magnificent bank stretching along the river’s brink far above the fall?—here, looming up in a broken mass of rocks—there, falling with a gentle slope to the water’s brink, sometimes cut into defiles and hollows by the rivulets that feed the brook, and everywhere covered with the quivering green of spring, the feathery red maple—wild-cherry trees, white with spring blossoms, and whole thickets of starry dog-wood flowers all tangled and luxuriating between sun and water. With what majesty the bank sweeps back at the fall, giving breadth to the valley below and hedging in, with its green rampart, this beautiful little plain with its fine grove which lies on our left, nestled almost entirely within its shadow! Now look down the stream. Follow the bank as it curves inward again, encompassing the rich surface of level ground in a semicircular sweep, till it terminates down the stream yonder, in a pile of rocks and foliage, half hill half mountain. There the river joins it again—winds around the precipice which forms its base, and is lost to sight, as if it terminated amid the dense shadows which lie sleeping there. Did you ever see anything more superb than that lofty pile of rocks and verdure, standing out over the very river, like a glorious old garrison guarding the passage? Its topmost trees are lost in a pile of fleecy clouds—the steep surface is burdened with foliage, and beautifully broken up with lights and shadows. See the sunshine flickering over those massive rocks and kindling with its silvery light the grape-vines that creep among the young trees, rooted in the clefts. A picturesque feature, in our sketch, is that old Castle-rock, and many a holiday have I spent, with a troop of school-mates, amid its clefts, piling up the rich mosses we found there, gathering honey-suckle apples, and sometimes doing terrible execution on the poor garter-snakes that crept harmlessly from their nests to sleep in the sunshine.

Turn once more, and mark how, like a serpent creeping through the thrifty herbage, the road leads, from the bridge where we stand, across the level ground and up the bank! See where it begins to curve back from the fall, till it is lost amid the trees and shrubbery which but half conceal that cluster of white houses standing against the sky so far above us, and looking so quiet and rural among the fresh trees. Can any thing appear more religious than that white church in their midst, rising from its bed of vegetation and throwing the shadow of its taper steeple aslant the graves that are gathered to the very brink of the hill? How distinct are the white gravestones and the long grass shivering among them! My mother’s grave is there beneath the old oak standing alone in that solitary graveyard. My playmates never went with me there, but often have I lingered beneath that old tree, listening to the music of its restless leaves, and the rushing waters below me, till aspirations awoke in my young heart, holy and deep as ever the pride of my womanhood has known. At nightfall I have wandered amid those graves—a little child, and yet fearless—till the stars have stationed themselves in the blue heavens above me, and the fireflies have flashed their tiny brilliants among the grass, like gentle spirits sent to light up the places of the dead; and thoughts, for which I had no name, would fill my heart with pleasant sadness till I went away, reluctantly, amid feelings that haunted me at night as I listened to the acorns rattling from the oak trees over the roof of our house, and colored my dreams long after the dash of the waterfall had lulled me to sleep.

I have wearied you, with my reminiscences, so you have turned away from the houses on Fall’s-hill, to those on the opposite bank, which we have scarcely noticed yet. The hill which forms this side of the valley, is neither so lofty nor picturesque as the other. You will observe that the road branches off at that end of the bridge—that the turnpike which lends to the old Presbyterian meeting-house, and the dwellings which surround it, is cut through the bank some thirty feet down, but forms a steep ascent to the most thickly settled portion of our village. The roof of our old meeting-house—the belfry of our new academy, with the third story window blinds, all fresh and verdant with green paint—half the front of a dry goods store, with the gable end of a red farm-house, are all the signs of life which we can obtain from our station on the bridge—yet the most thrifty and industrious portion of our village is located on School-hill. The Episcopal church, and the white cottages opposite, can boast more of rural beauty, perhaps; but that old meeting-house has stood on School-hill almost a century, and many of the farmers who surround it have grown rich upon lands which they inherited from men who worshiped beneath its roof almost before the rafters were shingled.

Now permit me to draw your attention to the little plain at our left, in the river vale, between the two portions of our village, lying green, and fresh, like a garden run wild, and, but for one cottage house, left to its own leafy solitude. A magnificent grove of white pines stoops and murmurs to the wind as it draws down the valley, the tufted boughs give out a healthy odor, and in their shadows are a thousand grassy nooks and hollows filled with wild blossoms that give a richer fragrance to the air. I have said there was but one house in the river vale. A little back from the river’s brink, and just beyond the clump of chesnuts at the end of the bridge, are two large oak trees, sheltering, and almost hiding a low cottage house. A flower garden is in front, and a sweep of rich sward rolls from the back parlor windows down to the water’s edge. It is a quiet rural dwelling, and the home of my childhood. Does it not look sequestered and deliciously cool? That waterfall, which sounds a perpetual anthem night and day, can be seen from the windows. The fine grove forever spreads its sea of green in front, and here are the old bridge, the village cut into fragments, and the rough hills giving a dash of the sublime to what is in itself so beautiful!

There is yet another object which cannot be seen from the bridge, but from our cottage door we may trace the road which branches off from the turnpike at the opposite end where it winds along the river’s margin till it reaches a spot just opposite Castle-rock. There the high bank crowds close down to the water, thus forcing the projectors of the road to lead it up the brow of the hill, where a growth of underwood and some few trees that have been left standing partially conceal its course, and the exact spot where a cross road from School-hill intersects it. But just at that point and directly opposite the highest peak of Castle-rock, stood a handsome white dwelling-house, with green blinds and a portico of lattice work, covered half the year with crimson trumpet flowers and cinnamon roses. In the winter, when the trees were leafless, we had a full view of this house from our cottage, and could almost distinguish its inmates as they passed in and out through the portico. Even in the summer, its white walls might here and there be seen gleaming through the green foliage, and very frequently the figures of two young girls appeared at night-fall wandering through the garden which sloped down the hill, where the flower beds and thickets were at the twilight hour rendered golden by the sun as he plunged over Castle-rock, deluging it with a glory which kindled up the whole landscape.

This house was occupied by a widow, and the two girls were her daughters. The homestead was their joint property, with a small farm which lay further up the hill. They might have had other means of support, but I was too young at the time to be informed on the subject; certain it is that possession, or some other claim to standing which I could not appreciate, gave a distinction to the family which made the widow a sort of village aristocrat, a female leader in the church, and one of those sanctimonious domestic tyrants who profess to do every thing from principle, and to consider those impulses and generous feelings of the heart which are its brightest waters, things to struggle with and pray against. Her husband had been dead many years, and must have been a man of some consequence in the village. Her daughters were pleasant girls, one of them decidedly handsome, but totally unlike both in person and character. Phebe, the eldest, had always been a gentle and quiet child, one of those retiring and sensitive creatures whose whole being seems imbrued with religion, naturally as flowers are with color and perfume. When a mere child she became a member of the old Presbyterian church on School-hill, and this circumstance served to make her a favorite with the mother, and to strengthen that most deceitful of all passions, spiritual pride, in her heart. In the church Mrs. Gray was feared and looked up to, for she was a strong minded, intelligent woman, bland in tone and smooth in manner, but in reality selfish in heart and stubborn of purpose. With these qualities she retained an influence among the brethren which strength of intellect, without goodness of heart, will often acquire over weaker minds, however pure they be, even to a dangerous extent. If the mother was feared and reverenced, little Phebe was loved and petted like a flower among the members—old and young, high and low—all looked with affection on the lamb of their flock, and so she grew up among them, perhaps the purest and sweetest creature that ever bloomed in the bosom of a Christian church. But Malina, the bright, romping, mischievous Malina, with her sunny brown eyes, her rosy cheeks and dimples that played about them like sunshine trembling in the heart of a rose, there was little hope of Malina—poor thing! The good old deacon shook his head gravely when she was mentioned, and more than once, when she had been observed in the widow’s cushioned pew, peeping with a roguish smile from under her gipsy hat, at some schoolmate in the gallery, or smoothing the folds of her muslin dress, and tying her pink sash into all sorts of love knots during service, the clergyman had reproved her with a look from the pulpit, a proceeding which only frightened the dimples from her face and deluged it with crimson for a moment, which impulse of shame was soon followed by a saucy pout of the red lips, a toss of the gipsy bonnet which made the roses on its crown tremble, and perhaps a desperate jerk at the sash which destroyed all the love knots and left the ends crumpled in her lap, while her mother sat frowning majestically all the time, and poor Phebe was doing her best to hide the tears and blushes which her sister’s disgrace had occasioned. Still, though Malina was a romp and a sad reprobate in the estimation of a sect which had made old Connecticut celebrated among the states by the strictness and sobriety of their lives, there was something about the girl which stole even upon their austere habits—a warmth of heart and generosity of feeling that no faults could check or conceal. She had a winning, soft and exceedingly arch manner peculiarly her own, which few could resist; a ready wit, and a laugh that rang through the heart like the tones of a silver bell, and which made the old deacon smile, even while he was lecturing her. Before Malina was eighteen she had good cause to congratulate herself that she was not a “church member,” for most assuredly would she have been ignominiously expelled had this been the case. At that season a sectarian feud had arisen between the Episcopal church and our old meeting-house, a difference of opinion which went well nigh to destroy all social intercourse in our village. The Episcopalians had offered a practical reproof to the upright manner in which the Presbyterians were in the habit of addressing the throne of grace, by erecting kneeling boards in the pews of their church, a course which led our minister into open denunciation of such heresy from the pulpit, where he eloquently defended his own manner of worship by a sermon containing manifold heads, and a prayer which was responded to by a congregation more resolutely upright both in body and mind than ever. This sermon of course was answered from the white church, with some spirit, and, in the midst of the controversy which arose, Malina Gray took it into her pretty head to exhibit a fashionable bonnet which she had purchased in New Haven, and a smart silk dress, in the Episcopal church, not only without asking her mother’s consent, but directly against her known wishes. It was even rumored that she did not rise, but absolutely bent forward and covered her pretty face with her pocket handkerchief, during the whole time of prayer, and that, on leaving the church, three persons had heard her say that she was delighted with the sermon, and particularly with the chant, it was _so_ droll. It was in vain that Malina defended her conduct, in vain she insisted that she had bent forward, and used her handkerchief only to conceal the motion of her lips as she ate half a dozen peppermint drops, and a head of green fennel which a companion had given her. She could not disprove her presence at the church, and that alone was considered as rank rebellion against her mother, and an insult to the congregation with which she had been taught to worship. Dark were the looks, and manifold the lectures which poor Malina was compelled to endure after this. When she entered the old meeting-house on the following sabbath every one looked coldly upon her. The minister even hinted at her delinquency in his prayers, and, during the sermon, two or three passages were applied directly to herself, by the steady and reproving glance which he fixed upon her from the pulpit. Now Malina was not of a temperament to bear all this patiently. She believed it intended to annoy and humble her. So, instead of receiving the chastisement with becoming humility, she arose from her seat, opened the pew door, in spite of her mother’s detaining hand, and hurried down the aisle, her eyes sparkling with tears, and her cheeks crimsoned with a degree of excitement which ill became the house of God.

To be perfectly aware of the enormity of Malina’s conduct, our reader must bring to mind the discipline of the times, and the rigid decorum exacted by the people in their places of worship, where nothing short of a fainting fit or a dispensation of apoplexy could excuse the interruption of a sermon. Never was a body of people so overwhelmed with astonishment and dismay. The widow arose from her seat pale with resentment, for it was by her private request that the minister had pointed out the spirited girl as a transgressor before the congregation—she half opened the pew door, paused a moment and sat down again, with her lips firmly compressed, and a spirit burning in her dark eyes, which in another might have been thought as much to be condemned as that of her child. Phebe, the mild and gentle Phebe, blushed crimson with a feeling of sympathy for her sister, which could not, with all her meekness of disposition, be entirely suppressed. When the glow died away from her cheeks she was in tears and wept silently till the service closed.

When Mrs. Gray reached home that afternoon, sternly ruminating on the best means of conquering the refractory spirit of her child, she found the house locked, and the rooms empty as she had left them. Malina was no where to be found. It was in vain that Phebe searched for the culprit. She went to their mutual sleeping-chamber, hoping to find her there, but all was silent. She lifted the muslin drapery that fell over the bed like a summer cloud, put her hand through the open sash and parting the thick green leaves of a cinnamon rose tree that half darkened it, looked anxiously up and down the road, and along the footpath which threaded the river’s brink. But the waters gliding quietly by, and a fish-hawk soaring up from the shore just below the bridge, with an unfortunate perch in his claws, alone rewarded her gaze. Still she leaned from the window, apprehensive on her sister’s account, but afraid to extend her search beyond the house, for never in the whole course of her life had Mrs. Gray permitted her children to walk even in the garden on a sabbath day; a walk to and from the old meeting-house morning and evening was all the exercise that she had allowed them. Phebe felt as if almost transgressing a domestic rule even while she lingered with her head out of the window, and when the chamber door opened she started back like a guilty thing, and with a violence that sent a shower of pink leaves half over the room, from the full blown roses which fell rustling together from her hands.

Mrs. Gray entered the chamber quietly, but a little paler than usual, and with her lips still slightly compressed. She evidently expected to find the culprit there, but when she saw only her elder daughter standing by the window, in tears and with a look of trouble on her sweet face, her own composure seemed a little shaken, still she did not speak, but going up to the toilet took a pocket bible from its snowy cover, and dusting away the rose leaves that had fallen there with her handkerchief, was about to leave the room again. As she passed through the door, Phebe found courage to follow her.

“Oh, mother,” she said, “what can have become of her? Where can she be? Let me go and look.”

“It is the sabbath,” said Mrs. Gray, in her usual slow, mild voice.

“I know it is, mother,” replied the weeping girl, “but when a lamb strays from the flock can there be wrong in bringing it home again, even on the sabbath?”

“You may search for your sister in the garden,” was the reply, “and when she is found bring her to the parlor. Our minister will be there, and if she does not beg his pardon for her flagrant conduct, even on her knees if he desires it, she is henceforth no child of mine!”

“Oh, mother, do not urge her to-night. You know how high spirited and resolute she is—and, indeed, indeed, I must think they have been too hard with her—it was cruel to expose her fault before the whole village, her schoolmates and all, and she so proud and sensitive. I wonder it didn’t kill her.”

“Have you also become rebellious?” said Mrs. Gray, turning her eyes with steady disapproval on the agitated girl, and marveling within herself at the burst of feeling which she evinced.

“You will never, I trust, find me rebellious,” replied Phebe meekly, but weeping all the time. “I know that Malina has faults; who has not? but they are such as harsh treatment will perpetuate, not conquer. She is so kind, so warm-hearted, that you can persuade her to any thing.”

“I do not choose to _persuade_ my children,” said the mother, moving forward. “Go seek Malina in the garden, and bring her to me as I desired.”

“But I fear that she is not in the garden,” said Phebe, doubtingly.

“Then seek her elsewhere, but return soon,” was Mrs. Gray’s reply, and she went down stairs just as Phebe heard the minister knocking at the front door.

Phebe tied on her cottage bonnet, and flinging a scarf over her white dress went into the garden. She traversed the flower-beds, searched among the rose thickets, and the lilac trees, calling Malina by name, but all without effect. More than once, when a rustling among the bushes, created by a tame rabbit, reached her ear, she started and listened with an expectation that her call would be answered. After searching through the garden and around the rock spring—a fountain of water that leaped through a hollow at the foot of the hill into a natural basin of solid granite—we saw her come out into the road and look anxiously toward the pine grove on our side of the river, with her hand shading her eyes and her scarf fluttering in the breeze.

As our cottage stood on neutral ground, between the two sections of the village, so our family was perhaps the only one within three miles which did not take part in the religious controversy going on. It was our usual custom to worship in the old meeting-house in the morning, and in the afternoon attend service in the Episcopal church. This habit left us ignorant of what had been passing on School-hill, and when we saw Phebe Gray out in the open street that sabbath evening, we felt that something unusual must have occurred. She remained, as I have described, with a hand shading her eyes for more than a minute, and then hurried down the road toward the bridge at a quicker pace than we had ever seen her walk before. After crossing the bridge, she paused a moment on seeing our family sitting at the door—some of us on the steps and others reading on the greensward in which they were bedded—as if prompted to come toward us, but changing her mind she followed the road a few steps and then turned into the pine grove, through a footpath which led along that portion which skirted the river. After a little time she came in sight again, retracing her steps with another person whom we recognized as Malina. Their progress was very slow, Phebe’s arm was around her sister’s waist, and she seemed to be talking with great earnestness. When they came opposite our house we could see Malina’s face, though after the first glance toward us she turned it away, as if ashamed of the tears which stained her cheeks. Her dress was disordered and a little soiled by the moss on which she had evidently flung herself; her gipsy hat was blown on one side, exposing a profusion of brown ringlets slightly disheveled, and out of curl enough to make them fall more profusely than usual over her neck and shoulders. She walked with an impatient step, and seemed a little restless under the restraint of her sister’s arm, but when they got within the shadow of the chesnuts, and as they supposed beyond our observation, we saw her pause all of a sudden, fling her arms round Phebe’s neck and kiss her more than once with a degree of affection which spoke volumes in her favor. After this she arranged the hat on her head with considerable care and allowed the folds of her disordered dress to be smoothed. Then with another kiss the two girls crossed the bridge, each with her arm circling the other, and in this position they walked up the hill and disappeared in the portico of their own dwelling.

The two girls entered the family parlor; Malina with her cheek flushed once more and a step tremulous but haughty. Poor Phebe clung to her side, looking frightened and much more like a culprit than her sister. Mrs. Gray was seated at a table looking cold, precise and courteous as if nothing had happened; her black silk dress was arranged with that scrupulous care which she always bestowed on her raiment. Her false curls were carefully fastened beneath the slate-colored ribands and the fine lace border of her cap, while a muslin neckerchief was folded on her bosom, beneath the dress, sufficiently low to reveal a neck that had not yet lost all its whiteness, and a string of large gold beads which encircled it. The family bible lay open before her, but she was not reading, for in an easy chair close by sat the minister. He had been pastor at School-hill for more than twenty years, was naturally a kind man, but believed the well-being of his congregation to be identified with certain doctrinal points, which to dispute was rank heresy. He looked very grave when the girls entered, and rather restless, as if the duty which brought him there was one which his naturally kind heart would have avoided.

“Phebe, you may go to your chamber,” said Mrs. Gray to her eldest daughter, who had followed Malina to a chintz sofa and was about to sit down by her side.

Phebe hesitated and looked toward her mother, as if anxious to remain; but as she parted her lips to speak, a more decided command sent her weeping from the room.

[_To be continued._

* * * * *

TO THE EARTH.

BY JAMES ALDRICH.

How are thy charms, O maskéd Earth! displayed,
In hill and valley, rock and waterfall,
Flower-studded field, deep glen, and open glade,
With the blue sky in beauty bent o’er all.

Seekest with outward shows to win the heart?
Only their glare our grosser vision dulls;
The inward eye beholds thee, as thou art,
Great hearse of man, vast catacomb of skulls!

Thy moving forces, which we call the living,
Bustling and battling through their little day,
Are nought to thy great prostrate army, giving
Their flesh to worms, their bones to slow decay.

And what is that which life thy children call?
A little round of idle hopes and fears,
A dream prefig’ring being, this is all,
Made up of hope and smiles, despair and tears.

The countless millions all around us lying
With ghastly upturned faces, free from strife,
The unreturning dead, yet the undying,
How laugh they at the nothing we call life!

Enough! enough! if after our brief fretting,
Freed from thy fetters, we may rise in bliss
To some bright world where Life’s sun knows no setting
Where we may meet the lost and loved of this.

* * * * *

REJOICE.

The world is full of Joy. The sweet rose flings
Her fragrance out to invite the zephyr’s kiss:
The morning lark in wantonness of bliss
To meet the sun, with song of welcome, springs:
The little brook to her own motion sings:
The storm laughs wild—down comes the dancing rain,
The mountain stream leaps shouting to the plain
And with high glee the echoing valley rings.
The strong wind whistles in his desert caves;
The thick clouds ride triumphant down the sky;
The old green wood his trusty branches waves;
Huge ocean shakes his foamy crest on high;
Earth springs exulting in her fadeless prime;
And the glad sun rolls on his course sublime!
S. S.

* * * * *

THE CLAM-BAKE.

JEREMY SHORT AMONG THE RHODE ISLANDERS.

Well, sirs, Robin is a gallant poney, but riding over these confounded hills has almost shaken me to pieces, and, at every stride, for the last ten minutes, I’ve heard my bones rattling like pennies in a beggar’s alms-box. My mouth’s as parched as if dried up by lightning—but be sociable, lads, and give us a drinking cup, if it’s no better than a clam shell. Ah! that’s divine, better than ambrosia, real Cogniac I declare. How are you, captain? doctor? general?—bless my soul! if yonder isn’t Providence. Egad! this is a delightful place—beats Rowseville all hollow—it only wants a few trees here, and a clump of woodland there, to make it as cool and shady as a Mussulman’s paradise. The bay is alive with craft, and yonder—just look at them—are two jaunty rascals racing. How the little fellow eats to windward—they are throwing ballast overboard from the larger craft—whizz, whizz, one can almost hear the water bubbling along the wash-board as she bends to the blast—and now, side by side, they go, the foam crackling over the bow, and drenching the crew all the way aft. Huzza! the little fellow has won, and dances into the wind as Taglioni when she springs on the stage, more like a spirit than a human being.

They’re opening the bake—are they? Then I’ll take a seat by the heap here, with your leave, sir, and go to work. Heaven bless the Indians for having taught us how to cook clams! Yes, there’s all the difference in the world between eating your clam at a table, and eating it hot and smoking from the heap. I’d as lief think of turning Grahamite, and going through a purgatory of bran bread and water, as give up a seat at the bake. It’s there you get a clam in all its glory; in its spirituality, I may say—egad! it’s as sweet as a kiss from a blushing angel of sixteen. The heap, sir! why it’s an earthly paradise—the το χχλον of existence—the all in all of the epicure. Ah! the perfume of that steam is delicious—just see how poetically the vapor curls away into the air, for all the world like the morning mists rolling upward in the Catskill valley—you’ve been at the mountain house, no doubt. And then the clams themselves! Clams! egad, they are food for immortals! Isn’t this a superb fellow?—how snowy his shell—how perfect his form—how savory his juice—how rich his color—how luscious his taste:—by the gods! if Apicius were here, he’d dance a saraband, or snap his fingers through a cachuca, in sheer ecstasy at having found a dish that would have made jubilee on Olympus. Hip, hip, hurrah! haven’t I caught a jewel of a fellow? None of your rascally quohogs, but the real Narragansett clam for me. The poor, deluded wretches on the Jersey shore, who think their round-shells are clams, and chew for half an hour at what isn’t better than sole leather, have no more idea of what a real clam is, than a Hottentot of Heaven, or—what is the same thing—a crusty old bachelor of matrimony. The man who never ate a Narragansett clam can’t expect to live long, or die happy; he may dwindle out a miserable existence, but—take my word for it—he is a poor devil after all, no better than the horse in the mill, going the same eternal round, and living on salt hay and stagnant water. Heaven have mercy on the souls of such wretches! Ah! that’s a good fellow, stir up the heap; and here’s as juicy a villain as ever roasted, tall and slender, “in linked sweetness long drawn out.” Another and another—I shall faint with ecstasy, and must really take a little to calm my transports. Chowder may be fine, turtle soup glorious, tautog a dish for kings, but clams! clams!! sirs, would almost raise the dead.

“Wi’ tippenny, we fear nae evil,
Wi’ usquebae we’ll face the devil.”

Thank you for drinking my health, gentlemen—you ask me whether we have any such thing as a clam-bake in Philadelphia—bless my soul! if we had, it wouldn’t be such a place for riots, broken banks, and all sorts of other eccentricities. Starvation was the cause of the French Revolution—to the fogs of England can be traced the suicides there—and it’s my candid belief that the absence of clam-bakes whereat to recreate is the prime origin of the present difficulties. Don’t ask me to demonstrate my position, for I hate logic as I hate olives and old maids. Assertion, sirs, is everything—a neat, portable affair that unrolls in a moment, and can’t be turned into a dozen aspects like shot silk. No, no, if a man ain’t convinced by a round assertion call him a fool, and if he resents it knock him down. There’s more evil come upon the world from the habit of reasoning than a thousand penitents, walking around the globe with pebbles in their shoes, could redeem. If two friends disagree, what is the cause? Argument. If a man quarrels with his wife, it’s because he stopped to reason with her. Bow deprecatingly, though with suavity, in the first case: kiss your wife and call her angel in the second case—and you keep your friend and helpmate; but get into an argument, and you are booked for a maelstrom from which St. Peter couldn’t save you. The Transcendentalists understand this matter: _they_ never argue. They lay down something which they themselves can’t understand, and then call on the gaping disciple to give credence to it: if they are believed, it is well; if not, they jabber a jargon of shibboleth, call him a world-deluded gull, and turn away talking of the light within, and the glories of Pantheism. And so with the ladies, dear creatures, whom Nature intends for peace-makers, and, therefore, never allows them to give any better reason for what they do than “because”—thereby saving them a world of trouble about major and minor premises, and other things “in concatenation accordingly.” Glory be to the man who first invented assertion!—may the author of logic go to thunder, whence he came.

The young folks, further south, have, it is true, a sort of penance they call a pic-nic; but a pic-nic is no more like a clam-bake than vinegar is like champaigne. Imagine a dozen couple packed into an omnibus, after having got up before day—a thing no sane man was ever known to do—jolting over dusty roads for an hour or two, and then sitting down on the damp grass, on a greenish rock, or on a decaying trunk, to breakfast on cold ham and insipid water. Call you that fun? And, by and bye, the sentimental ones will wander off into the woods to read Tom Moore in company or alone—while those who affect field sports, Heaven save the mark! will go bobbing for eels with a skewer, or fish for trout in still waters and with a float. Others may rig out a rickety, leaky scow, shaded by an awning not bigger than a sun-screen, and take a sail—the gentlemen shoving the ark along with poles, and the ladies, all dressed in white, sitting with their feet in the water and singing “The Gondolier’s Song,” or “Shall we go a sailing!” Then, at noon, when the sun is hot enough to broil a steak, and the sweet dears’ faces look as flushed as a cook’s, they will huddle around a table cloth spread on the dusty grass, and try to keep each other in countenance by eating the remnants of their breakfast, washing the whole down with the interminable water, or lemonade so sour that a cupful would carry off a regiment with the cholera. Toward night they will start for home, regarding it as “a crowning mercy,” as old Noll would say, if a thunder storm doesn’t come up, and drench them through. Egad! it would make the tears run down your cheeks with laughter, if you could only see a pic-nic party after a shower—all draggled and dirty, dripping like drowned rats, or, to be more complimentary, like mermaids, hungry, tired, out of humor, and looking as unlike the dear angels we love as a radish looks unlike a claret bottle.

I never see a young man going on a pic-nic, but I ask if insanity doesn’t run in his family. But a clam-bake, sirs, is a different affair. On the hard, smooth, white sand of the bay shore you pitch your tent, for music having the low voice of the ripples as they break on the beach, the fresh breeze the while crisping the waves into silver, and fanning you with a delicious coolness that reminds you of the airs of that Eden you used to dream of when a child. It is not long before you have mustered a gay fishing party, and pushing from the shore, you row out by the well known stake, throw overboard the keelog, and idly rocking on the low, long swell, spend an hour, or it may be two, in the most delicious of pastimes. And when you tire of the sport, you lean lazily over the gunwale, and gaze far down into the transparent wave, where the fish float to and fro, the long grass waves with the tide, or the snowy bottom sparkles fitfully in the sun. Long ere noon has come your craft is laden with the spoil, and then it is “up keelog and away!” A few rapid, rollicking strokes bring you to the shore—your boat grates musically on the hard sand—and a joyous shout welcomes you back, while all hurry to inspect your cargo and wonder at your skill. By this time the table, spread by fair hands, is ready—and now the bake begins! A half hour, and lo! dinner is ready to be served—just at the very nick of time, too, for the sun is now at meridian, and the bay glitters like molten silver, while far and near the atmosphere boils in the sultry beams. Retreating to the shade of the tent—made more cool by a copious sprinkling of water—you are soon deep in the mysteries of clams, and sweet corn and, what would make a god’s mouth water, tautog baked in the heap. Pop—pop go the corks of the champaigne flasks, and here, cool as the peaks of Mont Blanc, comes the foaming liquid, sparkling and bright as the wit of a Sheridan, egad! And thus ends the dinner; but think not it stops here. All day long you see bright faces and hear gay laughter; and when evening steals on, and the moon rises in the azure sky, trailing a fairy line of light across the waters, and flooding the snowy beach with her effulgence—when the night wind murmurs among the trees, or sighs over the sleeping bay—when the jocund music strikes up and you dance merrily on the hard white sand, while bright eyes sparkle and fair cheeks flush with love—then you have a foretaste of heaven, and wish to lie down and sleep, and, sleeping, dream of such delicious pastime. And, by and bye, when returning home, the air is vocal with songs, warbled by the seraphic voices of those you love—and, as you dash through the trees, the moon, all the while shimmering between the leaves, you almost shout aloud in the exhilaration of the moment. Gradually, however, you sink into a more pensive mood, and silence falls on you and the white-armed one beside you, so that, at length, you may hear nothing but a gentle (yet oh! how eloquent) sigh, and the low beating of her heart, audible in the stillness. Aye! and if you look into her eyes you will see there a music more soul-subduing than the softest strains. At length your hands will meet, and with a strange, delicious thrill through your whole frame, she will sink yielding on your bosom, and then—and then, God bless me! I’ve been thinking of the way I used to make love, and forgot all about the clam-bake.

As the heap’s empty and the bottle drained I’ll stop, but since you all beg for it, I’ll give you, some of these days, my notions on making love, egad! And now here’s Robin—hip, ho, we’re off.

* * * * *

THE SUMMER NIGHT.

ARRANGED FROM A GERMAN AIR FOR THE PIANO FORTE.

Presented to Graham’s Magazine, by J. G. Osbourn.

The moon’s brightly beaming, love,
Still waters gleaming;
Wake from thy dreaming, love,
List to my lay.
Long, long, at twilight hour,
From yon lone distant bow’r,
Sadly I watch thy tow’r,
Fading away.
Long, long, at twilight hour,
From yon lone distant bow’r,
Sadly, I watch thy tow’r,
Fading away.

Low winds are sighing, love,
Day flowers dying,
Sweet moments flying, love,
Swiftly away.
Come e’er the morning dew,
Gemming the heather blue,
Green turf and mountain yew,
Our fond flight betray.

Young years are fleeting, love,
Warm bosoms heating,
Watch them retreating, love,
Sadly away.
Haste, o’er the summer tide,
Sweetly our bark will glide,
Thou my fond trust and guide,
On the blue way.

* * * * *

REVIEW OF NEW BOOKS.

_The Critical and Miscellaneous Writings of Thomas Noon
Talfourd, author of “Ion,” etc. In one volume. Philadelphia,
Carey & Hart, 1842._

It is doubted by many intelligent critics whether the present age has in very deed given birth to any work of genius which will withstand the restless beatings of the waves of time and carry down to remotest generations the embodied evidence of the power and greatness of the Nineteenth Century. There is certainly room for an honest difference of opinion on this point, for it cannot be denied that on looking around the eye meets not at every corner nor does the ear hear, acting or uttering their Life Poem from every house-top, Homers, Shakspeares, Luthers, or Miltons. But that our cotemporaries are eminently skilled in examining into and discovering the worth of what has been done aforetime cannot be denied. Criticism has been made an art; and there is an evident tendency to exalt the man, with his telescope, to the star he looks at. We do not at present intend to find fault with this disposition, nor should we have mentioned it, but for the purpose of saying that it has produced some not distasteful fruits, among the best of which we rank these critical essays of Mr. Sergeant Talfourd. We are glad they have been thus collected together, for the periodicals in which they first appeared reach but few of those who would fain read them. Macauley and Carlyle write mainly for one or two works, so that with comparatively little difficulty the general reader may find all their productions; but Mr. Talfourd writes for quarterlies, monthlies and weeklies, and a collective re-publication of his contributions was therefore greatly to be desired. He makes admirable speeches, too, on copyright, and in defence of the professors of high Art when they are assailed by the spirit of the world, or when, in their vagaries, not always the most orderly, they run athwart some of the good and unbending rules established for the general welfare. These, we are sorry to say, we do not find in the present volume. Still, we are too thankful for what we have, to complain of the absence of the defence of Shelley and the argument on the rights of authors.

The peculiar characteristics of Mr. Talfourd’s criticism are its catholic liberality, its accurate and clear sighted discrimination, its insight, which is really of the _scientific_ kind, and its classical purity, both in thought and style. He never writes hastily or without elaboration, and yet his criticism is not cold and unsympathizing. He enters deeply into the spirit of the work he examines, is peculiarly sensitive to its beauties and excellencies, and speaks of them eloquently and with boldness. His language is strong, but polished, and there is always in his thought a cheerful confidence and a keen-eyed discernment, which instruct and strengthen. The essay on Wordsworth is among the best in the volume, written in the spirit of the poetry it dissects, and evincing skill in developing beauty, and a sharp sense which will detect it wherever it exists. The review of Wallace’s Prospects of Mankind, and the paper on Modern Improvements, are valuable and instructive. The essays on the profession of the law, and on pulpit oratory, are also excellent. Indeed, the contents of this volume are so uniformly good and so alike in all their prominent characteristics, that it would be difficult, as it is certainly unnecessary, to point out any as pre-eminently deserving of applause.

* * * * *

_Critical and Miscellaneous Writings of Sir Walter Scott.[6]
Collected by Himself. Now for the first time Published in
America. Three volumes, 12mo. Philadelphia, Carey & Hart._

The Wizard of the North, as it was the custom a few years ago to call Walter Scott, may be regarded in four aspects—as a novelist, a poet, a critic, and a historian. In the first character he was unequaled, in the second and third among the first of his age and country, and in the last, alone, utterly contemptible; and that not for lack of ability or painstaking, certainly, but on account of his perfect recklessness of all principle, truth or decency that did not tend to fill his pockets with money or advance the interests of his party. In the volumes before us we have his criticisms and miscellaneous essays, and though we had aforetime been accustomed to regard them as possessing comparatively slight merit, a reperusal of the greater number has left on our mind an impression in the highest degree favorable to them, as compared with the best productions of their kind. Macauley is our favorite reviewer; Wilson, Sidney Smith, Talfourd and Scott we rank next. With all his apparent rapidity and ease, Macauley is the most laborious of the fraternity. He spends his month in reading—_cramming_ is the technical phrase—everything relating to his subject; sits for a week or two at his desk, writing, recurring to documents, and rewriting, until every fact or idea he deems worthy of retention is embodied in his article, which is then carefully retouched and copied for the “Edinburgh.” Talfourd meditates his subject, too, and polishes with no less care or skill. But Scott glanced upon the surface of things, skimmed over the abstracts and summaries relating to his theme, and wrote off, in his smooth, vivacious, pleasant way, his paper—read the MS—marked in a few commas and colons—and sent it to the printer.

With too little time and space for an elaborate review of these volumes, yet anxious, as in all our notices of books, to give the reader a definite idea of their character, we place in the margin a list of their contents, and shall notice more particularly but a small number of the forty-eight articles of which they are composed. The essays on Chatterton and Burns, in the first volume, are sympathizing, liberal and judicious, though less distinguished for nicety of discrimination than some others on the same subjects. In the second volume is his review of his own “Tales of My Landlord,” from the _Quarterly_, for January, 1817, educed by a series of essays from the pen of Doctor McCrie, in which the views given of the Scottish covenanters in the Waverly novels were bitterly impugned. The authorship of these novels, it will be remembered, was then a secret. The modesty of Scott’s estimate of himself may be inferred from the following passage, from page 144:

“The volume which this author has studied is the great book of
nature. He has gone abroad into the world in quest of what the
world will certainly and abundantly supply, but what a man of
great discrimination alone will find, and a man of the very
highest genius will alone depict after he has discovered it. The
characters of Shakspeare are not more exclusively human, not
more perfectly men and women as they live and move, than those
of this mysterious author.”

Yet, this _is_ modest, compared with numerous other puffs of himself from his own pen, written in his long and successful career, and justified on the ground that they were “fair business transactions.” Washington Irving has done the same thing, in writing laudatory notices of his own works for the reviews, and, like Scott, received pay for whitewashing himself. We do not imagine that in either case there was any great injustice in the self-praise, but certainly Mr. Murray should not have been solicited to pay the “guinea a page.” The articles in the third volume on Kemble, Kelly’s Reminiscences, and Davy’s “Salmonia,” are all excellent, and equally so. We have understood, too, that the Letters from Malachi Malagrowther, Esquire, on the currency, are readable, but we never look into articles on such subjects.

-----

[6] Vol. I.—Articles on Ellis’s Specimens of the Early English Poets; Ellis’s and Ritson’s Specimens of the Early English Metrical Romances; Godwin’s Life of Chaucer; Todd’s Edition of Spencer; Herbert’s Poems; Evans’s Old Ballads; Moliere; Chatterton; Reliques of Burns; Campbell’s Gertrude of Wyoming; The Battles of Tallavera (a poem); Southey’s Curse of Kehama; The Fourth Canto of Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage; Amadis of Gaul; Southey’s Chronicle of the Cid; Southey’s Life of John Bunyan; Godwin’s “Fleetwood;” Cumberland’s John of Lancaster; Maturin’s “Fatal Revenge;” Maturin’s “Women, or Pour et Contre;” Miss Austin’s Novels; and Remarks on Frankenstein.

Vol. II.—Novels of Ernest Theodore Hoffman; The Omen; Hajji Baba in England; Tales of My Landlord; Thornton’s Sporting Tour; Two Cookery Books; Jones’s Translation of Froissart; Miseries of Human Life; Carr’s Caledonian Sketches; Lady Suffolk’s Correspondence; Kirkton’s Church History; Life and Works of John Home; The Culloden Papers; and Pepys’s Memoirs.

Vol. III.—Life of Kemble; Kelly’s Reminiscences; Davy’s Salmonia; Ancient History of Scotland; On Planting Waste Lands—Monteith’s Forresters’ Guide; On Landscape Gardening—Sir H. Steuart’s Planters’ Guide; Tyler’s History of Scotland; Pitcairn’s Criminal Trials; and The Letters of Malachi Malagrowther, Esquire, on the Currency.

* * * * *

_The History of the Reformation of the Church of England, by
Gilbert Burnet, D. D., late Lord Bishop of Salisbury, with the
Collection of Records and a copious Index, revised and
corrected, with additional Notes and a Preface, by the Rev. E.
Nares, D. D., late Professor of Modern History in the University
of Oxford. Illustrated with a Frontispiece and twenty-three
engraved Portraits. Four volumes, 8vo. New York: D. Appleton &
Co._

Bishop Burnet’s celebrated History of the Reformation in England is one of those standard works which a gentleman is ashamed not to have read. Respecting the important period to which it relates, there are few productions so frequently consulted by more modern writers, and its intrinsic excellence must ever make it desirable, not only to scholars and persons familiar with the advancement of civil and ecclesiastical affairs, but to young students in history and general readers. Of the ability of Doctor Nares, we confess we have not a very high opinion—having, it may be, imbibed some prejudices against him from Macauley—but, as the English critics all concur, so far as we have seen, in the opinion that his edition of this work is the best extant, we are bound to believe that he has, in one instance, done his duty well. If the work has any defects they are such as we are unable to detect.

Burnet’s History of the Reformation, though frequently republished in England, has never before been printed in America, and the high price of the English impressions here kept it from the libraries of many who will now obtain it. The copy before us is creditable to the publishers, in all but the portraits, which, with deference to the taste of Messrs. Appleton, we think add very little to its value or beauty.

* * * * *

_Cottage Residences; or a Series of Designs for Rural Cottages
and Cottage Villas and their Gardens and Grounds, adapted to
North America. By A. J. Downing. Illustrated by numerous
Engravings. One volume, 8vo. New York: Wiley & Putnam._

Mr. Downing’s previous publication, on Landscape Gardening, has made or should have made his name familiar to all for whom rural life has charms. This new book, on a cognate subject, the application of moderate means to country residences, is, like that, eminently calculated to advance among us elegance, comfort, in a word, _civilization_; and we hope, therefore, that it will be universally studied. Mr. Downing’s object is to inspire the minds of his readers with a vivid perception of the beautiful in every thing that relates to our houses and grounds—to awaken a quicker sense of the grace or picturesqueness of fine forms that may be produced in these by rural architecture and ornamental gardening—a sense which will not only refine and elevate the mind, but pour into it new and infinite resources of delight. In his preface he remarks that he wishes to imbue all persons with a love of beautiful forms and a desire to assemble them around their daily walks of life; to appreciate how superior is the charm of that home where we discover the tasteful cottage or villa, and the well designed and neatly kept garden or grounds, full of beauty and harmony—not the less beautiful and harmonious because simple and limited—and to become aware that these superior forms, and the higher and more refined enjoyment derived from them, may be had at the same cost and the same labor as a clumsy dwelling, and its uncouth and ill-designed accessories. “More than all,” he continues, “I desire to see these sentiments cherished for their pure and moral tendency. ‘All beauty is an outward expression of inward good,’ and so closely are the Beautiful and True allied, that we shall find, if we become sincere lovers of the grace, the harmony, and the loveliness, with which rural homes and rural life are capable of being invested, that we are silently opening our hearts to an influence which is higher and deeper than the mere _symbol_; and that if we have worshiped in the true spirit, we shall have caught a nearer glimpse of the Great Master whose words, in all his material universe, are written in lines of Beauty.”