Chapter II: Front Matter (2)

I found her where a flowering tree
Gave odors and cool shade. Her cheek
A little rested on her hand;
Her rustic skill had made a band
Of rare device which garlanded
The beauty of her bending head;
Some maiden thoughts most kind and wise
Were dimly burning in her eyes.
When I beheld her--form and face
So lithe, so fair--the spirit race,
Of whom the better poets dream'd,
Came to my thought, and I half deem'd
My earth-born mistress, pure and good,
Was some such lady of the wood,
As she who work'd at spell, and snare,
With Huon of the dusky hair,
And fled, in likeness of a doe,
Before the fleet youth Angelo.
But these infirm imaginings
Flew quite away on instant wings.
I call'd her name. A swift surprise
Came whitely to her face, but soon
It fled before some daintier dyes,
And, laughing like a brook in June,
With sweet accost she welcomed me.
It was a golden day to me,
And its great bliss is with me yet,
Warming like wine my inmost heart----
For memories of happy hours
Are like the cordials press'd from flowers,
And madden sweetly.

Then the poet recited ancient lays which tell some natural tales; and then:

Pity look'd lovely in the maiden;
Her eyes were softer, when so laden
With the bright dew of tears unshed.
But I was somewhat envious
That other bards should move her thus,
And oft within myself had said,
"Yea--I will strive to touch her heart
With some fair songs of mine own art"----
And many days before the day
Whereof I speak, I made essay
At this bold labor. In the wells
Of Froissart's life-like chronicles
I dipp'd for moving truths of old.
A thousand stories, soft and bold,
Of stately dames, and gentlemen,
Which good Lord Berners, with a pen
Pompous in its simplicity,
Yet tipt with charming courtesy,
Had put in English words, I learn'd;
And some of these I deftly turn'd
Into the forms of minstrel verse.
I know the good tales are the worse--
But, sooth to say, it seems to me
My verse has sense and melody----
Even that its measure sometimes flows
With the brave pomp of that old prose.

It was a good while before the promised contents of the book were sent to us, and Cooke wrote of the delay to a friend:

"Procrastination is a poison of my very marrow. Moreover,
since 'the first wisping of the leaf,' my whole heart has
been in the woods and the waters--every rising sun that
could be seen, _I have seen_, and I never came in from my
sport until too much used up to do more than adopt this
epitaph of Sardanapalus: 'Eat, drink,' &c. Moreover (2d),
Mr. Kennedy and others were poking me in the ribs eternally
about my poems; and I was driven to the labor of finishing
them. I groaned and did it, and sent them to Griswold, and
have left the task of carrying them through the press to
him; and only lie passive, saying with Don Juan (in the
slave-market of Adrianople, or some other place), 'would to
God somebody would buy me.'"

At length through his cousin and friend, John P. Kennedy--(a name that makes one in charity with all mankind)--the MS. of all the poems was sent to us. It makes a book about the size of the printed volume, written with a regular elegance to match that of the old copyists. In an accompanying letter he says:

... "They are certainly not in the high key of a man warm
with his subject, and doing the thing finely; I wrote them
with the reluctance of a turkey-hunter kept from his
sport--only Mr. Kennedy's urgent entreaty and remonstrance
whipped me up to the labor. You will hardly perceive how
they should be called "Ballads." You are somewhat
responsible for the name. I designed (originally) to make
them short poems of the old understood ballad cast. I sent
you the proem, which you published as a preface to the
"Froissart Ballads." Words in print bore a look of
perpetuity (or rather of fixedness) about them, and what I
would have changed if only my pen and portfolio had been
concerned, your type deterred me from changing. The term
"Froissart Ballads," however, is after all correct, even
with the poems as they are. The Master of Bolton is as much
a _song_ as the Lay of the Last Minstrel, although I have no
prologue, interludes, &c., to show how it was sung; and as
for Orthone, &c. Sir John Froissart may as easily be
imagined chanting them as talking them."

Again he wrote:

"You will find them beneath your sanguine prognostic. They
are mere narrative poems, designed for the crowd. Poetic
speculation, bold inroads upon the debatable land--"the wild
weird clime, out of space out of time"--I have not here
attempted. I _will_ hereafter merge myself in the nobler
atmosphere; in the mean time I have stuck to the ordinary
level, and endeavored to write interesting stories in verse,
with grace and spirit. I repeat my fear that in writing for
the cold, I have failed to touch the quick and warm--in
writing for a dozen hunting comrades, who have been in the
habit of making my verse a _post prandium_ entertainment,
and never endured an audacity of thought or word, I have
tamed myself out of your approbation."

The book was at length published, but though reviewed very favorably by the late Judge Beverly Tucker, in the Southern Literary Messenger, and by Mr. Poe, in the American Review, and much quoted and praised elsewhere, it was, on the whole, not received according to its merits or our expectations. Yet the result aroused the author's ambition, and after a few weeks he remarked in a letter:

"My literary life opens now. If the world manifest any
disposition to hear my 'utterances,' it will be abundantly
gratified. I am thirty: until forty literature shall be my
calling--avoiding however to rely upon it pecuniarily--then
(after forty) politics will be a _sequitur_.

"It has occurred to me to turn my passion for hunting, and
'my crowding experiences' (gathered in fifteen or sixteen
years of life in the merriest Virginia country society) of
hunting, fishing, country races, character and want of
character, woods, mountains, fields, waters, and the devil
knows what, into a rambling book. Years ago I used to devour
the 'Spirit of the Times.' Indeed, much of my passion for
sports of all kinds grew out of reading the 'Spirit.' Like
Albert Pike's poet, in 'Fantasms,' I

'Had not known the bent of my own mind,
Until the mighty spell of 'Porter' woke
Its hidden passions.'

Only Albert Pike, says 'Coleridge' and 'Powers' for 'Porter'
and 'passions.' Then, I have a half-written novel in my MS.
piles, with poems, tales, sketches, histories, commenced, or
arranged in my mind ready to be put in writing, _to order_.
In a word, I am cocked and primed for authorship. My life
here invites me urgently to literary employments. My house,
servants, &c. &c.,--all that a country gentleman, really
wants of the goods of life,--are in sure possession to me
and mine. I want honors, and some little more money. Be good
enough, my dear sir, to let me know how I am to go about
acquiring them."

We wrote with frankness what we thought as true, of possible pecuniary advantages from the course he proposed, and were answered:

"What you say about the returns in money for an author's
labors is dispiriting enough,--and I at once give over an
earnest purpose, which I had formed, of writing _books_.
Thank God, I am not dependent on the booksellers, but have a
moderate and sure support for my family, apart from the
crowding hopes and fears which dependence on them, would no
doubt generate. But I must add (or forego some
gratifications) two or three hundred dollars per annum to my
ordinary means. I might easily make this by my profession,
which I have deserted and neglected, but it would be as bad
as the tread-mill to me; I detest the law. On the other
hand, I love the fever-fits of composition. The music of
rhythm, coming from God knows where, like the airy melody in
the Tempest, tingles pleasantly in my veins and fingers; I
like to build the verse cautiously, but with the excitement
of a rapid writer, which I rein in and check; and then, we
both know how glorious it is to make the gallant dash, and
round off the stanza with the sonorous couplet, or with some
rhyme as natural to its place as a leaf on a tree, but
separated from its mate that peeps down to it over the inky
ends of many intervening lines.... That unepistolary
sentence has considerably fatigued me. I was saying, or
about to say, that I would be obliged to you for information
as to the profitableness of writing for periodicals."

From this time Mr. Cooke wrote much, but in a desultory way, and seemed, in a growing devotion to a few friends, and in the happiness that was in his home, to forget almost the dreams of ambition. He had commenced an historical novel to be called "Lutzen," in which that great battle was to end the adventures of his hero; this he threw aside, and his love for that age appeared in "The Chevalier Merlin," suggested by the beautiful story of Charles the Twelfth, as given by Voltaire, several chapters of which appeared in the Southern Literary Messenger. In the same magazine he printed "John Carpe," "The Two Country Houses," and other tales, parts of a series in which he intended to dramatize the whole life and manners of Virginia. As for any applause that these might win for him, he wrote to his friend John R. Thompson:

"I look upon these matters serenely, and will treat renown
as Sir Thomas More advises concerning guests; welcome its
coming when it cometh, hinder not with oppressive eagerness
its going, when it goeth. Furthermore, I am of the temper to
look placidly upon the profile of this same renown, if,
instead of stopping, it went by to take up with another;
therefore it would not ruffle me to see you win the honors
of southern letters away from me."

The chivalric poetry had filled his mind early and long, and he was only banishing it for the more independent and beautiful growth of his nature, when his untimely death destroyed hopes of fruits which the productions of his youth seemed to precede as blossoms. He died suddenly, at his home, on Sunday, the 20th of January, 1850, at the age of thirty-three.

At the time of his death he was writing "The Women of Shakspeare," "The Chariot Race," and a political and literary satire.

Undoubtedly Philip Pendleton Cooke was one of the truest poets of our day, and what he has left us was full of promise that he would become one of the most famous. Of his love poems, this little song, written when he was scarcely more than twenty, is perhaps the finest:

FLORENCE VANE.

I loved thee long and dearly,
Florence Vane;
My life's bright dream, and early
Hath come again;
I renew, in my fond vision,
My heart's dear pain,
My hopes, and thy derision,
Florence Vane.

The ruin lone and hoary,
The ruin old,
Where thou didst hark my story,
At even told,----
That spot--the hues Elysian
Of sky and plain----
I treasure in my vision,
Florence Vane.

Thou wast lovelier than the roses,
In their prime;
Thy voice excelled the closes
Of sweetest rhyme;
Thy heart was as a river
Without a main;
Would I had loved thee never,
Florence Vane.

But fairest, coldest wonder!
Thy glorious clay
Lieth the green sod under----
Alas the day!
And it boots not to remember
Thy disdain----
To quicken love's pale ember,
Florence Vane.

The lilies of the valley
By young graves weep,
The pansies love to dally
Where maidens sleep;
May their bloom, in beauty vying,
Never wane
Where thine earthly part is lying,
Florence Vane!

We cannot quote others; in the lines "To my Daughter Lilly," may be discovered the tenderness and warmth of his affections; in his Ballads, the fiery and chivalrous phase of his intelligence; in "Ugolino," his pathos; in "Life in the Autumn Woods," his love of nature; and in all his writings, the thoroughly healthy character of his mind.

As a boy and as a young man, we understand, his life was always poetical--apart, original, and commanding affectionate respect. As he grew older, and married, he became practical in his views, reaching that point in the life of genius in which its beautiful ideals take the forms of duty or become the strength of wise resolves. Toward his family, including his father, mother, brothers, and sisters, he cherished a deep and unfaltering devotion. A short time before his last illness he introduced into his household morning and evening prayers. He died, as he had lived, a pure-minded gentleman and humble Christian.

Of his personal appearance a just impression is given by the portrait at the beginning of this article. His carriage was graceful and upright; his frame vigorous and elastic, trained as he was by constant hunting in the Blue Ridge; his hair was black and curling; his eye dark and bright; his expression calm and thoughtful; his manner impressed with dignity.

----"Lycidas is dead, dead ere his prime,
Young Lycidas, and hath not left his peer."

DR. HUNTINGTON ON COPYRIGHT.

The author of _Alice_ and _Alban_ has written the following piquant letter on the important subject of INTERNATIONAL COPYRIGHT.

_To the Editor of the Morning Chronicle._

As an American deeply interested in the subject of international copyright, and much struck by the fallacies of some of the speakers at a meeting of authors and publishers, recently reported in the London journals, may I, as the subject is fresh so long as it is undecided, beg of your courtesy a little space to point them out.

Let me begin by admitting the force of most that was said by the distinguished chairman on that occasion, Sir Edward Bulwer Lytton. No man living, perhaps, has a better right than he to complain of my countrymen, to whose intellectual pleasures and moral instruction he has contributed ever since I was a boy, out of the hard labor of his brains--helping to enrich our publishers and booksellers, and to stimulate all the trade connected with bookmaking, and vivifying the circulation of magazines and newspapers--for all which he has never received a penny. The same may be said of Dickens, whose works are of course as familiar to us as to you, and whose characters have become a part of our stock of ideas, more precious than the gold from our new-discovered mines. It is true that neither of these great men has benefited us so much as he might have done if we had paid for our pleasure honorably, for the influence of genius is like that of grace--the fertilizing shower falls in vain on the arid, stony places of selfish and unjust enjoyment. Charles Dickens has never received a penny from us, although we insulted our unpaid creditor when he came among us by asking him to Boz balls and dinners, given on a scale of splendor which showed how well we could have afforded to pay our debt if we had been honest enough to have admitted it. How degrading--how incongruous--for a great nation, such as we boast of being, to be thus the literary pensioners, the intellectual beggars of England, meanly enjoying what we won't pay for? An American would scorn to be fed or clothed gratis; he would "stand treat" with the world; yet he lets an Englishman (of all men!) gratuitously amuse his leisure, satisfy his thirst for knowledge, and clothe the nakedness of his mind. If Sir Edward Bulwer Lytton, or Mr. Dickens, were to offer to pay for a pair of trousers for Brother Jonathan, he would knock him down; or if Miss Bell, or whatever is the name of the lady who wrote "Jane Eyre," and her sisters, pretended to make him up a dozen fine shirts as a charity, I think he would go out of his senses. He would rather go bare to the end of his days than owe such an obligation to any he or she Briton in existence; but what are such favors to those which he unblushingly accepts, year after year, from Sir Edward Bulwer and Miss Bell?

But I think, sir, with submission, that an injury has been done to the cause of copyright by resting it on false abstract grounds, which cannot be, and never have been, carried out. If a man has a rightful monopoly in his book, merely because he has produced it, your law is unjust and piratical in fixing a term to copyright--for why should you take away a man's property after he has enjoyed it a certain number of years? On the contrary, one would suppose that the longer he has enjoyed it the more perfect his right, and the greater the wrong to deprive him of it. Time converts even what is unjustly acquired into a legitimate possession--how much more that which the owner has actually created? I would put the matter on simple, concrete grounds, which all men can appreciate. The production of books is an element of civilization, by the common consent of nations. Books cannot be produced unless in some way they procure the authors a subsistence. And whoever produces by his labor a beneficial thing, is entitled to a reasonable compensation from those who are thereby benefited. In former times, when readers were scarce, as copies were costly, the rich, or sovereigns, supported authors directly, by pensions or otherwise. It is now conceded that the best mode of rewarding them is by allowing them an exclusive copyright in their works, and all civilized nations do so. But this mode of remuneration being once established, a foreign author, coming personally, or in his work, into a country, "has as much moral right to his book as he has to his baggage," and it is as barbarous to plunder him of the one as of the other. Why, when was there a time in Europe, or even in Asia or the antique world, that princes and states did not receive and cherish, and nobly reward, foreign men of letters? Are they to be more ignobly treated now that the people have become patrons? But, if deaf to the voice of honor, hear that of justice. Those who enjoy their works are bound to remunerate them for what they have produced at a great expenditure of time, money, and soul-wearing labor. That "the laborer is worthy of his hire," is a divine sentence which sooner or later will judge all those by whom that hire is by fraud "kept back." A country which refuses a fair copyright to authors, whether native or foreign, condemns itself to barbarism. It cultivates in itself a spirit of violence, aggravated by ingratitude to benefactors. There is, too, a sort of indelicacy in this injury, which even the law of reprisal cannot excuse. The benefit which the author of genius confers is something personal. You might as well, if some savage tribe ravished your women, condemn its females, when captured, to insult and dishonor.

Moreover, to refuse copyright to any class of authors (and here, again, I agree with Sir Bulwer), is to refuse it, in part, to all. The native author is robbed of his just hire by such a law, as much as the foreigner. I am compelled by the existing law of American copyright to part with my books for a sum which is under their natural price, and which is not a remunerating price, because I am undersold by reprints for which the authors are paid nothing. Look the fact in the face, ye readers of cheap reprints, who are unwilling to abandon an unjust privilege, which affords you so much pleasure at so low a rate. I have written a book. I have spent years in writing or learning to write it. Perhaps I could do nothing else. The influence of the literary atmosphere in which all who read the English language are forced to live, acting on my special organization, has made literary production a necessary resource. It is the same as if I were a poor shirt-maker, over whose sorrows a Hood has taught you to weep and be indignant. At all events, you approve of my writing, or you would not have read my book so extensively. And yet, because you can refuse to pay foreign authors for books of the same kind, you oblige me to take a nominal price for mine--a price for which it could not be produced by any man living, and less than it would command if you honestly paid for such labor in other instances. You have beaten me down most unfairly. I consider it so; and if every one of the 10 or 12,000 buyers of the cheap edition of "Lady Alice" were to send me a "quarter" (1_s._) by mail, I should regard it as a simple restitution; nor would the sum total cover my expenses while writing it.

So far, then, Sir Edward Lytton and myself (if it is not too great presumption in me to join myself with him) cordially agree. And further, it is a most nonsensical and absurd policy for a country thus to swamp its native literature, and to depress and degrade the whole class of native writers. No nation can afford to let foreigners write for it; it would be as unwise as to let them fight its battles. I may add that no nation can afford to embitter its own writers against itself by producing in their minds a sense of injustice. Strong as our feeling of nationality undoubtedly is, it will not stand this for ever. It has seemed strange to some that an American should have written such a book as "Lady Alice," the author of which appears, at first sight, to have expatriated his mind, if not his heart. His being an episcopal clergyman accounts for it in part--for the Church is essentially of Old England, and its clergy and more devoted members are morally domiciled in England, with whose institutions and social system they have a stronger sympathy than with those of their own country. Moreover, for years, he lived only among Englishmen of that class which is most intensely attached to things as they are--a part of the time in England itself. These circumstances made the thing possible. But despair of obtaining any thing like a fair copyright for an American book made it actual--led him to lay aside a projected American story, and try his hand at an English novel, with a bent less serious: at first, indeed, not without some idea of caricature, in a gay, lawless, audacious spirit, in defiance of cant of every kind: but the calm, methodical, somewhat mechanical [Greek: ethos] of actual English life, when he saw it and felt its restraints, tamed down these peculiarities somewhat. The result was a book which truly excited more surprise than sympathy in England--but which, in America, proved its real nationality by bursting in a trice all the bonds of clique, and, in spite of its acknowledged faults, securing near a hundred thousand readers in a few months. If copyright had been protected as it ought, I should have been reimbursed by so large a sale; but, as it was, even this successful book paid me less than a day laborer could have earned in the time I was writing it, in any part of the States.

But now I want Sir Edward Bulwer Lytton and Mr. Colburn to tell me what good it will do English authors and publishers for you to imitate in this respect the injustice and folly of your transatlantic cousins. Because "literature is in a depressed state," which Sir Edward asserts to be a fact--and because Mr. Colburn cannot afford to give one hundred pounds for a book for which once he would have given L1000--they propose, if I understand them, to have recourse to an unlimited pirating of American literature. I should think (if your British pride will tolerate the expression of my opinion) that the true remedy would be to give a stringent copyright to American authors. Pray which injured the English book-market most--Mr. Colburn's issue of a few hundreds of "Lady Alice" at a guinea and a half, or Mr. Bohn's issue of as many thousands of Mayo's "Kaloolah" at a shilling? Or do they think, as Sir E. Bulwer Lytton seems to imply, that, except Cooper and Irving, we have no authors whose works are readable in Britain? "Typee," and "The Scarlet Letter," and "The Reveries of a Bachelor," and the two works above mentioned, tell a different story. Who can deny the genius and artistic power of Hawthorne, or the clear English simplicity of his style? And if Ik Marvel falls much behind Geoffrey Crayon, we, their countrymen, are no judges--although it is true that the former has fallen upon an affected age. I admit our deterioration. Or is it supposed that we shall cease producing if the possibility of English copyright is taken away? That would be a great mistake. Men who have a vocation for it will write, well or ill, even if they starve, as London garrets can testify. And there is no danger of our starving absolutely. Successful books pay their authors, not adequately, but enough to keep soul and body together. In light literature (so-called, perhaps, because it demands entire devotion and unceasing toil to arrive at excellence in it)--in light literature, which pays best here as well as elsewhere, there is a distinct demand for native works, which all the competition of the cheap pamphlet novels of the Harpers cannot wholly extinguish, and it is by the feeble, but real aid of this national taste that we exist. For my part, I feel a sort of Coriolanus pride in having got nothing, as I may say, for a book which had an unprecedented run; and if my countrymen object, as some of them do, to its principles, I tell them fairly that beggars cannot be choosers. I can live, thank Heaven, in many ways. I could not, indeed, keep school--as my countrymen, I believe, think every literary man should, the better to amuse them at his own expense. Two such drains on the cerebro-nervous system would soon lay me beneath the sod. But I can invest what remains of my patrimony in wild land, till it for my bread, and write a tale every winter, in defiance of the buccaneers.

But suppose that we continue to write (as we shall, depend on it), and that our impracticable Congress--from the difficulty of getting it to look at any question not bearing upon "Who is to be the next President?" or from the general apathy in regard to the injuries of authors, and want of perception as to the important interests of the heart--will not or does not pass an international copyright law, what sense or what honesty will there be in your strangling yourselves meanwhile by permitting Mr. Bohn his black-flag reprisals? Whom do you injure by this species of retaliation? First, and chiefly, your own authors and publishers, and your own literature (and, therefore, you must abandon such a policy sooner or later); and next, your friends on this side the water. For what does our government care if our native authors, even of the highest ability, earn less than common stevedores? Not a rush. Do the people enjoy our works with a less magnanimous gusto, because we have coined our brains and hearts in composing them for bread and patched elbows? Will they be less, in their own estimation, the greatest, the freest, the wisest, and the most enlightened nation upon earth? You retaliate, gentlemen, by injuring those whose sufferings (greater than yours) are already disregarded by the power you would influence; and if you ruined them, you would not ruffle one self-complacent feather of the American eagle. You but do what you can to depress and extinguish the only class of Americans who have a direct interest in getting you what you want, and who are already as eager to obtain it as men usually are to protect themselves from ruinous competition. I do not know what you expect from such a method, unless you think that our government, which has no pity on its native men of letters, will be touched by the distresses of yours.

Believe me, further, that it is the most unlikely way to succeed with the American people, to offer them an international copyright as a matter of bargain. They immediately suspect a design of obtaining an advantage for you, without any real equivalent to themselves. Show them, by granting a free and perfect copyright to all the world, on the same terms as your own subjects, that you regard such a course as the true policy of every state (which it is), and you will be much more likely to gain a hearing. I see nothing in this movement against foreigners getting a copyright, but selfishness overreaching itself.

The Americans are sometimes obtuse to appeals to their sense of justice, when they have an immediate interest in repudiating the claim. I admit it with regret, but it cannot be denied. They do not know how to relinquish the present advantages of a cheap pirated literature--forgetting that the endless reading of cheap books is a vice, and that this deluge of foreign under-priced novels and magazines, good, bad, and indifferent, is washing away every manly national taste. But on the other hand you are too grasping. It is undignified and unbecoming. Why should you so eagerly clutch at a foreign sale for your works, as to sacrifice what you can secure--freedom from injurious competition at home? For my own part (and I am sure I speak the sentiments of every American writer of respectability), give me on this side of the Atlantic, what you may have on yours at pleasure--a fair chance, without being under-bid by pirates--and I ask no more. I will cheerfully relinquish all the advantage to be drawn from an English sale. Without vanity, justly as we are charged with it, or boasting (our national infirmity--heaven knows we came honestly by it), all we want is "a fair field" at home, "and no favor," and we will write books, if not intrinsically so good as those of English authors, yet more congenial to the tastes, and better adapted to supply the intellectual wants, of our countrymen.

To conclude: although the American people appear at times obtuse, as I have said, on the question of justice, and take, as in this instance, a "mighty narrow" view of expediency, they are very open to an appeal to their generosity. Present a bill--above all, an unusual bill--to Brother Jonathan, and he may dispute it, or turn his back on you with all the coolness imaginable; but offer to contribute your sovereign for those poor devils of authors, and he is up to the gentlemanly thing--he will cover your subscription with an eagle. I should be glad to persuade him to do justice under the idea that it was a sort of charity, convinced as I am that, as soon as he had done it, he would see the true nature of the transaction, and blush to have ever stood out about so plain a thing. You Englishmen pretend, even in your national capacity, to believe the Bible (I wish it were true of either us or you). There is one passage which I commend to your consideration, as bearing directly on the practical solution of this question, and sustaining my view of it by a sentence which cannot fail: "Give and it shall be given unto you; good measure, pressed down, and running over, shall men give into your bosom. For with the same measure that ye mete withal shall it be measured to you again." And there is another maxim more universal still, which among us is thus familiarly expressed: "Do as you would be done by." By reversing Lord Campbell's decision, you will act ungenerously, that's certain, and I think, unjustly, you will injure your own writers more than ours, and rob us of one of our strongest arguments.

I remain, sir, very respectfully yours,

THE AUTHOR OF "LADY ALICE."
New-York, July 26.

"THE SCIENCE OF DECEPTION."

This is the title of a chapter in "The Age of Veneer," a series of papers appearing from month to month in _Fraser's Magazine_. At the beginning of it a certain preeminence is claimed for England which some have thought belonged to our own country, but we are not unwilling to yield the distinction:

"The science of deception has of late years attained an
immense importance in this good realm of Britain. In other
lands,--as, for example, in France or in America,--it is
practiced with more or less of success and perfection; but
the inherent superiority of the Anglo-Saxon race has
asserted itself even in this sinister and questionable
pursuit, so that we may fairly claim as decided a
preeminence in the arts by which fools are gulled and ruled,
as in those more honorable and useful ones by which we have
attained a moral dominion over the opinions and tastes of
mankind. There may be more _finesse_ in the system of the
French deceivers, or the American 'humbug' may, like the
other indigenous productions of that remarkable land, be a
very monster in the grandeur of his conceptions, and the
enormous force brought to bear on their development; but for
real, sound, profitable, business-like work in this peculiar
line, we back the Britishers against all the world. Like
every thing done in the country, their operations in the art
of deception are steady, systematic and sure.

"We conceive that we have a right to speak of the 'science'
of deception, for it has all the dignity, symmetry, and
order of the nobler sciences. It has its mysteries, which
are utterly unknown to the uninitiated; it has also its
professors, who are men very often raised by the admiration
of their own dupes to positions of high honor and great
profit. The organization and regulation of its minor
ministrants are also complete, and ere a man can hope to
reach the high places and carry off the rich prizes, he must
go through many grades, and master many secrets, both in
theory and practice. Once initiated, he is able to effect
results, by comparison with which the glory and the honors
reaped by successful soldiers or great discoverers sink into
insignificance.

"In a former number an attempt was made to explain some of
the means resorted to for the manufacture of public opinion
in England, through the journals and other agents, by which
the public ear is monopolized. We showed that almost any
desired 'public opinion' might be made to order; that there
were great contractors, who would not only undertake the
duty, but who would also fulfil their undertakings. That
similar processes exist in other countries cannot admit of a
doubt, but it is questionable whether the corresponding
effects in France or America are not produced upon a much
lower and more ignorant class of the community, and whether
there are in those countries such masses of wealthy,
intelligent, and educated persons willing to be cajoled,
fleeced, and laughed at, as those we find in our own dearly
beloved country. It might, perhaps, be proved that the arts
of which we speak succeed with the superior classes of our
countrymen in a much larger proportion than with similar
classes elsewhere. This science of deception has, of course,
for its basis, the production of particular 'opinions,' and
the creation of peculiar preferences in the public mind; but
although the great contractors for political opinion are, of
all the practitioners, the most perfect adepts, their _modus
operandi_ is far more difficult, and the secret of their
power far more occult than in the case of the general
professors or the charlatans.

"Except for the lower class of Frenchmen or Americans such
tactics as these are unavailing; all the rest have enough
penetration to see through the whole scheme; but in England
it is possible to lead by the nose persons who not only
ought to know better, but who in all other transactions of
life evince the utmost shrewdness and aptitude."

In this series of papers on the _Age of Veneer_, a general confession of national sins and weaknesses is made by John Bull, and he is shown to have as discerning an apprehension for his own character as he ever had for that of any of his neighbors. The "Age of Veneer" is a happy title, and it gives alone a better idea of English society and manners than can be derived from some hundreds of volumes on the subject that have been printed within our recollection.

ARTS AMONG THE AZTECS AND INDIANS.

WRITTEN FOR THE INTERNATIONAL MAGAZINE

BY THOMAS EWBANK

_United States Commissioner of Patents, author of "Treatise on Hydraulics", &c._

To the antiquary and student of ethnology on this continent there are few subjects more interesting than those early industrial arts, which, better than any thing else, illustrate the civilization of the Aztecs, and their rude neighbors, the aborigines of the more northern parts of the country. An attempt is made in the following pages to define, in certain respects, the extent, and justly to represent the character, of those efforts, made before the Discovery, and repeated, with more or less uniformity, by portions of the American races until the present time. I have copied from the great work of Lord Kingsborough on Mexican Antiquities, four uncouth figures, of which the originals are native drawings sent to Spain by Antonio de Mendoza, the successor of Cortes, and first viceroy of New Spain. It will be confessed that few things could give us a more correct impression of the condition and character of the peoples subdued by Cortes and Pizarro than we may derive from these pictures.

In this drawing the artist has represented a workman in the act of soldering or annealing a piece of plate. Except the rude style in which the native limners portrayed the human figure, the cut is a fac-simile of Pharaonic profiles of the same class of workmen, and of modern goldsmiths of Africa, Hindustan, Java, Sumatra, Ceylon, and Asia generally. The small portable furnace, the blowpipe, the position of the operator, the scantiness of his apparel, and the absence of any bench, are common to all; the only observable difference is in the apron (suspended by long shoulder-straps) of the American, who, in this respect, seems to have advanced beyond his brethren of the other hemisphere. Had the draughtsman possessed the skill of a modern artist, and painted the tools and processes used, in fusing the metal, in spreading it out into plates, working it into shape, and chasing in the ornaments, in drawing wire, and fabricating the famous old Panama chains, &c., many other problems of Aztec economy and art would have been solved. The smiths of Mexico, Central America, and Peru, were expert in the use of the blowpipe; and this is not to be wondered at, if, as early Spanish writers report, the bellows was unknown among them. In specimens of their industry which are extant the soldering rivals any thing executed in modern workshops, and seams often challenge and sometimes defy the keenest scrutiny to detect them. Native smiths still use the pipe.

Every enlightened worker in metals must feel interested in thus beholding an ancient red man in the actual use of the blowpipe, to say nothing of the illustration the figure affords of the state of the arts in ante-Columbian epochs, and of ancient life in this part of the world. The use of the blowpipe has been inferred from metalline remains discovered in sepulchral tumuli of the Mississippi valley. In Caleb Atwater's _Antiquities of the West_, (Columbus, 1833, pages 92-3,) mention is made of sixty copper beads, found in one of the mounds at Grave Creek, near Wheeling. "They were made of a coarse wire, which appeared to have been hammered out, not drawn, and were cut off at unequal lengths; _they were soldered together_ in an awkward manner, the centres of some of them uniting with the edges of others; they were incrusted with verdigris, but the inside of them was pure copper; which fact shows that the ancient inhabitants were not wholly unacquainted with the use of metals." As it is admitted that _brass_ was not known to the mound-builders, an analysis of the alloy that constituted the brazen solder here alluded to would be a positive addition to the little knowledge we have gleaned of these early native workers and of their arts.

No matter how far man is separated from his fellows, either on the earth's surface or by time, the general uniformity of his nature is stamped on all his normal devices. Primitive inventions are universally similar. Under agreeing circumstances and conditions, the same means are hit upon to produce the same ends. Kindred trains of thought, of resources and results, characterize the origin and early progress of the arts every where. They begin in the same wants, and suggest the same ideas, which are carried out in substantially the same ways. Still, when a primitive people is found shut from communion with others--isolated from the rest of the world and deriving no suggestions from it--some shades of difference, more or less strongly defined, often mark means they discover, in common with others, and this whether occupiers of small islands or of widespread continents. But after all, this is only what may be called a variety of _expression_, the same general idea being differently brought out, just as in speech the same thoughts are displayed in various idioms. All arts and all machines are but dialects of one language--reasonings and conclusions in tangible forms and figures--a universal speech, understood by all men.

Of the diverse exhibitions of a primitive and common suggestion, a more interesting example cannot well be adduced than the processes for the fabrication of thread, which have been disclosed on this half of the globe. They appear so different from others, and so remarkable, if not unique, that it may safely be said, if the first spinsters were foreigners, their mode of spinning was indigenous, however difficult, if not impossible, it may be to reconcile one suggestion with the other.

Spinning lies at the threshold of human culture. It was the first or among the first born of the arts, and was doubtless the offspring of woman's ingenuity. Through all the past ages it was within the peculiar province of the sex. In it queens and even goddesses sought to excel; one of the earliest of useful efforts, it was one of the best; till it was introduced, man was a houseless wanderer, and where it is unknown, he is still a vagabond, roaming the forest. Home and its softening and soothing influences had no existence, till woman began to twirl the spindle. Till then the fount of the arts was unopened, unthought of, undreamt of. A universal acquirement, it is one in which little variation in details could be looked for among uncultivated tribes. It is, however, singular, that the thread-making idea has been less skilfully developed by the red race than perhaps any other of their mechanical conceptions. This is a striking fact, in peoples so far advanced as were the Mexicans, Peruvians, and others.

The distaff has been identified with spinning in the eastern world from the earliest times. It dates far behind historic and was a common thing in heroic epochs. It pervades the most ancient legends, and plays a part in the remotest myths. No other instrument of domestic economy is seen through the semi-historic clouds that are about the infancy of human progress; few others could be named as belonging to lower strata of time. Common in the other hemisphere through unknown periods, it was utterly a stranger in this.

Of the offices assigned to the fates, that of Clotho was to hold the distaff, while Lachesis twirled the spindle, and Atropos determined the length of the thread. Then there was Hercules, who was playfully rapped over the head by Omphale, for his awkwardness in this service. Sardanapalus, too, endeavored to rival the son of Jupiter, by spinning among his maids. Ancient Egyptian spindles and distaffs have been recovered from the tombs; and how common they both were among the Hebrews appears in Solomon's portrait of a virtuous woman: "She seeketh wool and flax--she layeth her hands to the spindle, and her hands hold the distaff." Both spindle and distaff were frequently dedicated to Minerva, the patroness of spinning and of the arts connected with it. The goddess was herself rudely sculptured with them in the Trojan Palladium.

A glance at these classic implements, before introducing the primitive American apparatus, will better enable us to perceive the differences existing between them, more correctly to appreciate both, and to judge how far one is allied to or could have been derived from the other.

This figure is from a series of bas-reliefs representing the arts of Minerva, upon a frieze of the Forum Palladium at Rome. It exhibits the process of spinning, at the moment when the spinner has drawn out a sufficient length of thread from the distaff, and just previous to the act of taking it out of the slit on the top of the spindle, to wind it on that instrument. It is said by classic writers that the spindle was always, when in use, accompanied by the distaff, as "an indispensable part of the apparatus." The following particulars are gathered from Homer, Herodotus, Ovid, Horace, Catullus, Pliny, and others: The spindle was a stick, ten or twelve inches long, having at the top a slit or notch, by which to fix the thread at the commencement; the lower end was passed through and attached to a small but heavy disc or whirl, made of wood, stone, or metal. The weight of this and of the spindle, kept the thread at a proper tension, and the momentum while turning round kept the yarn or thread twisting in the interval of repeating the operation with the fingers. When, from the length of the thread, the spindle approached the ground, or descended below the reach of the fingers, the thread was wound on the spindle, except a short piece left for insertion in the slit, preparatory to the formation of another length. The distaff was about three times as long as the spindle, and commonly made of a reed, with an expansion near the top, over which the prepared flax or wool was placed, and secured by a ribbon or tape; the fibres being left sufficiently loose to be easily drawn out by the fingers and thumb of the spinner. Distaffs as well as spindles of gold and of ivory were ascribed to goddesses, and were presented to distinguished women.

It was quite common for ancient females to keep their spindles whirling while on their way to the fountain for water, or in making short visits, &c. Some striking examples have been recorded by historians, and among them the following, by Herodotus: "As Darius, king of Persia, was sitting publicly in one of the streets of Sardis, he observed a young woman of great elegance and beauty, bearing a vessel on her head, leading a horse by a bridle fastened round her arm, and at the same time spinning some thread. Darius viewed her as she passed, with intense curiosity, observing that her employments were not those of a Persian, Lydian, nor indeed of any Asiatic female. Prompted by what he had seen, he sent some of his attendants to observe what she did with the horse. They accordingly followed her. When she came to the river, she gave the horse some water, and then filled her pitcher, and having done this, she returned by the way she came, with the pitcher of water on her head, the horse fastened by a bridle to her arm, and, as before, employed in spinning."

In the rural districts of old Rome, women were forbidden to spin while travelling on foot. The prohibition arose from superstitious feelings; but the practice has come down to our times, being found more or less common in Spain, Portugal, Hungary, Italy, Greece, and other parts of Europe, as also over the greater part of Asia. The shank of the distaff on such occasions was secured by a sheath or strap to the person; or, as in the preceding figure of a modern spinner, was held under the left arm.

How differently the idea has been worked out by the ancient inhabitants of this hemisphere, will appear in the two next illustrations. They are coarse and uncouth, yet of unusual interest and value in an historical survey of a people who at the Conquest stood at the head of the aborigines, but whose nationality and power have been broken, and whose arts have all but vanished before those introduced by the whites.

The figure represents a girl, six years old, learning to spin, in the presence of her mother, whose portrait is omitted. She is in the act of winding on the spindle the length of thread just spun. The spindle differs but little from those of the eastern races, its lower end being furnished with a conical weight or fly, to promote rotation, and, as it would seem, for its pointed extremity to rest like a pivot in some small cavity while revolving; for the spindle, when in use, was not raised from the ground: the reverse of the eastern practice, in which the motion ceased the moment the ground was touched by the spindle. The basket-like base on which the fly rests, is the Mexican symbol of the ground, though possibly it may here represent an implement or utensil also. The bunch of cotton to be spun, after being suitably prepared, was held in the left hand, and the length of thread formed at one operation was determined by the distance the bunch could be drawn away from the spindle, this being also the converse of the Asiatic and European practices, in which the distaff, and cotton on it, are at rest--the length of thread depending on the descent of the spindle from them. We know that domestic industry was strictly enforced by the Mexicans, particularly on girls; and of this, these cuts are remarkable illustrations.

In the next, a female adult (as the headdress shows) is portrayed at the moment when a full length of thread has been twisted, or she is in the act of finishing it. To this spindle _two_ conical weights were attached, unless the under one was fixed and had a cavity on the top to admit the point of the upper one to play in it. The process differs but little from that of the present Pimos and Maricopas tribes, as mentioned hereafter, except in the hollow in which the spindle turns. It is obvious that this practice is incompatible with walking; locomotion can only be associated with a spindle suspended by the thread, and whirling free above the ground. In this absence of the distaff, and especially in twirling the spindle like a top _on the floor_, the process can never be viewed as one derived from abroad; but rather as a result solely of primitive ingenuity. No people, civilized or savage, of the eastern hemisphere, are known to have thus embarrassed the movements of the spindle. The idea and the practice appear to be purely American. No ancient American spinner is represented at work either when seated or standing--much less when walking.

For the following illustration and description the patent office is indebted to Mr. Squier, late United States Charge to Nicaragua. It is interesting as showing how little the old native process has been changed.

The common foot-wheel is extensively used in spinning cotton in Nicaragua; but the simple contrivance in use before the Conquest is not yet entirely supplanted. It consists of a spindle of hard wood, sixteen or eighteen inches in length, which passes through and is fixed to a disc of heavy wood that serves as a fly, by adding momentum to the whirling spindle. The lower end of the spindle is rounded or rudely pointed, and when in use the instrument is placed in a calabash or clean iron kettle.

The mode of operation is as follows: The spinster is seated on a stool, with a bunch of loose cotton already prepared, in her lap. From this she twists a thread with her finger, and attaches the end to the spindle at the top, giving it an energetic twirl that keeps it going for some time. Meanwhile she disengages and draws out the cotton, from her lap, with both hands. The length of thread spun (from two to three feet) is then wound around the spindle, which is again set in motion, and another length added in the same manner.

In the accompanying sketch, _b_ is the spindle, _c_ the thread already twisted, _d_ the disc or fly, and _f_ the calabash. When the spindle is not in motion, the calabash prevents it from falling over, the fly resting against the sides.