Chapter II: Front Matter (2)

"A priest had built it; a priest had succeeded to it; other
priestly men, from time to time, had dwelt in it; and children,
born in its chambers, had grown up to assume the priestly
character. It was awful to reflect how many sermons must have
been written there. The latest inhabitant alone--he, by whose
translation to Paradise the dwelling was left vacant--had
penned nearly three thousand discourses, besides the better, if
not the greater number, that gushed living from his lips. How
often, no doubt, had he paced to and fro along the avenue,
attuning his meditations, to the sighs and gentle murmurs, and
deep and solemn peals of the wind, among the lofty tops of the
trees! In that variety of natural utterances, he could find
something accordant with every passage of his sermon, were it
of tenderness or reverential fear. The boughs over my head
seemed shadowy with solemn thoughts, as well as with rustling
leaves. I took shame to myself for having been so long a
writer of idle stories, and ventured to hope that wisdom would
descend upon me with the falling leaves of the avenue; and that
I should light upon an intellectual treasure, in the Old Manse,
well worth those hoards of long-hidden gold, which people seek
for in moss-grown houses. Profound treatises of morality--a
layman's unprofessional, and therefore unprejudiced views of
religion;--histories (such as Bancroft might have written, had
he taken up his abode here, as he once purposed), bright with
picture, gleaming over a depth of philosophic thought;--these
were the works that might fitly have flowed from such a
retirement. In the humblest event, I resolved at least to
achieve a novel, that should evolve some deep lesson, and
should possess physical substance enough to stand alone. In
furtherance of my design, and as if to leave me no pretext for
not fulfilling it, there was, in the rear of the house, the
most delightful little nook of a study that ever offered its
snug seclusion to a scholar. It was here that Emerson wrote
'Nature;' for he was then an inhabitant of the Manse, and used
to watch the Assyrian dawn and the Paphian sunset and moonrise,
from the summit of our eastern hill. When I first saw the room,
its walls were blackened with the smoke of unnumbered years,
and made still blacker by the grim prints of puritan ministers
that hung around. These worthies looked strangely like bad
angels, or, at least, like men who had wrestled so continually
and so sternly with the devil, that somewhat of his sooty
fierceness had been imparted to their own visages. They had all
vanished now; a cheerful coat of paint, and gold tinted paper
hangings, lighted up the small apartment; while the shadow of a
willow-tree, that swept against the overhanging eaves,
attempered the cheery western sunshine. In place of the grim
prints there was the sweet and lovely head of one of Raphael's
Madonnas, and two pleasant little pictures of the Lake of Como.
The only other decorations were a purple vase of flowers,
always fresh, and a bronze one containing graceful ferns. My
books (few, and by no means choice; for they were chiefly such
waifs as chance had thrown in my way) stood in order about the
room, seldom to be disturbed."

In his home at Concord, thus happily described, in the midst of a few congenial friends, Hawthorne passed three years; and, "in a spot so sheltered from the turmoil of life's ocean," he says, "three years hasten away with a noiseless flight, as the breezy sunshine chases the cloud-shadows across the depths of a still valley." But at length his repose was invaded by that "spirit of improvement," which is so constantly marring the happiness of quiet-loving people, and he was compelled to look out for another residence.

"Now came hints, growing more and more distinct, that the owner
of the old house was pining for his native air. Carpenters next
appeared, making a tremendous racket among the outbuildings,
strewing green grass with pine shavings and chips of chesnut
joists, and vexing the whole antiquity of the place with their
discordant renovations. Soon, moreover, they divested our abode
of the veil of woodbine which had crept over a large portion of
its southern face. All the aged mosses were cleared unsparingly
away; and there were horrible whispers about brushing up the
external walls with a coat of paint--a purpose as little to my
taste as might be that of rouging the venerable cheeks of one's
grandmother. But the hand that renovates is always more
sacrilegious than that which destroys. In fine, we gathered up
our household goods, drank a farewell cup of tea in our
pleasant little breakfast-room--delicately-fragrant tea, an
unpurchasable luxury, one of the many angel-gifts that had
fallen like dew upon us--and passed forth between the tall
stone gate-posts, as uncertain as the wandering Arabs where our
tent might next be pitched. Providence took me by the hand,
and--an oddity of dispensation which, I trust, there is no
irreverence in smiling at--has led me, as the newspapers
announce while I am writing, from the old Manse into a Custom
House! As a story-teller, I have often contrived strange
vicissitudes for my imaginary personages, but none like this.
The treasure of intellectual gold which I had hoped to find in
our secluded dwelling, had never come to light. No profound
treatise of ethics--no philosophic history--no novel, even,
that could stand unsupported on its edges--all that I had to
show, as a man of letters, were these few tales and essays,
which had blossomed out like flowers in the calm summer of my
heart and mind."

The _Mosses from an Old Manse_ he declared the last offering of their kind he should ever put forth; "unless I can do better," he wrote in this Introduction, "I have done enough in this kind." He went to his place in the Custom House, in his native city, and if President Taylor's advisers had not been apprehensive that in his devotion to ledgers he would neglect the more important duties of literature, perhaps we should have heard no more of him; but those patriotic men, remembering how much they had enjoyed the reading of the _Twice-Told Tales_ and the _Mosses_, induced the appointment in his place of a whig, who had no capacity for making books, and in the spring of last year we had _The Scarlet Letter_.

Like most of his shorter stories, The Scarlet Letter finds its scene and time with the earlier Puritans. Its argument involves the analysis and action of remorse in the heart of a person who, himself unsuspected, is compelled to assist in the punishment of the partner of his guilt. This peculiar and powerful fiction at once arrested attention, and claimed for its author the eminence as a novelist which his previous performances had secured for him as a writer of tales. Its whole atmosphere and the qualities of its characters demanded for a creditable success very unusual capacities. The frivolous costume and brisk action of the story of fashionable life are easily depicted by the practised sketcher, but a work like The Scarlet Letter comes slowly upon the canvas, where passions are commingled and overlaid with the deliberate and masterly elaboration with which the grandest effects are produced in pictorial composition and coloring. It is a distinction of such works that while they are acceptable to the many, they also surprise and delight the few who appreciate the nicest arrangement and the most high and careful finish. The Scarlet Letter will challenge consideration in the name of Art, in the best audience which in any age receives Cervantes, Le Sage, or Scott.

Following this romance came new editions of _True Stories from History and Biography_, a volume for youthful readers, and of the _Twice-Told Tales_. In the preface to the latter, underrating much the reputation he has acquired by them, he says:

"The author of _Twice-Told Tales_ has a claim to one
distinction, which, as none of his literary brethren will care
about disputing it with him, he need not be afraid to mention.
He was for a good many years the obscurest man of letters in
America. These stories were published in magazines and annuals,
extending over a period of ten or twelve years, and comprising
the whole of the writer's young manhood, without making (so far
as he has ever been aware) the slightest impression on the
public. One or two among them, the _Rill from the Town Pump_,
in perhaps a greater degree than any other, had a pretty wide
newspaper circulation; as for the rest, he has no grounds for
supposing that on their first appearance they met with the good
or evil fortune to be read by any body. Throughout the time
above specified he had no incitement to literary effort in a
reasonable prospect of reputation or profit; nothing but the
pleasure itself of composition--an enjoyment not at all amiss
in its way, and perhaps essential to the merit of the work in
hand, but which, in the long run, will hardly keep the chill
out of a writer's heart, or the numbness out of his fingers. To
this total lack of sympathy, at the age when his mind would
naturally have been most effervescent, the public owe it (and
it is certainly an effect not to be regretted, on either part),
that the author can show nothing for the thought and industry
of that portion of his life, save the forty sketches, or
thereabouts, included in these volumes. Much more, indeed, he
wrote; and some very small part of it might yet be rummaged out
(but it would not be worth the trouble) among the dingy pages
of fifteen or twenty year old periodicals, or within the shabby
morocco covers of faded Souvenirs. The remainder of the works
alluded to had a very brief existence, but, on the score of
brilliancy, enjoyed a fate vastly superior to that of their
brotherhood, which succeeded in getting through the press. In a
word, the author burned them without mercy or remorse, and,
moreover, without any subsequent regret, and had more than one
occasion to marvel that such very dull stuff as he knew his
condemned manuscripts to be, should yet have possessed
inflammability enough to set the chimney on fire!...

"As he glances over these long-forgotten pages, and considers
his way of life while composing them, the author can very
clearly discern why all this was so. After so many sober years,
he would have reason to be ashamed if he could not criticise
his own work as fairly as another man's; and, though it is
little his business and perhaps still less his interest, he can
hardly resist a temptation to achieve something of the sort. If
writers were allowed to do so, and would perform the task with
perfect sincerity and unreserve, their opinions of their own
productions would often be more valuable and instructive than
the works themselves. At all events, there can be no harm in
the author's remarking that he rather wonders how the
_Twice-Told Tales_ should have gained what vogue they did, than
that it was so little and so gradual. They have the pale tint
of flowers that blossomed in too retired a shade--the coolness
of a meditative habit, which diffuses itself through the
feeling and observation of every sketch. Instead of passion,
there is sentiment; and, even in what purport to be pictures of
actual life, we have allegory, not always so warmly dressed in
its habiliments of flesh and blood as to be taken into the
reader's mind without a shiver. Whether from lack of power or
an unconquerable reserve, the author's touches have often an
effect of tameness; the merriest man can hardly contrive to
laugh at his broadest humor, the tenderest woman, one would
suppose, will hardly shed warm tears at his deepest pathos. The
book, if you would see any thing in it, requires to be read in
the clear, brown, twilight atmosphere in which it was written;
if opened in the sunshine, it is apt to look exceedingly like a
volume of blank pages....

"The author would regret to be understood as speaking sourly or
querulously of the slight mark made by his earlier literary
efforts on the public at large. It is so far the contrary, that
he has been moved to write this preface, chiefly as affording
him an opportunity to express how much enjoyment he has owed to
these volumes, both before and since their publication. They
are the memorials of very tranquil, and not unhappy years. They
failed, it is true--nor could it have been otherwise--in
winning an extensive popularity. Occasionally, however, when he
deemed them entirely forgotten, a paragraph or an article, from
a native or foreign critic, would gratify his instincts of
authorship with unexpected praise,--too generous praise,
indeed, and too little alloyed with censure, which, therefore,
he learned the better to inflict upon himself. And, by-the-by,
it is a very suspicious symptom of a deficiency of the popular
element in a book, when it calls forth no harsh criticism. This
has been particularly the fortune of the _Twice-Told Tales_.
They made no enemies, and were so little known and talked
about, that those who read, and chanced to like them, were apt
to conceive the sort of kindness for the book, which a person
naturally feels for a discovery of his own. This kindly feeling
(in some cases, at least) extended to the author, who, on the
internal evidence of his sketches, came to be regarded as a
mild, shy, gentle, melancholic, exceedingly sensitive, and not
very forcible man, hiding his blushes under an assumed name,
the quaintness of which was supposed, somehow or other, to
symbolize his personal and literary traits. He is by no means
certain that some of his subsequent productions have not been
influenced and modified by a natural desire to fill up so
amiable an outline, and to act in consonance with the character
assigned to him; nor, even now, could he forfeit it without a
few tears of tender sensibility. To conclude, however,--these
volumes have opened the way to most agreeable associations, and
to the formation of imperishable friendships; and there are
many golden threads, interwoven with his present happiness,
which he can follow up more or less directly, until he finds
their commencement here; so that his pleasant pathway among
realities seems to proceed out of the Dream-Land of his youth,
and to be bordered with just enough of its shadowy foliage to
shelter him from the heat of the day. He is therefore
satisfied with what the _Twice-Told Tales_ have done for him,
and feels it to be far better than fame."

That there should be any truth in this statement that the public was so slow to recognize so fine a genius, is a mortifying evidence of the worthlessness of a literary popularity. But it may be said of Hawthorne's fame that it has grown steadily, and that while many who have received the turbulent applause of the multitude since he began his career are forgotten, it has widened and brightened, until his name is among the very highest in his domain of art, to shine there with a lustre equally serene and enduring.

Mr. Hawthorne's last work is _The House of Seven Gables_, a romance of the present day. It is not less original, not less striking, not less powerful, than The Scarlet Letter. We doubt indeed whether he has elsewhere surpassed either of the three strongly contrasted characters of the book. An innocent and joyous child-woman, Phoebe Pyncheon, comes from a farm-house into the grand and gloomy old mansion where her distant relation, Hepzibah Pyncheon, an aristocratical and fearfully ugly but kind-hearted unmarried woman of sixty, is just coming down from her faded state to keep in one of her drawing-rooms a small shop, that she may be able to maintain an elder brother who is every moment expected home from a prison to which in his youth he had been condemned unjustly, and in the silent solitude of which he has kept some lineaments of gentleness while his hair has grown white, and a sense of beauty while his brain has become disordered and his heart has been crushed and all present influences of beauty have been quite shut out. The House of Seven Gables is the purest piece of imagination in our prose literature.

The characteristics of Hawthorne which first arrest the attention are imagination and reflection, and these are exhibited in remarkable power and activity in tales and essays, of which the style is distinguished for great simplicity, purity and tranquillity. His beautiful story of Rappacini's Daughter was originally published in the Democratic Review, as a translation from the French of one M. de l'Aubépine, a writer whose very name, he remarks in a brief introduction, (in which he gives in French the titles of some of his tales, as _Contes deux foix racontées_, _Le Culte du Feu,_ etc.) "is unknown to many of his countrymen, as well as to the student of foreign literature." He describes himself, under this _nomme de plume_, as one who--

"Seems to occupy an unfortunate position between the
transcendentalists (who under one name or another have their
share in all the current literature of the world), and the
great body of pen-and-ink men who address the intellect and
sympathies of the multitude. If not too refined, at all events
too remote, too shadowy and unsubstantial, in his mode of
development, to suit the taste of the latter class, and yet too
popular to a satisfy the spiritual or metaphysical requisitions
of the former, he must necessarily find himself without an
audience, except here and there an individual, or possibly an
isolated clique."

His writings, to do them justice, he says--

"Are not altogether destitute of fancy and originality; they
might have won him greater reputation but for an inveterate
love of allegory, which is apt to invest his plots and
characters with the aspect of scenery and people in the clouds,
and to steal away the human warmth out of his conceptions. His
fictions are sometimes historical, sometimes of the present
day, and sometimes, so far as can be discovered, have little or
no reference either to time or space. In any case, he generally
contents himself with a very slight embroidery of outward
manners,--the faintest possible counterfeit of real life,--and
endeavors to create an interest by some less obvious
peculiarity of the subject. Occasionally a breath of nature, a
rain-drop of pathos and tenderness, or a gleam of humor, will
find its way into the midst of his fantastic imagery, and make
us feel as if, after all, we were yet within the limits of our
native earth. We will only add to this cursory notice, that M.
de l'Aubépine's productions, if the reader chance to take them
in precisely the proper point of view, may amuse a leisure hour
as well as those of a brighter man; if otherwise, they can
hardly fail to look excessively like nonsense."

Hawthorne is as accurately as he is happily described in this curious piece of criticism, though no one who takes his works in the "proper point of view," will by any means agree to the modest estimate which, in the perfect sincerity of his nature, he has placed upon them. He is original, in invention, construction, and expression, always picturesque, and sometimes in a high degree dramatic. His favorite scenes and traditions are those of his own country, many of which he has made classical by the beautiful associations that he has thrown around them. Every thing to him is suggestive, as his own pregnant pages are to the congenial reader. All his productions are life-mysteries, significant of profound truths. His speculations, often bold and striking, are presented with singular force, but with such a quiet grace and simplicity as not to startle until they enter in and occupy the mind. The gayety with which his pensiveness is occasionally broken, seems more than any thing else in his works to have cost some effort. The gentle sadness, the "half-acknowledged melancholy," of his manner and reflections, are more natural and characteristic.

His style is studded with the most poetical imagery, and marked in every part with the happiest graces of expression, while it is calm, chaste, and flowing, and transparent as water. There is a habit among nearly all the writers of imaginative literature, of adulterating the conversations of the poor with barbarisms and grammatical blunders which have no more fidelity than elegance. Hawthorne's integrity as well as his exquisite--taste prevented him from falling into this error. There is not in the world a large rural population that speaks its native language with a purity approaching that with which the English is spoken by the common people of New England. The vulgar words and phrases which in other states are supposed to be peculiar to this part of the country are unknown east of the Hudson, except to the readers of foreign newspapers, or the listeners to low comedians who find it profitable to convey such novelties into Connecticut, Massachusetts, and Vermont. We are glad to see a book that is going down to the next ages as a representative of national manners and character in all respects correct.

Nathaniel Hawthorne is among the first of the first order of our writers, and in their peculiar province his works are not excelled in the literature of the present day or of the English language.

YEAST: A PROBLEM.

The Rev. Mr. KINGSLEY, author of _Alton Locke_, has collected into a book the series of vehement and yeasty papers which have appeared from his pen in _Fraser's Magazine_ under the above title, and a new impulse is thus given in England to the discussion of the Problem of Society. The declared object of the work--which is of the class of philosophical novels--is to exhibit the miseries of the poor; the conventionalisms, hypocrisies, and feebleness of the rich; the religious doubts of the strong, and the miserable delusions and superstitions of the weak; the mammon-worship of the middling and upper classes, and the angry humility of the masses. The story is very slight, but sufficient for the effective presentation of the author's opinions. The best characters are an Irish parson, a fox-hunting squire and his commonplace worldly wife, and a thoughtless and reckless but not unkind man of the world. Here is a sketch of a commonplace old English vicar, such as has been familiar in the pages of novels and essays time out of mind:

"He told me, hearing me quote Schiller, to beware of the
Germans, for they were all Pantheists at heart. I asked him
whether he included Lange and Bunsen, and it appeared that he
had never read a German book in his life. He then flew
furiously at Mr. Carlyle, and I found that all he knew of him
was from a certain review in the _Quarterly_. He called Boëhmen
a theosophic Atheist. I should have burst out at that, had I
not read the very words in a High Church review, the day
before, and hoped that he was not aware of the impudent
falsehood which he was retailing. Whenever I feebly interposed
an objection to any thing he said (for, after all he talked
on), he told me to hear the Catholic Church. I asked him which
Catholic Church? He said the English. I asked him whether it
was to be the Church of the sixth century, or the thirteenth,
or the seventeenth, or the eighteenth? He told me the one and
eternal Church, which belonged as much to the nineteenth
century as to the first. I begged to know whether, then, I was
to hear the Church according to Simeon, or according to Newman,
or according to St. Paul; for they seemed to me a little at
variance? He told me, austerely enough, that the mind of the
Church was embodied in her Liturgy and Articles. To which I
answered, that the mind of the episcopal clergy might, perhaps,
be; but, then, how happened it that they were always quarreling
and calling hard names about the sense of those very documents?
And so I left him, assuring him that living in the nineteenth
century, I wanted to hear the Church of the nineteenth century,
and no other; and should be most happy to listen to her, as
soon as she had made up her mind what to say."

English travellers in America give very minute accounts of the bad grammar and questionable pronunciation they sometimes hear among our common people: with what advantage they might go into the rural neighborhoods of their own country for exhibitions in this line is shown by the following description of a scene in a booth, which one of the characters of Mr. Kingsley enters at night:

"Sadder and sadder, Lancelot tried to listen to the
conversation of the men around him. To his astonishment he
hardly understood a word of it. It was half articulate, nasal,
guttural, made up almost entirely of vowels, like the speech of
savages. He had never before been struck with the significant
contrast between the sharp, clearly-defined articulation, the
vivid and varied tones of the gentleman, or even of the London
street-boy, when compared with the coarse, half-formed growls,
as of a company of seals, which he heard round him. That single
fact struck him perhaps more deeply than any; it connected
itself with many of physiological fancies; it was the parent of
many thoughts and plans of his after-life. Here and there he
could distinguish a half sentence. An old shrunken man opposite
him was drawing figures in the spilt beer with his pipestem,
and discoursing of the glorious times before the great war,
'when there was more food than there were mouths, and more work
than there hands.' 'Poor human nature,' thought Lancelot, as he
tried to follow one of those unintelligible discussions about
the relative prices of the loaf and the bushel of flour, which
ended, as usual, in more swearing and more quarreling, and more
beer to make it up: 'poor human nature! always looking back, as
the German sage says, to some fancied golden age, never looking
forward to the real one which is coming."

The descriptive powers of the author are illustrated in many fine passages, of which this delineation of an English day in March will serve as a specimen:

"A silent, dim, distanceless, steaming, rotting day in March.
The last brown oak-leaf, which had stood out the winter's
frost, spun and quivered plump down, and then lay, as if
ashamed to have broken for a moment the ghastly stillness, like
an awkward guest at a great dumb dinner-party. A cold suck of
wind just proved its existence, by toothaches on the north side
of all faces. The spiders, having been weather-be-witched the
night before, had unanimously agreed to cover every brake and
brier with gossamer-cradles, and never a fly to be caught in
them; like Manchester cotton-spinners madly glutting the
markets in the teeth of 'no demand.' The steam crawled out of
the dank turf, and reeked off the flanks and nostrils of the
shivering horses, and clung with clammy paws to frosted hats
and dripping boughs. A soulless, skyless, catarrhal day, as if
that bustling dowager, old mother Earth--what with
match-making in spring, and _fêtes champetres_ in summer, and
dinner-giving in autumn--was fairly worn out, and put to bed
with the influenza, under wet blankets and the cold-water
cure."

"Yeast," says the _Spectator_, "may be looked at as a series of sketches, loosely strung together, descriptive of palpable social evils in the mass, and of metaphysical broodings among the more thoughtful youth; a struggle which perhaps is always taking place, and which is no further distinctive of the present age than the form that is given by our intellectual and religious activity. The origin of evil, its presence in the world, what man was made for, what he struggles for, what becomes of him, have been questions that excited the speculative of all ages, taking various channels according to the circumstances of the time. Considered from this point of view, as a life-like picture of the heavings of the mass, and the mental fermentation going on among individuals--of the _yeast_ of society--the book displays great ability, and challenges careful attention. It is powerful, earnest, feeling, and eloquent; the production of a man acquainted with society, who has looked closely upon its various classes, and has the power of reading the signs of the times. He has a truthful vigor of description, a rhetorical rather than a dramatic power; or he sacrifices the latter to his habit of expressing his opinions in dialogue, where the author talks rather than the dramatis personæ. There is a genial warmth of feeling in the book, and wide human sympathies, but with a tendency to extremes in statement and opinion--a disposition to deepen the shadows of English life; for go where the author would, pictures quite as bad or worse may be drawn of the condition of mankind, from the 'noble savage,' the beau ideal of Rousseau, to the educated 'Prussian,' who was within a little while the model man of a certain school of philosophers."

THE LITTLENESS OF A GREAT PEOPLE.

The future historians of this age will have to record no more mortifying illustration of the difficulties which in a republic prevent the success of great ideas than that which is presented in the case of Mr. Whitney, who early in the last month sailed for England. We transcribe with especial approval the following paragraphs respecting him and his labors, from the _Tribune_:

"If we are not mistaken, it is now nearly ten years since Mr.
Whitney first devoted himself to his great project, and he has
pursued it with a force of purpose, an intelligent apprehension
of all its bearings and consequences upon the world, a nobility
of ambition, and a sustained, intellectual enthusiasm which
belongs to the rarest and most admirable characters. We do not
know in any country a man in whom great intellectual and
practical elements are more happily combined. It is not with
the warm partiality of private friendship that we thus speak of
Mr. Whitney, for, like all men of ideas, and all of nature
positive and deep enough to have a special mission in the
world, he puts others into relation with the thoughts which
engage him rather than with his own personality, and you become
intimate with them, not with him. A native, as we believe, of
Connecticut, brought up to business in this city, where he
acquired a competence, having conceived the idea of a vaster
and more inspiring enterprise than the political and industrial
world had ever attempted, he quitted the pursuits of trade, and
the certain wealth they promised him, to perfect and realize
his conception. He studied the great routes of the world, and
the causes of their adoption. In a residence in Europe and by
voyages in the East he made himself acquainted with the facts
relating to the trade and productive capacities of Asia. He
thoroughly surveyed and mastered the whole subject before
beginning its discussion. Then he proposed the scheme to his
countrymen, and for many years has sought exclusively to
commend it to their favor. He has travelled in every direction,
addressing public bodies and meetings of citizens, writing
newspaper articles and pamphlets, and sparing no occasion to
bring the idea and the facts connected with it to the knowledge
of all. Wherever he has gone he has left some sparks of his own
genial enthusiasm. The plan has found advocates in every
section; many state legislatures have formally endorsed it, and
a large party in Congress have been in its favor. Dependent
altogether on his own pecuniary resources, Mr. Whitney, without
compensation or assistance, has labored with a constancy and
fidelity which could only proceed from a great purpose. But
after this period of arduous exertion he has failed to carry
his plan through Congress, while a great part of the lands on
which he must depend for its execution, have already passed
from the control of the federal Legislature. Accordingly,
though he would greatly prefer that his own country should reap
the splendid harvest of honor and substantial power which the
building of this world's highway would assure, he has no choice
but to consider the means which may be offered him for making
it through British America. To the world at large the
consequences would be the same, though to the United States
very different.

"The route through British America is, in some respects, even
preferable to that through our own territory. By the former,
the distance from Europe to Asia is some thousand miles shorter
than by the latter. Passing close to the northern shore of Lake
Superior, traversing the watershed which divides the streams
flowing toward the Arctic Sea from those which have their exit
southward, and crossing the Rocky Mountains at an elevation
some three thousand, feet less than at the South Pass, the road
could here be constructed with comparative cheapness, and would
open up a region abounding in valuable timber and other natural
products, and admirably suited to the growth of grain and to
grazing. Having its Atlantic seaport at Halifax, and its
Pacific Depot near Vancouver's Island, it would inevitably draw
to it the commerce of Europe, Asia, and the United States. Thus
British America, from a mere colonial dependency, would assume
a controlling rank in the world. To her other nations would be
tributary, and in vain would the United States attempt to be
her rival; for we could never dispute with her the possession
of the Asiatic commerce, or the power which that confers."

But the matter reaches beyond the suggestions of national
interest, and has a wider scope than the mere sentiment of
patriotism. We have hoped that this republic might make the
easy effort necessary to grasp a prize so magnificent, but we
shall hail with satisfaction the actual commencement of such a
work, wherever and by whomsoever it is undertaken.

A JEW AND A CHRISTIAN.

A few days ago, a man of various genius and acquirement, with whose writings people of many countries have been delighted, entered an office, holding in his hand two black-bordered notes, inviting him to funerals.

So--other friends have gone! who now?

Two persons very unlike each other. Truly I have never known more striking contrasts. I was meditating of popular prejudices by which their lives were more or less affected, by which their reputations were certainly much affected: one was a Jew, and the other a Christian.

Proceed with your morality.

I was very poor when I came to this country. I sought occupation in the pursuits for which I was best fitted by my education: for a time with little success; and at length I was offered for the translation of two wretched French novels, the meager sum of fifty dollars. I sold some of my wife's trinkets to purchase paper and ink, and worked diligently, you can guess how many weeks, until they were in English as readable as the French of their author. The task accomplished, I went to my patron, expecting of course to have the pittance counted down in current notes or gold; but----the market for such literature was by this time over stocked; he had supplied it too liberally; and with some insulting excuse he refused the manuscripts.

You have an invitation to his funeral?

Yes--he was rich--always speculating in the sweat of brains--and we had business relations afterward.

The other history?

I chanced one day to meet a gentleman, with whom I had no personal acquaintance, though our names were known to each other, and conversing of a subject with which I was familiar he inquired if I would write something upon it for his journal. I replied that I would be very happy to do so, and as we shook hands, at parting, he left in my palm two twenty-dollar notes. He would gladly have avoided a word of explanation, but seeing my surprise he said, "It is merely a retainer, as the lawyers have it; consider it upon account of the articles you will write me." I wrote the articles; it was but an evening's work; and wrote frequently afterward for the same person, always receiving a liberal reward--always more than I asked--though my employer was himself by no means rich. You will think that in the first place he expected a profit for the money he gave me, but I knew better: he cared not a fig for the papers I was to prepare; he simply suspected that I was in need of money, and took that delicate way to relieve me, as, in his time, he relieved hundreds of men.

A noble characteristic of a man perhaps in all respects deserving of admiration: But what of the prejudice you were meditating?

It is this--that even in this land, where many an old world superstition has found life impossible--the community regard a _Jew_ as an incarnation of all selfishness, meanness and dishonor. A hundred to one, being told that the hero of one of these two histories was an Israelite, would swear instantly that the name of him who swindled me was Moses. But it was not: that person will to-morrow have Christian burial, and the other--one of the most sincere and generous men of the age, was an officer of the synagogue. You know--we both know--that the Hebrew race are not only before the other races in all fine intelligence, but that in defiance of prejudices and disabilities which might turn any other people into hordes of robbers, they are of the most honorable portion of mankind.

POLICARPA LA SALVARIETTA,

THE HEROINE OF COLOMBIA.

There are not many subjects for poetry or romance in American history more suggestive than that furnished in the following incidents, translated from Restrepo's _Historia de la Revolucion de la Colombia_:

"After the standard of liberty had been raised in all the
provinces, and the people had struck a successful blow for
freedom, Morillo, with an overwhelming force, re-conquered the
country for Spain. During six months this fiendish savage held
undisputed sway over Colombia. The best men of the provinces
were by him seized and shot, and each of his officers had the
power of death over the inhabitants of the districts in which
they were stationed. It was during this period that the
barbarous execution of Policarpa La Salvarietta--a heroic girl
of New Granada--roused the Patriots once more to arms, and
produced in them a determination to expel their oppressors or
die. This young lady was enthusiastically attached to the cause
of liberty, and had, by her influence, rendered essential aid
to the Patriots. The wealth of her father, and her own superior
talents and education, early excited the hostility of the
Spanish commander against her and her family. She had promised
her hand in marriage to a young officer in the Patriot service,
who had been compelled by Morillo to join the Spanish army as a
private soldier. La Salvarietta, by means that were never
disclosed, obtained, through him an exact account of the
Spanish forces, and a plan of their fortifications. The
Patriots were preparing to strike a decisive blow, and this
intelligence was important to their success. She had induced
Sabarain, her lover, and eight others, to desert. They were
discovered, and apprehended. The letters of La Salvarietta,
found on the person of her lover, betrayed her to the vengeance
of the tyrant of her country. She was seized, brought to the
Spanish camp, and tried by court martial. The highest rewards
were promised her if she would disclose the names and plans of
her associates. The inducements proving of no avail, torture
was employed to wring from her the secret, in which so many of
the best families of Colombia were interested, but even on the
rack she persisted in making no disclosure. The accomplished
young lady, hardly eighteen years of age, was condemned to be
shot. She calmly and serenely heard her sentence, and prepared
to meet her fate. She confessed to a Catholic priest, partook
of the sacrament, and with a firm step walked to the open
square, where a file of soldiers, in presence of Morillo and
his officers, were drawn up, with loaded muskets. Turning to
Morillo, she said, "I shall not die in vain, for my blood will
raise up heroes from every hill and valley of my country." She
had scarcely uttered the above, when Morillo himself gave the
signal to the soldiers to fire, and in the next moment La
Salvarietta was a mangled and bleeding corpse. The Spanish
officers and soldiers were overwhelmed with astonishment at the
firmness and patriotism of this lovely girl, but the effect
upon her own countrymen was electrical. The Patriots lost no
time in flying to arms, and their war cry, "_La Salvarietta_!"
made every heart burn to inflict vengeance upon her murderers.
In a very short time the army of Morillo was nearly cut to
pieces, and the commander himself escaped death only by flight,
and in disguise."

In Mexico a dramatic piece, which we have seen described as possessing considerable merit, has been founded upon this tragical history. In the Spanish American wars there have been numerous instances of remarkable heroism by women, which is the more noticeable for the little the sex has had to gain by the political independence of the Spanish race on this continent.

A REAL AMERICAN SAINT.

Mrs. Jameson, in her beautiful book lately published in London, _Legends of the Monastic Orders_, has the following account of the only American woman ever canonized:

"Santa Rosa di Lima was born at Lima, in Peru, in 1586. This
flower of sanctity, whose fragrance has filled the whole
Christian world, is the patroness of America, the St. Theresa
of Transatlantic Spain. She was distinguished, in the first
place, by her austerities. 'Her usual food was an herb bitter
as wormwood. When compelled by her mother to wear a wreath of
roses, she so adjusted it on her brow that it became a crown of
thorns. Rejecting a host of suitors, she destroyed the lovely
complexion to which she owed her name, by an application of
pepper and quicklime. But she was also a noble example of
filial devotion, and maintained her once wealthy parents,
fallen on evil days, by the labor of her hands.' All day she
toiled in a garden, and at night she worked with her needle.
She took the habit of the third order of St. Dominic, and died
in 1617. She was canonized by Clement X. According to the
Peruvian legend, the Pope, when entreated to canonize her,
absolutely refused, exclaiming, 'India y santa! asi como
llueven rosas!' (India and saint! as much so as that it rains
roses!') Whereupon, a miraculous shower of roses began to fall
in the Vatican, and ceased not till the incredulous pontiff
acknowledged himself convinced."

Among men saints have been more plentiful.

Authors and Books.

We have already briefly spoken of Dr. ANDREE'S work on America which is now publishing at Brunswick, Germany, by the house of Westermann, a branch of which is established in this city at the corner of Broadway and Duane-streets. The book in question is to consist of three volumes of some six hundred and fifty octavo pages each, devoted respectively to North, Central, and South America. It is published in numbers of some eighty pages each; of these numbers four are already issued, and we have read them with great satisfaction. The broad and philosophical spirit, the exhaustive learning, and the spirited and picturesque style of Dr. Andree are beyond praise; among all the books on America which we have met with this impresses us as unique, and if the remainder shall prove equal to what is already published, we hope that some American publisher may undertake a translation of the whole into English.

The work opens with an introduction of some forty odd pages, in which, first, the physical characteristics of the new world are set forth with great clearness and beauty: its mountains, rivers, lakes, climate, vegetable and animal kingdoms; the origin of the aboriginal inhabitants, their languages, races, manners, customs, and civilization; the settlements of Europeans, the Spaniards, the Spanish and Portuguese states, the Creoles, Mexico, Brazil, &c. Amalgamation of races, the negroes, Slavery, influence of the Latin races, the Teutonic race, the United States, their growth and destiny, are made the subjects of a continuous discussion, remarkable alike for an air at least of breadth and profundity, careful and comprehensive knowledge, and for concise and often eloquent expression. The introduction is followed by chapters on Iceland, Greenland, and the various expeditions to the polar regions of the north, treating those topics both historically and ethnographically, and with a clear presentation of every interesting and important fact. Next follows a general survey of the continent north of the fiftieth, degree of latitude, its rivers, lakes, forests, animals, men, and commerce, including an account of the various Indian tribes, and the trading companies dealing with them. The trading posts of the Hudson's Bay Company, Lord Selkirk's colony on Red River, Labrador, Newfoundland, the British Possessions on the West coast, Russian America, are successively treated. Next the Indians in Canada and the United States are considered at length, in respect of their history, traditions, languages, monuments, customs, the influence of the whites upon them, and their probable destiny. In this connection we notice that Dr. Andree frequently cites Gallatin, Schoolcraft, Squier, and other American writers. The remainder of the first volume will treat of the United States, their political history and organization, their soil, climate, people, &c., not failing to give whatever information may be useful to the European settler looking for a new home, as well as to the _savan_ looking for light upon ethnographic and social problems.

From this general outline the scope of the book may be inferred, but our readers will permit us to refer to one or two points which are dwelt upon in the introduction. Dr. Andree contends with the earnestness of a determined partisan for the originality of the vegetable and animal creations, as well as of the human race upon this continent, rejecting entirely the theory that either was transplanted from the eastern hemisphere. The unity of the human family, he maintains with a class of writers distinguishable chiefly for a sleepless activity in assailing the authority of the Christian religion, does not require the assumption of numerical identity of origin, but rather the contrary. "It is not necessary," he says, "to assume the arithmetical _oneness_ of mankind, and the derivation of all from a single pair, thus arbitrarily confining and limiting the creative power of the Highest Being;" and this position he proceeds to advocate by a variety of arguments, at the same time controverting the opposite opinion, and especially the notion of the late Major Noah that the Indians of this continent were descendants of the lost ten tribes of Israel. In this impertinence is the only noteworthy fault we discover in the book. Discussions of such controverted points as this belong exclusively to the audience of scholars. A far more interesting and satisfactory part of the introduction is that devoted to the Spanish and Portuguese in America, and their influence on the native tribes, and _vice versa_. The contrast which these races and the states they have founded exhibit to the Germanic race in North America is brought out by Dr. Andree in a striking manner. All the South American republics except Chili are in a condition of comparative or actual disorder: no signs of expanding life and progress are visible among them; every where the conflict of races and castes is active or only partially suppressed; Brazil alone, by the monarchical form of its executive, (though its institutions are fundamentally democratic,) is spared from the anarchy which prevails among its neighbors, and there too, alone, the black, yellow, and red races are politically equal and in the way of complete amalgamation; but in all these states the European element, instead of growing more powerful and influential, tends constantly to greater weakness, and is likely to be completely absorbed and swallowed up; since the wars of independence the white race has diminished, not increased in number; and instead of conferring on the native races the civilization and refinement which was its native property, it is so far dominated by them as to relapse toward their ignorance and rudeness; and after three centuries all Spanish America, the West Indies included, contains not more than fifteen millions of inhabitants, about a fifth of whom are whites, that is to say as many as are found in the State of New-York alone. Or, reckoning for all America south of the United States, five millions of whites, this population still falls far short of that which within thirty years has taken possession of the country between the Alleghanies and the Mississippi. Such is the difference between the Latin and the Saxon races. The latter has spread itself with astonishing rapidity, never mixing, to any extent, with negroes or Indians, nor allowing mixed races to get the upper hand, or even exercise any influence. The Anglo-Saxon civilizes the other races or devotes them to extinction. And yet South America is naturally better than North. It is richer and more productive, and endowed with a system of rivers compared with which that of the Mississippi seems trifling. Had it been settled by Anglo-Saxons and Germans instead of Creoles and mixed breeds, it would long since have worn another aspect; steamboats would have covered the rivers up to the very foot of the Cordilleras, and the vast plains would have been occupied by flourishing towns and cultivated fields.

The parallel which Dr. Andree draws between the history of the United States and Europe for the last fifty years is so strikingly put, that we make room for a single passage by way of specimen:

"A comparison of the history of Europe and of North America
during the time since the first French revolution is in every
respect to the advantage of the United States. The old world
has been convulsed by wars, a military emperor has had the sway
of Europe, and broken kingdoms into fragments; blood has flowed
in torrents, and thousands of millions have been wasted for
unproductive purposes and on royal vanity. Since the fall of
the Great Soldier the nations have incessantly risen against
their rulers, and more than a million of men now stand in arms
to restrain the people and serve the passions of monarchs and
their cabinets. Only sixty years ago the entire valley of the
Mississippi was still a desert, a wide wilderness, with hardly
here and there a settlement. Now we see this empire in
subjection--conquered, not by soldiers, with waving banners and
sounding trumpets, but by the toil of the farmer, the skill of
the artisan, the enterprising spirit of the merchant. They have
drained morasses, cleared up forests, opened roads, dug canals,
built ships, and founded flourishing states. Within the period
of two generations they have peopled that wilderness with ten
millions of industrious inhabitants, and opened a new home to
the arts of peace, to civil and religious liberty, to culture
and progress. In these sixty years, not so much blood has been
shed in wars against Indians in the Mississippi valley as in
one of the hundreds of battles fought by the soldiers of
European states, most of them for useless or even pernicious
ends. No blessing has followed the wars and conquests in
Europe, but in the Great West, conquered by labor and
enterprise, all is progress and unexampled prosperity."

There are numerous other passages tempting us to translate them, but our space is already exhausted, and we forbear.

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