Chapter III: Book III: Chapters xiii. to xxvii. 542 (2)

The public were in ecstasies. The laughers were all on the side of the satirist, and how vast a portion of the community these are, needs not be said. But it was not in the _Examiner_ alone that Swift offered up his victims at the shrine of universal mirth. He could write verses for the rough heart of a nation to chuckle over and delight in. Personalities to-day fly wide of the mark; then they went right home. The habits, the foibles, the moral and physical imperfections of humanity, were all fair game, provided the shaft were tipped with gall as well as venom. Short poems, longer pamphlets--whatever could help the Government and cover their foes with ridicule and scorn, Swift poured upon the town with an industry and skill that set eulogy at defiance. And because they did defy praise, Jonathan Swift never asked, and was ever too grand to accept it.

But he claimed much more. His disordered yet exquisite intellect acknowledged no superiority. He asked no thanks for his labor, he disdained pecuniary reward for his matchless and incalculable services--he did not care for fame, but he imperiously demanded to be treated by the greatest as an equal. Mr. Harley offered him money, and he quarreled with the Minister for his boldness. "If we let these great Ministers," he said, "pretend too much, _there will be no governing them_." The same Minister desired to make Swift his chaplain. One mistake was as great as the other. "My Lord Oxford, by a second hand, proposed my being his chaplain, which I, by a second hand, refused. I will be no man's chaplain alive." The assumption of the man was more than regal. At a later period of his life he drew up a list of his friends, ranking them respectively under the heads "Ungrateful," "Grateful," "Indifferent," and "Doubtful." Pope appears among the grateful. Queen Caroline among the ungrateful. The audacity of these distinctions is very edifying. What autocrat is here for whose mere countenance the whole world is to bow down and be "grateful!"

It is due to Swift's imperiousness, however, to state that, once acknowledged as an equal, he was prepared to make every sacrifice that could be looked for in a friend. Concede his position, and for fortune or disgrace he was equally prepared. Harley and Bolingbroke, quick to discern the weakness, called their invulnerable ally by his Christian name, but stopped short of conferring upon him any benefit whatever. The neglect made no difference to the haughty scribe, who contented himself with pulling down the barriers that had been impertinently set up to separate him from rank and worldly greatness. But, if Swift shrank from the treatment of a client, he performed no part so willingly as that of a patron. He took literature under his wing and compelled the Government to do it homage. He quarreled with Steele when he deserted the Whigs, and pursued his former friend with unflinching sarcasm and banter, but at his request Steele was maintained by the Government in an office of which he was about to be deprived. Congreve was a Whig, but Swift insisted that he should find honor at the hands of the Tories, and Harley honored him accordingly. Swift introduced Gay to Lord Bolingbroke, and secured that nobleman's weighty patronage for the poet. Rowe was recommended for office, Pope for aid. The well-to-do, by Swift's personal interest, found respect, the indigent, money for the mitigation of their pains. At Court, at Swift's instigation, the Lord Treasurer made the first advances to men of letters, and by the act made tacit confession of the power which Swift so liberally exercised, for the advantage of everybody but himself. But what worldly distinction, in truth, could add to the importance of a personage who made it a point for a Duke to pay him the first visit, and who, on one occasion, publicly sent the Prime Minister into the House of Commons to call out the First Secretary of State, whom Swift wished to inform that he would not dine with him if he meant to dine late?

A lampoon directed against the Queen's favorite, upon whose red hair Swift had been facetious, prevented the satirist's advancement in England. The see of Hereford fell vacant in 1712. Bolingbroke would now have paid the debt due from his Government to Swift, but the Duchess of Somerset, upon her knees, implored the Queen to withhold her consent from the appointment, and Swift was pronounced by Her Majesty as "too violent in party" for promotion. The most important man in the kingdom found himself in a moment the most feeble. The fountain of so much honor could not retain a drop of the precious waters for itself. Swift, it is said, laid the foundations of fortune for upward of forty families who rose to distinction by a word from his lips. What a satire upon power was the satirist's own fate! He could not advance himself in England one inch. Promotion in Ireland began and ended with his appointment to the Deanery of St. Patrick, of which he took possession, much to his disgust and vexation, in the summer of 1713.

The summer, however, was not over before Swift was in England again. The wheels of government had come to a dead lock, and of course none but he could right them. The Ministry was at sixes and sevens. Its very existence depended upon the good understanding of the chiefs, Bolingbroke and Harley, and the wily ambition of the latter, jarring against the vehement desires of the former, had produced jealousy, suspicion, and now threatened immediate disorganization. A thousand voices called the Dean to the scene of action, and he came full of the importance of his mission. He plunged at once into the vexed sea of political controversy, and whilst straining every effort to court his friends, let no opportunity slip of galling their foes. His pen was as damaging and industrious as ever. It set the town in a fever. It caused Richard Steele to be expelled from the House of Commons, and it sent the whole body of Scotch peers, headed by the Duke of Argyle, to the Queen, with the prayer that a proclamation might be issued for the discovery of their libeller. Swift was more successful in his assaults than in its mediation. The Ministers were irreconcilable. Vexed at heart with disappointment, the Dean, after his manner, suddenly quitted London, and shut himself up in Berkshire. One attempt he made in his strict seclusion to uphold the Government and save the country, and the composition is a curiosity in its way. He published a proposition for the exclusion of all Dissenters from power of every kind, for disqualifying Whigs and Low Churchmen for every possible office, and for compelling the presumptive heir to the throne to declare his abomination of Whigs, and his perfect satisfaction with Her Majesty's present advisers. Matters must have been near a crisis when this modest pamphlet was put forth; and so they were. By his intrigues Bolingbroke had triumphed over his colleagues, and Oxford was disgraced. The latter, about to retire into obscurity, addressed a letter to Swift, entreating him, if he were not tired of his former prosperous friend, "to throw away so much time on one who loved him as to attend him upon his melancholy journey." The same post brought him word that his own victory was won. Bolingbroke triumphant besought his Jonathan, as he loved his Queen, to stand by her Minister, and to aid him in his perilous adventure. Nothing should be wanting to do justice to his loyalty. The Duchess of Somerset would be reconciled, the Queen would be gracious, the path of honor should lie broad, open, and unimpeded before him. Bolingbroke and Harley were equally the friends of Swift. What could he do in his extremity? What would a million men, taken at random from the multitude, have done, had they been so situated, so tempted? Not that upon which Swift in his chivalrous magnanimity, at once decided. He abandoned the prosperous to follow and console the unfortunate. "I meddle not with Lord Oxford's faults," is his noble language, "as he was a Minister of State, but his personal kindness to me was excessive. He distinguished and chose me above all men when he was great." Within a few days of Swift's self-denying decision Queen Anne was a corpse, Bolingbroke and Oxford both flying for their lives, and Swift himself hiding his unprotected head in Ireland amidst a people who at once feared and hated him.

During Swift's visit to London in 1710 he had regularly transmitted to Stella, by which name Esther Johnson is made known to posterity, an account of his daily doings with the new Government. The journal exhibits the view of the writer that his conduct invariably presents. It is full of tenderness and confidence, and not without coarseness that startles and shocks. It contains a detailed and minute account, not only of all that passed between Swift and the Government, but of his changeful feelings as they arose from day to day, and of his physical infirmities, that are commonly whispered into the ear of a physician. If Swift loved Stella in the ordinary acceptation of the term, he took small pains in his diary to elevate the sentiments with which she regarded her hero. The journal is not in harmony throughout. Toward the close it lacks the tenderness and warmth, the minuteness and confidential utterance, that are so visible at the beginning. We are enabled to account for the difference. Swift had enlarged the circle of his female acquaintance whilst fighting for his friends in London. He had become a constant visitor, especially, at the house of a Mrs. Vanhomrigh, who had two daughters, the eldest of whom was about twenty years of age, and had the same Christian name as Stella. Esther Vanhomrigh had great taste for reading, and Swift, who seems to have delighted in such occupation, condescended, for the second time in his life, to become a young lady's instructor. The great man's tuition had always one effect upon his pupils. Before Miss Vanhomrigh had made much progress in her studies she was over head and ears in love, and, to the astonishment of her master, she one day declared the passionate and undying character of her attachment. Swift met the confession with a weapon far more potent when opposed to a political foe than when directed against the weak heart of a doting woman. He had recourse to raillery, but, finding his banter of no avail, endeavored to appease the unhappy girl by "an offer of devoted and everlasting friendship, founded on the basis of virtuous esteem." He might with equal success have attempted to put out a conflagration with a bucket of cold water. There was no help for the miserable man. He returned to his deanery at the death of Queen Anne with two love affairs upon his hands, but with the stern resolution of encouraging neither, and overcoming both.

Before quitting England he wrote to Esther Vanhomrigh, or Vanessa, as he styles her in his correspondence, intimating his intention to forget everything in England and to write to her as seldom as possible. So far the claims of Vanessa were disposed of. As soon as he reached his deanery he secured lodgings for Stella and her companion, and reiterated his determination to pursue his intercourse with the young lady upon the prudent terms originally established. So far his mind was set at rest in respect of Stella. But Swift had scarcely time to congratulate himself upon his plans before Vanessa presented herself in Dublin, and made known to the Dean her resolution to take up her abode permanently in Ireland. Her mother was dead, so were her two brothers; she and her sister were alone in the world, and they had a small property near Dublin, to which it suited them to retire. Swift, alarmed by the proceeding, remonstrated, threatened, denounced--all in vain. Vanessa met his reproaches with complaints of cruelty and neglect, and warned him of the consequences of leaving her without the solace of his friendship and presence. Perplexed and distressed, the Dean had no other resource than to leave events to their own development. He trusted that time would mitigate and show the hopelessness of Vanessa's passion, and in the meanwhile he sought, by occasional communication with her, to prevent any catastrophe that might result from actual despair. But his thoughts for Vanessa's safety were inimical to Stella's repose. She pined and gradually sunk under the alteration that had taken place in Swift's deportment toward her since his acquaintance with Vanessa. Swift, really anxious for the safety of his ward, requested a friend to ascertain the cause of her malady. It was not difficult to ascertain it. His indifference and public scandal, which spoke freely of their unaccountable connection, were alone to blame for her sufferings. It was enough for Swift. He had passed the age at which he had resolved to marry, but he was ready to wed Stella provided the marriage were kept secret and she was content to live apart. Poor Stella was more than content, but she overestimated her strength. The marriage took place, and immediately afterward the husband withdrew himself in a fit of madness, which threw him into gloom and misery for days. What the motives may have been for the inexplicable stipulations of this wayward man it is impossible to ascertain. That they were the motives of a diseased, and at times utterly irresponsible, judgment, we think cannot be questioned. Of love, as a tender passion, Swift had no conception. His writings prove it. The coarseness that pervades his compositions has nothing in common with the susceptibility that shrinks from disgusting and loathsome images in which Swift reveled. In all his prose and poetical addresses to his mistresses there is not one expression to prove the weakness of his heart. He writes as a guardian--he writes as a friend--he writes as a father, but not a syllable escapes him that can be attributed to the pangs and delights of the lover.

Married to Stella, Swift proved himself more eager than ever to give to his intercourse with Vanessa the character of mere friendship. He went so far as to endeavor to engage her affections for another man, but his attempts were rejected with indignation and scorn. In the August of the year 1717 Vanessa retired from Dublin to her house and property near Cellbridge. Swift exhorted her to leave Ireland altogether, but she was not to be persuaded. In 1720 it would appear that the Dean frequently visited the recluse in her retirement, and upon such occasions Vanessa would plant a laurel or two in honor of her guest, who passed his time with the lady reading and writing verses in a rural bower built in a sequestered part of her garden. Some of the verses composed by Vanessa have been preserved. They breathe the fond ardor of the suffering maid, and testify to the imperturbable coldness of the man. Of the innocence of their intercourse there cannot be a doubt. In 1720 Vanessa lost her last remaining relative--her sister died in her arms. Thrown back upon herself by this bereavement, the intensity of her love for the Dean became insupportable. Jealous and suspicious, and eager to put an end to a terror that possessed her, she resolved to address herself to Stella, and to ascertain from her own lips the exact nature of her relations with her so-called guardian. The momentous question was asked in a letter, to which Stella calmly replied by informing her interrogator that she was the Dean's wife. Vanessa's letter was forwarded by Stella to Swift himself, and it roused him to fury. He rode off at once to Cellbridge, he entered the apartment in which Vanessa was seated, and glared upon her like a tiger. The trembling creature asked her visitor to sit down. He answered the invitation by flinging a packet on the table, and riding instantly away. The packet was opened; it contained nothing but Vanessa's letter to Stella. Her doom was pronounced. The fond heart snapped. In a few weeks the hopeless, desolate Vanessa was in her grave.

Swift, agonized, rushed from the world. For two months subsequently to the death of Vanessa his place of abode was unknown. But at the end of that period he returned to Dublin calmer for the conflict he had undergone. He devoted himself industriously again to affairs of State. His pen had now a nobler office than to sustain unworthy men in unmerited power. We can but indicate the course of his labors. Ireland, the country not of his love, but of his birth and adoption, treated as a conquered province, owed her rescue from absolute thraldom to Swift's great and unconquerable exertions on her behalf. He resisted the English Government with his single hand, and overcame them in the fight. His popularity in Ireland was unparalleled even in that excited and generous-hearted land. Rewards were offered to betray him, but a million lives would have been sacrificed in his place before one would have profited by the patriot's downfall. He was worshiped, and every hair of his head was precious and sacred to the people who adored him.

In 1726 Swift revisited England, for the first time since the death of Queen Anne, and published, anonymously as usual, the famous satire of _Gulliver's Travels_. Its immediate success heralded the universal fame that masterly and singular work has since achieved. Swift mingled once more with his literary friends, and lived almost entirely with Pope. Yet courted on all sides he was doomed again to bitter sorrow. News reached him that Stella was ill. Alarmed and full of self-reproaches, he hastened home to be received by the people of Ireland in triumph, and to meet--and he was grateful for the sight--the improved and welcoming looks of the woman for whose dissolution he had been prepared. In March, 1727, Stella being sufficiently recovered, the Dean ventured once more to England, but soon to be resummoned to the hapless couch of his exhausted and most miserable wife. Afflicted in body and soul, Swift suddenly quitted Pope, with whom he was residing at Twickenham, and reaching his home, was doomed to find his Stella upon the verge of the grave. Till the last moment he continued at her bedside, evincing the tenderest consideration, and performing what consolatory tasks he might in the sick chamber. Shortly before her death part of a conversation between the melancholy pair was overheard. "Well, my dear," said the Dean, "if you wish it, it shall be owned." Stella's reply was given in fewer words. "_It is too late._" "On the 28th of January," writes one of the biographers of Swift, "Mrs. Johnson closed her weary pilgrimage, and passed to that land where they neither marry nor are given in marriage," the second victim of one and the same hopeless and consuming passion.

Swift stood alone in the world, and for his punishment was doomed to endure the crushing solitude for the space of seventeen years. The interval was gloomy indeed. From his youth the Dean had been subject to painful fits of giddiness and deafness. From 1736 these fits became more frequent and severe. In 1740 he went raving mad, and frenzy ceased only to leave him a more pitiable idiot. During the space of three years the poor creature was unconscious of all that passed around him, and spoke but twice. Upon the 19th of October, 1745, God mercifully removed the terrible spectacle from the sight of man, and released the sufferer from his misery, degradation, and shame.

The volumes, whose title is found below,[1] and which have given occasion to these remarks, are a singular comment upon a singular history. It is the work of a Frenchman who has ventured to deduce a theory from the _data_ we have submitted to the reader's notice. With that theory we cannot agree: it may be reconcilable to the romance which M. de Wailly has invented, but it is altogether opposed to veritable records that cannot be impugned. M. de Wailly would have it that Swift's marriage with Stella was a deliberate and rational sacrifice of love to principle, and that Swift compensated his sacrificed love by granting his principle no human indulgences; that his love for Vanessa, in fact, was sincere and ardent, and that his duty to Stella alone prevented a union with Vanessa. To prove his case M. de Wailly widely departs from history, and makes his hypothesis of no value whatever, except to the novel reader. As a romance, written by a Frenchman, _Stella and Vanessa_ is worthy of great commendation. It indicates a familiar knowledge of English manners and character, and never betrays, except here and there in the construction of the plot, the hand of a foreigner. It is quite free from exaggeration, and inasmuch as it exhibits no glaring anachronism or absurd caricature, is a literary curiosity. We accept it as such, though bound to reject its higher claims. The mystery of Swift's amours has yet to be cleared up. We explain his otherwise unaccountable behavior by attributing his cruelty to prevailing insanity. The career of Swift was brilliant, but not less wild than dazzling. The sickly hue of a distempered brain gave a color to his acts in all the relations of life. The storm was brewing from his childhood; it burst forth terribly in his age, and only a moment before all was wreck and devastation, the half-distracted man sat down and made a will, by which he left the whole of his worldly possessions for the foundation of a lunatic asylum.

[1: _Stella and Vanessa: A Romance from the French. By Lady Duff
Gordon. In two vols. Bentley. 1850.]

AUTHORS AND BOOKS.

We find in the _Deutsche Zeitung aus Boehmen_, an account of a visit to the great German satirist and poet Henry Heine, who lives at Paris, where, as is known, he has long been confined to his bed with a lingering illness. We translate the following for the _International_:--

"It is indeed a painful or rather a terrible condition in which Heine now is and has been for the past year; though the paralysis has made no progress, it has at least experienced no alleviation. He has now lain near two years in bed, and during that time has not seen a tree nor a speck of the blue sky. He cannot raise himself, and scarcely moves. His left eye is blind, his right can just perceive objects, but cannot bear the light of day. His nights are disturbed by fearful torments, and only morphine can produce him the least repose. Hope of recovery has long been given up, and he himself entertains no illusions on that subject. He knows that his sufferings can end only with death. He speaks of this with the utmost composure."

The writer goes on to contradict, as calumnious, the report that Heine had become religious, saying, that he bears his tortures without "the assistance of saints of any color, and by the inward power of the free man." He does not regard himself as a sinner, and has nothing to repent of, since he has but rejoiced like a child, in everything beautiful--chasing butterflies, finding flowers by the way-side, and making a holiday of his whole life. He has, however, often called himself religious, by way of contradiction, and from antipathy to a certain clique who openly proclaim themselves atheists, and under that sonorous title seek to exercise a certain terror on others.

It seems that Heine has lost a great deal of property through various speculators who have persuaded him to join in their schemes. The writer says: "Heine's friends are enraged at many of these individuals, and urge him to attack them publicly, and show them up in their true light. He owes this satisfaction to himself and to us; at the same time it would conciliate many who have not pardoned him the cavalier air with which he has turned off the most respectable notabilities of literature and patriotism, in order to amuse himself in the company of some adventurer." By this love for out-of-the-way characters, the writer thinks that Heine must have collected the materials for a humorous novel, which could equal the best productions of Mendoza, Smollett, or Dickens; his experiences in this line have cost him a great deal of money. We translate the conclusion of the article:--

"We shall be asked if Heine really continues to write? Yes; he writes, he works, he dictates poems without cessation; perhaps he was never in his whole life as active as now. Several hours a day he devotes to the composition of his memoirs which are rapidly advancing under the hand of his secretary. His mind still resembles, in its wonderful fullness and vigor, those fantastic ball-nights of Paris, which, under the open sky, unfold an endless life and variety. There rings the music, there rushes the dance, and the loveliest and grotesquest forms flit hither and thither. There are silent arbors for tears of happiness and sorrow, and places for dancing, with light, full of loud bold laughter. Rockets after rockets mount skyward, scattering millions of stars, and endless extravagance of art, fire, poesy, passion, flames up, showing the world now in green, now in purple light, till at last the clear silver stars come out, and fill us with infinite delight, and the still consciousness of life's beauty. Yes, Heine lives and writes incessantly. His body is broken, but not his mind, which, on the sick bed rises to Promethean power and courage. His arm is impotent; not so his satire, which still in its velvet covering bears the fearful knife that has flayed alive so many a Maryas. Yes, his frame is worn away, but not the grace in every movement of his youthful spirit. Along with his memoirs, a complete volume of poems has been written in these two years. They will not appear till after the death of the poet; but I can say of them that they unite in full perfection all the admirable gifts which have rendered his former poems so brilliant. So struggles this extraordinary man against a terrible destiny, with all the weapons of the soul, never despairing in this vehement suffering, never descending to tears--bidding defiance to the worst. As I stood before that sick bed, it seemed as if I saw the sufferer of the Caucasus bound in iron chains, tortured by the vulture, but still confronting fate unappalled, and there alone on the sea-shore caressed by sea-nymphs. Yes, this is the sick-bed and the death-bed of a great and free man; and to have come near him is not only a great happiness but a great instruction."

Heine has never been well known in this country. The only work by him we have seen in English is his _Beitrage zur Deutschen Literatur-Geschichte_, translated by Mr. G.W. Haven, and published in Boston, in 1846. It is remarkably clever, and audacious, as the productions of this German-Frenchman generally are. He is now fifty-three years of age, having been born at Dusseldorff, in 1797. As several wealthy bankers, and other persons of substance, in Paris, are related to him, and he has a pension from the French Government, he is not likely to suffer very much from the losses of property referred to in the _Zeitung aus Boehmen_.

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Dr. Otto Zirckel has just published at Berlin a volume called "Sketches from and concerning the United States," which has some curious peculiarities to the eyes of an American. It is intended as a guide for Germans who wish either to emigrate to this country or to send their money here for investment. It begins with a description of the voyage to America and of the East, West and South of the Union; next it describes the position of the farmer, physician, clergyman, teacher, jurist, merchant, and editor, and the chance of the emigrant in each of these professions. It is written with spirit and humor, and a good deal of practical judgment and wisdom are concisely and clearly expressed. The curious part is the advice given to speculators who wish to invest their money here at a high rate of interest. The author seems to think America a perfect Eldorado for money lenders, and his book cannot fail to produce a considerable increase in the amount of German capital employed in this country. The various state and national loans are described correctly, showing that Dr. Zirckel might venture safely into the mazes of Wall Street. The history of repudiation he has studied with care, and the necessity of final resumption of payments even in Mississippi he estimates with justice. He suggests as the safest means of managing matters, that a number of wealthy families should combine their funds and send over a special agent in whom they can confide, to manage the same in shaving notes, speculating in land, lending on bond and mortgage, and making money generally. Thus they can get a high return and live comfortably in Europe on the toil of Americans, all of which will be much more grateful to the capitalists than useful to this country. Better for us to have no foreign capital at all than to have the interest thereon carried away and consumed in Europe.

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Emile Silvestre has sent forth a new volume, _Un Philosophe sous les Toits_.

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The work on Aerostation, by Mr. Green, recently published in Philadelphia, has been much noticed in Europe, where--particularly in France--the subject has attracted large attention, in consequence of the death of Gale, (formerly a player at our Bowery Theater,) near Bordeaux, and the recent wicked and ridiculous ascents with horses, ostriches, &c. from the Hippodrome in Paris, and some experiments in ballooning at Madrid. In an interesting paper in the _Revue des Deux Mondes_, for the fifteenth of October, we have an account of numerous theories, experiments, and accidents, constituting an entertaining _resume_ of the whole matter. Few instances of intrepidity, danger, and escape, excite livelier emotion than the crossing from England to France by Blanchard, and Dr. Jeffries, an American, on the seventh of January, 1785. When, by the loss of gas, the balloon descended rapidly over the channel, and approached near the surface of the sea, after everything had been thrown out, even to their clothes, Jeffries offered to leap into the sea, and by thus lightening the balloon further, afford Blanchard a chance of safety. "We must both be lost as the case is," said he; "if you think your preservation is possible, I am ready to sacrifice my life." The French military ascents are particularly described. Companies of aeronauts were formed and trained, and Bonaparte took one of them with him to Egypt, but the British captured all the apparatus for the generation of gas. The First Consul caused ascents in picturesque balloons to be made on occasions of public rejoicing for victories, in order to strike the imaginations of the Egyptians, and an aerostatic academy was established near Paris. The writer mentions that Lieutenant Gale, like poor Sam Patch, so famous for a similar absurdity, and for a similar and not less miserable end, had drank too much brandy for self-possession in a dangerous predicament. He thinks that the problem of the direction or government of balloons cannot possibly be solved with the mechanical means which science now commands; and that, as they may be usefully employed for the study of the great physical laws of the globe, all experiments should be restricted to the object of advancing science. He dwells on what might be accomplished toward ascertaining the true laws of the decrease of temperature in the elevated regions of the air, of the decrease of density of the atmosphere, of the decrease of humidity according to atmospheric heights, and of the celerity of sound. After all the experiments, and all that has been written upon the subject, we are confident that the direction of a balloon is quite impossible, except by a process which we have never yet seen suggested; that is, by the rapid decomposition of the air in its way, so that a tube extended in the direction in which it is desired to move, shall open continually a vacuum into which the pressure of the common atmosphere shall impel the carriage.

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The _Journal des Debats_ announces for publication two works from the pen of Guizot. The hero of the first is General Monk. Its title is _The Downfall of the Republic in England in 1660, and the Reestablishment of the Monarchy: A Historic Study_. It may be regarded as new, though part has been published before in the form of articles in the _Revue Francaise_. These articles appeared in 1837. M. Guizot has carefully revised them, and added a great deal of new matter. The work is also to be enriched with a number of curious documents never before published, such as a letter from Richard Cromwell to General Monk, and seventy dispatches from M. de Bordeaux, then French Ambassador at London, to Cardinal Mazarin. These dispatches have been found in the archives of the Foreign Office at Paris. The work has a new preface, which the _Debats_ says will prove to be no less important in a political than a historical point of view. The second book is that so well known in this country upon Washington. We do not understand that anything new is added to it. It was in the first place issued as the introduction of the translation into French of Sparks's _Life of Washington_, which the French journalist says is the most exact and complete work yet published on the war of independence and the foundation of the United States. "Monk and Washington," adds the _Debats_: "on the one side a republic falling and a monarchy rising again into existence, on the other a monarchy giving birth to a republic; and M. Guizot, formerly the prime minister of our monarchy, now amid the perplexities of our own republic the historian of these two great men and these two great events! Were contrasts ever seen more striking, and more likely to excite a powerful interest?"

This is very well for the _Debats_. But the omissions by Mr. Sparks--sometimes from carelessness, sometimes from ignorance, and sometimes from an indisposition to revive memories of old feuds, or to cover with disgrace names which should be dishonored; and his occasional verbal alterations of Washington's letters prevent that general satisfaction with which his edition of Washington would otherwise be regarded. We are soon to have histories of the Revolution, from both Sparks and Bancroft, in proper form. The best documentary history is not, as the _Debats_ fancies, this collection of Washington's letters, but Mr. Force's "Archives,"--of which, with its usual want of sagacity or regard for duty, Congress is publishing but one tenth of the edition necessary, since every statesman in our own country, and every writer on American history at home or abroad, needs a copy of it, and from its extent and costliness it will never be reprinted.

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The Rabbi Cahen has published at Paris the Book of Job, which concludes his learned version of the Hebrew Bible.

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Works on the German Revolution and German Politics.--An excellent book on the Prussian revolution is now being published at Oldenburg. It is from the pen of Adolf Stahr, a writer of remarkable force and clearness. He belongs to the party most bitterly disappointed by the turn affairs have taken in Germany. We mean the democratic monarchists, who labored under the illusion that they might see Prussia converted into a sort of republic with a hereditary chief, like Belgium. They desired a monarchy, with a parliament elected by universal suffrage, and democratic institutions of every kind. Stahr's book breathes all the bitterness of their rage at the success of absolutism in snatching from them every slightest vestige of hope. His book is published serially, four parts having already been issued. As a record of facts it deserves the praise of great industry and lucidity in collection and arrangement, while on every page there glows in suppressed eloquence the indignation of a generous and manly heart. Of course Stahr cannot be called a historian in the usual sense of the term. He is rather a political pamphleteer, maintaining at length the ideas and chastising the foes of his party.

Another and a more permanently valuable work on this subject is the _Revolutions-Chronik_ (Revolutionary Chronicle) of Dr. Adolf Wolff, published by Hempel of Berlin. This is a collection of authentic documents, such as proclamations, placards, letters, legislative acts, &c., connected with the revolution. They are not only arranged in due order, but are combined with a clear and succinct narrative of the events and circumstances to which they relate. We know of no man more competent than Dr. Wolff to the successful execution of so important an undertaking. Without being a partisan, his sympathies are decidedly on the popular side, and the clearness of his judgment cannot be blinded by any of the feints and stratagems in which the period abounded. He is now engaged upon the revolution in Prussia, but intends to treat all the manifestations of the time throughout Germany in the same thorough and reliable manner. His work will be invaluable to future historians of this eventful period; at the same time it reads like a romance, not only from the nature of the events, but from the spirit and keenness of the style.

Two other striking contributions to the history of this stormy epoch have been made by Bruno Bauer, the well known rationalist. Bauer treats the political and religious parties of modern Germany with the same scornful satire and destructive analysis which appear in his theological writings. He delights in pitting one side against the other and making them consume each other. His first book is called the _Buergerliche Revolution in Deutschland_, (the Burghers' Revolution in Germany); it was published above a year ago, and attracted a great deal of attention from the fact that it took neither side, but with a sort of Mephistophelian superiority, showed that every party had been alike weak, timid, hesitating, short-sighted, and useless. The New-Catholics of Ronge's school were especially treated with unsparing severity. Bauer has now just brought out his second book, which is particularly devoted to the Frankfort Parliament. In this also the Hegelian Logic is applied with the same result. The author proves that all that was done in that body was worth nothing and produced nothing. There is not a particle of sympathetic feeling in the whole book; but only cold and contemptuous analysis. It has not made very much of an impression in Germany. Both these works, and, indeed, the whole school of ultra-Hegelian skeptics generally, are a singular reaction upon the usual warmth and sentimentality of German character and literature. They are the very opposite extreme, and so a very natural product of the times. For our part we like them quite as well as the other side of the contrast.

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Germany is the richest of all countries in historical literature. Nowhere have all the events of human experience been so variously, profoundly, or industriously investigated. Ancient history especially has been most exhaustively treated by the Germans. One of the best and most comprehensive works in this category is that of Dr. Zimmer, the seventh edition of which, revised and enlarged, has just been published at Leipzic. Dr. Zimmer does not proceed upon the hypotheses of Niebuhr and others, but conceives that the writing of history and romance ought to be essentially different. The whole work is in one volume of some 450 pages, and of course greatly condensed. It discusses the history of India, China, and Japan; the western Asiatic States, Assyria, Babylonia, Syria, Phoenicia, India, down to the fall of Jerusalem; the other parts of Asia; Egypt to the battle of Actium, with a dissertation on Egyptian culture; Carthage; Greece to the fall of Corinth; Rome under the emperors down to the year 476; and concludes with an account of the literature of classical antiquity.

As we have no manual of this sort in English, that is written up to the latest results of scholarship, we hope to see some American undertaking a version of Dr. Zimmer's book. There is considerable learning and talent in the two octavos on the same subject by Dr. Hebbe, and published last year by Dewitt & Davenport; but we strongly dislike some of the doctrines of the work, which are _not_ derived from a thorough study.

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The seventh volume of Professor Schlosser's History of the Eighteenth Century, and of the Nineteenth till the overthrow of the French Empire, appeared, in translation, in London, on the first of November. Volume eighth, completing the work, with a copious index, is preparing for early publication.

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The Discovery of a lost MS. of Jean Le Bel is mentioned in the Paris papers, as having been made by M. Polain, keeper of the Archives at Liege, among the MSS. in the _Bibliotheque de Bourgogne_, at Brussels. It is on the eve of publication, and will be comprised in an octavo volume, in black letter. This work was supposed to be irretrievably lost. It was found by M. Polain, transcribed and incorporated into a prose _Chronicle de Liege_, by Jean des Pres, dit _d'Ontremeuse_. It comprises a period between 1325 and 1340, which are embraced in one hundred and forty-six chapters of the first book of _Froissart_. It therefore contains only the first part of Le Bel's Chronicle: nevertheless it is a fragment of much importance. Froissart cannot be considered as a contemporary historian of the events recorded in his first book, but Le Bel was connected with the greater portion of them, and was acquainted with them either from personal knowledge or through those who had authentic sources of information.

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Monsieur Bastiat, the political economist, (who has shown more economy in the matter of credit for the best ideas in his books, than in anything else we know of,) is not dead, as in the last _International_ was stated. The _Courier and Enquirer_ correspondent says:

"I am glad to say that the report which reached Paris from Italy,
of the death of F. Bastiat, a noted writer on political economy, is
unfounded. That gentleman is recovering his health, and it is now
believed will be able, at the opening of the session, to resume his
seat in the Assembly."

Since his return from Italy he has published at Paris a new edition of his latest production, the _Harmonies Economiques_, in which he has availed himself in so large a degree and in so discreditable a manner of the ideas of Mr. Henry C. Carey, of New Jersey, who, since he first gave to the public the essentials of M. Bastiat's performance, has himself, in a volume, entitled _The Harmony of Interests_, published some three or four months ago in Philadelphia, largely and forcibly illustrated his just and admirable doctrines. In the _Harmonies Economiques_ M. Bastiat seeks to prove that the interests of classes and individuals in society, as now constituted, are harmonious, and not antagonistic as certain schools of thinkers maintain. Commercial freedom he avers, instead of urging society toward a state of general misery, tends constantly to the progressive increase of the general abundance and well being. In sustaining this proposition M. Bastiat teaches the optimism of the socialists, and holds that injustice is not a necessary thing in human relations, that monopoly and pauperism are only temporary, and that things must come right at last. The powers of nature, the soil, vegetation, gravitation, heat, electricity, chemical forces, waters, seas, in short the globe and all the endowments with which God has enriched it, are the common property of the entire race of man, and in proportion as society advances this common property is more equally distributed and enjoyed. Capital assists men in their efforts to improve this magnificent inheritance; competition is a powerful lever with which they set in movement and render useful the gratuitous gifts of God; the social instinct leads them to make a continual exchange of services; and even now, though the powers of nature enter into these services, those who receive them pay only for the labor of their fellows, not for natural products; and the accumulation of capital constantly diminishes the rate of interest and enables the laborer to derive a greater return from his toil. M. Bastiat also gives a new definition of value, which he says is _the relation of two services exchanged_. This is all, we believe, that he _claims_ to offer as perfectly new,--the main part of his book appearing as a clearer exposition of the doctrine of Adam Smith. It will be seen that the theory of the book is infinitely superior to that of Ricardo or Malthus; it has borrowed truths from the advanced thinkers of the age; but he would be a bold critic who should affirm that it had not mingled far-reaching errors with them.

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M. Romieu's book in defense of despotism, (lately published in France,) sounds as if it had been written for the _North American Review_, but it never could have been sent to its editor, or it would have been adopted and published by him. It is entitled "The Era of the Caesars," and its argument is, that history, ancient and modern, and the situation of the contemporary world, prove that force, the sword, or _Caesarism_, has ultimately decided, and will prevail, in the affairs of the nations. Representative assemblies, Monsieur Romieu considers ridiculous, and mischievous, and in the end fatal: such, at least, he contends, is the experience of France; and as for the liberty of the press, it means a form of tyranny which destroys all other liberty. At the beginning of the century, M. de Fontanes said what (he thinks) multitudes of the soundest minds would reecho, "I shall never deem myself free in a country where freedom of the press exists." He would convert all journals into mere chronicles, and have them strictly watched. Force, he says, is the only principle, even in governments styled free. He includes Switzerland and the United States. The condition and destinies of France he handles with special hardihood. Caesarism is here already desired and inaugurated--not monarchy, which requires faith in it, nor constitutional government, which is an expedient and an illusion, but a supreme authority capable of maintaining itself, and _commanding_ respect and submission. Mr. Walsh reviews the work in one of his letters to the _Journal of Commerce_; and judging from Mr. Walsh's correspondence on the recent attempts to establish free institutions in Europe, we might suspect him of a hearty sympathy with M. Romieu, whom he describes as an erudite, conscientious personage, formerly a prefect of a department, and a member of the Assembly.

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The German poet, Anastasius Gruen, has just published, at Leipzic a collection of the _popular songs of Carinthia_, translated from the original. Carinthia, as, perhaps, all our readers are not aware, is one of the southerly provinces of the Austrian empire, on the borders of Turkey; and, during all the wars of Austria with the Moslems, had to bear the brunt of the fighting. And even after peace was concluded the Carinthians kept up a sort of minor war on their own account, being constantly exposed to incursions from the other side of the frontier. Thus for centuries their country was one extended fortification, and the whole population in constant readiness to rush to arms when the signal fires blazed upon the hills. Then every house was a fortress, and even the churches were surrounded with palisades and ditches, behind which the women and children sought refuge with their movables when the alarm came too near. From this period of constant and savage warfare the popular songs of the country date their origin. Curious to say, many of their heroes are borrowed from the traditions and history of neighboring lands. Thus the Servian champion Marko figures a good deal in this poetry, while the figure which has more importance than all the others is a foreign and almost fabulous being, called King Mathias; wherever this mystic personage can be laid hold of and historically identified, he appears to be Mathias Corvin, king of Hungary. The Carinthians attribute to him not only all the exploits of a variety of notable characters, but also the vices of some celebrated illustrations of immorality. Nor is his career accomplished; according to the tradition of the southern Slavonians, King Mathias is not yet dead, but sleeps in a grotto in the interior of Hungary, waiting for the hour of waking, like Frederick the Redbeard in the Kyffhaeuser, Charlemagne in the Untersberg at Salzburg, Holger the Dane near Kronburg, and King Arthur in a mountain of his native country. There sits King Mathias with his warriors, by a table under a linden tree. Another song makes him, like Orpheus with Eurydice, go down to hell with his fiddle in his hand to bring thence his departed bride. But he has no better luck than Orpheus; on the way out she breaks the commanded silence by saying a word to her companion, and so is lost forever. These songs are still sung by the Carinthian soldiers at night, around their watch-fires. There are others of more modern origin, but they are weak and colorless compared with these relics of the old heroic time.

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Mr. Bryant's delightful "Letters of a Traveler," of which we have heretofore spoken, has been issued by Mr. Putnam in a new and very beautiful edition, enriched with many exquisite engravings, under the title of "The Picturesque Souvenir." It is a work of permanent value, and in the style of its publication is hardly surpassed by any of the splendid volumes of the season.

* * * * *

Dr. Laing, one of those restless English travelers who have printed books about the United States, is now a prominent personage in Australia, where he has been elected a member of the newly instituted Legislature, for the city of Sidney. Upon the conclusion of the canvass he made a speech, after which he was dragged home in his carriage by some of the more energetic of his partisans, the horses having been removed by them for that purpose. He is opposed to the Government.

* * * * *

The History of Liberty, by Mr. Samuel Elliot, of Boston, is examined at considerable length and in a very genial spirit, in the last number of the _Revue des Deux Mondes_--a review, by the way, in which much more attention appears to be paid to our literature than it receives in the _North American_. The writer observes, in the beginning, that the two initial volumes of Mr. Elliot's great work, now published, in which the _Liberty of Rome_ is treated, would be a superhuman performance, if Niebuhr, Muller, Heeren, Grote, and Thirlwall, had not written, and compares the work of our countryman with the poem on the same subject by Thomson, the author of "The Seasons." He says:

"Mr. Elliot's work breathes a lofty morality; a grave and masculine
reserve; a deep and constant fear of not having done the best. He
may be subject,--like other Americans more or less _ideologists_
and system-mongers,--to illusions; but he has the true remedy: his
_ideal_ is well placed; he can sympathize fervently with all the
pursuits and employments of human activity; he cherishes a profound
respect for prudence, and moderation; for an enlarging survey and
indulgence of human necessities; for that generosity and virtue
which is tender above all of what has life, and seeks to conciliate
a complete transformation in the ideas of men. Until now, it would
have been difficult to find a thinker who, in judging the Romans,
would not have celebrated their inordinate patriotism, as their
chief glory. Their heroes were admired precisely for the ardor with
which they sacrificed everything--even their children or their
conscience--to the interests of country or party. Mr. Elliot, on
the contrary, discovers in this heroism only a lamentable
deficiency of true virtue and honor; of a sound moral sense and
equitable liberality. To our apprehension, a great reform--an
historical event--is to be recognized in this new moral
repugnance--this new tendency to deem the spirit of _party_ an evil
and a danger. Formerly, nothing was conceived to be nobler than to
serve your party, without stint or reservation;--nothing more
disgraceful than to abandon it even when you could not entertain
the same opinions. The condemnation and reversal of this doctrine
would be a moral advancement more important for human futurity,
than many of the occurrences or the revolutions of the last sixty
years, that have made the most noise."

We believe Mr. Elliot's leisure is not to be seriously interrupted by public employments, and trust, therefore, that he will proceed, with as much rapidity as possible, with his grand survey of the advance of Liberty, down even to our own day--which it is not unlikely will conclude a very important era of his subject.

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