Chapter III: Front Matter (3)

Mr. Neal owns up, it appears, to the following publications, omitted by the writer of the article you mentioned: 'Rachel Dyer,' one volume; 'Authorship,' one volume; 'Brother Jonathan,' three volumes, (English edition;) 'Ruth Elder,' one volume; 'One Word More;' 'True Womanhood,' one volume; magazine articles, reviews, and stories in most of the British and American monthlies, and in some of the quarterlies, to the amount of twenty volumes, at least, duodecimo. In addition to which, he has been a liberal contributor all his life to some of the ablest newspapers of the age, and either sole or sub-editor, or associate, in perhaps twenty other enterprises, most of which fell through.

He claims, too--being a modest man--and others who know him best acknowledge his claims, we see--that he revolutionized _Blackwood_ and the British periodical press, at a time when they were all against us; that he began the war on titles in this country, that he broke up the lottery system and the militia system, and proposed (through the _Westminster Review_) the only safe and reasonable plan of emancipation that ever appeared; that with him originated the question of woman's rights; that he introduced gymnasia to our people; and, in short, that he has always been good for something, and always lived to some purpose. 'And furthermore deponent sayeth not.'

THE SOLDIER AND THE CIVILIAN.

When Charles Dickens expressed regret for having written his foolish _American Notes_, and _Martin Chuzzlewit_, he 'improved the occasion' to call us a large-hearted and good-natured people, or something to that effect--I have not his _peccavi_ by me, and write from 'a favorable general impression.'

It is not weak vanity which may lead any American to claim that in this compliment lies a great truth. The American _is_ large-hearted and good-natured, and when a few of his comrades join in a good work, he will aid them with a lavish and Jack-tar like generosity. Charity is peculiarly at home in America. A few generations have accumulated, in all the older States, hospitals, schools, and beneficent institutions, practically equal in every respect to those which have been the slow growth of centuries in any European country. The contributions to the war, whether of men or money, have been incredible. And there is no stint and no grumbling. The large heart is as large and generous as ever.

The war has, however, despite all our efforts, become an almost settled institution. This is a pity--we all feel it bitterly, and begin to grow serious. Still there is no flinching. Flinching will not help; we must go on in the good cause, in God's name. 'Shall there not be clouds as well as sunshine?' 'Go in, then'--that is agreed upon. Draft your men, President Lincoln; raise your money, Mr. Chase, we are ready. To the last man and the last dollar we are ready. History shall speak of the American of this day as one who was as willing to spend money for national honor as he was earnest and keen in gathering it up for private emolument. Go ahead!

But let us do every thing advisedly and wisely.

In the first flush of war, it was not necessary to look so closely at the capital. We pulled out our loose change and bank-notes, and scattered them bravely--as we should. Now that more and still more are needed, we should look about to see how to turn every thing to best account. For instance, there is the matter of soldiers. Those who rose in 1861, and went impulsively to battle, acted gloriously--even more noble will it be with every volunteer who _now_, after hearing of the horrors of war, still resolutely and bravely shoulders the musket and dares fate. God sends these times to the world and to men as 'jubilees' in which all who have lost an estate, be it of a calling or a social position, may regain it or win a new one.

But still we want to present _every_ inducement. Already the lame and crippled soldiers are beginning to return among us. The poor souls, ragged and sun-burnt, may be seen at every corner. They sit in the parks with unhealed wounds; they hobble along the streets, many of them weary and worn; poor fellows! they are greater, and more to be envied than many a fresh fopling who struts by. And the people feel this. They treat them kindly, and honor them.

But would it not be well if some general action could be adopted on the subject of taking care of all the incurables which this war is so rapidly sending us? If every township in America would hold meetings and provide honorably in some way for the returned crippled soldiers, they would assume no great burden, and would obviate the most serious drawback which the country is beginning to experience as regards obtaining volunteers. It has already been observed by the press, that the scattering of these poor fellows over the country is beginning to have a discouraging effect on those who should enter the army. It is a pity; we would very gladly ignore the fact, and continue to treat the question solely _con entusiasmo_, and as at first; but what is the use of endeavoring to shirk facts which will only weigh more heavily in the end from being inconsidered now? Let us go to work generously, great-heartedly, and good-naturedly, to render the life of every man who has been crippled for the country as little of a burden as possible.

Dear readers, it will not be sufficient to guarantee to these men a pauper's portion among you. I do not pretend to say what you should give them, or what you should do for them. I only know that there are but two nations on the face of the earth capable of holding town-meetings and acting by spontaneous democracy for themselves. One of these is represented by the Russian serfs, who administer their _mir_ or 'commune' with a certain beaver-like instinct, providing for every man his share of land, his social position, his rights, so far as they are able. The Englishman, or German, or Frenchman, is _not_ capable of this natural town-meeting sort of action. He needs 'laws,' and government, and a lord or a squire in the chair, or a demagogue on the rostrum. The poor serf does it by custom and instinct.

The Bible Communism of the Puritans, and the habit of discussing all manner of secular concerns in meeting, originated this same ability in America. To this, more than to aught else, do we owe the growth of our country. One hundred Americans, transplanted to the wild West and left alone, will, in one week, have a mayor, and 'selectmen,' a town-clerk, and in all probability a preacher and an editor. One hundred Russian serfs will not rise so high as this; but leave them alone in the steppe, and they will organize a _mir_, elect a _starosta_, or 'old man,' divide their land very honestly, and take care of the cripples!

Such nations, but more especially the American, can find out for themselves, much better than any living editor can tell them, how to provide liberally for those who fought while they remained at home. The writer may suggest to them the subject--they themselves can best 'bring it out.'

In trials like these it is very essential that our habits of meeting, discussing and practically acting on such measures, should be more developed than ever. We have come to the times which _test_ republican institutions, and to crises when the public meeting--the true corner-stone of all our practical liberties--should be brought most boldly, freely, and earnestly into action. Politics and feuds should vanish from every honorable and noble mind, and all unite in cordial coöperation for the good work. Friends, there is _nothing_ you can not do, if you would only get together, inspire one another, and do your _very best_. You could raise an army which would drive these rebel rascals howling into their Dismal Swamps, or into Mexico, in a month, if you would only combine in earnest and do all you can.

Hitherto the man of ease, and the Respectable, disgusted by the politicians, has neglected such meetings, and left them too much to the Blackguard to manage after his own way. But this is a day of politics no longer; at least, those who try to engineer the war with a view to the next election, are in a fair way to be ranked with the enemies of the country, and to earn undying infamy. The only politics which the honest man now recognizes is, the best way to save the country; to raise its armies and fight its battles. It is not McClellan or anti-McClellan, which we should speak of, but anti-Secession. And paramount among the principal means of successfully continuing the war, I place this, of properly caring for the disabled soldier, and of placing before those who have not as yet enlisted, the fact, that come what may, they will be well looked after, for life.

As I said, the common-sense of our minor municipalities will abundantly provide for these poor fellows, if a spirit can be awakened which shall sweep over the country and induce the meetings to be held. In many, something has already been done. But something liberal and large is requisite. Government will undoubtedly do its share; and this, if properly done, will greatly relieve our local commonwealths. Here, indeed, we come to a very serious question, which has been already discussed in these pages--more boldly, as we are told, than our cotemporaries have cared to treat it, and somewhat in advance of others. We refer to our original proposition to liberally divide Southern lands among the army, and convert the retired soldier to a small planter. Such men would very soon contrive to hire the 'contraband,' get him to working, and make something better of him than planterocracy ever did. At least, this is what Northern ship-captains and farmers contrive to do, in their way, with numbers of coal-black negroes, and we have no doubt that the soldier-planter will manage, 'somehow,' to get out a cotton-crop, even with the aid of hired negroes! Here, again, a bounty could be given to the wounded. Observe, we mean a bounty which shall, to as high a degree as is possible or expedient, fully recompense a man for losing a limb. And as we can find in Texas alone, land sufficient to nobly reward a vast proportion of our army, it will be seen that I do not propose any excessive or extravagant reward.

Between our municipalities and our government, _much_ should be done. But will not this prove a two-stool system of relief, between which the disbanded soldier would fall to the ground? Not necessarily. Let our towns and villages do their share, pledging themselves to take _good_ care of the disabled veteran, and to find work for all until Government shall apportion the lands of the conquered among the army.

And let all this be done _soon_. Let it forthwith form a part of the long cried for 'policy' which is to inspire our people. If this had been a firmly determined thing from the beginning, and if we had _dared_ to go bravely on with it, instead of being terrified at every proposal to _act_, by the yells and howls of the Northern secessionists, we might have cleared Dixie out as fire clears tow. 'The enemy,' said one who had been among them, 'have the devil in them.' If our men had something solid to look forward to, they too, would have the devil in them, and no mistake. They fight bravely as it is, without much inducement beyond patriotism and a noble cause. But the 'secesh' soldier has more than this--he has the desperation of a traitor in a bad cause, of a fanatic and of a natural savage. It is no slur at the patriotism of our troops to say that they would fight better for such a splendid inducement as we hold out.

We may as well do all we can for the army--at home and away, here and there, with all our hearts and souls. For it will come to that sooner or later. The army is a terrible power, and its power has been, and is to be, terribly exerted. If we would organize it betimes, prevent it from becoming a social trouble, or rather make of it a great social support and a _help_ instead of a future hindrance and a drag, we must be busy at work providing for it. There it is--destined, perhaps, to rise to a million--the flower, strength, and intellect of America, our productive force, our brain--yes, the great majority of our mills, and looms, and printing-presses, and all that is capital-producing, are there, in those uniforms. There, friends, lie towns and cities, towers and palace-halls, literature and national life--for there are the brains and arms which make these things. Those uniforms are not to be, at least, _should not_ be, forever there. But manage meanly and weakly and stingily _now_, and you destroy the cities and fair castles, the uniform remains in the myriad ranks, war becomes interminable, the soldier becomes nothing but a soldier--God avert the day!--and you will find yourself some day telling your grand-children--if you have any, for I can inform you that the chances of war diminish many other chances--how 'things _might_ have been, and how finely we _might_ have conquered the enemy and had an undivided country--God bless us!'

Will the WOMEN of America take no active part in this movement?

Many years ago, a German writer--one Kirsten--announced the extraordinary fact, that in the Atlantic States the proportion of women who died unmarried, or of 'old maids,' was larger than in any European country. It is certainly true that, owing to the high standard of expenses adopted by the children of respectable American parents--and what American is not 'respectable'?--we are far less apt to rush into 'imprudent' marriages than is generally supposed. But what proportion of unmarried dames will there be, if drafting continues, and the war becomes a permanent annual subject of draft? The prospect is seriously and simply frightful! The wreck of morality in France caused by Napoleon's wars is notorious, for previous to that time the French peasantry were not so debauched as they subsequently became. But this shocking subject requires no comment.

On with the war! Drive it, push it, send it howling and hissing on like the wild tornado, like the mad levin-brand, right into the foe! Pay the soldier--promise--pledge--do any thing and every thing; but raise an overwhelming force, and end the war.

Up and fight!

It is better to die now than see such disaster as awaits this country if war become a fixed disease.

VOLUNTEER BOYS. [1750.]

'Hence with the lover who sighs o'er his wine,
Chloes and Phillises toasting;
Hence with the slave who will whimper and whine,
Of ardor and constancy boasting;
Hence with Love's joys,
Follies and noise.
The toast that _I_ give is: 'The Volunteer Boys!''

AUTHOR-BORROWING.

Bulwer, in narrating the literary career of a young Chinese, states how one of his works was very severely handled by the Celestial critics: one of the gravest of the charges brought against it by these poll-shaved, wooden-shod, little-foot-worshiping, Great-Wall-building mandarins of literature being its extreme originality! They denounced Fihoti as having sinned the unpardonable literary sin of writing a book, a large share of whose ideas was nowhere to be found in the writings of Confucius.

But how strange such a charge would sound in our English ears! With us, if between two authors the most remote resemblance of idea or expression can be detected, straightway some ultraist stickler for originality--some Poe--shrieks out, 'Some body must be a thief!' and forthwith, all along the highways of reviewdom, is sent up the hue and cry: 'Stop thief! stop thief!' For has not the law thundered from Sinai, 'Thou shalt not steal'? True, plagiarism is nowhere distinctly forbidden by Moses; but have not critics judicially pronounced it author-_theft_? Has not metaphor been sounded through every note of its key-board, to strike out all that is base whereunto to liken it? Have not old Dr. Johnson's seven-footed words--the tramp of whose heavy brogans has echoed down the staircase of years even unto our day--declared plagiarists from the works of buried writers 'jackals, battening on dead men's thoughts'?

And yet, after a vast deal of such like catachresis, the orthodoxy of plagiarism remains still in dispute. What we incorporate among the cardinal articles of literary faith, China abjures as a dangerous heresy. But neither our own nor the Chinese creed consists wholly of tested bullion, but is crude ore, in which the pure gold of truth is mingled with the dross of error. That is a golden tenet of the tea-growers which licenses the borrowing of ideas; that 'of the earth, earthy,' which embargoes every one unborrowed. We build upon a rock when interdicting plagiarism; but on sand when we make that term inclose author-theft and author-borrowing. The making direct and unacknowledged quotations, and palming them off as the quoter's, is a very grave literary offense. But the expression of similar or even identical thoughts in different language, in this age of the world must be tolerated, or else the race of authors soon become as extinct as that of behemoths and ichthyosauri; and, indeed, far from levying any imposts upon author-borrowing, rather ought we to vote bounties and pensions to encourage it.

Originality of thought with men is impossible. There is in existence a certain amount of thought, but it all belongs to God. Lord paramount over the empire of mind as well as matter, he alone is seized, in fee simple right, of the whole domain: provinces of which men hold, as fiefs, by vassal tenure, subject to reversion and enfeoffment to another. Nor can any man absolve himself from his allegiance, and extend absolute sovereignty over broad tracts of idea-territory; for while feudal princes vested in themselves, by conquest merely, the ownership of kingdoms, God became suzerain over the empire of thought by virtue of creation--for creation confers right of property. We do not, then, originate the thoughts we call our own; or else Pantheism tells no lie when it declares that man is God, for the differentia which distinguishes God from man is absolute creative power. And if man be thought-creative, he can as well as God give being unto what was non-existent, and that, too, not mere gross, perishable matter, but immortal soul; for thought is mind, and mind is spirit, soul, undying, immortal. Grant that, and you divide God's empire, and enthrone the creature in equal sovereignty beside his Maker.

All thought, then, belongs exclusively to God, and is parceled out by him, as he chooses, among his creature feudatories. As the wind, which bloweth where it listeth, and no one knoweth whence it cometh, save that it is sent by God, so is thought, as it blows through our minds. Over birds, flying at liberty through the free air, boys often advance claims of ownership more specific than are easily derived from the general dominion God gave man over the beasts of the field and the birds of the air; yet, 'All those birds are mine!' exclaims a youngster in roundabout, with just as much reason as any man can claim, as exclusively his own, the thoughts which are ever winging their way through the firmament of mind.

But considered apart from the relation we sustain to God, none of us are original with respect to our fellow-men. Few, indeed, are the ideas we derive by direct grant, or through nature, from our liege lord; but far the greater share, by hooks or personal contact, we gather through our fellow-men. Consciously, unconsciously, we all teach--we all learn from, one another. Association does far more toward forming mind than natural endowments. As not alone the soil whence it springs makes the oak, but surrounding elements contribute. Seclude a human mind entirely from hooks and men, and you may have a man with no ideas borrowed from his fellows. Such a one, in Germany, once grew up from childhood to manhood in close imprisonment, and poor Kasper Hauser proved--an idiot. It can hardly be necessary to suggest the well-known fact, that the greatest readers of men and books always possess the greatest minds. Such are, besides, of the greatest service to mankind. For since God has so formed us that we love to give as well as take, a great independent mind, complete in itself and incapable of receiving from others, must always stand somewhat apart from men; and even a great heart, when conjoined--as it seldom is--with a great head, is rarely able to drawbridge over the wide moat which intrenches it in solitary loneliness. Originality ever links with it something of uncongeniality--a feeling somewhat akin to the egotism of that one who, when asked why he talked so much to himself, replied--for two reasons: the one, that he liked to talk to a sensible man; the other, that he liked to hear a sensible man talk. Divorcing itself from fellow-sympathies, it broods over its own perfections, till, like Narcissus, it falls in love with itself. And so, a highly original man can rarely ever be a highly popular man or author. By the very super-abundance of his excellencies, his usefulness is destroyed; just as Tarpeia sank, buried beneath the presents of the Sabine soldiery. A Man once appeared on earth, of perfect originality; and in him, to an unbounded intellect was added boundless moral power. But men received him not. They rejected his teachings; they smote him; they crucified him.

But though the right of eminent domain over ideas does and should inhere in one superior to us, far different is the case with words. These 'incarnations of thought' are of man's device, and therefore his; and style--the peculiar manner in which one uses words to express ideas--is individually personal. Indeed, style has been defined the man himself; a definition, so far as he is recognized only as a revealer of thought, substantially correct. In an idea word-embodied, the embodier, then, possesses with God concurrent ownership. The idea itself may be borrowed, or it may be his so far as discovery gives title; but the words, in their arrangement, are absolutely his. All ideas are like mathematical truths: eternal and unchangeable in their essence, and originate in nature; words like figures, of a fixed value, but of human invention; and sentences are formulæ, embodying oftentimes the same essential truth, but in shapes as various as their paternity. Words, in sentences, should then be inviolate to their author.

Nor is this to value words above ideas--the flesh above the spirit of which it is but the incarnation. It is not the intrinsic value of each that we here regard, but the value of the ownership one has in each. 'Deacon Giles and I,' said a poor man, 'own more cows than any five other men in the county.' 'How many does Deacon Giles own?' asked a bystander. 'Nineteen.' 'And how many do you?' 'One.' And that one cow, which that poor man owned, was worth more to _him_ than the nineteen which were Deacon Giles's. So, when you have determined whose the style is which enfolds a thought, whose the thought is, is as little worth dispute as, after its wrappage of corn has been shelled off, the cob's ownership is worth a quarrel.

As thoughts bodied in words uttered make up conversation, thought incarnate in words written constitutes literature. The gross sum of thought with which God has seen to dower the human mind, though vast, is finite, and may be exhausted. Indeed, we are told this had been already done so long ago as times whereof Holy Writ takes cognizance. Since that time, then, men have been echoing and reëchoing the same old ideas. And though words, too, are finite, their permutations are infinite. What Himalayan piles of paper, river-coursed by Danubes and Niagaras of ink, hath the 'itch of writing' aggregated! And yet, Ganganelli says that every thing that man has ever written might be contained within six thousand folio volumes, if filled with only original matter. But how books lie heaped on one another, weighing down those under, weighed down by those above them; each crushed and crushing; their thoughts, like bones of skeletons corded in convent vault, mingled in confusion--like those which Hawthorne tells us Miriam saw in the burial-cellar of the Capuchin friars in Rome, where, when a dead brother had lain buried an allotted period, his remains, removed from earth to make room for a successor, were piled with those of others who had died before him.

It is said Aurora once sought and gained from Jove the boon of immortality for one she loved; but forgetting to request also perpetual youth, Tithonus gradually grew old, his thin locks whitened, his wasting frame dwindled to a shadow, and his feeble voice thinned down till it became inaudible. And just so ideas, although immortal, were it not for author-borrowers, through age grown obsolete, might virtually perish. But by and by, just as some precious thought is being lost unto the world, let there come some Medea, by whose potent sorcery that old and withered idea receives new life-blood through its shrunken veins, and it starts to life again with recreated vigor--another Æson, with the bloom of youth upon him. Besides in this way playing the physician to save old ideas from a burial alive, the author-borrower often delivers many a prolific mother-thought of a whole family of children--as a prism from out a parent ray of colorless light brings all the bright colors of the spectrum, which, from red to violet, were all waiting there only for its assistance to leap into existence; or sometimes he plays the parson, wedlocking thoughts from whose union issue new; as from yellow wedded to red springs orange, a new, a secondary life; or enacts, maybe, the brood-hen's substitute. Many a thought is a Leda egg, imprisoning twin life-principles, which,, incubated in the eccaleobion brain of an author-borrower, have blessed the world; but without such a foster-parent, in some neglected nest staled and addled, had never burst the shell.

Author-borrowing should also be encouraged, because it tends to language's perfection, and thus to incrementing the value of the ideas it vehicles; for though a gilding diction and elegant expression may not directly increase a thought's intrinsic worth, yet by bestowing beauty it increases its utility, and so adds relative value--just as a rosewood veneering does to a basswood table. There may be as much raw timber in a slab as in a bunch of shingles, but the latter is worth the most; it will find a purchaser where the former would not. So there may be as much truly valuable thought in a dull sermon as in a lively lecture; but the lecture will please, and so instruct, where the dull sermon will fall on an inattentive ear. Moreover, author minds are of two classes, the one deep-thinking, the other word-adroit. Providence bestows her favors frugally; and with the power of quarrying out huge lumps of thought, ability to work them over into graceful form is rarely given. This is no new doctrine, but a truth clearly recognized in metaphysics, and evidenced in history. Cromwell was a prodigious thinker; but in language, oh! how deficient. His thoughts, struggling to force themselves out of that sphynx-like jargon which he spake and wrote, appear like the treasures of the shipwrecked Trojans, swimming '_rari in gurgite vasto_'--Palmyra columns, reared in the midst of a desert of sentences. And Coleridge--than whom in the mines of mental science few have dug deeper, and though Xerxes-hosts of word-slaves waited on his pen--often wrote apparently mere bagatelle--the most transcendental nonsense. Yet he who takes the pains to husk away his obscurity of style will find solid ears of thought to recompense his labor. Bentham and Kant required interpreters--Dumont and Cousin--to make understood what was well worth understanding. These two kinds of authors--thought-creditors and borrowing expressionists--are as mutually necessary to each other to bring out idea in its most perfect shape, as glass and mercury to mirror objects. Dim, indeed, is the reflection of the glass without its coating of quicksilver; and amalgam, without a plate on which to spread it, can never form a mirror. The metal and the silex are

'Useless each without the other;'

but wed them, and from their union spring life-like images of life.

But it may be objected that in trying to improve a thought we often mar it; just as in transplanting shrubs from the barren soil in which they have become fast rooted, to one more fertile, we destroy them. 'Just as the fabled lamps in the tomb of Terentia burned underground for ages, but when removed into the light of day, went out in darkness.' That this sometimes occurs, we own. Some ideas are as fragile as butterflies, whom to handle is to destroy. But such are exceptions only, and should not preclude attempts at improvement. If a bungler tries and fails, let him be Anathema, Maranathema; but let not his failure deter from trial a genuine artist. Nor is it an ignoble office to be thus shapers only of great thinkers' thoughts--Python interpreters to oracles. Nor is his work of slight account who thus--as sunbeams gift dark thunder-clouds with 'silver lining' and a fringe of purple, as Time with ivy drapes a rugged wall--hangs the beauties of expression round a rude but sterling thought. Nay, oftentimes the shaper's labor is worth more than the thought he shapes. For if the stock out of which the work is wrought be ever more valuable than the workman's skill, then let canvas and paint-pots impeach the fame of Raphael; rough blocks from Paros and Pentelicus, the gold and ivory of the Olympian Jove; tear from the brow of Phidias the laurel wreath with which the world has crowned him. Supply of raw material is little without the ability to use it. Furnish three men with stone and mortar, and while one is building an unsightly heap of clumsy masonry, the architect will rear up a magnificent cathedral--an Angelo, a St. Peter's. And so when ideas, which in their crudeness are often as hard to be digested as unground corn, are run through the mill of another's mind, and appear in a shape suited to satisfy the most dyspeptic stomachs, does not the miller deserve a toll?

Finally, author-borrowing has been hallowed by its practice, in their first essays, by all our greatest writers. Turn to the scroll on which the world has written the names of those it holds as most illustrious. How was it with him whom English readers love to call the 'myriad-minded?' Shakespeare began by altering old plays, and his indebtedness to history and old legends is by no means slight. How with him who sang 'of man's first disobedience' and exodus from Eden? Even Milton did not, Elijah-like, draw down his fire direct from heaven, but kindled with brands, borrowed from Greek and Hebrew altars, the inspiration which sent up the incense-poetry of a Lost Paradise. And all the while that Maro sang 'Arms and the Man,' a refrain from the harp of Homer was sounding in his ears, unto whose tones so piously he keyed and measured his own notes, that oftentimes we fancy we can hear the strains of 'rocky Scio's blind old bard' mingling in the Mantuan's melody. If thus it has been with those who sit highest and fastest on Parnassus--the crowned kings of mind--how has it been with the mere nobility? What are Scott's poetic romances, but blossomings of engrafted scions on that slender shoot from out the main trunk of English poetry--the old border balladry? Campbell's polished elegance of style, and the 'ivory mechanism of his verse,' was born the natural child of Beattie and Pope. Byron had Gifford in his eye when he wrote 'English Bards and Scotch Reviewers,' and Spenser when he penned the 'Pilgrimage.' Pope, despairing of originality, and taking Dryden for his model, sought only to polish and to perfect. Gray borrowed from Spenser, Spenser from Chaucer, Chaucer from Dante, and Dante had ne'er been Dante but for the old Pagan mythology. Sterne and Hunt and Keats were only

Bees, in their own volumes hiving
Borrowed sweets from others' gardens.

And thus it ever is. The inceptions of true genius are always essentially imitations. A great writer does not begin by ransacking for the odd and new. He re-models--betters. Trusting not hypotheses unproven, he demonstrates himself the proposition ere he wagers his faith on the corollary; and it is thus that in time he grows to be a discoverer, an inventor, an _originator_.

Toward originality all should steer; but can only hope to reach it through imitation. For if originality be the Colchis where the golden fleece of immortality is won, imitation must be the Argo in which we sail thither.

INTERVENTION.

Intervene! and see what you'll catch
In a powder-mill with a lighted match.
Intervene! if you think fit,
By jumping into the bottomless pit.
Intervene! How you'll gape and gaze
When you see all Europe in a blaze!
Russia gobbling your world half in,
Red Republicans settling with _sin_;
Satan broke loose and nothing between--
_That's_ what you'll catch if you intervene!

MACCARONI AND CANVAS.

VII.

'A REEL TITIANO FOR SAL.'

There was a shop occupied by a dealer in paintings, engravings, intaglios, old crockery, and _Bric-à-brac_-ery generally, down the Via Condotti, and into this shop Mr. William Browne, of St. Louis, one morning found his way. He had been induced to enter by reading in the window, written on a piece of paper,

'A REEL TITIANO FOR SAL,'

and as he wisely surmised that the dealer intended to notify the English that he had a painting by Titian for sale, he went in to see it.

Unfortunately for Mr. Browne, familiarly known as Uncle Bill, he had one of those faces that invariably induced Roman tradesmen to resort to the Oriental mode of doing business, namely, charging three hundred per cent profit; and as this dealer having formerly been a courier, commissionaire and pander to English and American travelers, naturally spoke a disgusting jargon of Italianized English, and had what he believed were the most distinguished manners: _he_ charged five hundred per cent.

'I want,' said Uncle Bill to the 'brick-Bat' man, 'to see your Titian.'

'I shall expose 'im to you in one moment, sare; you walk this way. He's var' fine pickshoor, var' fine. You ben long time in Rome, sare?'

No reply from Uncle Bill: his idea was, even a wise man may ask questions, but none but fools answer fools.

Brick-bat man finds that his customer has ascended the human scale one step; he prepares 'to spring dodge' Number two on him.

'Thare, sar, thare is Il Tiziano! I spose you say you see notheeng bote large peas board: zat peas board was one táble for two, tree hundret yars; all zat time ze pickshoor was unbeknounst undair ze táble. Zey torn up ze table, and you see a none-doubted Tiziano. Var' fine pickshoor!'

'Do you know,' asked Uncle Bill, 'if it was in a temperance family all that time?'

'I am not acquent zat word, demprance--wot it means?'

'Sober,' was the answer.

'Yas, zat was in var' sobair fam'ly--in convent of nons.'

'That will account for its being undiscovered so long--all the world knows they are not inquisitive! If it had been in a drinking-house, some body falling under the table would have seen it--wouldn't they?'

Brick-bat reflects, and comes to the conclusion that the 'eldairly cove' is wider-awake than he believed him, at first sight.

'Now I torne zis board you see on ze othaire side, ze Bella Donna of Tiziano. Zere is one in ze Sciarra palace, bote betwane you and I, I don't believe it is gin'wine.'

'I don't know much about paintings,' spoke Uncle Bill, 'but I know I've seen seventy-six of these Belli Donners, and each one was sworn to as the original picture!'

'Var' true, sare, var' true, Tiziano Vermecellio was grate pantaire, man of grate mind, and when he got holt onto fine subjick he work him ovair and ovair feefty, seexty times. Ze chiaro-'scuro is var' fine, and ze depfs of his tone somethings var' deep, vary. Look at ze flaish, sare, you can pinch him, and, sare, you look here, I expose grand secret to you. I take zis pensnife, I scratgis ze pant. Look zare!'

'Well,' said Uncle Bill, 'I don't see any thing.'

'You don't see anne theengs! Wot you see under ze pant?'

'It looks like dirt.'

'_Cospetto!_ zat is ze gr-and prep-par-ra-tion zat makes ze flaish of Tiziano more natooral as life. You know grate pantaire, Mistaire Leaf, as lives in ze Ripetta? Zat man has spend half his lifes scratging Tiziano all to peases, for find out 'ow he mak's flaish: now he believes he found out ze way, bote, betwane you and I----' Here the Brick-bat man conveyed, by a shake of his head and a tremolo movement of his left hand, the idea that 'it was all in vain.'

'What do you ask for the picture?' asked Uncle Bill

The head of the Brick-bat man actually disappeared between his shoulders as he shrugged them up, and extended his hands at his sides like the flappers of a turtle. Uncle Bill looked at the man in admiration; he had never seen such a performance before, save by a certain contortionist in a traveling circus, and in his delight he asked the man, when his head appeared, if he wouldn't do that once more, only once more!

In his surprise at being asked to perform the trick, he actually went through it again. For which, Uncle Bill thanked him, kindly, and again asked the price of the Titian.

'I tak' seex t'ousand scudi for him, not one baiocch less.'

'It an't dear,'specially for those who have the money to scatterlophisticate,' replied Uncle Bill cheerfully.

'No, sare, it ees dogs chip, var' chip. I have sevral Englis' want to buy him bad; I shall sell him some days to some bodies. Bote, sare, will you 'ave ze goodniss to write down on peas paper zat word, var' fine word, you use him minit 'go--scatolofistico sometheengs--I wis' to larn ze Englis' better as I spiks him.'

'Certainly; give me a pencil and paper, I'll write it down, and you'll astonish some Englishman with it, I'll bet a hat.'

So it was written down; and if any one ever entered a shop in the Condotti where there was a Titiano for Sal, and was 'astonished' by hearing that word used, they may know whence it came.

Mr. Browne, after carefully examining the usual yellow marble model of the column of Trajan, the alabaster pyramid of Caius Cestius, the verd antique obelisks, the bronze lamps, lizards, marble _tazze_, and paste-gems of the modern-antique factories, the ever-present Beatrice Cenci on canvas, and the water-color costumes of Italy, made a purchase of a Roman mosaic paper-weight, wherein there was a green parrot with a red tail and blue legs, let in with minute particles of composition resembling stone, and left the Brick-bat man alone with his Titiano for Sal.

SO LONG!

Rocjean came into Caper's studio one morning, evidently having something to communicate.

'Are you busy this morning? If not, come along with me; there is something to be seen--something that beats the Mahmoudy Canal of the Past, or the Suez Canal of the Present, for wholesale slaughter; for I do assure you, on the authority of Hassel, that nine hundred and thirty-six million four hundred and sixty-one thousand people died before it was finished!'

'That must be a work worth looking at. Why, the Pyramids must be as anthills to Chimborazo in comparison to it! Nine hundred and odd millions of mortals! Why, that is about the number dying in a generation--and these have passed away while it was being completed? It ought to be a master-piece.'

'Can't we get a glass of wine round here?' asked Rocjean, looking at his watch; 'it is about luncheon-time, and I have a charming little thirst.'

'Oh! yes, there is a wine-shop only three doors from here, pure Roman. Let us go: we can stand out in the street and drink if you are afraid to go in.'

Leaving the studio, they walked a few steps to a house that was literally all front-door; for the entrance was the entire width of the building, and a buffalo-team could have passed in without let. Outside stood a wine-cart, from which they were unloading several small casks of wine. The driver's seat had a hood over it, protecting him from the sun, as he lazily sleeps there, rumbling over the tufa road, to or from the Campagna, and around the seat were painted in gay colors various patterns of things unknown. In the autumn, vine-branches with pendent, rustling leaves decorate hood and horse, while in spring or summer, a bunch of flowers often ornaments this gay-looking wine-cart.

The interior of the shop was dark, dingy, sombre, and dirty enough to have thrown an old Flemish Interior artist into hysterics of delight. There was an _olla podrida_ browniness about it that would have entranced a native of Seville; and a collection of dirt around, that would have elevated a Chippeway Indian to an ecstasy of delight. The reed-mattings hung against the walls were of a gulden ochre-color, the smoked walls and ceiling the shade of asphaltum and burnt sienna, the unswept stone pavement a warm gray, the old tables and benches very rich in tone and dirt; the back of the shop, even at midday, dark, and the eye caught there glimpses of arches, barrels, earthen jars, tables and benches resting in twilight, and only brought out in relief by the faint light always burning in front of the shrine of the Virgin, that hung on one of the walls.

In a wine-shop this shrine does not seem out of place, it is artistic; but in a lottery-office, open to the light of day, and glaringly common-place, the Virgin hanging there looks much more like the goddess Fortuna than Santa Maria.

But they are inside the wine-shop, and the next instant a black-haired gipsy-looking woman with flashing, black eyes, warming up the sombre color of the shop by the fiery red and golden silk handkerchief which falls from the back of her head, Neapolitan fashion, illuminating that dusky old den like fireworks, asks them what they will order?

'A foglietta of white wine.'

'Sweet or dry?' she asks.

'Dry,' (_asciùtto_,) said Rocjean.

There it is on the table, in a glass flask, brittle as virtue, light as sin, and fragile as folly. They are called Sixtusses, after that pious old Sixtus V. who hanged a publican and wine-seller sinner in front of his shop for blasphemously expressing his opinion as to the correctness of charging four times as much to put the fluoric-acid government stamp on them as the glass cost. However, taxes must be raised, and the thinner the glass the easier it is broken, so the Papal government compel the wine-sellers to buy these glass bubbles, forbidding the sale of wine out of any thing else save the _bottiglie_; and as it raises money by touching them up with acid, why, the people have to stand it. These _fogliette_ have round bodies and long, broad necks, on which you notice a white mark made with the before-mentioned chemical preparation; up to this mark the wine should come, but the attendant generally takes thumb-toll, especially in the restaurants where foreigners go, for the Roman citizen is not to be swindled, and will have his rights: the single expression, 'I AM A ROMAN CITIZEN,' will at times save him at least two _baiocchi_, with which he can buy a cigar. There was a time when these words would have checked the severest decrees of the highest magistrate: now when they fire off 'that gun,' the French soldiers stand at its mouth, laugh, and say; '_Boom!_ you have no balls for your cartridges!'

The wine finished, our two artists took up their line of march for the object that had outlived so many millions on millions of human beings, and at last reached it, discovering its abode afar off, by the crowd of fair-and unfair, or red-haired Saxons, who were thronging up a staircase of a house near the Ripetta, as if a steamboat were ringing her last bell and the plank were being drawn in.

'And pray, can you tell me, Mister Buller, if it's a positive fact that the man has been so long as they say, at work on the thing?'

'And ah! I haven't the slightest doubt of it, myself. I've been told that he has worked on it, to be sure, for full thirty years; and I may say I am delighted, that he has it done at last, and that it is to be packed up and sent away to St. Petersburg next week. And how do you like the Hotel Minerva? I think it's not a very dirty inn, but the waiters are very demanding, and the fleas--'

'I beg you won't speak of them, it makes my blood run cold. Have you seen the last copy of _Galignani_? The Americans, I am glad to see, have had trouble with us, and I hope they will be properly punished. Do you know the Duke of Bigghed is in town?'

'Really! and when did he come--and where is the Duchess? oh!--she's a very amiable lady--but here's the picture!'

Ushered in, or preceded by this rattle-headed talk, Caper and Rocjean stood at last before Ivanhof's celebrated painting--finished at last! Thirty years' work, and the result?

A very unsatisfactory stream of water, a crowd of Orientals, and our Saviour descending a hill.

The general impression left on the mind after seeing it, was like that produced by a wax-work show. Nature was travestied; ease, grace, freedom, were wanting: evidently the thirty years might have been better spent collecting beetles or dried grasses.

Around the walls of the studio hung sketches painted during visits the artist had made to the East. Here were studies of Eastern heads, costumes, trees, soil by river-side, sand in the desert, copied with scrupulous care and precise truth, yet, when they were all together in the great painting, the combined effect was a failure.

The artist, they said, had, during this long period, received an annual pension of so many roubles from the Russian government, and had taken his time about it. At last it was completed; the painting that had outlasted a generation was to be sent to St. Petersburg to hibernate after a lifetime spent in sunny Italy. Well! after all, it was better worth the money paid for it than that paid for nine tenths of those kingly toys in the baby-house Green Chambers of Dresden. _Le Roi s'amuse!_

And the white-haired Saxons came in shoals to the studio to see the painting with thirty years' labor on it, and accordingly as their oracles had judged it, so did they: for behold! gay colors are tabooed in the mythology of the Pokerites, and are classed with perfumes, dance-music, and jollity, and art earns a precarious livelihood in their land, where all knowledge of it is supposed to be tied up with the enjoyers of primogeniture.

ROMAN THEATRES.

The Apollo, where grand opera, sandwiched with moral ballets, is given for the benefit of foreigners, principally, would be a fine house if you could only see it; but when Caper was in Rome, the oil-lamps, showing you where to sit down, did not reveal its proportions, or the dresses of the box-beauties, to any advantage; and as oil-lamps will smoke, there settled a veil over the theatre towards the second act, that draped Comedy like Tragedy, and then set her to coughing.

During Carnival a melancholy ball or two was given there: a few wild foreigners venturing in masked, believed they had mistaken the house, for although many women were wandering around in domino, they found the Roman young men unmasked, walking about dressed in canes and those dress-coats, familiarly known as tail-coats, which cause a man to look like a swallow with the legs of a crane, and wearing on their impassive faces the appearance of men waiting for an oyster-supper--or an earthquake.

The commissionaire at the hotel always recommends strangers to go to the Apollo: 'I will git you lôge, sare, first tier--more noble, sare.'

The Capranica Theatre is next in size and importance; it is beyond the Pantheon, out of the foreign quarter of Rome, and you will find in it a Roman audience--to a limited extent. Salvini acted there in _Othello_, and filled the character admirably; it is needless to say that Iago received even more applause than Othello; Italians know such men profoundly--they are Figaros turned undertakers. Opera was given at the Capranica when the Apollo was closed.

The Valle is a small establishment, where Romans, pure blood, of the middle class, and the nobility who did not hang on to foreigners, were to be found. Giuseppina Gassier, who has since sung in America, was prima-donna there, appearing generally in the _Sonnambula_.

But the Capranica Theatre was the resort for the Roman _minenti_, decked in all their bravery. Here came the shoemaker, the tailor, and the small artisan, all with their wives or women, and with them the wealthy peasant who had ten cents to pay for entrance. Here the audience wept and laughed, applauded the actors, and talked to each other from one side of the house to the other. Here the plays represented Roman life in the rough, and were full of words and expressions not down in any dictionary or phrase-book; nor in these local displays were forgotten various Roman peculiarities of accentuation of words, and curious intonations of voice. The Roman people indulge in chest-notes, leaving head-notes to the Neapolitans, who certainly do not possess such smoothness of tongue as would classify them among their brethren in the old proverb: 'When the confusion of tongues happened at the building of the Tower of Babel, if the Italian had been there, Nimrod would have made him a plasterer!'

You will do well, if you want to learn from the stage and audience, the Roman _plebs_, their customs and language, to attend the Capranica Theatre often; to attend it in 'fatigue-dress,' and in gentle mood, being neither shocked nor astonished if a good-looking Roman youth should call your attention to the fact that there is a beautiful girl in the box to the left hand, and inquire if you know whether she is the daughter of Santi Stefoni, the grocer? And should the man on the other side offer you some pumpkin-seeds to eat, by all means accept a few; you can't tell what they may bring forth, if you will only plant them cheerfully.

Do not think it strange if a doctor on the stage recommends conserve of vipers to a consumptive patient; for these poisonous reptiles are caught in large numbers in the mountains back of Rome, and sold to the city apothecaries, who prepare large quantities of them for their customers.

When you see, perhaps the hero of the play, thrown into a paroxysm of anger and fiery wrath by some untoward event, proceed calmly to cut up two lemons, squeeze into a tumbler their juice, and then drink it down--learn that it is a common Roman remedy for anger.

Or if, when a piece of crockery, or other fragile article, may be broken, you notice one of the actors carefully counting the pieces, do not think it is done in order to reconstruct the article, but to guide him in the purchase of a lottery-ticket.

When you notice that on one of his hands the second finger is twined over the first, of the Rightful-heir in presence of the Wrongful-heir, you may know that the first is guarding himself against the Evil Eye supposed to belong to the second.

And--the list could be extended to an indefinite length--you will learn more, by going to the Capranica.

At the Metastasio Theatre there was a French vaudeville company, passably good, attended by a French audience, the majority officers and soldiers. Here were presented such attractive plays as _La Femme qui Mord_, or 'The Woman who Bites;' _Sullivan_, the hero of which gets _bien gris_, very gray, that is, blue, that is, very tipsy, and at the close, astonishes the audience with the moral: To get tight is human! _Dalilah_, etc., etc. The French are not very well beloved by the Romans pure and simple; it is not astonishing, therefore, that their language should be laughed at. One morning Rome woke up to find placards all over the city, headed:

FRENCH

TAUGHT IN THIRTY-SIX LESSONS!

Apply to Monsieur SO-AND-SO.

A few days afterward appeared a fearful wood-cut, the head of a jackass, with his tongue hanging down several inches, and under it, these words, in Italian: 'The only tongue yet learnt in less than thirty-six lessons!'

Caper, seated one night in the parquette of the Metastasio, had at his side a French infantry soldier. In conversation he asked him:

'How long have you been in Rome?'

'Three years, _Mossu_.'

'Wouldn't you like to return to France?'

'Not at all.'

'Why not?'