Chapter II: Part 2

MR. G.P.R. JAMES has taken a cottage at Jamaica, Long Island, and is domiciliated as an American--we hope for a long time. He has made troops of friends since his arrival here, and is likely to be as popular in society as he has long been in literature. We are sure we communicate a very pleasing fact when we state that it is his intention to give in two or three of our principal cities, during the autumn and fall, a series of lectures--probably upon the chivalric ages, with which no one is more profoundly familiar, and of which no one can discourse more wisely or agreeably. His abilities, his reputation, and the almost universal acquaintance with his works, insure for him the largest success. We are indebted to no other living author for so much enjoyment, and by his proposed lectures he will not only add to our obligations, but furnish an opportunity to repair in some degree the wrong he has suffered from the imperfection and injustice of our copyright system.

* * * * *

"THE LIFE, CHARACTER, AND GENIUS OF EBENEZER ELLIOTT," is a volume by January Searle, author of _Leaves from Sherwood Forest_, &c., who knew the corn-law rhymer well, and has been enabled to give very characteristic sketches, original descriptions, correspondence, &c. There are in it many judiciously selected specimens of Elliott's poems, prose productions, and lectures. Mr. Searle observes of him, that "he was cradled into poetry by human wrong and misery; and was emphatically the bard of poverty--singing of the poor man's loves and sorrows, and denouncing his oppressors." Again: "He has one central idea--terrible and awful in its aspect, although beautiful and beneficent in spirit--before which he tries all causes, and men, and things. It is the Eternal Idea of Right; his synonyme of God. And this idea is perpetually present in his mind, pervades all his thoughts, will not be shuffled nor cheated, but demands a full satisfaction from all violators of it."

* * * * *

THE LATE MRS. OSGOOD was in a very remarkable degree respected and beloved by those who were admitted to her acquaintance. Without envy or jealousy, or any of the immoralities of the intellect which most commonly beset writers of her sex, she occasioned no enmities and was a party to none, but was regarded, especially by the literary women of this country, with a feeling of tenderness and devotion probably unparalleled in the annals of literature or of society. Immediately after her death, therefore, a desire was manifested to illustrate the common regard for her by some suitable testimonial, and upon consultation, it was decided to publish a splendid souvenir, to consist of the gratuitous contributions of her friends, and with the profits accruing from its sale to erect a monument to her memory in the cemetery of Mount Auburn. This gift book, edited by Mrs. Osgood's most intimate friend, Mary E. Hewitt, will be published by Mr. Putnam, on the first of October, under the title of _The Cairn_, and it will contain original articles by George Aubrey, Lord Bishop of Jamaica: the Right Rev. George W. Doane, the Right Rev. Alonzo Potter, the Hon. R.H. Walworth, the Hon. J. Leander Starr, the Rev. C.S. Henry, D.D., G.P.R. James, Esq., N.P. Willis, Esq., W. Gilmore Simms, Esq., Bayard Taylor, Esq., J.H. Boker, Esq., Alfred B. Street, Esq., R. H. Stoddard, Esq., Miss Fredrika Bremer, Mrs. Sigourney, Mrs. Oakes Smith, Mrs. Embury, Mrs. Lewis, Mrs. Neal, Mrs. Willard, Mrs. Whitman, Miss Lynch, Miss Hunter, Miss Cheesebro', and indeed nearly all the writers of her sex who have attained any eminence in our literary world. The volume will be illustrated with nine engravings on steel, by Cheney and other eminent artists.

* * * * *

THE REV. WALTER COLTON has just published through A.S. Barnes & Co. "Three Years in California," a journal of experiences and observations in the gold region, from the period when it first attracted the attention of the Atlantic cities. Mr. Colton was some time alcade of Monterey, and he had in every way abundant opportunity to acquire whatever facts are deserving of preservation in history. His "Ship and Shore," "Constantinople and Athens," "Deck and Port," and other works, have illustrated his genial temper, shrewdness, and skill in description and character writing; and this book will increase his reputation for these qualities. It contains portraits of Capt. Sutter, Col. Fremont, Mr. Gwin, Mr. Wright, Mr. Larkin, and Mr. Snyder, a map of the valley of the Sacramento, and several other engravings, very spirited in design and execution.

* * * * *

MR. GEORGE STEPHENS, author of the "_Manuscripts of Erdely_," has been struck by ill health and reduced to poverty, and an amateur play has been prepared for his benefit at the Soho Theater. He wrote "The Vampire," "Montezuma," and "Martinuzzi."

* * * * *

The Gallery of Illustrious Americans, conducted by Mr. Lester, continues with every number to increase in interest. The work is designed to embrace folio portraits, engraved by Davignon, from daguerreotypes by Brady, of twenty-four of the most eminent American citizens who have lived since the time of Washington. The portraits thus far have been admirable for truthfulness and artistic effect. It may be said that the _only_ published pictures we have, deserving to be called portraits, of the historian Prescott, or Mr. Calhoun, or Colonel Fremont, are in this Gallery. The great artist, naturalist, and man of letters, Audubon, is reflected here as he appears at the close of the battle, receiving the reverence of nations and ages. In the biographical department Mr. Lester has evinced very eminent abilities for this kind of writing. He seizes the prominent events of history and the strong points of character, and presents them with such force and fullness, and happy combination, as to make the letter-press as interesting and valuable as the engraved portion of the work. We are pleased to learn that the Gallery is remarkably successful. No publication of equal splendor and expensiveness has ever before been so well received in this country. The cost of it is but one dollar per number, or twenty dollars for the series of twenty-four numbers. It is now half completed.

* * * * *

M. Max Schlesinger, author of "The War in Hungary, in 1848-9,"--a work which, from what we read of it in the foreign journals, is much the most striking and attractive of all that have appeared upon its subject in English,--is described in the _Athenæum_, as by birth a Hungarian, by the accidents of fortune a German. For some time a resident in Prague, and more recently settled in Berlin, he has had excellent opportunities of seeing the men and studying the questions connected both in the literary and political sense with the present movement of ideas and races in Eastern Europe. His acquaintance with the aspects of nature in his native land--his knowledge of the peculiar character of its inhabitants, their manners, modes of thought and habits of life--his familiarity with past history--his right conception of the leading men in the recent struggle--are all vouched for as "essentially accurate" by no less an authority than Count Pulszky. It would be an injustice merely to say that M. Schlesinger has given in an original and picturesque way a general view of the course of events in the late war, more complete and connected than is afforded in any account hitherto presented to the public. He has done more: he has enabled the German and English reader to understand the miracle of a nation of four or five millions of men rising up at the command of a great statesman, and doing successful battle with the elaborately organized power of a first-class European state, shaking it to its very foundations, and contending, not without hope, against two mighty military empires,--until the treachery from within paralyzed its power of resistance.

* * * * *

Dr. Mayo's new novel, "The Berber, or the Mountaineer of the Atlas," published by Putnam, promises to be scarcely less popular than his "Kaloolah." The _Evening Post_ says of it: "Kaloolah was a sprightly narrative of the wanderings of a Yankee, who seemed to combine in his person the characteristics of Robinson Crusoe with those of Baron Munchausen; but the Berber professes to be nothing more than a novel; or, as the author says in his preface, his principal object has been to tell an agreeable story in an agreeable way. In doing so, however, an eye has been had to the illustration of Moorish manners, customs, history, and geography; to the exemplification of Moorish life as it actually is in Barbary in the present day, and not as it usually appears in the vague and poetic glamour of the common Moorish romance. It has also been an object to introduce to the acquaintance of the reader a people who have played a most important part in the world's history, but of whom very few educated people know anything more than the name. As Dr. Mayo has traveled extensively over the regions he describes, we presume that his descriptions may be taken as true. His account of the Berbers, a tribe of ancient Asiatic origin, who inhabit a range of the Atlas, and who live a semi-savage life like the Arabs, is minute, and to the intelligent reader quite as interesting as the more narrative parts of the work. It is, perhaps, the best evidence of the merits of the book, that the whole first edition was exhausted by orders from the country before the first number had appeared in the city."

* * * * *

Col. Forbes, who was in Italy during the revolution, and many years previous, and who was himself, both in a military and civic capacity, one of the actors in that event, the _Evening Post_ informs us, is about to give public lectures on the subject of Italy in the various cities and towns of the United States. Col. Forbes was intimately connected with the revolutionary chiefs during the brief existence of the Roman Republic, and was directly and confidently employed by Mazzini. His knowledge of the country, its people, its politics, and its recent history, will supply him with materials for making his lectures highly interesting and instructive.

* * * * *

The Gem of the Western World, edited by Mrs. Hewitt, and published by Cornish & Co., Fulton street, is a very beautiful gift-book, and in its literary character is deserving of a place with the most splendid and; tasteful annuals of the season. Mrs. Hewitt's own contributions to it embrace some of her finest compositions, and are of course among its most brilliant contents.

* * * * *

FRENCH PERIODICALS.--A Parisian correspondent of the London _Literary Gazette_ observes, that if we exclude the _Revue des Deux Mondes_--a, sort of cross between the English _Quarterly_ and the monthlies,--if we exclude also a few dry scientific periodicals, and one or two theatrical or musical newspapers, we shall seek in vain for any _Quarterly_, or _Blackwood_, or _Art Union_, or _Literary Gazette_; and that even the periodicals and journals which make the nearest approach to the weekly, monthly, or quarterly publications of England, are either wretched compilations, or abominably ill-written and ill-printed. The _feuilleton_ system of the newspapers is no doubt the principal cause of the periodical literature being in such an extremely low condition. But though literary and scientific periodicals be, generally speaking, vile in quality, they can at least boast of quantity. There are, it seems, not fewer than 300 of one kind or another published in Paris alone. Among them are 44 devoted to medicine, chemistry, natural science, &c.; 42, trade, commerce, railways, advertisements; 34, fashions; 30, law; 22, administration, public works, roads, bridges, mines; 19, archæology, history, biography, geography, numismatics; 19, public instruction and education; 15, agriculture and horticulture; 8, bibliography and typography; 10, army and navy; 7, literary; the rest theatrical, musical, or of a character too hybrid to be classified.

* * * * *

THE ILLUSTRATED DOMESTIC BIBLE, edited by the Rev. Ingram Cobbin, seems to us decidedly the best family Bible ever offered to the trade in this country. It is printed with remarkable correctness and beauty; illustrated with a very large number of maps and engravings on wood; and its notes, written with much condensation and perspicuity, are such as are necessary for the understanding of the text. Indeed, all that is added to the letter of the Bible is legitimate and necessary _illustration_. It is being published in a series of twenty-five numbers, at twenty-five cents each, by S. Hueston, publisher of _The Knickerbocker_, Nassau-street.

* * * * *

THE VIENNA UNIVERSITY, long one of the best in Europe, has not been reopened since the insurrection of November, 1848, its principal edifice having been occupied as barracks for a regiment of soldiers. It is now proposed to restore it to its proper use, but great difficulty is experienced in finding professors. The old ones are scattered, some as exiles in foreign countries, on account of democratic opinions,--some in prison for the same reason, others employed elsewhere. Wackernagel, the eminent professor of the German Language and Literature at Basle, Switzerland, tempted by liberal offers, had promised to come to Vienna, and lend the aid of his reputation and talents to the restoration of the University, but being lately at Milan, on a wedding tour, as he and his wife were passing through the _Piazza d'Armi_, their ears were saluted by cries of pain, which on inquiry they found to proceed from sundry rebellious Italians, of both sexes, who were receiving each from twenty-five to fifty blows of the military baton, or cane, employed by the Austrians in flogging soldiers. Madame Wackernagel at once declared that she would never willingly inhabit a country whose laws and habits suffered women to be so brutally punished for patriotism, and her husband could only agree with her. He has accordingly broken off the engagement, and the Government cannot hope to supply his place.

* * * * *

HINCKS ON LITERARY LARCENY.--A Canadian friend sends us the following extract from a speech by Francis Hincks, a leading member of the Canadian Ministry, touching the International Copyright question:

"The American publisher steals the works of British authors,
because he is immoral enough to do it, because he is scoundrel
enough, and the nation is scoundrel enough to permit it.
(Ironical cheers.) Yes, because the nation is scoundrel enough
to permit it."

Our unknown friend who sends us this wants us to give Hincks a thorough roasting for it, and evidently expects every hair on our head to bristle with indignation. Now we have not the least objection to roasting the Minister aforesaid, and will do it when a fair chance presents itself, but we don't consider this such a chance. In fact, though we think Francis has drawn rather a strong draught from "the well of English undefiled," yet essentially we regard his observations above quoted as rather more than half right. It _is_ rascally to steal a man's book, print it, sell it, read it, and refuse him any pay for the labor of writing it; and we don't see that his being an Englishman makes any material difference. There may be a cheaper way to get the proceeds of another man's toil than by paying for it, but we don't think there is any other strictly honest way.--_Tribune_.

* * * * *

HERR SCHUMANN's opera, "Généviève," was produced at Leipsic on the 28th ultimo. "This work," says the _Gazette Musicale_, "after having been much recommended beforehand, does not seem to have satisfied public expectation, being concert music, without any dramatic force." For the verdict which will finally be passed on "Généviève" every one must be curious who has at all followed the journals of Young Germany in the recent crusades which they nave made, not so much to establish Schumann as a great composer, as to prove him greater than Mendelssohn.

* * * * *

THE GRAND LITERARY TRADE SALES are now in progress in New York: and the catalogues of the rival houses are the largest ever printed. Cooley & Keese at their splendid hall in Broadway present this year a richer and more extensive series of invoices than has ever before been sold in America.

* * * * *

THE FINE ARTS.

* * * * *

Bavaria is a sort of artists' paradise, both the late King Louis and the present Maximilian being determined to leave behind them the glory of munificent patrons of art. In this they have so far succeeded, that Munich, which before their time was by no means among German cities the most worthy a traveler's attention, may now dispute the palm even with Dresden, notwithstanding the unrivaled gallery of paintings, possessed by the latter. For students of modern art, and especially of the German schools, Munich is incomparable, while its collection of ancient sculptures cannot be equaled out of Italy. We now learn that King Maximilian has conceived the plan of a grand series of pictures to comprehend the prominent epochs and events of history. The most eminent German and foreign artists are to be invited to assist in carrying out this immense undertaking; so that thus the series will not only represent the great experiences of mankind, but will, it is hoped, contain specimens of all the great schools of modern painting.

* * * * *

An exhibition of indisputable works by the old painters is now open at Valenciennes, in France. It consists of pictures belonging to the family of the Belgian general Rottiers. They are for sale, either single or together. Among them is a St. Denis, bearing his Head, by Rubens, said to have been painted by order of Pope Urban VIII. It was deposited in the Convent of the _Annunciades_, at Antioch; in 1747, Louis XV. offered 100,000 francs for it, but was refused, the convent having no right to dispose of it. Afterward, on the suppression of the convent, it fell into the hands of the family to which it now belongs. The exhibition also contains a landscape by Salvator Rosa, representing a scene in the Appenines; a Magdalen kneeling in a Cavern, by Kneller; two Allegories, by Giulio Romano; several portraits by Rubens and Van Dyke, besides other works of less value.

* * * * *

Darley's "Sleepy Hollow."--The London Art Journal, for July, has the following notice of Mr. Darley's illustrations of Irving's "Legends of Sleepy Hollow," published by the _American Art Union_: "The charmingly quaint original legend told with so much quiet humor by Washington Irving, is here illustrated by a native artist in a congenial spirit, and his scenes realized in a manner which must give its author satisfaction, and redound to the credit of the designer. We have before noticed the great ability exhibited by Mr. Darley for the mode of illustration he adopts, which we may add is that rendered famous by Retzsh. The series we are now noticing are quite as meritorious as that designed by the same artist to Rip Van Winkle; but the subject matter is not equally capable of such broad contrasts in drollery as that legend presents. Nevertheless, Mr. Darley has executed his task in the truest appreciation of his author; and his hero is the veritable Ichabod Crane of Irving; his love-making scene with "the peerless daughter of Van Tassel" is exquisite in its quiet humor; so also is the merry-making in the Dutch Farmer's home. Altogether, the series is extremely good, and does the greatest credit to the designer. American literature thus illustrated by American artists cannot fail to achieve honor to that country in the old world as well as the new. We believe Mr. Darley, in his line, to be as great as any American artist whose works have fallen under our notice."

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Chaucer's Monument.--The _Athenæum_ says, "One of the objections formerly urged against taking steps to restore the perishing memorial of the Father of English Poetry in Poet's Corner was, that it was not really his tomb, but a monument erected to do honor to his memory a century and a half after his death. An examination, however, of the tomb itself, by competent authorities, has proved this objection to be unfounded--inasmuch as there can exist no doubt, we hear, from the difference of workmanship, material, &c., that the altar tomb is the original tomb of Geoffrey Chaucer,--and that instead of Nicholas Brigham having erected an entirely new monument, he only added to that which then existed the overhanging canopy, &c. So that the sympathy of Chaucer's admirers is now invited to the restoration of what till now was really not known to exist--_the original tomb_ of the Poet--as well as to the additions made to it by the affectionate remembrance of Nicholas Brigham."

* * * * *

Lessing's new picture.--A letter from Düsseldorf under date of 9th July, in the _Courier and Enquirer_, says that Lessing's great painting, "The Martyrdom of Huss," Sad just been finished and had been exhibited for the last few days at the Academy of Fine Arts, where it was visited by thousands. When it became known that orders for its immediate shipment had arrived from New York, the desire to obtain a last view of this truly great work became so intense that it was found necessary to put the Police in requisition to keep back the throng, and the gates of the Academy had to be closed. It causes general regret that it is to be sent out of the country. The _Cologne Gazette_ calls this picture the most sublime production of the great artist, and expresses the conviction that a speedy fortune might be realized by its exhibition in Europe.

* * * * *

Mr. George Flagg has just completed a portrait of Mrs. E. Oakes Smith, which will be ranked among the first productions of his pencil. We know of scarce a picture as beautiful or a portrait as truthful. It is to be engraved, we believe, by Cheney.

* * * * *

Mlle. Rachel.--The wonderful accuracy of the death-scene in "Adrienne Lecouvreur" has been the object of universal praise in London, not merely from the thrilled and thralled public, but from men of art and science. A physician, it is said, was complimenting Mademoiselle on her amazing truth to the symptoms of mortal agony: "You must have studied death closely," said he. "Yes, I have," was the quiet reply; "my maid's. I went up to her--I stayed with her--she recommended her mother to me!--I was studying my part." This is probably merely one of those cynical stories with which the sharp people of Paris love to environ and encircle every one who stands a dangerous chance of becoming too popular. But smaller artists than Mademoiselle Rachel have sometimes had recourse to curious expedients to give their dramatic personations a show at reality. The French _prima donna_, who not very long ago appeared in M. Clapisson's poor opera, "Jeanne la Folle," is said to have shut herself up in the _Salpêtrière_, by way of studying _her_ part, and to have been rewarded for her zealous curiosity by receiving a basin of scalding soup dashed in her face by one of the poor miserable objects of her examination.

* * * * *

A Frankfort journal states that the colossal statue of Bavaria, by SCHWANTHALER, which is to be placed on the hill of Seudling, surpasses in its gigantic proportions all the works of the moderns. It will have to be removed in pieces from the foundry where it is cast to its place of destination,--and each piece will require sixteen horses to draw it. The great toes are each half a metre in length. In the head two persons could dance a polka very conveniently,--while the nose might lodge the musician. The thickness of the robe--which forms a rich drapery descending to the ankles--is about six inches, and its circumference at the bottom about two hundred metres. The Crown of Victory which the figure holds in her hands weighs one hundred quintals (a quintal is a hundred-weight).

* * * * *

The death of SIR ROBERT PEEL, says the _Literary Gazette_, has awakened a busy competing spirit for the production of articles relating to him, and especially in connection with Literature and the Arta. In the one, Memoirs, Speeches, Recollections, Anecdotes, &c., have been abundantly supplied; and in the other, every printshop window in London displays its Peels of every style and every degree, but mostly very indifferent, absolutely bad, or utter caricature.

* * * * *

Goupil, Vibert & Co. have published a series of portraits of eminent Americans which is deserving of the largest approval and sale. The head of Mr. Bryant is the best ever published of that poet; it presents his fine features and striking phrenology with great force and with pleasing as well as just effect. A portrait of Mr. Willis is wonderfully truthful, in detail, and is in an eminent degree characteristic. The admirers of that author who have not seen him will find in it their ideal, and all his acquaintances will see in it as distinctly the real man who sits in the congress of editors as the representative of the polite world. The head of the artist Mount, after Elliott, is not by any means less successful. Among the other portraits are those of Gen. Scott, President Fillmore, Robert Fulton, J.Q. Adams, Mr. Clay, Mr. Webster, and President Taylor. They are all on imperial sheets, and are sold at $1 each.

* * * * *

The Paris papers tell a story of a young actor, who finding no engagement in that city, came to America to try his fortune. From New Orleans he went to California, was lucky as a digger, embarked in business and got immensely rich. He is now building in the Champs Elysées a magnificent hotel for his mother. All actors are not so fortunate.

* * * * *

Expected arrivals from Nineveh.--The Great Bull, and upward of one hundred tons of sculpture, excavated by Dr. Layard, are now on their way to England, and may be expected in the course of September. In addition-to the Elgin, Phigalian, Lycian, and Boodroun marbles, the British Museum will soon be enriched with a magnificent series of Assyrian sculptures.

* * * * *

Mr. Burt has nearly finished the "Anne Page and Slender" of Leslie, which is to be the annual engraving of the Art Union. It will be an admirable picture, but we cannot but regret that the managers selected for this purpose a work so familiar.

* * * * *

The French Minister of the Interior has decided that marble busts of M. Gay-Lussac and of M. Blainville shall be executed at the expense of the government, and placed in the Institute.

* * * * *

Mr. Powell, who is living in Paris, engaged upon his picture for the capital, has been in ill health nearly all the summer.

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RECENT DEATHS.

* * * * *

The French papers report the death, at Paris, of M. MORA, the Mexican Minister Plenipotentiary at the Court of St. James. M. Mora was the author of a History of Mexico and its Revolutions since the establishment of its independence, and editor-in-chief of several journals in Mexico.

* * * * *

MR. B. SIMMONS, an amiable and accomplished writer, whose name will be recollected as that of a frequent contributor of lyrical poems of a high order to _Blackwood's Magazine_, and to several of the Annuals, died in London on the 20th of July.

* * * * *

[FROM GRAHAM'S MAGAZINE.]

ON A PORTRAIT OF CROMWELL.

BY JAMES T. FIELD.

"Paint me as I am," said Cromwell,
Rough with age, and gashed with wars--
"Show my visage as you find it--
Less than truth my soul abhors!"

This was he whose mustering phalanx
Swept the foe at Marston Moor;
This was he whose arm uplifted
From the dust the fainting poor.

God had made his face uncomely--
"Paint me as I am," he said.
So he lives upon the canvas
Whom they chronicled as _dead_!

Simple justice he requested
At the artist's glowing hands,
"Simple justice!" from his ashes
Cries a voice that still commands.

And, behold! the page of History,
Centuries dark with Cromwell's name,
Shines to-day with thrilling luster
From the light of Cromwell's fame!

* * * * *

[FROM THE EXAMINER.]

WORDSWORTH'S POSTHUMOUS POEM.[3]

This is a voice that speaks to us across a gulf of nearly fifty years. A few months ago Wordsworth was taken from us at the ripe age of fourscore, yet here we have him addressing the public, as for the first time, with all the fervor, the unworn freshness, the hopeful confidence of thirty. We are carried back to the period when Coleridge, Byron, Scott, Rogers, and Moore were in their youthful prime. We live again in the stirring days when the poets who divided public attention and interest with the Fabian struggle in Portugal and Spain, with the wild and terrible events of the Russian campaign, with the uprising of the Teutonic nations and the overthrow of Napoleon, were in a manner but commencing their cycle of songs. This is to renew, to antedate, the youth of a majority of the living generation. But only those whose memory still carries them so far back, can feel within them any reflex of that eager excitement with which the news of battles fought and won, or mailcoach copies of some new work of Scott, or Byron, or the _Edinburgh Review_, were looked for and received in those already old days.

[Footnote 3: The Prelude, or Growth of a Poet's Mind; an Autobiographical Poem. By William Wordsworth. London, Moxon. [New York, Appletons.]]

We need not remind the readers of the _Excursion_ that when Wordsworth was enabled by the generous enthusiasm of Raisley Calvert to retire with a slender independence to his native mountains, there to devote himself exclusively to his art, his first step was to review and record in verse the origin and progress of his own powers, as far as he was acquainted with them. This was at once an exercise in versification, and a test for the kind of poetry for which he was by temperament fitted. The result was a determination to compose a philosophical poem containing views of man, of nature, and of society. This, ambitious conception has been doomed to share the fate of so many other colossal undertakings. Of the three parts of his _Recluse_, thus planned, only the second, (the _Excursion_, published in 1814,) has been completed. Of the other two there exists only the first book of the first, and the plan of the third. The _Recluse_ will remain in fragmentary greatness, a poetical Cathedral of Cologne.

Matters standing thus, it has not been without a melancholy sense of the uncertainty of human projects, and of the contrast between the sanguine enterprise and its silent evaporation (so often the "history of an individual mind"), that we have perused this _Prelude_ which no completed strain was destined to follow. Yet in the poem itself there is nothing to inspire depression. It is animated throughout with the hopeful confidence in the poet's own powers, so natural to the time of life at which it was composed; it evinces a power and soar of imagination unsurpassed in any of his writings; and its images and incidents have a freshness and distinctness which they not seldom lost, when they came to be elaborated, as many of them were, in his minor poems of a later date.

The _Prelude_, as the title-page indicates, is a poetical autobiography, commencing with the earliest reminiscences of the author, and continued to the time at which it was composed. We are told that it was begun in 1799 and completed, in 1805. It consists of fourteen books. Two are devoted to the infancy and school-time of the poet; four to the period of his University life; two to a brief residence in London immediately subsequent to his leaving Cambridge, and a retrospect of the progress his mind had then made; and three to a residence in France, chiefly in the Loire, but partly in Paris, during the stormy period of Louis the Sixteenth's flight and capture, and the fierce contest between the Girondins and Robespierre. Five books are then occupied with an analysis of the internal struggle occasioned by the contradictory influences of rural and secluded nature in boyhood, and of society when the young man first mingles with the world. The surcease of the strife is recorded in the fourteenth book, entitled "Conclusion."

The poem is addressed to Coleridge; and apart from its poetical merits, is interesting as at once a counterpart and a supplement to that author's philosophical and beautiful criticism of the _Lyrical Ballads_ in his _Biographia Literaria_. It completes the explanation, there given, of the peculiar constitution of Wordsworth's mind, and of his poetical theory. It confirms and justifies our opinion that that theory was essentially partial and erroneous; but at the same time it establishes the fact that Wordsworth was a true and a great poet in despite of his theory.

The great defect of Wordsworth, in our judgment, was want of sympathy with and knowledge of men. From his birth till his entry at college, he lived in a region where he met with none whose minds might awaken his sympathies, and where life was altogether uneventful. On the other hand, that region abounded with the inert, striking, and most impressive objects of natural scenery. The elementary grandeur and beauty of external nature came thus to fill up his mind to the exclusion of human interests. To such a result his individual constitution powerfully contributed. The sensuous element was singularly deficient in his nature. He never seems to have passed through that erotic period out of which some poets have never emerged. A soaring, speculative imagination, and an impetuous, resistless self-will, were his distinguishing characteristics. From first to last he concentrated himself within himself; brooding over his own fancies and imaginations to the comparative disregard of the incidents and impressions which suggested them; and was little susceptible of ideas originating in other minds. We behold the result. He lives alone in a world of mountains, streams, and atmospheric phenomena, dealing with moral abstractions, and rarely encountered by even shadowy specters of beings outwardly resembling himself. There is measureless grandeur and power in his moral speculations. There is intense reality in his pictures of external nature. But though his human characters are presented with great skill of metaphysical analysis, they have rarely life or animation. He is always the prominent, often the exclusive, object of his own song.

Upon a mind so constituted, with its psychological peculiarities so cherished and confirmed, the fortunes and fates of others, and the stirring events of his time, made vivid but very transient impressions. The conversation and writing of contemporaries trained among books, and with the faculty of speech more fully developed than that of thought, seemed colorless and empty to one with--whom natural objects and grandeurs were always present in such overpowering force. Excluded by his social position from taking an active part in the public events of the day, and repelled by the emptiness of the then fashionable literature, he turned to private and humble life as possessing at least a reality. But he thus withheld himself from the contemplation of those great mental excitements which only great public struggles can awaken. He contracted a habit of exaggerating the importance of every-day incidents and emotions. He accustomed himself to see in men and in social relations only what he was predetermined to see there, and to impute to them a value and importance derived mainly from his own self-will. Even his natural good taste contributed to confirm him in his error. The two prevailing schools of literature in England, at that time, were the trashy and mouthing writers who adopted the sounding language of Johnson and Darwin, unenlivened by the vigorous thought of either; and the "dead-sea apes" of that inflated, sentimental, revolutionary style which Diderot had unconsciously originated, and Kotzebue carried beyond the verge of caricature. The right feeling and manly thought of Wordsworth were disgusted by these shallow word-mongers, and he flew to the other extreme. Under the influences--repulsive and attractive--we have thus attempted to indicate, he adopted the theory that as much of grandeur and profound emotion was to be found in mere domestic incidents and feelings, as on the more conspicuous stage of public life; and that a bald and naked simplicity of language was the perfection of style. Singularly enough, he was confirmed in these notions by the very writer of the day whose own natural genius, more than any of his contemporaries, impelled him to revel in great, wild, supernatural conceptions; and to give utterance to them in gorgeous language. Coleridge was perhaps the only contemporary from whom Wordsworth ever took an opinion; and that he did so from him, is mainly attributable to the fact that Coleridge did little more than reproduce to him his own notions, sometimes rectified by a subtler logic, but always rendered more attractive by new and dazzling illustrations.

Fortunately it is out of the power of the most perverse theory to spoil the true poet. The poems of Wordsworth must continue to charm and elevate mankind, in defiance of his crotchets, just as Luther, Henri Quatre, and other living impersonations of poetry do, despite all quaint peculiarities of the attire, the customs, or the opinions of their respective ages, with which they were imbued. The spirit of truth and poetry redeems, ennobles, hallows, every external form in which it may be lodged. We may "pshaw" and "pooh" at Harry Gill and the Idiot Boy; but the deep and tremulous tenderness of sentiment, the strong-winged flight of fancy, the excelling and unvarying purity, which pervade all the writings of Wordsworth, and the exquisite melody of his lyrical poems, must ever continue to attract and purify the mind. The very excesses into which his one-sided theory betrayed him, acted as a useful counter-agent to the prevailing bad taste of his time.

The Prelude may take a permanent place as one of the most perfect of his compositions. It has much of the fearless felicity of youth; and its imagery has the sharp and vivid outline of ideas fresh from the brain. The subject--the development of his own great powers--raises him above that willful dallying with trivialties which repels us in some of his other works. And there is real vitality in the theme, both from our anxiety to know the course of such a mind, and from the effect of an absorbing interest in himself excluding that languor which sometimes seized him in his efforts to impart or attribute interest to themes possessing little or none in themselves. Its mere narrative, though often very homely, and dealing in too many words, is often characterized also by elevated imagination, and always by eloquence. The bustle of London life, the prosaic uncouthness of its exterior, the earnest heart that beats beneath it, the details even of its commonest amusements, from Bartholomew Fair to Sadler's Wells, are portrayed with simple force and delicate discrimination; and for the most part skillfully contrasted with the rural life of the poet's native home. There are some truthful and powerful sketches of French character and life, in the early revolutionary era. But above all, as might have been anticipated, Wordsworth's heart revels in the elementary beauty and grandeur of his mountain theme; while his own simple history is traced with minute fidelity, and is full of unflagging interest.

We have already adverted to the fact that this Prelude was but the overture to a grander song which the poet has left, in a great measure, unsung. Reverting to this consideration an important fact seems to force itself upon our notice. The creative power of Wordsworth would appear to have been paralyzed after the publication of his Excursion. All his most finished works precede that period. His later writings generally lack the strength and freshness which we find in those of an earlier date. Some may attribute this to his want of the stimulus which the necessity of writing for a livelihood imparts, and in part they may be right; but this is not the whole secret. That his isolation from the stirring contact of competition, that his utter disregard of contemporary events, allowed his mind, which for perfect health's sake requires constantly-renewed impulses from without, to subside into comparative hebetude, there can be no doubt whatever. But the main secret of the freezing up of his fountain of poetical inspiration, we really take to have been his change of politics. Wordsworth's muse was essentially liberal--one may say, Jacobinical. That he was unconscious of any sordid motive for his change, we sincerely believe; but as certainly his conforming was the result less of reasonable conviction than of willfulness. It was by a determined effort of his will that he brought himself, to believe in the Church-and-State notions which he latterly promulgated. Hence the want of definite views, and of a living interest, which characterizes all his writings subsequent to that change, when compared with those of an earlier time. It was Wordsworth's wayward fate to be patronized and puffed into notice by the champions of old abuses, by the advocates of the pedantry of Oxford, and by the maintainers of the despotism not even of Pitt but of Castlereagh. It is already felt, however, that the poet whom these men were mainly instrumental in bringing into notice, will live in men's memories by exactly those of his writings most powerful to undermine and overthrow their dull and faded bigotries. Despite his own efforts, Wordsworth (as has been said of Napoleon) is the child and champion of Jacobinism. Though clothed in ecclesiastical formulas, his religion is little more than the simple worship of nature; his noblest moral flights are struggles to emancipate himself from conventional usage; and the strong ground of his thoughts, as of his style, is nature stripped of the gauds with which the pupils of courts and circles would bedeck and be-ribbon it. Even in the ranks of our opponents Wordsworth has been laboring in our behalf.

It is in the record of his extra-academic life that the poet soars his freest flight, in passages where we have a very echo of the emotions of an emancipated worshiper of nature flying back to his loved resorts. Apart from its poetic value, the book is a graphical and interesting portraiture of the struggles of an ingenuous and impetuous mind to arrive at a clear insight into its own interior constitution and external relations, and to secure the composure of self-knowledge and of equally adjusted aspirations. As a poem it is likely to lay fast and enduring hold on pure and aspiring intellects, and to strengthen the claim of Wordsworth to endure with his land's language.

* * * * *

THE MONUMENT TO SIR ROBERT PEEL.

A LETTER FROM WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR,

TO THE EDITOR OF THE 'EXAMINER.'

Now the fever hath somewhat subsided which came over the people from the grave of Sir Robert Peel, there is room for a few observations on his decease and on its consequences. All public writers, I believe, have expatiated on his character, comparing him with others who, within our times, have occupied the same position. My own opinion has invariably been that he was the wisest of all our statesmen; and certainly, though he found reason to change his sentiments and his measures, he changed them honestly, well weighed, always from conviction, and always for the better. He has been compared, and seemingly in no spirit of hostility or derision, with a Castlereagh, a Perceval, an Addington. a Canning. Only one of these is worthy of notice, namely Canning, whose brilliancy made his shallowness less visible, and whose graces, of style and elocution threw a vail over his unsoundness and lubricity. Sir Robert Peel was no satirist or epigrammatist: he was only a statesman in public life: only a virtuous and friendly man in private. _Par negotiis, nee supra_. Walpole alone possessed his talents for business. But neither Peel nor his family was enriched from the spoils of his country; Walpole spent in building and pictures more than double the value of his hereditary estate, and left the quadruple to his descendants.

Dissimilar from Walpole, and from commoner and coarser men who occupied the same office, Peel forbade that a name which he had made illustrious should be degraded and stigmatized by any title of nobility. For he knew that all those titles had their origin and nomenclature from military services, and belong to military men, like their epaulets and spurs and chargers. They sound well enough against the sword and helmet, but strangely in law-courts and cathedrals: but, reformer as he was, he could not reform all this; he could only keep clear of it in his own person.

I now come to the main object of my letter.

Subscriptions are advertised for the purpose of raising monuments to Sir Robert Peel; and a motion has been made in Parliament for one in Westminster Abbey at the public expense, Whatever may be the precedents, surely the house of God should contain no object but such as may remind us of His presence and our duty to Him. Long ago I proposed that ranges of statues and busts should commemorate the great worthies of our country. All the lower part of our National Gallery might be laid open for this purpose. Even the best monuments in Westminster Abbey and St. Paul's are deformities to the edifice. Let us not continue this disgrace. Deficient as we are in architects, we have many good statuaries, and we might well employ them on the statues of illustrious commanders, and the busts of illustrious statesmen and writers. Meanwhile our cities, and especially the commercial, would, I am convinced, act more wisely, and more satisfactorily to the relict of the deceased, if, instead of statues, they erected schools and almshouses, with an inscription to his memory.

We glory in about sixty whose busts and statues may occupy what are now the "deep solitudes and awful cells" in our national gallery. Our literary men of eminence are happily more numerous than the political or the warlike, or both together. There is only one class of them which might be advantageously excluded, namely, the theological; and my reasons are these. First, their great talents were chiefly employed on controversy; secondly, and consequently, their images would excite dogmatical discord. Every sect of the Anglican Church, and every class of dissenters, complaining of undue preferences. Painture and sculpture lived in the midst of corruption, lived throughout it, and seemed indeed to draw vitality from it, as flowers the most delicate from noxious air; but they collapsed at the searching breath of free inquiry, and could not abide persecution. The torch of Philosophy never kindled the suffocating fagot, under whose smoke Theology was mistaken for Religion. Theology had, until now, been speculative and quiescent: she abandoned to Philosophy these humbler qualities: instead of allaying and dissipating, as Philosophy had always done, she excited and she directed animosities. Oriental in her parentage, and keeping up her wide connections in that country, she acquired there all the artifices most necessary to the furtherance of her designs: among the rest was ventriloquism, which she quite perfected, making her words seem to sound from above and from below and from every side around. Ultimately, when men had fallen on their faces at this miracle, she assumed the supreme power. Kings were her lackeys, and nations the dust under her palfrey's hoof. By her sentence Truth was gagged, scourged, branded, cast down on the earth in manacles; and Fortitude, who had stood at Truth's side, was fastened with nails and pulleys to the stake. I would not revive by any images, in the abode of the graceful and the gentle Arts, these sorrowful reminiscences. The vicissitudes of the world appear to be bringing round again the spectral Past. Let us place great men between it and ourselves: they all are tutelar: not the warrior and the statesman only; not only the philosopher; but also the historian who follows them step by step, and the poet who secures us from peril and dejection by his counter-charm. Philosophers in most places are unwelcome: but there is no better reason why Shaftesbury and Hobbes should be excluded from our gallery, than why Epicurus should have been from Cicero's or Zeno from Lucullus's. Of our sovereigns, I think Alfred, Cromwell, and William III alone are eligible; and they, because they opposed successfully the subverters of the laws. Three viceroys of Ireland will deservedly be placed in the same receptacle; Sir John Perrot, Lord Chesterfield, and (in due time) the last Lord-Deputy. One Speaker, one only, of the Parliament; he without whom no Parliament would be now existing; he who declared to Henry IV. that until all public grievances were removed, no subsidy should be granted. The name of this Speaker may be found in Rapin; English historians talk about facts, forgetting men.

Admirals and generals are numerous and conspicuous. Drake, Blake, Rodney, Jervis, Nelson, Collingwood; the subduer of Algiers beaten down for the French to occupy: and the defender of Acre, the first who defeated, discomfited, routed, broke, and threw into shameful flight, Bonaparte. Our generals are Marlborough, Peterborough, Wellington, and that successor to his fame in India, who established the empire that was falling from us, who achieved in a few days two arduous victories, who never failed in any enterprise, who accomplished the most difficult with the smallest expenditure of blood, who corrected the disorders of the military, who gave the soldier an example of temperance, the civilian of simplicity and frugality, and whose sole (but exceedingly great) reward, was the approbation of our greatest man.

With these come the statesmen of the Commonwealth, the students of Bacon, the readers of Philip Sidney, the companions of Algernon, the precursors of Locke and Newton. Opposite to them are Chaucer, Spenser, Shakspeare, Milton; lower in dignity, Dryden, Pope, Gray, Goldsmith, Cowper, Scott, Burns, Shelley, Southey, Byron, Wordsworth; the author of _Hohenlinden_ and the _Battle of the Baltic_; and the glorious woman who equaled these, two animated works in her _Ivan_ and _Casabianca_. Historians have but recently risen up among us: and long be it before, by command of Parliament, the chisel grates on the brow of a Napier, a Grote, and Macaulay!

WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR.

* * * * *

[FROM THE SPECTATOR.]

JURISPRUDENCE OF THE MOGULS: THE PANDECTS OF AURUNGZEBE.[4]

THE Government of British India have not neglected to countenance the study of the indigenous and other systems of law which they found established on acquiring possession of the country. Warren Hastings was the first to recognize the value of such knowledge; and to his encouragement, if not to his incitement, we are indebted for the compilation of Hindoo law translated by Halbed, Jones, Colebrooke, Macnaghten, Hamilton, and a pretty numerous body of accomplished men, of whom Mr. Baillie is the most recently enrolled laborer in the vineyard, have carried on the good work. More comprehensive and accurate views of Hindoo law have gradually been developed, and the more advanced and more influential system of Mahometan jurisprudence has also shared in the attention of European students. There is, however, still much to be done in this field of inquiry; as a few remarks on the nature of the present publication, and the source whence its materials are derived, will show.

[Footnote 4: The Moohummadan Law of Sale, according to the Hunefeea Code: from the Futawa Alumgeeree, a Digest of the whole Law, prepared by command of the Emperor Aurungzebe Alumgeer. Selected and translated from the original Arabic, with an Introduction and explanatory Notes, by Neil B.E. Baillie, Author of "The Moohummadan Law of inheritance." Published by Smith and Elder.]