Chapter IX: Part I (3)

The Democratic party should not be restored to power, happen what may in the course of the present campaign. This we say, not because we believe the Democratic masses wanting in loyalty or patriotism, but because we are of opinion that there should be no change either in the position of parties or in the _personnel_ of the Government. There ought to be no doubt as to the soundness of the views that are held by most Democrats. They love their country, and they desire to see the Rebels subdued. They have the same interest, considered as citizens, in the triumph of the Federal cause that we all have. They have contributed their share of men to the fleets and armies of the Republic, and to the rolls on which are inscribed the names of the gallant dead. Many of our best generals formerly belonged to the Democratic organization, and they may still hold Democratic opinions on common politics. Why, then, object to the Democratic party being replaced in power? Because that would be a restoration, and it is a truism that a restoration is of all things the worst thing that can befall a country in times of civil commotion. If it could be settled beyond controversy that the Democratic party, should it be restored, would be governed by those of its members who have done their duty to their country in every way, no objection could be made to its coming again into possession of the National Government. But we know that nothing of the kind would take place. The most violent members of the Democratic party would govern that party, and dictate its policy and course of action, were it to triumph in the pending political contest. We wish for no better proof of this than is afforded by the conduct of Democratic conventions for some time past. The last convention of the New-Hampshire Democracy gave utterance to sentiments not essentially differing from those which were proclaimed by the supporters of Mr. Vallandigham in Ohio. Unwarned by the fate of the Ohio Democrats, the representatives of the New-Hampshire Democracy assumed a position that virtually pledged their State to make war on the Federal Government, should they succeed in electing Mr. Harrington, their candidate for Governor. The issue was distinctly made, and the people of New Hampshire, by a much larger majority than has usually marked the result of their State elections since the Civil War began, reëlected Mr. Gillmore, who owed his first term of office to the Legislature's action: so great was the change wrought in one year. This shows that some of the Democratic voters are not prepared to follow their leaders to destruction. So was it in Connecticut. The Democratic convention in that State exhibited a very strong feeling of disloyalty, but the people rebuked its members by reëlecting Governor Buckingham by a majority twice as large as that which he received last year. Here we have proofs, that, while the men who manage the Democratic party are prepared to go all lengths in opposition to the Federal Government, they cannot carry all their ordinary followers with them, when they unhesitatingly avow their principles and purpose. If they are so rabid, when engaged in action that is simply preliminary to local elections, what might not be expected from them, should they find themselves intrusted with the charge of the National Government? They would then behave in the most intolerant manner, and would introduce into this country a system of proscription quite as bad as anything of the kind that was known to the Romans as one of the most frightful consequences of their great civil contests. This would lead to reaction, and every Presidential election might be followed by deeds that would make our country a by-word, a hissing, and a reproach among the nations. There would be an end to all those fine hopes that are entertained that we shall speedily recover from the effects of the war, let peace once be restored. Prosperity would never return to the land, or would return only under the rule of some military despot, whose ascendency would gladly be seen and supported by a people weary of uncertainty and danger, and craving order above all things,--as the French people submitted to the rule of Napoleon III., because they believed him to be the man best qualified to protect themselves and their property against the designs of the Socialists. Our constitutional polity would give way to a cannonarchy, as every quietly disposed person would prefer the arbitrary government of one man to the organization of anarchy. If we should escape from both despotism and anarchy, it would be at the price of national destruction. Every great State would "set up for itself," while smaller States that are neighbors would form themselves into confederacies. There would come to exist a dozen nations where but one now exists,--for we leave the Southern Confederacy aside in this consideration. That Confederacy, however, would become the greatest power in North America. Not only would it hold together, but it would at once acquire the Border States, where slavery would be more than restored, for there it would be made as powerful an interest as it was in South Carolina and Mississippi but four years ago. War has welded the Southern Confederacy together, and in face of our breaking-up its rulers would have the strongest possible inducement to keep their Republic united, because they would then hope to conquer most of the Free States, and to confer upon them the "blessings" of the servile system of labor.

It is sometimes said, that, if the Democratic party should resume the rule of this nation, the Confederates, or Rebels, would signify their readiness to return into the Union, on the simple condition that things should be allowed to assume the forms they bore prior to Mr. Lincoln's election. They rebelled against the men who came into power through the political decision that was made in 1860; and, the American people having reversed that decision by restoring the Democracy, the cause of their rebellion having been removed, rebellion itself would cease as of course. Were this view of the subject indisputably sound, it would ill become the American to surrender to the men who assume that the decision of an election, this way or that, affords sufficient reason for a resort to arms. We should hold our existence as a nation by the basest of tenures, were we to admit the monstrous doctrine that only one party is competent to govern the Republic, and that there is an appeal from the decision of the ballot to that of the bayonet. There never existed a great people so craven as to make such an admission; and were we to set the example of making it, we should justify all that has been said adversely to us by domestic traitors and foreign foes. We should prove that we were unfit to enjoy that greatest of all public blessings, constitutional freedom, by surrendering it at the demand of a faction, merely that we might live in security, and enjoy the property we had accumulated. Ancient history mentions a people who were so fond of their ease that they placed all power in the hands of their slaves, on condition that the latter should not meddle with those pleasures to the unbroken pursuit of which they purposed devoting all their means and time. The slaves soon became masters, and the masters slaves. We should fare as badly as the Volsinians, were we to place all power in the hands of slaveholders, who then would own some millions of white bondmen, far inferior in every manly quality to those dark-faced chattels from among whom the Union has recruited some of its bravest and most unselfish champions. But there is no ground, none whatever, for believing that the Rebels would cease to be Rebels, if there should be a Democratic restoration effected. Not even the election of Mr. Buchanan to a second Presidential term would lead them to abandon their purpose: and he was their most useful tool in 1860, and without his assistance they could not have made one step in the road to rebellion, or ruin. Their purpose is to found a new nation, as they have never hesitated to avow, with a frankness that is as commendable as the cause in which it is evinced is abominable. They would be glad to see a Democrat chosen our next President, because they would expect from him an acknowledgment of their "independence"; but they would no more lay down their arms at his entreaty than they would at the command of a President of Republican opinions. Their arms can be forced from their hands, but there exists no man who could, from any position, induce them to surrender, or come back into the Union on any terms. They mean to abide the wager of battle, and are more likely to be moved from their purpose by the bold actions of General Grant than by the blandest words of the smoothest-tongued Democrat in America. To any mere persuader, no matter what his place or his opinions, they would turn an ear as deaf as that of the adder,--refusing to listen to the voice of the charmer, charm he never so wisely.

As there should be no change made in the political character of the Government, so there should be none in the men who compose it. To place power in new hands, at a time like the present, would be as unwise as it would be to raise a new army for the purpose of fighting the numerous, well-trained, and zealous force which the Rebels have organized with the intention of making a desperate effort to reëstablish their affairs. There is no reason for supposing that a change would give us wiser or better men, and it is certain that they would be inexperienced men, should they all be as many Solomons or Solons. As we are situated, it is men of experience that we require to administer the Government; and out of the present Administration it is impossible to find men of the kind of experience that is needed at this crisis of the nation's career. The errors into which we fell in the early days of the contest were the effect of want of experience; and it would be but to provide for their repetition, were we to call a new Administration into existence. The people understand this, and hence the very general expression of opinion in favor of the reëlection of President Lincoln, whose training through four most terrible years--years such as no other President ever knew--will have qualified him to carry on the Government during a second term to the satisfaction of all unselfish men. Mr. Lincoln's honesty is beyond question, and we need an honest man at the head of the nation now more than ever. That the Rebels object to him is a recommendation in the eyes of loyal men. The substitution of a new man would not dispose them to submission, and they would expect to profit from that inevitable change of policy which would follow from a change of men. As to "the one-term principle," we never held it in much regard; and we are less disposed to approve it now than we should have been, had peace been maintained. Were the President elected for six or eight years, it might be wise to amend the Constitution so as to prevent the reëlection of any man; but while the present arrangement shall exist, it would not be wise to insist upon a complete change of Government every four years. To hold out the Presidency as a prize to be struggled for by new men at every national election is to increase the troubles of the country. Among the causes of the Civil War the ambition to be made President must be reckoned. Every politician has carried a term at the White House in his portfolio, as every French conscript carries a marshal's _bâton_ in his knapsack; and the disappointments of so many aspirants swelled the number of the disaffected to the proportions of an army, counting all who expected office as the consequence of this man's or that man's elevation to the Presidency. Were there no other reason for desiring the reëlection of President Lincoln, the fact that it would be the first step toward a return to the rule that obtained during the first half-century of our national existence under the existing Constitution should suffice to make us all advocates of his nomination for a second term. That the Baltimore Convention will meet next month, and that it will place Mr. Lincoln once more before the American people as a candidate for their suffrages, are facts now as fully established as anything well can be that depends upon the future; and that he will be reëlected admits of no doubt. The popular voice designates him as the man of the time and the occasion, and the action of the Convention will be nothing beyond a formal process, that shall give regular expression to a public sentiment which is too strong to be denied, and which will be found of irresistible force.

* * * * *

REVIEWS AND LITERARY NOTICES.

_Industrial Biography: Iron-Workers and Tool-Makers._ By SAMUEL SMILES, Author of "Self-Help," "Brief Biographies," and "Life of George Stephenson." Boston: Ticknor & Fields.

The history of iron is the history of civilization. The rough, shapeless ore that lies hidden in the earth folds in its unlovely bosom such fate and fortune as the haughtier sheen of silver, gleam of gold, and sparkle of diamond may illustrate, but are wholly impotent to create. Rising from his undisturbed repose of ages, the giant, unwieldy, swart, and huge of limb, bends slowly his brawny neck to the yoke of man, and at his bidding becomes a nimble servitor to do his will. Subtile as thought, rejoicing in power, no touch is too delicate for his perception, no service too mighty for his strength. Tales of faërie, feats of magic, pale before the simple story of his every-day labor, or find in his deeds the facts which they but faintly shadowed forth. And waiting upon his transformation, a tribe becomes a nation, a race of savages rises up philosophers, artists, gentlemen.

Commerce, science, warfare have their progress and their vicissitudes; but underneath them all, unnoted, it may be, or treated to a superficial and perhaps supercilious glance, yet mainspring and regulator of all, runs an iron thread, true thread of Fate, coiling around the limbs of man, and impeding all progress, till he shall have untwisted its Gordian knot, but bidding him forward from strength to strength with each successive release. No romance of court or camp surpasses the romance of the forge. A blacksmith at his anvil seems to us a respectable, but not an eminently heroic person; yet, walking backward along the past by the light which he strikes from the glowing metal beneath his hand, we shall fancy ourselves to be walking in the true heroic age. Kings and warriors have brandished their swords right royally, and such splendor has flashed from Excalibur and Morglay that our dazzled eyes have scarcely discerned the brawny smith who not only stood in the twilight of the background and fashioned with skilful hand the blade which radiates such light, but passed through all the land, changing huts into houses, houses into homes, and transforming into a garden by his skill the wilderness which had been rescued by the sword. Vigorous brains, clear eyes, sturdy arms have wrought out, not without blood, victories more potent, more permanent, more heroic, than those of the battle-field.

Such books as this under consideration give us only materials for the great epic of iron, but with such materials we can make our own rhythm and harmony. From the feeble beginning of the savage, rejoicing in the fortunate possession of two old nails, and deriving a sufficient income from letting them out to his neighbors for the purpose of boring holes, down to the true Thor's hammer, so tractable to the master's hand that it can chip without breaking the end of an egg in a glass on the anvil, crack a nut without touching the kernel, or strike a blow of ten tons eighty times in a minute, we have a steady onward movement. Prejudice builds its solid breakwaters; ignorance, inability, clumsiness, and awkwardness raise such obstacles as they can; but the delay of a century is but a moment. Slowly and surely the waters rise till they sweep away all obstacles, overtop all barriers, and plunge forward again with ever accelerating force. The record of iron is at once a record of our glory and of our humiliation,--a record of marvellous, inborn, God-given genius, reaching forth in manifold directions to compass most beneficent ends, but baffled, thwarted, fiercely and persistently resisted by obstinacy, blindness, and stupidity, and gaining its ends, if it gain them at all, only by address the most sagacious, courage the most invincible, and perseverance the most untiring. Every great advance in mechanical skill has been met by the determined hostility of men who fancied their craft to be in danger. An invention which enabled a hand of iron to do the work of fifty hands of flesh and blood was considered guilty of taking the bread from the thrice fifty mouths that depended on those hands' labor, and was not unfrequently visited with the punishment due to such guilt. No demonstrated fruitlessness of similar fears in the past served to allay fears for the future; no inefficiency of brute force permanently to stay the enterprise of the mind prevented brute force from making its futile and sometimes fatal attempts. It is no matter that increased facility of production has been attended by an increased demand for the product; it is no matter that ingenuity has never been held permanently back from its carefully conned plans; there have not been wanting men, numerous, ignorant, and ignoble enough to collect in mobs, raze workshops, destroy machinery, chase away inventors, and fancy, that, so employed, they have been engaged in the work of self-protection.

It is such indirect lessons as may be learned from these and other statements that give this book its chief value. The interesting historical and mechanical information contained in its pages makes it indeed well worthy of perusal; yet for that alone we should not take especial pains to set it before the people. But its incidental teachings ought to be taken to heart by every man, and especially every mechanic, who has any ambition or conscience beyond the exigencies of bread and butter. Lack of ambition is not an American fault, but it is too often an ambition that regards irrelevant and factitious honors rather than those to which it may legitimately and laudably aspire. A mechanic should find in the excellence of his mechanism a greater reward and satisfaction than in the wearing of a badge of office which any fifth-rate lawyer or broken-down man-of-business with influential "friends" may obtain, and whose petty duties they may discharge quite as well as the first-rate mechanic. The mechanic who is master of his calling need yield to none. We would not have him like the ironmongers denounced by the old religious writer as "heathenish in their manners, puffed up with pride, and inflated with worldly prosperity"; but we would have him mindful of his true dignity. In the importance of the results which he achieves, in the magnitude of the honors he may win, in the genius he may employ and the skill he may attain, no profession or occupation presents a more inviting field than his; but it will yield fruits only to the good husbandman. Science and art give up their treasures only to him who is capable of enthusiasm and devotion. He alone who magnifies his office makes it honorable. Whether he work in marble, canvas, or iron, the man who is content simply to follow his occupation, and is not possessed by it, may be an artificer, but will not be an artist, nor ever wear the laurel on his brow. He should be so enamored of his calling as to court it for its own charms. Invention is a capricious mistress, and does not always bestow her favors on the most worthy. Men not a few have died in poverty, and left a golden harvest to their successors; yet the race is often enough to the swift, and the battle to the strong, to justify men in striving after strength and swiftness, as well for the guerdon which they bring as for the jubilant consciousness which they impart. And this, at least, is sure: though merit may, by some rare mischance, be overlooked, demerit has no opportunity whatever to gain distinction. Sleight of hand cannot long pass muster for skill of hand. Unswerving integrity, unimpeachable sincerity, is the lesson constantly taught by the lives of these renowned mechanics. "The great secret," says one, "is to have the courage to be honest,--a spirit to purchase the best material, and the means and disposition to do justice to it in the manufacture." Another, remonstrated with for his high charges, which were declared to be six times more than the price his employers had before been paying for the same articles, could safely say, "That may be, but mine are more than six times better." A master of his profession is master of his employers. Maudslay's works, we are told, came to be regarded as a first-class school for mechanical engineers, the Oxford and Cambridge of mechanics; nor can Oxford and Cambridge men be any prouder of their connection with their colleges than distinguished engineers of their connection with this famous school of Maudslay. With such an _esprit de corps_ what excellence have we not a right to expect?

We cannot forbear pointing out the Aids to Humility collected in this book from various quarters, and presented to the consideration of the nineteenth century. Our boasted age of invention turns out, after all, to have been only gathering up what antiquity has let fall,--rediscovering and putting to practical account what the past discovered, but could not, or, with miscalled dignity, would not, turn to the uses of common life. Steam-carriages, hydraulic engines, diving-bells, which we have regarded with so much complacency as our peculiar property, worked their wonders in the teeming brain of an old monk who lived six hundred years ago. Printing, stereotypes, lithography, gunpowder, Colt's revolvers and Armstrong guns, Congreve rockets, coal-gas and chloroform, daguerreotypes, reaping-machines, and the electric telegraph are nothing new under the sun. Hundreds of years ago the idea was born, but the world was too young to know its character or prize its service, and so the poor little bantling was left to shiver itself to death while the world stumbled on as aforetime. How many eras of birth there may have been we do not know, but it was reserved for our later age to receive the young stranger with open arms, and nourish his infant limbs to manly strength. Richly are we rewarded in the precision and power with which he performs our tasks, in the comfort with which he enriches, the beauty with which he adorns, and the knowledge with which he ennobles our daily life.

_The Life and Times of John Huss; or, The Bohemian Reformation of the Fifteenth Century_. By E.H. GILLETT. 2 vols. Second Edition. Boston: Gould & Lincoln.

The style of Mr. Gillett is clear, manly, and discriminating. If, in respect of show, sparkle, nervous energy, verbal felicity, and picturesqueness, it is not equal to that of our chief American historians, yet it is not deficient in ease, grace, or vigor. He is almost always careful, always unambitious, always in good taste. To complain that the style is not equal to Mr. Motley's, simply on the ground that the book is large and the subject historical, is grossly unfair. Mr. Gillett has not been eager for a place as a writer; his story has more merit in the thing told than in the telling. Even with his want of German he has been thorough in the investigation of authorities; and if he writes without enthusiasm, his judgment carries the greater weight. As a scholar and an historian, as a man of candor and resources, his name is an ornament to the Presbyterian ministry, of which he is a member.

And yet the life of Huss is not adapted to produce popular effect, to show to striking advantage the charm of elaborate style, or to lift the hero himself into that upper light where his commonest deeds are dazzling and fascinating. He had not the acumen, the weight, the learning, the logical irresistibleness of Calvin; nor had he the great human sympathies, the touch of earthiness, yet not grossness, which made Luther so dear to his countrymen, and which have imprinted a cordial geniality on the whole Lutheran Church. John Huss, though a man of learning, the Rector of a great and powerful University, though a true friend, though a man of wide sympathies, though an eloquent preacher, and a most formidable enemy to the corruptions of the Romish Church, was yet a colorless character in comparison with some men who have become the objects of hero-worship. There are few of those grand bursts which will always justify Luther's reputation, nothing of that rich poetical vein of Luther's, finding its twofold course in music and in poetry: Huss was comparatively dry, and unenriched by those overflowings of a deep inner nature. He is, therefore, rather the exponent of an age than a brilliant mark,--rather a type than a great, restless, creative power. His life was almost too saintly to be interesting in the popular sense; and although he does emerge above his age, yet it is not as the advocate of an idea, as Luther was, nor of a great system, as Calvin was, nor as a man fearless of kings and queens, as Knox was; his life, rather, was a continued protest against sin in the high places of the Church. Though in him there appear glimpses of a clearer doctrine than that of his age, yet they do not come to a full expression; it is the pride of pontiffs, the debaucheries of priests, the grasp after place and power and wealth by those who claim to follow the meek and holy One, which provoke his fiercest invective.

Mr. Gillett has, therefore, done a good service in subordinating the story of John Huss to the history of his age. His work is strictly entitled, "The Bohemian Reformation of the Fifteenth Century." That period has heretofore been almost a blank in our ecclesiastical records. The blank is now filled. It was a period of great beginnings. Germany was silent then; but Wycliffe in England, and Huss, with his predecessors, Waldhauser, Milicz, and Peter of Dresden, in Bohemia, were even then causing the Papal power, rent as it was with its internal dissensions, to tremble as before approaching death.

The story of that impotent rage which sought to purchase life and safety for the Romish Church by the murder of Huss and of Jerome of Prague is instructive, if it is not pleasing. The truth was too true to be spoken. Never has the Church of Rome, in its inquisitorial madness, been so blinded with fury and passion as then. Weakened by internal feuds, with two Popes struggling and hurling anathemas at each other, and with a priesthood at its lowest point, not of ignorance, but of carnality, it seemed in peril of utter extinction. Its own boldest and ablest men were among its most outspoken accusers; and no words stronger or more cutting were spoken by Huss than by Gerson and Clémangis. But Huss committed the common mistake of reformers. He put himself outside of the body to be reformed. He allowed his spirit to fret against the evils of his times so madly that he would fain have put himself outside of the circumstances of his age. This wiser men than he, men no loss ardent, but more calculating, never would do. In the city of Constance itself, during the sittings of the great Council which condemned Huss to death, sermons were preached more bitterly reproachful of the pride of the Pontiffs and the corruption of the Church than the words of any of the men who put themselves beyond its pale, and addressed it as "your Church," instead of speaking of it as "ours." And while the dignitaries of that corrupt body dared not lay a finger upon their more pure, prophetic, and sharply accusing brethren, they made men like Huss and Jerome of Prague the doubly burdened and tortured victims of their rage.

Much of the interest of these volumes is owing to the prominence given to Wycliffe, and his contemporaneous work in England. It is strange, indeed, that in those early days, before Europe was crossed with its net-works, not of railways, but of post-roads even, the land which inclosed the fountains that fed the Elbe, eight hundred miles above Hamburg, was closely bound to that distant island, four hundred miles beyond Hamburg, on the western side of the German Ocean. But a royal marriage in England had united that kingdom to Bohemia, and Wycliffe's name was a household word in the lecture-rooms of Prague, and Wycliffe's books were well worn in its libraries. The great work of preparation, the preliminary stirring-up of men's minds, by both of these great reformers, is hardly realized by us. But words had been spoken which could not die in a hundred years, and the public temper had been thrown into a glow which could not cool in a century. The "Morning Star of the Reformation" found its twin lighting up the dark ravines of Bohemia, and when they twain arose the day had begun to break. The Reformation did not begin with Luther. The elements had been made plastic to his touch; all was ready for his skilful hand to mould them into the symmetry of the Great Reformation. The armies of the Lord had enlisted man by man before he came; it was for his clarion blast to marshal them in companies and battalions, and lead them to the battle. We must again thank Mr. Gillett for his timely, serviceable book. It is never unprofitable to look back and see who have kept the sacred fire of Christianity burning when it seemed in danger of extinguishment. And in that fifteenth century its flames certainly burned low. Whenever the Church is on the side of aristocratic power, whenever it is a conservative and not a radical and progressive force in an evil age, when the forces of Satan are in power, the men are truly worthy of immortality who go out to meet death in behalf of Christ and the religion of meekness and purity and universal love. Such was John Huss. He ought never to have suffered himself to be driven from the Church, and when he did so, he committed the unceasing mistake of reformers, among whom Wesley and Zinzendorf stand as the two marked exceptions; but for rectitude, zeal, and a thorough consecration to the great interests of Christ, he merits an even more sumptuous memorial than this excellent book.

_Sordello, Strafford, Christmas-Eve and Easter-Day._ By ROBERT BROWNING. Boston: Ticknor & Fields.

In his dedication to the new edition of "Sordello," Mr. Browning says,--"I lately gave time and pains to turn my work into what the many might--instead of what the few must--like; but, after all, I imagined another thing at first, and therefore leave as I find it."

This, on the whole, he has done; for, though a prose heading runs before every page, with a knowing wink to the reader, the mystery is not cleared up. As the view dissolves with every turn of a leaf, the showman says, confidentially,--"Now you shall see how a poet's soul comes into play,--how he succeeds a little, but fails more,--tries again, is no better satisfied,--

"Because perceptions whole, like that he sought
To clothe, reject so pure a work of thought
As language: thought may take perception's place,
But hardly coexist in any case,
Being its mere presentment,--of the whole
By parts, the simultaneous and the sole
By the successive and the many. Lacks
The crowd perception?"

We fear so; at any rate, the exhibition fails, because the showman cannot furnish brains to his commentary. The man who can read "Sordello" is little helped by these headings, and the man who cannot is soon distracted by continual disappointment. We think he will end by reading only the headings. And they doubtless are the best for him. Otherwise, under the cerebral struggle to perceive how the prose interprets the poetry, he might become the idiot that Douglas Jerrold exclaimed that _he_ was at his first trial of "Sordello."

There has been a careful overhauling of the punctuation, with benefit to the text. Many lines have been altered, sometimes to the comfort of the reader; and about a hundred fresh lines have been interpolated here and there, to the weakening, we think, of the dramatic vigor of nearly every place that is thus handled. Many readers will, however, find this compensated by an increased clearness of the sense. On page 131 (page 152, first edition) there is an improved manipulation of the simile of the dwarf palm; and four lines before the last one on page 147 (page 171, first edition) lighten up the thought. So there are eight lines placed to advantage after "Sordello, wake!" on page 152 (page 176). But, on the whole, what Mr. Browning first imagined cannot be tampered with, and he must generously trust the elements of his own fine genius to do justice to his thought with all people who would not thank him to furnish an interpreter.

One day we argued earnestly for Browning with a man who said it was fatal to the poetry that it needed an argument, and that he did not want to earn the quickening of his imagination by the sweat of his brow,--he could gather the same thought and beauty in less break-neck places,--all the profit was expended in mental gymnastics,--in short,

"The man can't stoop
To sing us out, quoth he, a mere romance;
He'd fain do better than the best, enhance
The subjects' rarity, work problems out
Therewith: now, you're a bard, a bard past doubt,
And no philosopher; why introduce
Crotchets like these? fine, surely, but no use
In poetry,--which still must be, to strike,
Eased upon common sense; there's nothing like
Appealing to our nature!"

Find the rest of Mr. Average's argument on page 67.

These objections to the poetry of Mr. Browning, which the dense, involved, and metaphysical treatment of "Sordello" first suggested to the public, are made to apply to all his subsequent writings. We concede that "Sordello" over-refines, and that, after reading it, "who _would_ has heard Sordello's story told," but who would not and could not has probably not heard it. The very time of the poem, which is put several centuries back amid the scenery of the Guelph and Ghibelline feuds, as if to make the struggle of a humane and poetic soul to grow, to become recognized, to find a place and purpose, seem still more premature, puzzles the reader with remote allusions, with names that belong to obscure Italian narrative, with motives and events that require historical analysis. The poem is impatient with those very things which make the environment of the bard Sordello, and treats them in curt lines. A character is jammed into a sentence, like a witch into a snuff-box, the didactic parts grow metaphysical, and the life of Sordello does not fuse the events of the poem into one long rhythm. He thinks and dreams apart, and Palma's ambition for him is an aside, and the events swing their arms and strike fiery and cruel blows with Sordello absent. Considering Mr. Browning's intent, there is a fine poetic success in this very fault of the poem, but it is not a plain one, and is an after-thought of the critic. The numerous splendid pages in "Sordello" do nothing towards making one complete impression which cannot be evaded. Naddo, the genius-haunter, would complain, that, in struggling out towards these aisles of beauty, he had seriously compromised his clothing in the underbrush.

But the faults which characterize "Sordello" are not prevalent in the subsequent writings which are loosely accused of them. They become afterwards exceptional, they vein here and there the surface, and Mr. Average stumbles over them and proceeds no farther. Still, Mr. Browning's verse is not easy reading. He is economical of words to the point of harmony; but what a hypocrite he would be, if he used more! He brings you meaning, if you bring him mind; and there is Tupper outside, if you don't care to trouble yourself. In saying this we are not arrogant at all, for there is a large and widening sympathy with Mr. Browning's thought. Perhaps a whole generation of readers will fretfully break itself upon his style, and pass away, before the mind hails with ease his merits. But is Shakspeare's verse easy reading? Not to this day, in spite of his level of common sense, the artlessness of his passion, and the broad simplicity of a great imagination, that causeth its sun to shine on the evil and the good. It was easy reading to Ben Jonson, to Milton, and to Chapman; it took "Eliza and our James"; it had more theatrical success than the scholarly plays of Jonson: but two or three centuries have exhausted neither his commentators nor the subtile parts that need a comment. A good deal of Shakspeare is read, but the rest is caviare to the multitude. We need not comfort ourselves on the facility with which we take his name in vain. We venture to say that the whole of Shakspeare's thought is inwardly tasted by as many people as enjoy the subtilty of Robert Browning. Shakspeare has broader places over which the waters lie, sweet and warm, to tempt disporting crowds, and places deep as human nature, upon whose brink the pleasure-seekers peer and shudder. But if Mr. Browning had a theatrical ability equal to his dramatic, and were content to exhibit a greater number of the stock-figures of humanity, men would say that here again they had love that maddened and grief that shattered, murdering ambition, humorous weakness, and imagination that remarries man and Nature.

Mr. Browning's literary and artistic allusions prevent a ready appreciation of his genius. "Sordello" needs a key. How many friends, "elect chiefly for love," have spent time burrowing in encyclopædias, manuals of history, old biographies, dictionaries of painting, and the like, for explanations of the remote knowledge which Mr. Browning uses as if it had been left at the door with the morning paper! On the very first page, who is "Pentapolin, named o' the Naked Arm"? If a man had just read Don Quixote, he might single out Pentapolin. Taurello and Ecelin were not familiar,--nor the politics of Verona, Padua, Ferrara, six hundred years ago. There was not a lively sympathy with Sordello himself. Who were the "Pisan pair"? Lanzi's pages were turned up to discover. And Greek scholars recognized the "Loxian." But any reader might be pardoned for not at once divining that the double rillet of minstrelsy, on page 37, was the Troubadour and the Trouvere, nor for refusing to read pages 155 and 156 without a tolerable outfit of information upon the historical points and personages there catalogued.

There are not a few pages that appear like a long stretch of prose suddenly broken up and jammed in the current; some of the ends stick out, some have gone under, the sense has grown hummocky, and the reader's whole faculty turns to picking his way. Take, for instance, page 95, of which we have prepared a translation, but considerately withhold it.

But turn now to the famous marble font, sculptured afresh in those perfect lines which begin at the middle of page 16, with the picture of the Castle Goito and the maple-panelled room. Here the boy Sordello comes every eve, to visit the marble standing in the midst, to watch the mute penance of the Caryatides, who flush with the dawn of his imagination. Read the description of his childhood, from page 25, and the delights of his opening fancy:--

"He e'er-festooning every interval,
As the adventurous spider, making light
Of distance, shoots her threads from depth to height,
From barbican to battlement; so flung
Fantasies forth and in their centre swung
Our architect,--the breezy morning fresh
Above, and merry,--all his waving mesh
Laughing with lucid dew-drops rainbow-edged."

All these pages are filled with poetry; the reflective element does not dominate severely. Bordello's youthful genius craves sympathy, and he finds it by investing Nature with fanciful forms and attributes. He is Apollo,--"that shall be the name." How he ransacks the world for his youth's outfit, as he climbs the ravine in the June weather, and emerges into the forest, which tries "old surprises on him," amid which he lingers, deep in the stratagems of his own fancy, till

"aloft would hang
White summer-lightnings; as it sank and sprang
To measure, that whole palpitating breast
Of heaven, 't was Apollo, Nature prest
At eve to worship."

Then comes a portrait of Palma, done with Titian's brush and manner. As we turn the leaves where favorite passages lie brilliantly athwart the faded politics of an old story, we are tempted to try spinning its thread again for the sake of holding up these lines, which are among the most delicate and sumptuous that Mr. Browning ever wrote. But room is at present dear as paper. Only turn, for instance, to pages 39-45, 72-74, the picturesque scenes on pages 84, 85, the opening of Book IV., Salinguerra's portrait, like an old picture of Florence, on page 127, and lines single and by the half-dozen everywhere.

The tragedy of "Strafford" is one of Mr. Browning's earliest compositions. It was once placed upon the stage by Mr. Macready, but it is no more of an acting play than all the other pieces of Mr. Browning, and is too political to be good reading. The characters seem to be merely reporting the condition of parties under Charles I.; this and the struggle of the King with the Parliament are told, but are not represented, the passions of the piece belong too exclusively to the caucus and the council-chamber, and even the way in which the King sacrifices Strafford does not dramatically appear. In the last act, there is much tenderness in the contrast of Stratford's doom with the unconsciousness of his children, and pathos in his confidence to the last moment that the King will protect him. The dialogue is generally too abrupt and exclamatory. Vane speaks well on page 222, and Hampden on page 231, and there are two good scenes between Charles and Strafford, where the King's irresolution appears against the Earl's devotedness. The closing scene of Act IV. has the dramatic form, but it is interfused with mere civil commotion instead of color, and the motive is a transient one, important only to the historian. But we need not multiply words over that one of all his compositions which Mr. Browning probably now respects the least.

"Christmas-Eve and Easter-Day" is a beautiful poem, filled with thought, humor, and imagination. The mythical theory of Strauss was never so well analyzed as in the tilting lines from page 353 to 361. And there is good theology in this:--

"Take all in a word: the truth in God's breast
Lies trace for trace upon ours impressed;
Though He is so bright and we so dim,
We are made in His image to witness Him;
And were no eye in us to tell,
Instructed by no inner sense,
The light of heaven from the dark of hell,
That light would want its evidence," etc.

Naddo will doubtless tell us that this poem is not built broadly on the human heart; there is too much discussion about the difficulty of becoming a Christian, and the subtile genius flits so quickly through the lines that an ordinary butterfly-net does not catch it. That is well for the genius. But we are of opinion that the human heart will always find in this great poem the solemn and glorious things that belong to it, and more and more so as new and clearer thought is born into the world to read it. It is no more difficult to read than "Paradise Lost," while its scenery is less conventional, and the longings of a religious heart are taken by a bold imagination into serene and starry skies.

_A History of the Intellectual Development of Europe._ By JOHN WILLIAM DRAPER, M.D., LL.D. New York: Harper & Brothers.

Water and the science of Physiology are both good things. But water is one thing to drink, and another to be drowned in. In like manner, though Physiology is a large and noble science and a yet larger symbol, furnishing analogies to the thinker quite as often as uses to the medical doctor, nevertheless, Physiology in the form of a deluge, overflowing, swamping, drowning almost everything else, and leaving only Body, the sole ark, afloat,--this is a gift which we are able to receive with a gratitude not by any means unspeakable. And such, very nearly, is the contribution to modern thought which the author of the above work endeavors to make. He holds Physiology to be coextensive with Man, and would prove the fact by including History in its laws.

In truth, however, it is a pretty thin sort of Physiology to which this extension is to be given,--resembling water in this respect also. Our physiological philosopher seeks to prove (in 631 octavo pages) that there are in history five perpetually recurring epochs, answering--the reader will please consider--to the Infancy, Childhood, Youth, Maturity, and Old Age of the individual body. So much, therefore, as one would know concerning Physiology in its application to the individual body, in virtue of being aware that men pass from infancy to age, thus much does Dr. Draper propose to teach his readers concerning the said science in its application to History. Add now that his induction rests almost wholly on _two_ main instances, of which one is yet incomplete! Should one, therefore, say that his logic is somewhat precipitate, and his "science" somewhat lacking in matter, he would appear not to prefer a wholly groundless charge.

Were Dr. Draper simply giving a History of the Intellectual Development of Europe, he could, of course, relate only such facts as exist; and should it appear that this history has but two cycles, one of them incomplete, he would be under no obligation to make more. But such is not the case. His "history" is purely a piece of polemic. His aim is to establish a formula for all history, past, present, and to come; and, in this view, the paucity of instances on which his induction rests becomes worthy of comment.

And this disproportion between induction and conclusion becomes still more glaring, when it is observed that he expects his formula for all history to carry an inference much larger than itself. Dr. Draper is devoted to a materialistic philosophy, and his moving purpose is to propagate this. He holds that Psychology must be an inference from Physiology,--that the whole science of Man is included in a science of his body. His two perpetual aims are, first, to absorb all physical science in theoretical materialism,--second, to absorb all history in physical science. And beside the ambition of his aims one must say that his logic has an air of slenderness.

This work, then, may be described as a review of European history, written in obedience to two primary and two secondary assumptions, as follows:--

_Primary Assumptions_: First, that man is fully determined by his "corporeal organization"; second, that all corporeal organizations, with their whole variety and character, are due solely to "external situations."

_Secondary Assumptions_: First, that physical science (under submission to materialistic interpretations) is the only satisfactory intellectual result in history, being the only pure product of "reason"; second, that "reason" alone represents the adult stage of the human mind,--"faith" being simply immature mental action, and "inquiry" belonging to a stage of intellect still less mature,--in fact, to its mere childishness.

The position thus assigned to _inquiry_ is very significant of the theoretic precipitancy which is one of Dr. Draper's prominent characteristics. His mind is afflicted with that disease which physicians call "premature digestion." Inquiry, which is the perpetual tap-root of science, he separates wholly from science, stigmatizes it as the mere token of intellectual childhood; and this not in the haste of an epithet or heat of a paragraph, but as a fixed part of his scheme of history and of mind. The reason is found in his own intellectual habits. And the savage fury with which he plies his critical bludgeon upon Lord Bacon is due, not so much to that great man's infirmities, nor even to his possession of intellectual qualities which our author cannot appreciate and must therefore disparage, as to the profound consecration of Inquiry, which it was one grand aim of his life to make.

His assumptions made, Dr. Draper proceeds to "break" and train history into their service, much after the old fashion of "breaking" colts. First, he mounts the history of Greece. And now what a dust! What are centaurs to a _savant_ on his hobby? To see him among the mythic imaginations of the sweet old land! He goes butting and plunging through them with the headiness of a he-goat, another monster added to those of which antique fancy had prattled.

He has collected many facts respecting ancient thought, (for his industry is laudable,) but the evil is that he has no real use for his facts when obtained. Think of finding in an elaborate "History of the Intellectual Development of Europe" no use for the "Iliad" and "Odyssey" but that of bolstering up the proposition that there was in Greece an age of unreasoning credulity! It is like employing Jove to turn a spit or to set up tenpins. Everywhere, save in a single direction, and that of secondary importance with respect to antique thought, he practises the same enormous waste of material. Socrates is a mere block in his way, which he treats with nothing finer than a crow-bar. Socrates had set a higher value on ethical philosophy, derived from the consciousness of man, than on physical science; consequently, Dr. Draper's choice must be between treating him weakly and treating him brutally; he chooses the latter, and plays his _rôle_ with vigor,--talks of his "lecherous countenance," and calls him "infidel" and "hypocrite." Plato he treats with more respect, but scarcely with more intelligence. He makes an inventory of Plato's opinions, as a shopman might of his goods; and does it with an air which says, "He who buys these gets cheated," while occasionally be cannot help breaking out into an expression of impatience. Indeed, not only Plato, but Athens itself, represents to Dr. Draper's mind the mere raw youth, the mere ambitious immaturity of Grecian intellect, amusing itself with "faith" because incapable of "reason." He finds its higher and only rational stage at Alexandria, at Syracuse, or wherever results in physical science were attained. In Aristotle, indeed, he is able to have some complacency, since the Stagirite is in a degree "physiological." But this pleasure is partial, for Aristotle has the trick of eminent intelligences, and must needs presently spread his pinions and launch forth into the great skies of speculation; whereupon, albeit he flies low, almost touching the earth with the tips of his wings, our physiological philosopher begins to _pish_ and _pshaw_.

In his treatment of modern or post-Roman history, Dr. Draper goes over new ground in much the same spirit. He seems, indeed, nearer to his facts, deals more with actual life, is more lively, graphic, engaging, and has not that air of an intellectual shopman making an inventory. Considered as a general review of the history of Europe, written chiefly in the interest of physical science, but also in marked opposition to Roman Catholicism, it might pass unchallenged and not without praise. But considered as a final scientific interpretation of the last fifteen centuries, its shortcomings are simply immeasurable. The history of Europe, from the fusion of the Christian Impulse with Roman imperialism to the time of Columbus, Copernicus, and Luther, is the history of a grand religious idealism _established over men's heads in the form of an institution_, because too great to be held in solution by their thoughts. Of such a matter the writer in question could give no other than a very inadequate account. Wanting that which is highest in the reason of man, namely, imaginative intellect, he has no natural fitness for explaining such a fact; while his unconsciousness of any such deficiency, his persuasion that an _imagination_ and a _delusion_ are one and the same, and his extreme dogmatic momentum cause him to handle it with all the confidence of commanding power.