Chapter IV: The Moth Flies Into the Candle (2)

From the time of the victory of the Centralists until the commencement of the war with the United States, Mexico was the scene of perpetual disturbances. Mexia, a rash, but honest man, made an attempt to free his country in 1838, but failed, being defeated and executed by Santa Aña, who came from the retirement to which his Texan failure had consigned him, as champion of the government. After some years of apparent anarchy, Santa Aña became Dictator, and in 1843 a new Constitution, more centralizing in its nature than its immediate predecessor, was framed under his direction. At the beginning of 1845 he fell, and became an exile. His successor was General Herrera, who was desirous to avoid war with the United States, on which account he was violently opposed by Paredes, with success, the latter usurping the Presidency. Aided by our government, Santa Aña returned to Mexico, and infused new vigor into his countrymen. On his return, he avowed himself a Federalist, and recommended a recurrence to the Constitution of 1824, which was proclaimed. Paredes had fallen before a "revolution," and was allowed to proceed to Europe. He was a monarchist, and at that time the friends of monarchy in Mexico had some hopes of success. It is believed that the governments of England and France were desirous of establishing a Mexican monarchy, and their intervention in the affairs of Mexico was feared by our government. Two things, however, prevented their action, if ever they seriously contemplated armed intervention. The first was the rapid success of our armies, coupled as it was with the exhibition of a military spirit and capacity for which European nations had not been prepared by anything in our previous history; and the second was the potato-rot, which brought Great Britain to the verge of famine, and broke up the Tory party. The ill feeling, too, that was created between the English and French governments by the Montpensier marriage, and the discontent of the French people, which led to the Revolution of 1848, were not without their effect on affairs. Had our government resolved to seize all Mexico, it could have done so without encountering European resistance in 1848, when there was not a stable Continental government of the first class west of the Niemen, and when England was too much occupied with home matters, and with the revolutions that were happening all around her, to pay any regard to the course of events in the Occident. But the Polk administration was not equal to the work that was before it; and though members of the Democratic party did think of acting, and men of property in Mexico were anxious for annexation, nothing was done. The American forces left Mexico, and the old routine of weakness and disorder was there resumed. Perhaps it would be better to say it was continued; for the war had witnessed no intermission of the senseless proceedings of the Mexican politicians. Their contests were waged as bitterly as they had been while the country enjoyed external peace.

Several persons held the Presidential chair after the resignation of Herrera. Organic changes were made. The clergy exhibited the same selfishness that had characterized their action for five-and-twenty years. An Extraordinary Constituent Congress confirmed the readoption of the Constitution of 1824, making such slight changes as were deemed necessary. Santa Aña again became President. Some of the States formed associations for defence, acting independently of the general government. After the loss of the capital, Santa Aña resigned the Presidency, and Peña y Peña succeeded him, followed by Anaya; but the first soon returned to office. Peace was made, and Santa Aña again went into exile. Herrera was chosen President, and for more than two years devoted himself to the work of reformation, with considerable success, though outbreaks and rebellions occurred in many quarters. President Arista also showed himself to be a firm and patriotic chief. But in 1852 a reaction took place, under favor of which Santa Aña returned home and became President for the fifth time, and Arista was banished. The government of Santa Aña was absolute in its character, and much resembled that which Napoleon III. has established in France,--with this difference, that it wanted that strength which is the chief merit of the French imperial system. It encountered opposition of the usual form, from time to time, until it was broken down, in August, 1855, when the President left both office and the country, and has since resided abroad. The new revolution favored Federalism. Alvarez was chosen President, but he was too liberal for the Church party, being so unreasonable as to require that the property of the Church should be taxed. Plots and conspiracies were formed against him, and it being discovered that the climate of the capital did not agree with him, he resigned, and was succeeded by General Comonfort. Half a dozen leaders "pronounced" against Comonfort, one of them announcing his purpose to establish an Empire. Government made head against these attacks, and seized property belonging to the Church. Some eminent Church officers were banished, for the part they had taken in exciting insurrections. At the close of 1857, Comonfort made himself Dictator; but the very men who urged him to the step became his enemies, and he was deprived of power. Zuloaga, who was one of his advisers and subsequent enemies, succeeded him, being chosen President by a Council of Notables. Comonfort's measures for the confiscation of Church property were repealed. The Constitution of 1857 placed the Presidential power in the hands of the Chief Justice, on the resignation of the President, whence the prominence of Juarez lately, he being Chief Justice when Comonfort resigned. Assembling troops, he encountered Zuloaga, but was defeated. The Juarez "government" then left the country, but shortly after returned. Insurrections broke out in different places, and confusion reigned on all sides. General Robles deposed Zuloaga, and made an honest effort to unite the Liberals and Conservatives; but the Junta which he assembled elected Miramon President, a new man, who had distinguished himself as a leader of the Conservative forces. Miramon reinstated Zuloaga, but accepted the Presidency on the latter's abdication, and has since been the principal personage in Mexico, and, though he has experienced occasional reverses, has far more power than Juarez. At the close of the year 1859, the greater part of Mexico was either disposed to submit to the Miramon government, or cared little for either Miramon or Juarez.

It is impossible to believe that the Juarez government is possessed of much strength; and the gentleman who lately represented the United States in Mexico (Mr. Forsyth) is of opinion that it is powerless. Nevertheless, our government acknowledges that of Juarez, and has made itself a party to the contests in Mexico. In his last Annual Message, President Buchanan devotes much space to Mexican affairs, drawing a deplorable picture thereof, and recommending armed intervention by the United States in behalf of the Liberal party. "I recommend to Congress," says the President, "to pass a law authorizing the President, under such conditions as they may deem expedient, to employ a sufficient military force to enter Mexico for the purpose of obtaining indemnity for the past and security for the future." This force, should Congress respond favorably to the Presidential recommendation, is to act in concert with the Juarez government, and to "restore" it to power. In return for such aid, that government is to indemnify the Americans, and to provide that no more Americans shall be wronged by Mexican governments. Does the President believe this theory of Mexican settlement will be accepted by the world? If yes, then is he a man of marvellous faith, considering the uncommonly excellent opportunities he has had to learn what the political settlements of Mexico really mean. If no, then he has a meaning beneath his words, and that meaning is the conquest of Mexico. We do not charge duplicity upon President Buchanan, but it is vexatious and humiliating to be compelled to choose between such charge and the belief of a degree of simplicity in him that would be astonishing in a yearling politician, and which is astounding in a man who has held high office for well-nigh forty years. Let us suppose that Congress should kindly listen to President Buchanan's recommendation,--that a strong fleet and a great army should be sent to the aid of the Juarez government, and should establish it in the capital of Mexico, and then leave the country and the coasts of "our sister Republic,"--what would follow? Why, exactly what we have seen follow the Peace of 1848. The Juarez government could not be stronger or more honest than was that of Herrera, or more anxious to effect the rehabilitation of Mexico; yet Herrera's government had to encounter rebellions, and outrages were common during its existence, and afterward, when men of similar views held sway, or what passes for sway in "our sister Republic." So would it be again, should we effect a "restoration" of the Liberals. In a week after our last regiment should have returned home, there would be rebellions for our allies to suppress. If they should succeed in maintaining their power, it would be as the consequence of a violation of their agreement with us; and where, then, would be the "indemnity" for which we are to fight? If they should be overthrown, as probably would be their fate, where would be the "security" for which we are to pay so highly in blood and gold? It is useless to quote the treaty which the Juarez government has just made with our government, as evidence of its liberality and good faith. That treaty is of no more value than would be one between the United States and the ex-king of Delhi. Nothing is more notorious than the liberality of parties that are not in power. There is no stipulation to which they will not assent, and violate, if their interest should be supposed to lie in the direction of perjury. Have we, in the hour of our success, been invariably true to the promises made in the hour of our necessities? A study of the treaty we made with France in 1778, by the light of after years, would be useful to men who think that a treaty made is an accomplished fact. The people of the United States have to choose between the conquest of Mexico and non-intervention in Mexican affairs. There may be something to be said in favor of conquest, though the President's arguments in that direction--for such they are, disguised though they be--remind us strongly of those which were put forth in justification of the partition of Poland; but the policy of intervention does not bear criticism for one moment. Either it is conquest veiled, or it is a blunder, the chance to commit which is to be purchased at an enormous price; and blunders are to be had for nothing, and without the expenditure of life and money.

We had purposed speaking of the condition of Mexico, the character of her population, and the probable effect of her absorption by the United States; but the length to which our article has been drawn in the statement of preliminary facts--a statement made necessary by the general disregard of Mexican matters by most Americans--warns us to forbear. We may return to the subject, should the action of Congress on the President's recommendation lead to the placing of the Mexican question on the list of those questions that must be decided by the event of the national election of the current year.

REVIEWS AND LITERARY NOTICES.

_The Florence Stories._ By JACOB ABBOTT. _Florence and John._ New York: Sheldon & Co. 16mo. pp. 252.

_Ernest Bracebridge, or Schoolboy Days._ By W. H. G. KINGSTON. Boston: Ticknor & Fields. 16mo. pp. 344.

How should a book for children be written?

Three rules will suffice. It should be written clearly and simply; for young minds will spend little time in difficult investigation. It should have a good moral. It should be interesting; or it will generally be left unread, and thus any other excellence that it may possess will be useless. Some writers seem to have a fourth rule,--that it should be instructive; but, really, it is no great matter, if a child should have some books without wisdom. Moreover, this maxim is eminently perilous in its practical application, and, indeed, is seldom followed but at the expense of the other three.

To these three rules all writers of children's books profess to conform; yet a good book for children is a rarity; for, simple as the rules are, they are very little understood. While all admit that the style should be simple and familiar, some appear to think that anything simple to them will be equally simple to their child-readers, and write as nearly as possible in the style of "The Rambler." Such a book is "The Percy Family," whose author is guilty of an additional impropriety in putting his ponderous sentences into the mouth of a child not ten years old. Another and more numerous class, evidently piquing themselves not a little upon avoiding this error, fall into another by fancying it necessary to _write down_ to their young readers. They explain everything with a tiresome minuteness of detail, although any observer of children ought to know that a child's mind does not want everything explained. They think that simplicity demands this lengthy discussion of every trivial matter. There is such a thing as a conceited simplicity, and there is a technical simplicity, that in its barrenness and insipidity is worthy only of a simpleton. In Jacob Abbott's "Juveniles" especially, by means of this minuteness, a very scanty stock of ideas is made to go a great way. Does simplicity require such trash as this?

"The place was known by the name of the Octagon. The reason why
it was called by this name was, that the principal sitting-room
in the house was built in the form of an octagon, that is,
instead of having four sides, as a room usually has, this room
had eight sides. An octagon is a figure of eight sides.

"A figure of four sides is called a square. A figure of five
sides is called a pentagon, of six sides a hexagon, of eight
sides an octagon. There might be a figure of seven sides, but
it would not be very easily made, and it would not be very
pretty when it was made, and so it is seldom used or spoken of.
But octagons and hexagons are very common, for they are easily
made, and they are very regular and symmetrical in form."

The object of all this is, doubtless, to impart valuable information. But while such slipshod writing is singularly uninteresting, it may also be censured as inaccurate. Mr. Abbott seems to think all polygons necessarily regular. Any child can make a heptagon at once, notwithstanding Mr. Abbott calls it so difficult. A _regular_ heptagon, indeed, is another matter. Then what does he mean by saying octagons and hexagons are very regular? A regular octagon is regular, though an octagon in general is no more regular than any other figure. But Mr. Abbott continues:--

"If you wish to see exactly what the form of an octagon is, you
can make one in this way. First cut out a piece of paper in the
form of a square. This square will, of course, have four sides
and four corners. Now, if you cut off the four corners, you
will have four new sides, for at every place where you cut off
a corner you will have a new side. These four new sides,
together with the parts of the old sides that are left, will
make eight sides, and so you will have an octagon.

"If you wish your octagon to be regular, you must be careful
how much you cut off at each corner. If you cut off too little,
the new sides which you make will not be so long as what
remains of the old ones. If you cut off too much, they will be
longer. You had better cut off a little at first from each
corner, all around, and then compare the new sides with what
is left of the old ones. You can then cut off a little more,
and so on, until you make your octagon nearly regular.

"There are other much more exact modes of making octagons than
this, but I cannot stop to describe them here."

Must we have no more pennyworths of sense to such a monstrous quantity of verbiage than Mr. Abbott gives us here? We would defy any man to parody that. He could teach the penny-a-liners a trick of the trade worth knowing. The great Chrononhotonthologos, crying,

"Go call a coach, and let a coach be called,
And let the man that calleth be the caller,
And when he calleth, let him nothing call
But 'Coach! coach! coach! Oh, for a coach, ye gods!'"

is comparatively a very Spartan for brevity. This may be a cheap way of writing books; but the books are a dear bargain to the buyer.

A book is not necessarily ill adapted to a child because its ideas and expressions are over his head. Some books, that were not written for children and would shock all Mr. Abbott's most dearly cherished ideas, are still excellent reading for them. Walter Scott's poems and novels will please an intelligent child. Cooper's Leatherstocking tales will not be read by the lad of fourteen more eagerly than by his little sister who cannot understand half of them. A child fond of reading can have no more delightful book than the "Faërie Queene," unless it be the "Arabian Nights," which was not written as a "juvenile." There are pages by the score in "Robinson Crusoe" that a child cannot understand,--and it is all the better reading for him on that account. A child has a comfort in unintelligible words that few men can understand. Homer's "Iliad" is good reading, though only a small part may be comprehended. (We are not, however, so much in favor of mystery as to recommend the original Greek.) Do our children of the year 1860 ever read a book called "The Pilgrim's Progress"? Hawthorne's "Wonder-Book" is good for children, though better for adults.

Then look at our second rule. What, after all, constitutes a "good moral"? We say that no book has a good moral which teaches a child that goodness and effeminacy, laziness and virtue, are convertible terms; no book is good that is "goody," no book is moral that moralizes. The intention may be good, but the teaching is not. Have as much as you will of poetical justice, but beware of making your books mere vehicles for conveying maxims of propriety. You cannot so deceive a child. You may talk _at_ him, while pretending to tell him a story, but he will soon be shy of you. He has learned by bitter experience too much of the falseness of this world, and has been too often beguiled by sugared pills, to be slow in detecting the sugared pills of your literature,--especially, O Jacob Abbott! when the pills have so little, so very little, sugar.

Our notion of a good moral is a strong, breezy, open-air moral, one that teaches courage, and therefore truth. These are the most important things for a child to know, and a book which teaches these alone is moral enough. And these can be taught without offending the mind of the young reader, however keenly suspicious. But if you wish to teach gentleness and kindness as well, let them be shown in your story by some noisy boy who can climb trees, or some active, merry, hoydenish girl who can run like Atalanta; and don't imply a falsehood by attributing them always to the quiet children.

Mr. Abbott's books have spoiled our children's books, and have done their best to spoil our children, too. There is no fresh, manly life in his stories; anything of the kind is sourly frowned down. Rollo, while strolling along, picturesquely, perhaps, but stupidly, sees A Noisy Boy, and is warned by his insufferable father to keep out of that boy's way. That Noisy Boy infallibly turns out vicious. Is that sound doctrine? Will that teach a child to admire courage and activity? If he is ever able to appreciate the swing and vigor of Macaulay's Lays, it will not be because you trained him on such lyrics as

"In the winter, when 'tis mild,
We may run, but not be wild;
But in summer, we must walk,
And improve our time by talk" (!)

but because that Noisy Boy found him out,--and, quarrelling with him, (your boy, marvellous to relate! having provoked the quarrel by some mean trick, in spite of his seraphic training,) gave him a black eye,--and afterwards, turning out to be the best-hearted Noisy Boy in the world, taught him to climb trees and hunt for birds' nests,--and stopped him when he was going to kill the little birds, (for your pattern boy--poor child! how could he help it?--was as cruel as he was timid,)--and imparted to him the sublime mysteries of base-ball and tag and hockey,--and taught him to swim and row, and to fight bigger boys and leave smaller boys in peace, instructions which he was at first inclined to reverse,--and put him in the way to be an honest, fearless man, when he was in danger of becoming a white-faced and white-livered spooney. And that Noisy Boy himself, perversely declining to verify Mr. Abbott's decorous prophecies, has not turned out badly, after all, but has Reverend before his name and reverence in his heart, and has his theology sound because his lungs are so. No doubt, Tom Jones often turns out badly, but Master Blifil always does,--a fact which Mr. Abbott would do well to note and perpend.

What! Because Rollo is virtuous, shall there be no more mud-cakes and ale? Marry, but there shall! Don't keep a boy out of his share of free movement and free air, and don't keep a girl out. Poor little child! she will be dieted soon enough on "stewed prunes." Children need air and water,--milk and water won't do. They are longing for our common mother earth, in the dear, familiar form of dirt; and it is no matter how much dirt they get on them, if they only have water enough to wash it off. The more they are allowed to eat literal dirt now, the less metaphorical dirt will they eat a few years hence. The great Free-Soil principle is good for their hearts, if not for their clothes; and which is it more important to have clean? Just make up your mind to let the clothes go; and if you can't afford to have your children soil and tear their laced pantalets and plumed hats and open-work stockings, why, take off all those devices of the enemy, and substitute stout cloth and stout boots. What have they to do with open-work stockings?

"Doff them for shame,
And hang a calf-skin on those recreant limbs."

Believe now, instead of learning by sad experience, that tin trumpets and torn clothes do not necessarily signify depravity, and that quiet children are not always free from deceit, cruelty, and meanness. The quiet, ideal child, of whom Mr. Abbott thinks so highly, generally proves, in real life, neither more nor less than a prig. He is more likely to die than live; and if he lives, you may wish he had died.

These models not only check a child's spirit, but tend to make him dishonest. Ask a child now what he thinks, and, ten to one, he mentally refers to some eminent exemplar of all the virtues for instructions, and, instead of telling you what he does think, quotes listlessly what he ought to think. So that his mincing affectation is not merely ungraceful, but is a sign of an inward taint, which may prove fatal to the whole character. It is very easy to make a child disingenuous; if he be at all timid, the work is already half done to one's hand. Of course, all children are not bad who are brought up on such books,--one circumstance or another may counteract their hurtful tendency,--but the tendency is no less evident, nor is it a vindication of any system to prove that some are good in its despite.

Again, the popularity of these tame, spiritless books is no conclusive evidence of their merit. The poor children are given nothing else to read, and, of course, they take what they can get as better than nothing. An eager child, fond of reading, will read the shipping intelligence in a newspaper, if there be nothing else at hand. Does that show that he is properly supplied with reading matter? They will read these books; but they would read better books with more pleasure and more profit.

For our third rule, let our children's stories have no lack of incident and adventure. That will redeem any number of faults. Thus, Marryatt's stories, and Mayne Reid's, although in many respects open to censure and ridicule, are very popular, and deserve to be. The books first put into a child's hands are right enough, for they are vivid. Whether the letter A be associated in our infant minds with the impressive moral of "In Adam's fall We sinned all," or gave us a foretaste of the Apollo in "A was an Archer, and shot at a Frog,"--in either case, the story is a plainly told incident, (carefully observing the unities,) which the child's fancy can embellish for itself, and the whole has an additional charm from the gorgeous coloring of an accompanying picture. The vividness is good, and is the only thing that is good. Why, then, should this one merit be omitted, as our children grow a little older? A lifeless moral will not school a child into propriety. If a twig be unreasonably bent, it is very likely to struggle in quite a different direction, especially if in so doing it struggle towards the light. There is much truth in a blundering version of the old Scriptural maxim, "Chain up a child, and away he will go." If you want to do any good by your books, make them interesting.

And with reference to all three rules, remember that they are to be interpreted by the light of common sense, and you will hardly need the following remarks:--

It is alike uncomfortable and useless to a child to be perpetually waylaid by a moral. A child reading "The Pilgrim's Progress" will omit the occasional explanations of the allegory or resolutely ignore their meaning. If you want to keep a poor child on such dry food, don't mistake your own reason for doing so. It may be eminently proper, but it is very uncomfortable to him. If you want children to enjoy themselves, let them run about freely, and don't put them into a ring, in picturesque attitudes, and then throw bouquets of flowers at them. But, if you will do so, confess it is not for their gratification, but for your own.

If you choose to try the dangerous experiment of writing "instructive" stories, beware of defeating your own object. You write a story rather than a treatise, because information is often more effective when indirectly conveyed. Clearly, then, if you convey your information too directly, you lose all this advantage.

Perfection is as intolerable in these as in any other stories. We all want, especially children, some amiable weaknesses to sympathize with. Thus, in "Ernest Bracebridge," an English story of school-life, the hero is a dreadfully unpleasant boy who is always successful and always right, and we are soon heartily weary of him. Besides, he is a horrible boy for mastery of all the arts and sciences, and delivers brief and epigrammatic discourses, being about twelve years old. However, the book is full of adventure and out-door games, and so far is good.

After all, a child does not need many books. If, however, we are to have them, we may as well have good ones. There is no reason why dulness should be diverted from its legitimate channels into the writing of children's books. Let us disabuse ourselves of the idea that these are the easiest books to write. Let us remember that the alphabet is harder to teach than the Greek Drama, and no longer think that the proper man to write children's books is the man who is able to write nothing else.

_The Simplicity of Christ's Teachings, set forth in Sermons._ By CHARLES T. BROOKS, Pastor of the Unitarian Church, Newport, R. I. Boston: Crosby, Nichols, & Co. 1859. 16mo. pp. 342.

The name of the author of this volume has long been known as that of an accomplished man of letters. Successive volumes of poetic versions, chiefly from the German, had, by their various merit, gained for him a high rank among our translators, when four years ago, in 1856, by a translation of "Faust," he set himself at the head of living authors in this department of literature. It is little to say of his work, that it is the best of the numerous English renderings of Goethe's tragedy. It is not extravagant to assert that a better translation is scarcely possible. It is a work which combines extraordinary fidelity to the form of the original with true appreciation of its spirit. It is at once literal and free, and displays in its execution the qualities both of exact scholarship and of poetic feeling and capacity.

This work, and the others of a similar kind which preceded it, were the result of the intervals of leisure occurring in the course of their author's professional life as a clergyman. While the wider world has known him only through these volumes, a smaller circle has long known and loved him as the faithful and able preacher and pastor,--as one to whom the most beautiful description ever written of the character of a good parson might be truly applied; for

"A good man he was of religioun,
That was a poure Persone of a toun:
But riche he was of holy thought and werk;
He was also a lerned man, a clerk,
That Cristes gospel trewely wolde preche,
His parishens devoutly wolde he teche.

* * * * *

And Cristes lore and his apostles' twelve
He taught, but first he folwed it himselve."

And it is in this character that he now comes before us in the volume which is well entitled "The Simplicity of Christ's Teachings."

It is a misfortune that the qualities which distinguish most published sermons are not such as to recommend them on the score of literary merit. The volumes of religious discourses which are worthy to hold a place in literature, when judged by the usual critical standard, are very few. A very large proportion of those which are continually appearing from the press deserve no remembrance, and fortunately have no permanence. They are addressed to a special class of readers,--a class generally neither of highly cultivated taste, nor of acute critical perception. Their writers are rarely men of sufficient talent to win for themselves recognition out of their own narrow set. What in the slang of the day are called "sensation" sermons are no exception to the common rule. Their momentary effect, depending upon exaggeration and extravagance, is no indication of worth. We should no more think of criticizing them in a literary journal, than of criticizing the novels of Mr. Cobb or Mr. Reynolds. Some of the causes of the poverty of thought and of the negligence of style of average sermons are obvious. The very interest and importance of the subjects with which the preacher has to deal oftentimes serve to deaden rather than to excite the mind of one who takes them up in the formal round of duty. The pretensions of the clergy of many sects, pretensions as readily acknowledged as made, save them from the necessity of intellectual exertion. The frequent recurrence of the necessity of writing, whether they have anything to say or not, leads them into substituting words for thoughts, platitudes for truths. The natural weariness of long-continued solitary professional labor brings mental lassitude and feebleness. The absence of the fear of close and watchful criticism prevents them from bestowing suitable pains upon their composition. These and other causes combine to make the mass of the writing which is delivered from the pulpit poorer than any other which passes current in the world,--perhaps, indeed, not poorer in an absolute sense, but poorer when compared with the nature of the subjects that it treats. It is by no means, however, to be inferred, that, because a sermon is totally without merit as a work of literature, it is incapable of producing some good in those who listen to it. On the contrary, such is the frame of mind of many who regularly attend church, that they are not unlikely to derive good from a performance which, if weak, may yet be sincere, and which deals with the highest truths, even if it deal with them in an imperfect and unsatisfactory manner. And, indeed, as George Herbert says, good may be got from the worst preaching; for,

"if all want sense,
God takes the text, and preacheth patience."

Unquestionably, however, there is too much preaching in these days; too many sermons are written, and the spirit of Christianity is less effective than if the words concerning it were less numerous.

It is a rare satisfaction, therefore, to find such a volume of sermons as that of Mr. Brooks, which, though not possessing the highest merit in point of style, are the discourses of a thoughtful and cultivated man, with a peculiar spiritual refinement, and with a devout intellect, made clear by its combination with purity of heart and simplicity of faith. The religious questions which are chiefly stirring the minds of men are taken up in them and discussed with what may be called an earnest moderation, with elevation of feeling and insight of spirit.

_Goethe's Correspondence with a Child._ Boston: Ticknor & Fields. 1859.

The immediate cause of the republication of these letters is the recent death of Bettina, the child with whom Goethe corresponded. Though this fact, and the beauty of the volume, may quicken the sale of the work, and draw out fresh encomiums on its excellence, it has long since passed the critical crisis and taken its place as one of the most remarkable series of letters which the public have ever been invited to peruse. Something of the marvellous vanishes from them, however, when we find that the title, "Correspondence with a Child," is a misnomer; Bettina having been, in truth, twenty-two years of age when she first visited Goethe. Yet while this important circumstance abates much of the wonder with which we once read her thoughts and confessions, they really become all the more valuable as studies in human nature when we learn that they are the exhalations of a heart in full flower, and one upon which the dews of morning should not linger. The poet had reached the age of sixty when this tide of tender sentiment, original ideas, and enthusiastic admiration began to flow in upon him. Their first interview, as Bettina describes it, with singular freedom, in one of the letters to Goethe's mother, will be found a useful key, though perhaps not a complete one, by which to interpret the glowing passion which gushed from her pen. That the poet was pleased with the homage of this sweet, graceful, and affectionate girl, and drew her on to the revealing of her whole nature, is readily perceived. But when we inquire, To what end? we should remember, that, like Parrhasius, Goethe was before all things an artist; and furthermore, the correspondence of time will show that from this crowning knowledge the "Elective Affinities" sprang. It may be that her admiration was for his genius alone; if so, she chose love's language for its wealth of expression. Were it so received, it could not but be regarded as a peerless offering, for she was certainly a kindred spirit. There are many rare thoughts and profound confessions in these letters, which would have commanded the praise of Goethe, had they been written by a rival; and coming, as they did, from a devotee who declared that she drew her inspiration from him alone, they must have filled his soul with incense, of which that burned by the priest in the temple of the gods is only an emblem. To be brief and compendious on this book, it appears to be a heart unveiled. German critics throw some doubts on the literal veracity of the book; but it belongs at any rate to the better class of the _ben trovati_, and among its leaves, the dreamer, the lover, and the poet will find that ambrosial fruit on which fancy loves to feed, but whose blossoms are so generally blasted by the common air that only the few favored ones have had their longings for it appeased. In imagination, at least, Bettina partook of this banquet, and had the genius to wreak on words the emotions which swept through her heart.

_Sir Rohan's Ghost._ A Romance. Boston: J. E. Tilton & Company. 1860. pp. 352.

It is very plain that we have got a new poet,--a tremendous responsibility both for him who will have to learn how to carry the brimming vase of Art from the Pierian spring without squandering a drop, and for us critics who are to reconcile ourselves to what is new in him, and to hold him strictly to that apprenticeship to the old which is the condition of mastery at last.

Criticism in America has reached something like the state of the old Continental currency. There is no honest relation between the promises we make and the specie basis of meaning they profess to represent. "The most extraordinary book of the age" is published every week; "genius" springs up like mullein, wherever the soil is thin enough; the yearly catch of "weird imagination," "thrilling pathos," "splendid description," and "sublime imagery" does not fall short of an ordinary mackerel-crop; and "profound originality" is so plenty that one not in the secret would be apt to take it for commonplace. Now Tithonus, whom, as the oldest inhabitant, we have engaged to oversee the criticism of the "Atlantic," has a prodigiously long memory,--almost as long as one of Dickens's descriptive passages,--he remembers perfectly well all the promising young fellows from Orpheus down, and has made a notch on the stalk of a devil's-apron for every one who ever came to anything that was of more consequence to the world than to himself. His tally has not yet mounted to a baker's dozen. Accordingly, when a young enthusiast rushes to tell Tithonus that a surprising genius has turned up, that venerable and cautious being either puts his hand behind his ear and absconds into an extemporary deafness, or says dryly, "American kind, I suppose?" This coolness of our wary senior is infectious, and we confess ourselves so far disenchanted by it, that, when we go into a library, the lettering on the backs of nine-tenths of the volumes contrives to shape itself into a laconic _Hic jacet_.

It is of prime necessity to bring back the currency of criticism to the old hard-money basis. We have been gradually losing all sense of the true relation between words and things,--the surest symptom of intellectual decline. And this looseness of criticism reacts in the most damaging way upon literature by continually debasing the standard, and by confounding all distinction between fame and notoriety. Ought it to be gratifying to the author of "Popular Sovereignty, a Poem in Twelve Cantos," to be called the most remarkable man of the age, when he knows that he shares that preëminence with Mr. Tupper, nay, with half the names in the Directory? Indiscriminate eulogy is the subtlest form of depreciation, for it makes all praise suspicious.

We look upon artistic genius as the rarest and most wayward apparition among mankind. It cannot be predicated upon any of Mr. Buckle's averages. Given the census, you may, perhaps, say so many murders, so many suicides, so many misdirected letters (and men of letters), but not so many geniuses. In this one thing old Mother Nature will be whimsical and womanish. This is a gift that John Bull, or Johnny Crapaud, or Brother Jonathan does not find in his stocking every Christmas. Crude imagination is common enough,--every hypochondriac has a more than Shakspearian allowance of it; fancy is cheap, or nobody would dream; eloquence sits ten deep on every platform. But genius in Art is that supreme organizing and idealizing faculty which, by combining, arranging, modulating, by suppressing the abnormal and perpetuating the essential, apes creation,--which from the shapeless terror or tipsy fancy of the benighted ploughman can conjure the sisters of Fores heath and the court of Titania,--which can make language thunder or coo at will,--which, in short, is the ruler of those qualities any one of which in excess is sure to overmaster the ordinary mind, and which can crystallize helpless vagary into the clearly outlined and imperishable forms of Art.

It is not, therefore, from any grudging incapacity to appreciate new authors, but from a strong feeling that we are to guard the graves of the dead from encroachment, and their fames from vulgarization, that the "Atlantic" has been and will be sparing in its use of the word _genius_. One may safely predicate power, nicety of thought and language, a clear eye for scenery and character, and grace of poetic conception of a book, without being willing to say that it gives proof of genius. For genius is the _shaping_ faculty, the power of using material in the best way, and may not work itself clear of the besetting temptation of personal gifts and of circumstances in a first or even second work. It is something capable of education and accomplishment, and the patience with which it submits itself to this needful schooling and self-abnegation is one of the surest tests of its actual possession. Could even Shakspeare's poems and earlier plays come before us for judgment, we could only say of them, as of Keats's "Endymion," that they showed affluence, but made no sure prophecy of that artistic self-possession without which plenty is but confusion and incumbrance.

So much by way of preface, lest we might seem cold to the very remarkable merits of "Sir Rohan's Ghost," if we treated it as a book worth finding fault with, instead of condemning it to the indifferent limbo of general eulogy. It is our deliberate judgment that no first volume by any author has ever been published in America showing more undoubtful symptoms of genuine poetic power than this. There are passages in it where imagination and language combine in the most artistic completeness, and the first quatrain of the song which Sir Rohan fancies he hears,--

----"In a summer twilight,
While yet the dew was hoar,
I went plucking purple pansies
Till my love should come to shore,"--

seems to us absolutely perfect in its simplicity and suggestiveness. It has that wayward and seemingly accidental just-right-ness that is so delightful in old ballads. The hesitating cadence of the third line is impregnated with the very mood of the singer, and lingers like the action it pictures. All those passages in the book, too, where the symptoms of Sir Rohan's possession by his diseased memory are handled, where we see all outward nature but as wax to the plastic will of imagination, are to the utmost well-conceived and carried out. It was part of the necessity of the case that the book should be conjectural and metaphysical, for it is plain that the author is young and has little experience of the actual. Accordingly, with a true instinct, she (for the newspapers ascribe the authorship of the book to Miss Prescott) calls her story a Romance, thus absolving it from any cumbersome allegiance to fact, and lays the scene of it in England, where she can have old castles, old traditions, old families, old servants, and all the other olds so essential to the young writer, ready to her hand.

We like the book better for being in the main _subjective_ (to use the convenient word Mr. Ruskin is so angry with); for a young writer can only follow the German plan of conjuring things up "from the depths of his inward consciousness." The moment our author quits this sure ground, her touch becomes uncertain and her colors inharmonious. Character-painting is unessential to a romance, belonging as it does properly to the novel of actual life, in which the romantic element is equally out of place. Fielding, accordingly, the greatest artist in character since Shakspeare, hardly admits sentiment, and never romance, into his master-pieces. Hawthorne, again, another great master, feeling instinctively the poverty and want of sharp contrast in the externals of our New England life, always shades off the edges of the actual, till, at some indefinable line, they meet and mingle with the supersensual and imaginative.

The author of "Sir Rohan" attempts character in Redruth the butler, and in the villain and heroine of her story. We are inclined to think the villain the best hit of the three, because he is downright scoundrel without a redeeming point, as the Nemesis of the story required him to be, and because he is so far a purely ideal character. But there is no such thing possible as an ideal butler, at least in the sense our author assumes in the cellar-scene. The better poet, the worse butler; and so we are made impatient by his more than Redi-isms about wine, full of fancy as they are in themselves, because they are an impertinence. For the same reason, we forgive the heroine her rhapsodies about the figures of the Arthur-romances, but cannot pardon her descents into real life and her incursions on what should be the sanctuary of the breakfast-table. The author attributes to her a dash of gypsy blood; and if her style of humorous conversation be a fair type of that of the race in general, we no longer wonder that they are homeless exiles from human society. When will men learn the true nature of a pun,--that it is a play upon ideas, and not upon sounds,--and that a perfect one is as rare as a perfect poem?

In the prose "Edda," the dwarfs tell a monstrous fib, when they pretend that Kvasir, the inventor of poetry, has been suffocated by his own wisdom. Nevertheless, the little fellows showed thereby that they were not short of intelligence; for it is almost always in their own overflow that young poets are drowned. This superabundance seems to us the chief defect in "Sir Rohan's Ghost." The superabundance is all very fine, of the costliest kind; but was Clarence any the better for being done to death in Malmsey instead of water?

This fault we look on as a fault of promise. There is always a chance that luxuriance may be pruned, but none short of a miracle that a broomstick may be made to blossom. There is, however, one absolute, and not relative fault in the book, which we find it harder to forgive, since it is one of instinct rather than of Art. The author seems to us prone to confound the _terrible_, (the only true subject of Art) with the _horrible_. The one rouses moral terror or aversion, the other only physical disgust. This is one of the worst effects of the modern French school upon literature, the inevitable result of its degrading the sensuous into the sensual.

We have found all the fault we could with this volume, because we sincerely think that the author of it is destined for great things, and that she owes it to the rare gift she has been endowed with to do nothing inconsiderately, and by honest self-culture to raise natural qualities to conscious and beneficent powers.

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