Chapter III: Birds and Boy's Play (4)

Just now the Sanitary is seeking to enter into closer relations with the hospitals through the agency of regular visitors. The advantages of such a policy are manifest. The reports of the visitors will enable the directors to see more clearly the real wants of the sick; and the frequent presence and inquiries of such visitors will tend to repress the undue appropriation of hospital stores by attendants. But the highest benefit will be the change and cheer it will introduce into the monotony of hospital life. If you are sick at home, you are glad to have your neighbor step in and bring the healthy bracing air of out-door life into the dimness and languor of your invalid existence. Much more does the sick soldier like it,--for ennui, far more than pain, is his great burden. When I was at Washington, I accepted with great satisfaction an invitation to go with a Sanitary visitor on her round of duty. When we came to the hospital, I asked the ward-master if he would like to have me distribute among his patients the articles I had brought. He said that he should, for he thought it would do the poor fellows good to see me and receive the gifts from my own hands. The moment I entered there was a stir. Those who could hobble about stumped up to me to see what was going on; some others sat up in bed, full of alertness; while the sickest greeted me with a languid smile. As I went from cot to cot, the politeness of _la belle France_, with which a little Frenchman in the corner touched the tassel of his variegated nightcap at me, and the untranslatable gutturals, full of honest satisfaction, with which his German neighbors saluted me, and the "God bless your honor," which a cheery son of Old Erin showered down upon me, and the simple "Thank you, Sir," which came up on all sides from our true-hearted New England boys, were alike refreshing to my soul. No doubt the single peach or two which with hearty good-will were given to them were as good as a feast; and it may be that the little comforts which I left behind me, and which had been borne thither on the wings of this divine charity, perhaps from some village nestling among the rocky hills of New England, or from some hamlet basking in the sunlight on the broad prairies of the West, had magic power to bring to that place of suffering some breath of the atmosphere of home to cheer the sinking heart, or some fragrant memory of far-off home-affection to make it better. I came away with the feeling that visits from sunny-hearted people, and gifts from friendly hands, must be a positive blessing to these sick and wounded people.

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Of course the deepest throb of interest is given to the work at the front of battle. That is natural. It is work done on the very spots where the fortunes of our nation are being decided,--on the spots whither all eyes are turned, and towards which all our hopes and prayers go forth. It is work surrounded by every element of pathos and tragic interest. The wavering fortunes of the fight, the heroic courage which sustains a doubtful conflict, the masterly skill that turns disaster into triumph, the awful carnage, the terrible suffering, the manly patience of the wounded, all combine to fix the attention there and upon everything, which is transacted there. The question is constantly asked,--What is the Sanitary doing at the front? what at City Point? what at Winchester? are natural questions. Let me state first the general plan and method of what I may call a Sanitary campaign, and afterwards add what I saw with my own eyes at City Point and before Petersburg, and what I heard from those who had themselves been actors in the scenes which they described.

When the army moves out from its encampment to the field of active warfare, two or three Sanitary wagons, loaded with hospital stores of all sorts, and accompanied by a sufficient number of relief agents, move with each army corps. These are for the supply of present need, and for use during the march, or after such skirmishes and fights as may occur before the Commission can establish a new base. In this way some of the Commission agents have followed General Grant's army all the way from the Rapidan, through the Wilderness, across the Mattapony, over the James, on to the very last advance towards the Southside Railroad,--refilling their wagons with stores as opportunity has occurred. As soon now as the march commences and the campaign opens, preparations upon an extensive scale are made at Washington for the great probable demand. Steamers are chartered, loaded, and sent with a large force of relief agents to the vicinity of the probable battle-fields; or if the campaign is away from water communication, loaded wagons are held in readiness. The moment the locality of the struggle is determined, then, under the orders of the Provost Marshal, an empty house is seized and made the Sanitary head-quarters or general storehouse; or else some canal-barge is moored at the crazy Virginia wharf, and used for the same purpose. This storehouse is kept constantly full from Washington, or else from Baltimore and New York; and the branch depots which are now established in each army corps are fed from it, while the hospitals in their turn make requisitions for all needful supplies on these branch depots. That is to say, the arrangements, though rougher and less permanent in their character, approximate very nearly to the arrangements at Washington.

A few details need to be added. Where the distance from the battle-field to the base of supplies is great, what are called feeding-stations are established every few miles, and here the wounded on foot or in ambulances can stop and take the refreshments or stimulants necessary to sustain them on their painful journey. At the steamboat-landing the Commission has a lodge and agents, with crackers and beef-tea, coffee and tea, ice-water and stimulants, ready to be administered to such as need. Relief agents go up on the boats to help care for the wounded; and at Washington the same scene of active kindness is often enacted on their arrival as at their departure. This is the general plan of action everywhere, modified to suit circumstances, but always essentially the same. It will apply just as well West as East,--only for the names Baltimore, Washington, and City Point, you must put Louisville, Nashville, and Chattanooga.

When I was at City Point, the base of operations had been established there more than two months; and though there was much sickness, and the wounded were being brought in daily by hundreds from the prolonged struggle for the Weldon Road, everything moved on with the regularity of clock-work. As you neared the landing, coming up the James, you saw, a little farther up the river, the red flag of the Sanitary Commission floating over the three barges which were its office, its storehouse, and its distributing store for the whole Army of the Potomac. Climbing up the steep road to the top of the bluff, and advancing over the undulating plain a mile, you come to a city,--the city of hospitals. The white tents are arranged in lines of almost mathematical accuracy. The camp is intersected by roads broad and clean. Every corps, and every division of every corps, has its allotted square. Somewhere in these larger squares your eye will be sure to catch sight of the Sanitary flag, and beneath it a tent, where is the corps station. You enter, and you find within, if not as great an amount, at least as varied a supply, of hospital stores as you would find anywhere, waiting for surgeons' orders. To a very great extent, the extra diet for all the sick and wounded is furnished from these stores; and very largely the cooking of it is overseen by ladies connected with the Commission. In every corps there are from five to fifteen relief agents, whose duty it is to go through the wards once, twice, three times in each day, to see what the sick need for their comfort, to ascertain that they really get what is ordered, and in every way to alleviate suffering and to promote cheerfulness and health.

I shall never forget a tour which I made with a relief agent through the wards for the blacks, both because it showed me what a watchful supervision a really faithful person can exercise, and because it gave such an opportunity to observe closely the conduct of these people. The demeanor of the colored patients is really beautiful,--so gentle, so polite, so grateful for the least kindness. And then the evidences of a desire for mental improvement and religious life which meet you everywhere are very touching. Go from bed to bed, and you see in their hands primers, spelling-books, and Bibles, and the poor, worn, sick creatures, the moment they feel one throb of returning health, striving to master their alphabet or spell out their Bible. In the evening, or rather in the fading twilight, some two hundred of them crept from the wards, and seated themselves in a circle around a black exhorter. Religion to them was a real thing; and so their worship had the beauty of sincerity, while I ought to add that it was not marked by that grotesque extravagance sometimes attributed to it. One cannot but think better of the whole race after the experience of such a Sabbath. The only drawback to your satisfaction is, that they die quicker and from less cause than the whites. They have not the same stubborn hopefulness and hilarity. Why, indeed, should they have?

Speaking of the white soldiers, everybody who goes into their hospitals is happily disappointed,--you see so much order and cheerfulness, and so little evidence of pain and misery. The soldier is quite as much a hero in the hospital as on the battle-field. Give him anything to be cheerful about, and he will improve the opportunity. You see men who have lost an arm or a leg, or whose heads have been bruised almost out of likeness to humanity, as jolly as they can be over little comforts and pleasures which ordinary eyes can hardly see with a magnifying-glass. So it happens that a camp of six thousand sick and wounded, which seems at a distance a concentration of human misery that you cannot bear to behold, when near does not look half so lugubrious as you expected; and you are tempted to accuse the sick men of having entered into a conspiracy to look unnaturally happy.

If you go back now six or thirteen miles to the field hospitals, you find nothing essentially different. The system and its practical workings are the same. But it is a perpetual astonishment to find that here, near to the banks of a river that has not a respectable village on its shores from Fortress Monroe to Richmond,--here, in a houseless and desolate land which can be reached only by roads which are intersected by gullies, which plunge into sloughs of despond, which lose themselves in the ridges of what were once cornfields, or meander amid stumps of what so lately stood a forest,--that here you have every comfort for the sick: all needed articles of clothing, the shirts and drawers, the socks and slippers; and all the delicacies, too, the farinas, the jellies, the canned meats and fruits, the concentrated milk, the palatable drinks and stimulants, and even fresh fruits and vegetables. And in such profusion, too! I asked the chief agent of the Commission in the Ninth Corps how many orders he filled in a day. "Look for yourself." I took down the orders; and there they were, one hundred and twenty strong, some for little and some for much, some for a single article and some for a dozen articles.

But it is not in camps of long standing that the wounded and sick suffer for want of care or lack of comforts. It is when the base is suddenly changed, when all order is broken up, when there are no tents at hand, when the stores are scattered, nobody knows where, after a great battle perhaps, and the wounded are pouring in upon you like a flood, and when it seems as if no human energy and no mortal capacity of transportation could supply the wants both of the well and the sick, the almost insatiable demands of the battle-field and the equally unfathomable needs of the hospital, it is then that the misery comes, and it is then that the Commission does its grandest work. After the Battles of the Wilderness and Spottsylvania, twenty-five thousand wounded were crowded into Fredericksburg, where but ten thousand were expected. For a time supplies of all kinds seemed to be literally exhausted. There were no beds. There was not even straw. There were not surgeons enough nor attendants enough. There was hardly a supply of food. Some found it difficult to get a drop of cold water. Poor, wounded men, who had wearily trudged from the battle-field and taken refuge in a deserted house, remained hours and a day without care, and without seeing the face of any but their wounded comrades. Then the Sanitary Commission sent its hundred and fifty agents to help the overburdened surgeons. Then every morning it despatched its steamer down the Potomac crowded with necessaries and comforts. Then with ceaseless industry its twenty wagons, groaning under their burden, went to and fro over the wretched road from Belle Plain to Fredericksburg. A credible witness says that for several days nearly all the bandages and a large proportion of the hospital supplies came from its treasury. No mind can discern and no tongue can declare what valuable lives it saved and what sufferings it alleviated. Who shall say that Christian charity has not its triumphs proud as were ever won on battle-field? If the Commission could boast only of its first twenty-four hours at Antietam and Gettysburg and its forty-eight hours at Fredericksburg, it would have earned the everlasting gratitude and praise of all true men.

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But is there not a reverse to this picture? Are there no drawbacks to this success? Is there no chapter of abortive plans, of unfaithful agents, of surgeons and attendants appropriating or squandering charitable gifts? These are questions which are often honestly asked, and the doubts which they express or awaken have cooled the zeal and slackened the industry of many an earnest worker. There is no end to the stories which have been put in circulation. I remember a certain mythical blanket which figured in the early part of the war, and which, though despatched to the soldier, was found a few weeks after by its owner adorning the best bed of a hotel in Washington. To be sure, it seemed to have pursued a wandering life,--for now it was sent from the full stores of a lady in Lexington, and now it was stripped perhaps by a poor widow from the bed of her children, and then it was heard from far off in the West, ever seeking, but never reaching, its true destination. Without heeding any such stories, although they have done infinite mischief, I answer to honest queries, that I have no doubt that sometimes the stores of the Commission are both squandered and misappropriated. I do not positively know it; but I am sure that it would be a miracle, if they were not. It would be the first time in human history that so large and varied a business, and extending over such a breadth of country and such a period of time, was transacted without waste. Look at the facts. Here are thousands of United States surgeons and attendants of all ages and characters through whose hands many of these gifts must necessarily go. What wonder, if here and there one should be found whose principles were weaker than his appetites? Consider also the temptations. These men are hard-worked, often scantily fed. Every nerve is tried by the constant presence of suffering, and every sense by fetid odors. Would it be surprising, if they sometimes craved the luxuries which were so close at hand? Moreover, the Commission mission employs hundreds of men, the very best it can get, but it would be too much to ask that all should be models of prudence, watchfulness, and integrity.

I allow, then, that some misappropriation is not improbable. At the same time I do say, that every department is vigilantly watched, and that the losses are trivial, compared with the immense benefits. I do say, emphatically, that to bring a wholesale charge against whole classes, whose members are generally as high-minded and honorable as any other, to accuse them as a body of wretched peculations, is simply false and slanderous. I maintain that fidelity is the rule, and that its reverse is the petty exception; and that it would be in opposition to all rules by which men conduct their lives to suffer such exceptions to influence our conduct, or diminish our contributions to a good cause. In business how often we are harassed by petty dishonesty or great frauds! Nevertheless, the tide of business sweeps on. Why? Because the good so outweighs the evil. The railroad employee is negligent, and some terrible accident occurs. But the railroad keeps on running all the same; for the public convenience and welfare are the law of its life, and private peril and loss but an occasional episode. By the same rule, we support, without misgiving, the Commission, because the good which it certainly does, and the suffering it relieves, in their immensity cover up and put out of sight mistakes, which are incident to all human enterprise, and which are guarded against with all possible vigilance.

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But allow all the good which is claimed, and that the good far transcends any possible evil, and then we are met by these further questions: Is such an organization necessary? Cannot Government do the work? And if so, ought not Government to do it?

I might with propriety answer: Suppose that Government ought to do the work and does not, shall we fold our hands and let our soldiers suffer? But the truth is, Government does do its duty. Some persons foolishly exaggerate the work of the Commission. They talk as though it were the only salvation of the wounded, as though the Government let everything go, and that, if the Commission and kindred societies did not step in, there would not be so much as a wreck of our army left. Such talk is simply preposterous. The Commission, considered as a free, spontaneous offering of a loyal people to the cause of our common country, is a wonderful enterprise. The Commission, standing ready to supply any deficiency, to remedy any defect, and to meet any unforeseen emergency, has done a good work that cannot be forgotten. But, compared with what Government expends upon the sick, its resources are nothing. I have not the figures at hand, though I have seen them; and it is hardly too much to say, that, where the society has doled out a penny, the Government has lavished a pound.

No sane defender, therefore, of this charity supports it on any such ground as that it is the principal benefactor of the soldier. The Commission alone could no more support our hospitals than it could the universe. But the homely adage, "It is best to have two strings to your bow," applies wonderfully to the case. In practical life men act upon this maxim. They like to have an adjunct to the best-working machinery, a sort of reserved power. Every sensible person sees that our mail arrangements furnish to the whole people admirable facilities. Nevertheless, we like to have an express, and occasionally to send letters and packages by it. When the children are sick, there is nothing so good as the advice of the trusted family physician and the unwearied care of the mother. Yet when the physician has done his work and gone his way, and when the mother is worn out by days of anxiety and nights of watching, we deem it a great blessing, if there is a kind neighbor who will come in, not to assume the work, but to help it on a little. The Commission, looking at the hospitals and the armies from a different point of view, sees much that another overlooks, and in an emergency, when all help is too little, brings fresh aid that is a priceless blessing. To the plain, substantial volume of public appropriations it adds the beautiful supplement of private benefactions. That is all that it pretends to do.

There are some special reflections that bear upon the point which we are considering. This war was sprung upon an unwarlike people. The officers of Government, when they entered upon their work, had no thought of the gigantic burdens which have fallen upon their shoulders. Since the war began, Government, like everybody else, has had to learn new duties, and to learn them amid the stress and perplexity of a great conflict. And among other things, it has been obliged, in some respects, to recast its medical regulations to meet the prodigious enlargement of its medical work. Beyond a doubt, much help, which, on account of this imperfection of the medical code itself, or of the inexperience of many who administered it, was needed by our hospitals at the commencement of the war, is not needed now, and much help that is needed now may not, if the war lasts, be needed in the future. But it takes time to move the machinery of a great state. And when any change is to become the permanent law of public action, it ought to take both time and thought to effect it. You do not wish to alter and re-alter the framework of a state or of a state's activity as you would patch up a ruinous old house. If you work at all in any department, you should wish to work on a massive, well-considered plan, so that what you do may last. It is not likely, therefore, that, in the great field of suffering which the war has laid open to us, the public ministries will either be so quickly or so perfectly adjusted as to make private ministries a superfluity.

Neither do we reflect enough upon the limitations of human power. We think sometimes of Government as a great living organism of boundless resources. But, after all, in any department of state, what plans, what overlooks, what vitalizes, is one single human mind. And it is not easy to get minds anywhere clear enough and capacious enough for the large duties. It is easy to obtain men who can command a company well. It is not difficult to find those who can control efficiently a regiment. There are many to whom the care of five thousand men is no burden; a few who are adequate to an army corps. But the generals who can handle with skill a hundred thousand men, and make these giant masses do their bidding, are the rare jewels in war's diadem. Even so is it in every department of life. It is perhaps impossible to find a mind which can sweep over the whole field of our medical operations, and prepare for every emergency and avoid every mistake; not because all men are unfaithful or incapable, but because there must be a limit to the most capacious intellect. Looking simply at the structure of the human mind, we might have foreseen, what facts have amply demonstrated, that in a war of such magnitude as that which we are now waging there always must be room for an organization like the Sanitary Commission to do its largest and noblest work.

But, above and beyond all such reflections, there are great national and patriotic considerations which more than justify, yea, demand, the existence of our war charities. Allowing that the outward comfort of the soldier (and who would grant it?) might be accomplished just as well in some other way,--allowing that in a merely sanitary aspect the Government could have done all that voluntary organizations have undertaken, and have done it as well as they or better than they,--even then we do not allow for a moment that what has been spent has been wasted. What is the Sanitary Commission, and what are kindred associations, but so many bonds of love and kindness to bind the soldier to his home, and to keep him always a loyal citizen in every hope and in every heart-throb? This is the influence which we can least of all afford to lose. He must have been blind who did not see at the outset of the war, that, beyond the immediate danger of the hour, there were other perils. We were trying the most tremendous experiment that was ever tried by any people. Out of the most peaceful of races we were creating a nation of soldiers. In a few months, where there seemed to be scarcely the elements of martial strength, we were organizing an army which was to be at once gigantic and efficient. Who could calculate the effect of such a swift change? The questions many a patriotic heart might have asked were these: When this wicked Rebellion is ended,--when these myriads of our brethren whose lives have been bound up in that wondrous collective life, the life of a great army, shall return to their quiet homes by the hills and streams of New England or on the rolling prairies of the West, will they be able to merge their life again in the simple life of the community out of which they came? Will they find content at the plough, by the loom, in the workshop, in the tranquil labors of civil life? Can they, in short, put off the harness of the soldier, and resume the robe of the citizen? Many a one could have wished to say to every soldier, as he went forth to the war, "Remember, that, if God spares your life, in a few months or a few years you will come back, not officers, not privates, but sons and husbands and brothers, for whom some home is waiting and some human heart throbbing. Never forget that your true home is not in that fort beside those frowning cannon, not on that tented field amid the glory and power of military array, but that it nestles beneath yonder hill, or stands out in sunshine on some fertile plain. Remember that you are a citizen yet, with every instinct, with every sympathy, with every interest, and with every duty of a citizen."

Can we overestimate the influence of these associations, of these Soldiers'-Aid Societies, rising up in every city and village, in producing just such a state of mind, in keeping the soldier one of us, one of the people? Five hundred thousand hearts following with deep interest his fortunes,--twice five hundred thousand hands laboring for his comfort,--millions of dollars freely lavished to relieve his sufferings,--millions more of tokens of kindness and good-will going forth, every one of them a message from the home to the camp: what is all this but weaving a strong network of alliance between civil and military life, between the citizen at home and the citizen soldier? If our army is a remarkable body, more pure, more clement, more patriotic than other armies,--if our soldier is everywhere and always a true-hearted citizen,--it is because the army and soldier have not been cast off from public sympathy, but cherished and bound to every free institution and every peaceful association by golden cords of love. The good our Commissions have done in this respect cannot be exaggerated; it is incalculable.

Nor should we forget the influence they have had on ourselves,--the reflex influence which they have been pouring back into the hearts of our people at home, to quicken their patriotism, We often say that the sons and brothers are what the mothers and sisters make them. Can you estimate the electric force which runs like an irresistible moral contagion from heart to heart in a community all of whose mothers and daughters are sparing that they may spend, and learning the value of liberty and country by laboring for them? It does not seem possible, that, amid the divers interests and selfish schemes of men, we ever could have sustained this war, and carried it to a successful issue, had it not been for the moral cement which these wide-spread philanthropic enterprises have supplied. Every man who has given liberally to support the Commission has become a missionary of patriotism; every woman who has cut and made the garments and rolled the bandages and knit the socks has become a missionary. And so the country has been full of missionaries, true-hearted and loyal, pleading, "Be patient, put up with inconveniences, suffer exactions, bear anything, rather than sacrifice the nationality our fathers bequeathed to us!" And if our country is saved, it will be in no small degree because so many have been prompted by their benevolent activity to take a deep personal interest in the struggle and in the men who are carrying on the struggle.

These national and patriotic influences are the crowning blessings which come in the train of the charities of the war; and they constitute one of their highest claims to our affection and respect. The unpatriotic utterances which in these latter days so often pain our ears, the weariness of burdens which tempt so many to be ready to accept anything and to sacrifice anything to be rid of them, admonish us that we need another uprising of the people and another re-birth of patriotism; and they show us that we should cherish more and more everything which fosters noble and national sentiments. And when this war is over, and the land is redeemed, and we come to ask what things have strengthened us to meet and overcome our common peril, may we not prophesy that high among the instrumentalities which have husbanded our strength, and fed our patriotism, and knit more closely the distant parts of our land and its divided interests, will be placed the United States Sanitary Commission?

ART.

HARRIET HOSMER'S ZENOBIA.

It took a long while for artists to understand that the Greek face was the ideal face merely to Greek sculptors. During the baser ages of the sculpturesque art, (how far towards our own day the epicycle inclusive of those ages extended it would be invidious for us to say,) sculpture consisted of the nearest imitation of Greek models which was possible of attainment by _talents_, with an occasional intercalated _genius_, hampered by prevailing modes. That the Greek face was _beautiful_, none could doubt. That in the sovereign points of _intellect_ it was the absolute beau-ideal is open to great doubt. Apart from all such questions, the fact of subservience exists. Even Benjamin Robert Haydon, the man who thought himself called to be the æsthetic saviour of the age, knew no other, no better way of making himself master of solid form than by lying down in the cold with a candle before the Elgin marbles. Let not this be mistaken as a slur upon one of the most devoted men in history,--a man who surely lived, and who, aside from the pangs of poverty, probably died, for the regeneration of Art. We only mean to select an instance preëminent over all that can be mentioned, to show that until a very late date even the most learned men in the Art-world had not cut loose from the fascination of old models, considered not as suggestive, but as dominant. There is nothing in the sculptors of Haydon's period to prove that their view differed essentially from that of the most self-devoted theorist among painters.

We hold that it has been left for America to complete the æsthetic, as well as the social and political emancipation of the world. The fact that pre-Raphaelism began in England (we refer to the _new_ saints standing on their toe-nails, not the _old_ ones) proves nothing respecting the origination of Art's highest liberty. In the first place, the man who was selected by the Elisha to be the Elijah of the school would under no circumstances have chosen a fiery chariot to go up in, but would have taken the Lord Mayor's coach, (if he could have got it without paying,) and, like a true Englishman, been preceded by heralds, and after-run by lackeys. The idea of Turner _en martyre_ is to a calm spectator simply amusing. If "a neglected disciple of Truth" had met him out a-sketching, and asked him for help, or a peep, he would have shut up his book with a slap, and said, like the celebrated laird, "_Puir bodie! fin' a penny for yer ain sel'_." In the second place, this Elijah never dropped his mantle on the _soi-disant_ Elisha. Search over the whole range of walls where (with their color somewhat the worse for time) Turner's pictures are preserved, and if any critic but Ruskin's self can find the qualities which unite Turner with modern pre-Raphaelism, we will buy the view of Köln and make it a present to him. In the third place, apart from all ancestry or indorsement, we regard modern pre-Raphaelism, as a school full of vital mistakes. It refuses to acknowledge this preëminent, eternal fact of Art, _that the entire truth of Nature cannot be copied_: in other words and larger, that the artist must select between the major and the minor facts of the outer world; that, before he executes, he must pronounce whether he will embody the essential effect, that which steals on the soul and possesses it without painful analysis, or the separate details which belong to the geometrician and destroy the effect,--still further, whether he will make us feel what Nature says, or examine below her voice into the vibration of the _chordæ vocales_.

We have not touched on pre-Raphaelism with the idea of attacking it, still less of defending it, and not at all of discussing it. Our view has been simply to excuse the assertion that with America has begun, must necessarily begin and belong, the enfranchisement of Art from subservience to a type,--the opening of its doors into the open air of æsthetic catholicity.

Years ago, the writer in several places presented to the consideration of American Art-lovers the plaster bust of "The Old Trapper," as one of the foremost things which up to that period had been done by any man for such enfranchisement as that referred to above. Palmer, the noble master and teacher of the sculptor who created this bust, had done many things entirely outside of the old ring-fence, had made himself famous by them; but this, on some accounts, seemed to us the chief, because the most audacious of all. What did it represent? Simply an old, worn, peril-tried, battle-scarred man, who had fought grislies and Indians,--walked leagues with his canoe on his back,--camped under snow-peaks,--dined on his rifle's market,--had nothing but his heroic pluck, patience, and American individuality, to fascinate people,--and now, under a rough fur cap of his own making, showed a face without a line that was Greek in it, and said to Launt Thompson, "Make me, if you dare!"

What we then admired in "The Old Trapper" we now admire in Miss Hosmer's "Zenobia."

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There now stands on exhibition in this country one of the finest examples of the spirit which animates our best American artists in their selection of ideals, and their execution of them on the catholic principle.

Miss Hosmer has not thought it necessary to color her statue, because she knew that the utmost capability of sculpture is the expression of form,--that, had she colored it, she would have brought it into competition with a Nature entirely beyond her in mere details, and made it a doll instead of a statue. Neither has she made it a travel-stained woman with a carpet-bag, because in history all mean details melt away, and we see its actors at great distances like the Athené, and because our whole idea of Zenobia is this:--

_A Queen led in Chains._

Neither has she made her Zenobia a Greek woman, because she was a Palmyrene. What she has made her is this:--

_Our idea of Zenobia won from Romance and History._

This Zenobia is a queen. She is proud as she was when she sat in pillared state, under gorgeous canopies, with a hundred slaves at her beck, and a devoted people within reach of her couriers. She does not tremble or swerve, though she has her head down. That head is bowed only because she is a woman, and she will not give the look of love to the man who has forced her after him. Her lip has no weakness in it. She is a _lady_, and knows that there is something higher than joy or pain. Miss Hosmer has evidently believed nothing of the legends to the effect that she did swerve afterward, else she could not have put that noble soul in her heroine's mouth. Or did she believe the swerving, she must have felt that Aurelian had the right, after all pain and wrong, to come and claim the queen,--to say,--

"I did all this wrong _for_ you, and you were worth it."

The face (perhaps, with the present necessities of a catholicized Art, its most important excellence) is not a Greek face, but a much farther Oriental.

The bas-reliefs of Layard's Nineveh are not more characteristic, national, faithful to the probable facts in that best aspect of facts with which Art has to do.

As for the figure, none of those who from Roman studios have hitherto sent us their work have ever given a juster idea of their advancement in the understanding of the human anatomy. The bones of the right metatarsus show as they would under the flesh of a queenly foot. The right foot is the one flexed in Zenobia's walking, and that foot has never been used to support the weight of burdens; it has gone bare without being soiled. The shoulders perfectly carry the head, and no anatomist could suggest a place where they might be bent or erected in truer relative proportion to either of the feet. The dejection of the right arm is a wonderful compromise between the valor of a queen who has fought her last and best, and the grief of a woman who has no further resource left to her womanliness.

Both arms, in their anatomy, in their truthfulness to the queenly circumstances, may equally delight and challenge criticism. The chains which the queen carries are smaller than we suspect a _Roman_ conqueror put even upon a woman and a queen; but let that pass,--for they do not hurt the harmony of the idea, and are simply a matter of detail, which womanly sympathy might well have erred in since chivalric days, though their adherence to actual truth would not have blemished the idea. At all events, Zenobia holds them like a queen, so as not to hurt her. She _will_ remember her glory.

The drapery of the statue is a subordinate matter; but that has been attended to as true artists attend to even the least things which wait on a great idea. The tassels of the robe have been chiselled by Miss Hosmer's marble-cutter with a care which shows that the last as well as the first part of the work went on under her womanly supervision. Every fold of the robe, which must have been copied from the cast, falls and swings before our eyes as the position demands. Grace and truth lie in the least wrinkle of a garment which needs no after-cast of the anatomist's cloak of charity to hide a sin.

In many respects, we regard Miss Hosmer's "Zenobia" as one of the very highest honors paid by American Art to our earliest assertions of its dominant destiny.

REVIEWS AND LITERARY NOTICES.

_Patriotism in Poetry and Prose._ Being Selected Passages from
Lectures and Patriotic Readings. By JAMES E. MURDOCH.
Philadelphia: J.B. Lippincott & Co. 12mo.

This volume, published in aid of the funds of the Sanitary Commission, is one of the indications of the patriotism of the time. Mr. Murdoch, an eminent and estimable actor and elocutionist, has been engaged, ever since the war began, in doing his part towards rousing and sustaining the enthusiasm of the people, by scattering the burning words of patriotic poets in our Western camps and towns. The volume contains specimens of lyric poetry which have stood the test of actual delivery before soldiers who were facing the grim realities of war. Sometimes the elocutionist has been so near the enemy as to have a shell come into whizzing or screaming competition with the clear and ringing tones of his voice; at other times, he has cheered with "The American Flag," "Old Ironsides," or "The Union," audiences shivering with cold and famishing on a short allowance of hard-tack. He has seen the American soldier under all circumstances, and practically understands all the avenues to his heart and brain. Many of the poems in the volume which have obtained a national popularity were originally written at his suggestion. This is especially true of the sounding lyrics of Boker, Read, and Janvier. His own hearty and well-considered words, so full of manly feeling and genuine patriotism, are none the worse for catching a little of that inflation which the sights of the hospital and the battle-field, and a sympathy with the average sentiment of sensitive crowds, are so sure to provoke in an earnest and ardent mind. The poets who are represented in this volume have cause for gratification in the assurance that they have been more generally read than any of their American contemporaries. It is estimated that Mr. Murdoch has recited their pieces to a quarter of million of people during the last four years. In the hospital, in the camp, before the lyceum audience, they have been made to do their good work of comforting, rousing, or inflaming their auditors. They have sent many a volunteer to the front, and nerved him afterwards at the moment of danger. And certainly the friends of the soldiers will desire to read what soldiers have so heartily applauded, especially as the money they give for the book goes to sustain the most popular and beneficent of all charities.

_Philosophy as Absolute Science, founded in the Universal Laws
of Being, and including Ontology, Theology, and Psychology made
one, as Spirit, Soul, and Body._ By E. L. and A. L.
FROTHINGHAM. Volume I. Boston: Walker, Wise, & Co.

We must go back to the time when a certain father and son of Crete stretched their waxen wings and soared boldly into space, to discover any "external representation" of the sublime attempt of the authors of this volume. Yet it may reasonably be objected that in the Dædalian legend we can detect but a partial and deceptive correspondence; for, whereas we read that one of the ancient voyagers, having ventured too near the sun, met his end by a distressing casualty, it is certain, that, when the reader loses sight of this modern family-excursion in the metaphysical ether, both parties are pushing vigorously on, wings in capital condition, wind never better, and the grand tour of the universe in process of most happy accomplishment. And let it here be mentioned that the senior of the gentlemen whose names are given upon the title-page is understood to resemble the classical artificer in being inventor and manufacturer of pinions for the two. Mr. E. L. Frothingham is to be regarded as substantially the author of the volume before us.

And so Philosophy is not dead, after all! Mr. Lewes's rather handsome resolutions, of which copies have been forwarded to the friends of the supposed deceased, turn out to be premature; Dr. Mansel's pious obituary is an impertinence; Comte and Buckle, Mill and Spencer, are not the spendthrift heirs of her homestead estate in Dreamland. The Positive Mrs. Gamp may continue to assure us that the bantling "never breathed to speak on in this wale," but the perennial showman persists in depicting it "quite contrairy in a livin' state, and performing beautiful upon the 'arp." We play with metaphors, hesitating to characterize this latest Minerva-birth. For it is either that "new sensation" demanded by the Sir Charles Coldstream who has used up all religions and all philosophies, or, being a _reductio ad absurdum_ of speculative pretension, it fulfils the promise of a recent quack advertisement, and is in very truth "The Metaphysical Cure."

Perhaps it were better to cancel the preceding paragraphs. Is not any savor of banter out of place in the reception we are bound to accord to an alleged solution of the unthinkable problem which underlies creation and man's position therein? If the impulse which first controlled us is not denied expression, it is because it implies at once the worst that can be said of a very extraordinary performance. Let this worst be written roughly, and in a single sentence. To the vast majority of upright and thoughtful men who are at present living and laboring in the world, Mr. Frothingham's "Philosophy as Absolute Science" can be saved from being infinitely repulsive only by being infinitely ridiculous. But to stop with this assertion would give no adequate impression of an earnest and most conscientious work. A remarkable mind, even if a misdirected one, has mounted upon the battlements of its system, and proclaimed victory over all things. Of all tellers of marvels, Swedenborg alone is so absolutely free from a vulgar fanaticism, and so innocent of any appeal to passion, prejudice, or taste. With an equipoise of disposition which is almost provoking, Mr. Frothingham announces as dogmas speculations from whose sweep and immensity the human mind recoils. Having posited his principles, he confidently proceeds to deduce a system which shall include every spiritual and material fact of which man can take cognizance. And he is too genuine a philosopher to be troubled at the practical application of his discoveries. He repudiates with contempt whatever expression has been found for the energy of the purest and noblest leaders of modern society. Esculapius is not accommodated with the sacrifice of so much as a February chicken. The manly works of Wilberforce and Garrison, the gracious influence of Channing, the stalwart conviction of Parker, the deep perception of Emerson,--all these must be beaten down under our feet as the incarnate Satan of the Litany. But if this is rather rough treatment for the advance-guard of civilization, the brethren in the rear rank are prevented from taking the comfort to which they seem to be justly entitled. For we are utterly unable to understand what a recent reviewer means in commending this work to conservatives as a noble text-book and grand summary of arguments in favor of their positions. The truth is, that no conservative can possibly accept the system. For it is constantly shown that what may be called a progressive _bouleversement_ is to every individual a necessary advance, securing to him experiences which are essential to the realization of that spiritual consciousness which is alone capable of receiving the Absolute Philosophy. The editor of the "Richmond Examiner" must become as he of the "Liberator," and the Bishop of Vermont must meditate a John Brown raid, before either of them can receive the ultimate redemption now published to the world.

From what Mr. Frothingham calls "an internal-natural point of observation," which we understand to be that of a great majority of the most intelligent and gifted people at present on the earth, the results of this scheme appear so false and contradictory as to furnish its very adequate refutation. Nevertheless, there doubtless exists a class of spiritually minded, cultivated, unsatisfied men and women who will feel that the sober sincerity of this voice crying in the commercial wilderness must challenge a respectful hearing. Such persons will find no difficulty in accepting the statement, that a system of Absolute Truth must be "contrary to the natural conceptions of the mind, to the facts of the natural consciousness, and to the inclinations of the natural heart." Their past experiences have told them that no precision of human speech can reveal a spiritual condition, or even render intelligible the highest mental operations. Instead of the "this-will-never-do" dictum of superficial and carnal criticism, they will offer patient study, and be content that much shall appear foolish and meaningless until a change in the interior being can interpret it aright. It is just to mention that a very few persons of the character described have already received Mr. Frothingham's philosophy, and profess to find it full of instruction and delight. And let it not be concealed that no one who did not possess the very abundant leisure necessary for investigation and meditation, and had not passed through mental states represented by Romanism, Protestantism, Unitarianism, and Transcendentalism, could be accepted by the veriest neophyte as a competent reviewer. We attempt nothing more than a very humble notice which may bring the existence of this latest salvation before some of the scattered fellowship who are ready for it. We despair of making any statement concerning it which believers would not consider ludicrously inadequate or absolutely false. All and singular are accordingly warned that what is here printed comes from a mental point of view totally opposed to the alleged Truth, as well as from that limited amount of application which a regular calling in the week and customary church-going on Sunday has left at our disposal.