Chapter V (3)

The Fairy's frame was slight; yon fibrous cloud
That catches but the palest tinge of even,
And which the straining eye can hardly seize
When melting into eastern twilight's shadow,
Were scarce so thin, so slight; but the fair star
That gems the glittering coronet of morn,
_Sheds not a light so mild, so powerful,
As that which, bursting from the Fairy's form,
Spread a purpureal halo round the scene,
Yet with an undulating motion,
Swayed to her outline gracefully_.

[Footnote 8: As examples of entire poems of the purest ideality, we would cite the _Prometheus Vinctus_ of Æschylus, the _Inferno_ of Dante, Cervantes' _Destruction of Numantia_, the _Comus_ of Milton, Pope's _Rape of the Lock_, Burns' _Tam O'Shanter_, the _Auncient Mariner_, the _Christabel_, and the _Kubla Khan_ of Coleridge; and most especially the _Sensitive Plant_ of Shelley, and the _Nightingale_ of Keats. We have seen American poems evincing the faculty in the highest degree.]

In these exquisite lines the Faculty of mere Comparison is but little exercised--that of Ideality in a wonderful degree. It is probable that in a similar case the poet we are now reviewing would have formed the face of the Fairy of the "fibrous cloud," her arms of the "pale tinge of even," her eyes of the "fair stars," and her body of the "twilight shadow." Having so done, his admirers would have congratulated him upon his _imagination_, not taking the trouble to think that they themselves could at any moment _imagine_ a Fairy of materials equally as good, and conveying an equally distinct idea. Their mistake would be precisely analogous to that of many a schoolboy who admires the imagination displayed in _Jack the Giant-Killer_, and is finally rejoiced at discovering his own imagination to surpass that of the author, since the monsters destroyed by Jack are only about forty feet in height, and he himself has no trouble in imagining some of one hundred and forty. It will be seen that the Fairy of Shelley is not a mere compound of incongruous natural objects, inartificially put together, and unaccompanied by any _moral_ sentiment--but a being, in the illustration of whose nature some physical elements are used collaterally as adjuncts, while the main conception springs immediately _or thus apparently springs_, from the brain of the poet, enveloped in the moral sentiments of grace, of color, of motion--of the beautiful, of the mystical, of the august--in short of _the ideal_.[9]

[Footnote 9: Among things, which not only in our opinion, but in the opinion of far wiser and better men, are to be ranked with the mere prettinesses of the Muse, are the positive similes so abundant in the writings of antiquity, and so much insisted upon by the critics of the reign of Queen Anne.]

It is by no means our intention to deny that in the _Culprit Fay_ are passages of a different order from those to which we have objected--passages evincing a degree of imagination not to be discovered in the plot, conception, or general execution of the poem. The opening stanza will afford us a tolerable example.

'Tis the middle watch of a summer's night--
_The earth is dark, but the heavens are bright_
Naught is seen in the vault on high
But the moon, and the stars, and the cloudless sky,
And the flood which rolls its milky hue
A river of light on the welkin blue.
The moon looks down on old Cronest,
She mellows the shades of his shaggy breast,
And seems his huge grey form to throw
In a silver cone on the wave below;
His sides are broken by spots of shade,
By the walnut bough and the cedar made,
And through their clustering branches dark
_Glimmers and dies_ the fire-fly's spark--
Like starry twinkles that momently break
Through the rifts of the gathering tempest rack.

There is Ideality in these lines--but except in the case of the words italicized--it is Ideality _not of a high order_. We have it is true, a collection of natural {333} objects, each individually of great beauty, and, if actually seen as in nature, capable of exciting in any mind, through the means of the Poetic Sentiment more or less inherent in all, a certain sense of the beautiful. But to view such natural objects as they exist, and to behold them through the medium of words, are different things. Let us pursue the idea that such a collection as we have here will produce, of necessity, the Poetic Sentiment, and we may as well make up our minds to believe that a catalogue of such expressions as moon, sky, trees, rivers, mountains &c., shall be capable of exciting it,--it is merely an extension of the principle. But in the line "the earth is dark, _but_ the heavens are bright" besides the simple mention of the "dark earth" and the "bright heaven," we have, directly, the moral sentiment of the brightness of the sky compensating for the darkness of the earth--and thus, indirectly, of the happiness of a future state compensating for the miseries of a present. All this is effected by the simple introduction of the word _but_ between the "dark heaven" and the "bright earth"--this introduction, however, was prompted by the Poetic Sentiment, and by the Poetic Sentiment alone. The case is analogous in the expression "glimmers and dies," where the imagination is exalted by the moral sentiment of beauty heightened in dissolution.

In one or two shorter passages of the _Culprit Fay_ the poet will recognize the purely ideal, and be able at a glance to distinguish it from that baser alloy upon which we have descanted. We give them without farther comment.

The winds _are whist_, and the owl is still
The bat in the shelvy rock _is hid_
And naught is heard on the _lonely_ hill
But the cricket's chirp and the answer _shrill_
Of the gauze-winged katy-did;
And the plaint of the _wailing_ whippoorwill
Who mourns _unseen_, and ceaseless sings
Ever a note of wail and wo--

Up to the vaulted firmament
His path the fire-fly courser bent,
And at every gallop on the wind
_He flung a glittering spark behind_.

He blessed the force of the charmed line,
And he banned the water-goblins' spite,
For he saw around _in the sweet moonshine,
Their little wee faces above the brine,
Giggling and laughing with all their might_
At the piteous hap of the Fairy wight.

The poem "_To a Friend_" consists of fourteen Spenserian stanzas. They are fine spirited verses, and probably were not supposed by their author to be more. Stanza the fourth, although beginning nobly, concludes with that very common exemplification of the bathos, the illustrating natural objects of beauty or grandeur by reference to the tinsel of artificiality.

Oh! for a seat on Appalachia's brow,
That I might scan the glorious prospects round,
Wild waving woods, and rolling floods below,
Smooth level glades and fields with grain embrowned,
High heaving hills, with tufted forests crowned,
Rearing their tall tops to the heaven's blue dome,
And emerald isles, _like banners green unwound,
Floating along the lake, while round them roam
Bright helms of billowy blue, and plumes of dancing foam_.

In the _Extracts from Leon_, are passages not often surpassed in vigor of passionate thought and expression--and which induce us to believe not only that their author would have succeeded better in prose romance than in poetry, but that his attention would have naturally fallen into the former direction, had the Destroyer only spared him a little longer.

This poem contains also lines of far greater poetic power than any to be found in the _Culprit Fay_. For example--

The stars have lit in heaven their lamps of gold,
The _viewless_ dew falls lightly on the world;
The gentle air _that softly sweeps the leaves_
A strain of faint unearthly music weaves:
As when the harp of heaven _remotely_ plays,
Or cygnets _wail_--or song of _sorrowing_ fays
That _float amid the moonshine glimmerings pale_,
On wings of woven air in some enchanted vale.[10]

[Footnote 10: The expression "woven air," much insisted upon by the friends of Drake, seems to be accredited to him as original. It is to be found in many English writers--and can be traced back to Apuleius who calls fine drapery _ventum textilem_.]

_Niagara_ is objectionable in many respects, and in none more so than in its frequent inversions of language, and the artificial character of its versification. The invocation,

Roar, raging torrent! and thou, mighty river,
Pour thy white foam on the valley below!
Frown ye dark mountains, &c.

is ludicrous--and nothing more. In general, all such invocations have an air of the burlesque. In the present instance we may fancy the majestic Niagara replying, "Most assuredly I will roar, whether, worm! thou tellest me or not."

_The American Flag_ commences with a collection of those bald conceits, which we have already shown to have no dependence whatever upon the Poetic Power--springing altogether from Comparison.

When Freedom from her mountain height
Unfurled her standard to the air,
She tore the azure robe of night
And set the stars of glory there.
She mingled with its gorgeous dyes
The milky baldric of the skies,
And striped its pure celestial white
With streakings of the morning light;
Then from his mansion in the sun
She called her eagle bearer down
And gave into his mighty hand
The symbol of her chosen land.

Let us reduce all this to plain English, and we have--what? Why, a flag, consisting of the "azure robe of night," "set with stars of glory," interspersed with "streaks of morning light," relieved with a few pieces of "the milky way," and the whole carried by an "eagle bearer," that is to say, an eagle ensign, who bears aloft this "symbol of our chosen land" in his "mighty hand," by which we are to understand his claw. In the second stanza, the "thunder-drum of Heaven" is bathetic and grotesque in the highest degree--a commingling of the most sublime music of Heaven with the most utterly contemptible and common-place of Earth. The two concluding verses are in a better spirit, and might almost be supposed to be from a different hand. The images contained in the lines,

When Death careering on the gale
Sweeps darkly round the bellied sail,
And frighted waves rush wildly back,
Before the broadside's reeling rack,

are of the highest order of Ideality. The deficiencies {334} of the whole poem may be best estimated by reading it in connection with "Scots wha hae," with the "Mariners of England," or with "Hohenlinden." It is indebted for its high and most undeserved reputation to our patriotism--not to our judgment.

The remaining poems in Mr. Dearborn's edition of Drake, are three Songs; Lines in an Album; Lines to a Lady; Lines on leaving New Rochelle; Hope; A Fragment; To ----; Lines; To Eva; To a Lady; To Sarah; and Bronx. These are all poems of little compass, and with the exception of Bronx and a portion of the Fragment, they have no character distinctive from the mass of our current poetical literature. Bronx, however, is in our opinion, not only the best of the writings of Drake, but altogether a lofty and beautiful poem, upon which his admirers would do better to found a hope of the writer's ultimate reputation than upon the _niaiseries_ of the _Culprit Fay_. In the _Fragment_ is to be found the finest individual passage in the volume before us, and we quote it as a proper finale to our Review.

Yes! thou art lovelier now than ever;
How sweet 'twould be _when all the air
In moonlight swims_, along thy river
To couch upon the grass, and hear
Niagara's everlasting voice
Far in the deep blue west away;
That dreamy and poetic noise
We mark not in the glare of day,
Oh! how unlike its torrent-cry,
When o'er the brink the tide is driven,
_As if the vast and sheeted sky
In thunder fell from Heaven_.

* * * * *

Halleck's poetical powers appear to us essentially inferior, upon the whole, to those of his friend Drake. He has written nothing at all comparable to _Bronx_. By the hackneyed phrase, _sportive elegance_, we might possibly designate at once the general character of his writings and the very loftiest praise to which he is justly entitled.

_Alnwick Castle_ is an irregular poem of one hundred and twenty-eight lines--was written, as we are informed, in October 1822--and is descriptive of a seat of the Duke of Northumberland, in Northumberlandshire, England. The effect of the first stanza is materially impaired by a defect in its grammatical arrangement. The fine lines,

Home of the Percy's high-born race,
Home of their beautiful and brave,
Alike their birth and burial place,
Their cradle and their grave!

are of the nature of an invocation, and thus require a continuation of the address to the "Home, &c." We are consequently disappointed when the stanza proceeds with--

Still sternly o'er the castle gate
_Their_ house's Lion stands in state
As in _his_ proud departed hours;
And warriors frown in stone on high,
And feudal banners "flout the sky"
Above _his_ princely towers.

The objects of allusion here vary, in an awkward manner, from the castle to the Lion, and from the Lion to the towers. By writing the verses thus the difficulty would be remedied.

Still sternly o'er the castle gate
_Thy_ house's Lion stands in state,
As in his proud departed hours;
And warriors frown in stone on high,
And feudal banners "flout the sky"
Above _thy_ princely towers.

The second stanza, without evincing in any measure the loftier powers of a poet, has that quiet air of grace, both in thought and expression, which seems to be the prevailing feature of the Muse of Halleck.

A gentle hill its side inclines,
Lovely in England's fadeless green,
To meet the quiet stream which winds
Through this romantic scene
As silently and sweetly still,
As when, at evening, on that hill,
While summer's wind blew soft and low,
Seated by gallant Hotspur's side
His Katherine was a happy bride
A thousand years ago.

There are one or two brief passages in the poem evincing a degree of rich imagination not elsewhere perceptible throughout the book. For example--

Gaze on the Abbey's ruined pile:
Does not the succoring Ivy keeping,
Her watch around it seem to smile
As o'er a lov'd one sleeping?

and,

One solitary turret gray
Still tells in melancholy glory
The legend of the Cheviot day.

The commencement of the fourth stanza is of the highest order of Poetry, and partakes, in a happy manner, of that quaintness of expression so effective an adjunct to Ideality, when employed by the Shelleys, the Coleridges and the Tennysons, but so frequently debased, and rendered ridiculous, by the herd of brainless imitators.

Wild roses by the Abbey towers
Are gay in their young bud and bloom:
_They were born of a race of funeral flowers_,
That garlanded in long-gone hours,
A Templar's knightly tomb.

The tone employed in the concluding portions of Alnwick Castle, is, we sincerely think, reprehensible, and unworthy of Halleck. No true poet can unite in any manner the low burlesque with the ideal, and not be conscious of incongruity and of a profanation. Such verses as

Men in the coal and cattle line
From Teviot's bard and hero land,
From royal Berwick's beach of sand,
From Wooller, Morpeth, Hexham, and
Newcastle upon Tyne,

may lay claim to oddity--but no more. These things are the defects and not the beauties of _Don Juan_. They are totally out of keeping with the graceful and delicate manner of the initial portions of _Alnwick Castle_, and serve no better purpose than to deprive the entire poem of all unity of effect. If a poet must be farcical, let him be just that, and nothing else. To be drolly sentimental is bad enough, as we have just seen in certain passages of the _Culprit Fay_, but to be sentimentally droll is a thing intolerable to men, and Gods, and columns.

_Marco Bozzaris_ appears to have much lyrical without any high order of _ideal_ beauty. _Force_ is its prevailing character--a force, however, consisting more in a well ordered and sonorous arrangement of the metre, and a {335} judicious disposal of what may be called the circumstances of the poem, than in the true _materiel_ of lyric vigor. We are introduced, first, to the Turk who dreams, at midnight, in his guarded tent,

of the hour
When Greece, her knee in suppliance bent,
Should tremble at his power--

He is represented as revelling in the visions of ambition.

In dreams through camp and court he bore
The trophies of a conqueror;
In dreams his song of triumph heard;
Then wore his monarch's signet ring:
Then pressed that monarch's throne--a king;
As wild his thoughts and gay of wing
As Eden's garden bird.

In direct contrast to this we have Bozzaris watchful in the forest, and ranging his band of Suliotes on the ground, and amid the memories, of Platœa. An hour elapses, and the Turk awakes from his visions of false glory--to die. But Bozzaris dies--to awake. He dies in the flush of victory to awake, in death, to an ultimate certainty of Freedom. Then follows an invocation to Death. His terrors under ordinary circumstances are contrasted with the glories of the dissolution of Bozzaris, in which the approach of the Destroyer is

welcome as the cry
That told the Indian isles were nigh
To the world-seeking Genoese,
When the land-wind from woods of palm,
And orange groves and fields of balm,
Blew o'er the Haytian seas.

The poem closes with the poetical apotheosis of Marco Bozzaris as

One of the few, the immortal names
That are not born to die.

It will be seen that these arrangements of the subject are skilfully contrived--perhaps they are a little too evident, and we are enabled too readily by the perusal of one passage, to anticipate the succeeding. The rhythm is highly artificial. The stanzas are well adapted for vigorous expression--the fifth will afford a just specimen of the versification of the whole poem.

Come to the bridal Chamber, Death!
Come to the mother's, when she feels
For the first time her first born's breath;
Come when the blessed seals
That close the pestilence are broke,
And crowded cities wail its stroke;
Come in consumption's ghastly form,
The earthquake shock, the ocean storm;
Come when the heart beats high and warm,
With banquet song, and dance, and wine;
And thou art terrible--the tear,
The groan, the knell, the pall, the bier;
And all we know, or dream, or fear
Of agony, are thine.

Granting, however, to _Marco Bozzaris_, the minor excellences we have pointed out, we should be doing our conscience great wrong in calling it, upon the whole, any thing more than a very ordinary matter. It is surpassed, even as a lyric, by a multitude of foreign and by many American compositions of a similar character. To Ideality it has few pretensions, and the finest portion of the poem is probably to be found in the verses we have quoted elsewhere--

Thy grasp is welcome as the hand
Of brother in a foreign land;
Thy summons welcome as the cry
That told the Indian isles were nigh
To the world-seeking Genoese,
When the land-wind from woods of palm
And orange groves, and fields of balm
Blew o'er the Haytian seas.

The verses entitled _Burns_ consist of thirty eight quatrains--the three first lines of each quatrain being of four feet, the fourth of three. This poem has many of the traits of _Alnwick Castle_, and bears also a strong resemblance to some of the writings of Wordsworth. Its chief merit, and indeed the chief merit, so we think, of all the poems of Halleck is the merit of _expression_. In the brief extracts from _Burns_ which follow, our readers will recognize the peculiar character of which we speak.

Wild Rose of Alloway! my thanks:
Thou mind'st me of _that autumn noon
When first we met upon "the banks
And braes o' bonny Doon"_--

* * * * *

Like thine, beneath the thorn-tree's bough,
My sunny hour was glad and brief--
We've crossed the winter sea, _and thou
Art withered--flower and leaf_.

* * * * *

_There have been loftier themes than his,
And longer scrolls and louder lyres
And lays lit up with Poesy's
Purer and holier fires._

* * * * *

_And when he breathes his master-lay
Of Alloway's witch-haunted wall_
All passions in our frames of clay
Come thronging at his call.

* * * * *

Such graves as his are pilgrim-shrines,
Shrines to no code or creed confined--
_The Delphian vales, the Palestines,
The Meccas of the mind_.

* * * * *

_They linger by the Doon's low trees,
And pastoral Nith, and wooded Ayr_,
And round thy Sepulchres, Dumfries!
The Poet's tomb is there.

_Wyoming_ is composed of nine Spenserian stanzas. With some unusual excellences, it has some of the worst faults of Halleck. The lines which follow are of great beauty.

I then but dreamed: thou art before me now,
In life--a vision of the brain no more,
I've stood upon the wooded mountain's brow,
That beetles high thy lovely valley o'er;
And now, _where winds thy river's greenest shore,
Within a bower of sycamores am laid;
And winds as soft and sweet as ever bore
The fragrance of wild flowers through sun and shade
Are singing in the trees, whose low boughs press my head_.

The poem, however, is disfigured with the mere burlesque of some portions of Alnwick Castle--with such things as

he would look _particularly droll_
In his Iberian boot and Spanish plume;

and

a girl of sweet sixteen
Love-darting eyes and tresses like the morn
_Without a shoe or stocking--hoeing corn_,

mingled up in a pitiable manner with images of real beauty.

_The Field of the Grounded Arms_ contains twenty-four quatrains, without rhyme, and, we think, of a {336} disagreeable versification. In this poem are to be observed some of the finest passages of Halleck. For example--

Strangers! your eyes are on that valley fixed
Intently, as we gaze on vacancy,
_When the mind's wings o'erspread
The spirit world of dreams_.

And again--

_O'er sleepless seas of grass whose waves are flowers_.

_Red-Jacket_ has much power of expression with little evidence of poetical ability. Its humor is very fine, and does not interfere, in any great degree, with the general tone of the poem.

_A Sketch_ should have been omitted from the edition as altogether unworthy of its author.

The remaining pieces in the volume are _Twilight_; _Psalm_ cxxxvii; _To ****_; _Love_; _Domestic Happiness_; _Magdalen_; _From the Italian_; _Woman_; _Connecticut_; _Music_; _On the Death of Lieut. William Howard Allen_; _A Poet's Daughter_; and _On the Death of Joseph Rodman Drake_. Of the majority of these we deem it unnecessary to say more than that they partake, in a more or less degree, of the general character observable in the poems of Halleck. The _Poet's Daughter_ appears to us a particularly happy specimen of that general character, and we doubt whether it be not the favorite of its author. We are glad to see the vulgarity of

I'm busy in the cotton trade
And sugar line,

omitted in the present edition. The eleventh stanza is certainly not English as it stands--and besides it is altogether unintelligible. What is the meaning of this?

But her who asks, though first among
The good, the beautiful, the young,
The birthright of a spell more strong
Than these have brought her.

_The Lines on the Death of Joseph Rodman Drake_, we prefer to any of the writings of Halleck. It has that rare merit in compositions of this kind--the union of tender sentiment and simplicity. This poem consists merely of six quatrains, and we quote them in full.

Green be the turf above thee,
Friend of my better days!
None knew thee but to love thee,
Nor named thee but to praise.

Tears fell when thou wert dying,
From eyes unused to weep,
And long, where thou art lying,
Will tears the cold turf steep.

When hearts whose truth was proven,
Like thine are laid in earth,
There should a wreath be woven
To tell the world their worth.

And I, who woke each morrow
To clasp thy hand in mine,
Who shared thy joy and sorrow,
Whose weal and woe were thine--

It should be mine to braid it
Around thy faded brow,
But I've in vain essayed it,
And feel I cannot now.

While memory bids me weep thee,
Nor thoughts nor words are free,
The grief is fixed too deeply,
That mourns a man like thee.

If we are to judge from the subject of these verses, they are a work of some care and reflection. Yet they abound in faults. In the line,

Tears fell when thou wert dying;

_wert_ is not English.

Will tears the cold turf steep,

is an exceedingly rough verse. The metonymy involved in

There should a wreath be woven
To _tell_ the world their worth,

is unjust. The quatrain beginning,

And I who woke each morrow,

is ungrammatical in its construction when viewed in connection with the quatrain which immediately follows. "Weep thee" and "deeply" are inaccurate rhymes--and the whole of the first quatrain,

Green be the turf, &c.

although beautiful, bears too close a resemblance to the still more beautiful lines of William Wordsworth,

She dwelt among the untrodden ways
Beside the springs of Dove,
A maid whom there were none to praise
And very few to love.

As a versifier Halleck is by no means equal to his friend, all of whose poems evince an ear finely attuned to the delicacies of melody. We seldom meet with more inharmonious lines than those, generally, of the author of _Alnwick Castle_. At every step such verses occur as,

And _the_ monk's hymn and minstrel's song--
True _as_ the steel of _their_ tried blades--
For _him_ the joy of _her_ young years--
Where _the_ Bard-peasant first drew breath--
And withered _my_ life's leaf like thine--

in which the proper course of the rhythm would demand an accent upon syllables too unimportant to sustain it. Not unfrequently, too, we meet with lines such as this,

Like torn branch from death's leafless tree,

in which the multiplicity of consonants renders the pronunciation of the words at all, a matter of no inconsiderable difficulty.

But we must bring our notice to a close. It will be seen that while we are willing to admire in many respects the poems before us, we feel obliged to dissent materially from that public opinion (perhaps not fairly ascertained) which would assign them a very brilliant rank in the empire of Poesy. That we have among us poets of the loftiest order we believe--but we do _not_ believe that these poets are Drake and Halleck.

SLAVERY.

_Slavery in the United States. By J. K. Paulding. New York: Harper and Brothers._

_The South Vindicated from the Treason and Fanaticism of the Northern Abolitionists. Philadelphia: Published by H. Manly._

It is impossible to look attentively and understandingly on those phenomena that indicate public sentiment in regard to the subject of these works, without deep and anxious interest. "_Nulla vestigia retrorsum_," is a saying fearfully applicable to what is called the "march of mind." It is unquestionable truth. The absolute and palpable impossibility of ever unlearning what we know, and of returning, even by forgetfulness, to {337} the state of mind in which the knowledge of it first found us, has always afforded flattering encouragement to the hopes of him who dreams about the perfectibility of human nature. Sometimes one scheme, and sometimes another is devised for accomplishing this great end; and these means are so various, and often so opposite, that the different experiments which the world has countenanced would seem to contradict the maxim we have quoted. At one time human nature is to be elevated to the height of perfection, by emancipating the mind from all the restraints imposed by Religion. At another, the same end is to be accomplished by the universal spread of a faith, under the benign influence of which every son of Adam is to become holy, "even as God is holy." One or the other of these schemes has been a cardinal point in every system of perfectibility which has been devised since the earliest records of man's history began. At the same time the progress of knowledge (subject indeed to occasional interruptions) has given to each successive experiment a seeming advantage over that which preceded it.

But it is lamentable to observe, that let research discover, let science teach, let art practice what it may, man, in all his mutations, never fails to get back to some point at which he has been before. The human mind seems to perform, by some invariable laws, a sort of cycle, like those of the heavenly bodies. We may be unable, (and, for ourselves, we profess to be so) to trace the _causes_ of these changes; but we are not sure that an accurate observation of the history of various nations at different times, may not detect the _laws_ that govern them. However eccentric the orbit, the comet's place in the heavens enables the enlightened astronomer to anticipate its future course, to tell when it will pass its perihelion, in what direction it will shoot away into the unfathomable abyss of infinite space, and at what period it will return. But what especially concerns us, is to mark its progress through our planetary system, to determine whether in coming or returning it may infringe upon us, and prove the messenger of that dispensation which, in the end of all things, is to wrap our earth in flames.

Not less eccentric, and far more deeply interesting to us, is the orbit of the human mind. If, as some have supposed, the comet in its upward flight is drawn away by the attraction of some other sun, around which also it bends its course, thus linking another system with our own, the analogy will be more perfect. For while man is ever seen rushing with uncontrollable violence toward one or the other of his opposite extremes, fanaticism and irreligion--at each of these we find placed an attractive force identical in its nature and in many of its effects. At each extreme, we find him influenced by the same prevailing interest--devoting himself to the accomplishment of the same great object. Happiness is his purpose. The sources of that, he may be told, are within himself--but his eye will fix on the external means, and these he will labor to obtain. Foremost among these, and the equivalent which is to purchase all the rest, is property. At this all men aim, and their eagerness seems always proportioned to the excitement, which, from whatever cause, may for the time prevail. Under such excitement, the many who want, band themselves together against the few that possess; and the lawless appetite of the multitude for the property of others calls itself the spirit of liberty.

In the calm, and, as we would call it, the healthful condition of the public mind, when every man worships God after his own manner, and Religion and its duties are left to his conscience and his Maker, we find each quietly enjoying his own property, and permitting to others the quiet enjoyment of theirs. Under that state of things, those modes and forms of liberty which regulate and secure this enjoyment, are preferred. Peace reigns, the arts flourish, science extends her discoveries, and man, and the sources of his enjoyments, are multiplied. But in this condition things never rest. We have already disclaimed any knowledge of the causes which forbid this--we only know that such exist. We know that men are always passing, with fearful rapidity, between the extremes of fanaticism and irreligion, and that at either extreme, property and all the governmental machinery provided to guard it, become insecure. "Down with the Church! Down with the Altar!" is at one time the cry. "Turn the fat bigots out of their styes, sell the property of the Church and give the money to the poor!" "Behold our turn cometh," says the Millenarian. "The kingdoms of this world are about to become the kingdoms of God and of his Christ. Sell what you have and give to the poor, and let all things be in common!"

It is now about two hundred years since this latter spirit showed itself in England with a violence and extravagance which accomplished the overthrow of all the institutions of that kingdom. With that we have nothing to do; but we should suppose that the striking resemblance between the aspect of a certain party in that country then and now, could hardly escape the English statesman. Fifty years ago, in France, this eccentric comet, "public sentiment," was in its opposite node. Making allowance for the difference in the characters of the two people, the effects were identical, the apparent causes were the opposites of each other. In the history of the French Revolution, we find a sort of symptomatic phenomenon, the memory of which was soon lost in the fearful exacerbation of the disease. But it should be remembered now, that in that war against property, the first object of attack was property in slaves; that in that war on behalf of the alleged right of man to be discharged from all control of law, the first triumph achieved was in the emancipation of slaves.

The recent events in the West Indies, and the parallel movement here, give an awful importance to these thoughts in our minds. They superinduce a something like despair of success in any attempt that may be made to resist the attack on all our rights, of which that on Domestic Slavery (the basis of all our institutions) is but the precursor. It is a sort of boding that may belong to the family of superstitions. All vague and undefined fears, from causes the nature of which we know not, the operations of which we cannot stay, are of that character. Such apprehensions are alarming in proportion to our estimate of the value of the interest endangered; and are excited by every thing which enhances that estimate. Such apprehensions have been awakened in our minds by the books before us. To Mr. Paulding, as a Northern man, we tender our grateful thanks for the faithful picture he has drawn of slavery as it appeared to him in his visit to the South, and as {338} exhibited in the information he has carefully derived from those most capable of giving it. His work is executed in the very happiest manner of an author in whom America has the greatest reason to rejoice, and will not fail to enhance his reputation immeasurably as a writer of pure and vigorous English, as a clear thinker, as a patriot, and as a man. The other publication, which we take to be from a Southern pen, is more calculated to excite our indignation against the calumnies which have been put forth against us, and the wrongs meditated by those who come to us in the names of our common Redeemer and common country--seeking our destruction under the mask of Christian Charity and Brotherly Love. This too is executed with much ability, and may be read with pleasure as well as profit. While we take great pleasure in recommending these works to our readers, we beg leave to add a few words of our own. We are the more desirous to do this, because there is a view of the subject most deeply interesting to us, which we do not think has ever been presented, by any writer, in as high relief as it deserves. We speak of the moral influences flowing from the relation of master and slave, and the moral feelings engendered and cultivated by it. A correspondent of Mr. Paulding's justly speaks of this relation as one partaking of the patriarchal character, and much resembling that of clanship. This is certainly so. But to say this, is to give a very inadequate idea of it, unless we take into consideration the peculiar character (I may say the peculiar nature) of the negro. Let us reason upon it as we may, there is certainly a power, in causes inscrutable to us, which works essential changes in the different races of animals. In their physical constitution this is obvious to the senses. The color of the negro no man can deny, and therefore, it was but the other day, that they who will believe nothing they cannot account for, made this manifest fact an authority for denying the truth of holy writ. Then comes the opposite extreme--they are, like ourselves, the sons of Adam, and must therefore, have like passions and wants and feelings and tempers in all respects. This, we deny, and appeal to the knowledge of all who know. But their authority will be disputed, and their testimony falsified, unless we can devise something to show how a difference might and should have been brought about. Our theory is a short one. It was the will of God it should be so. But the means--how was this effected? We will give the answer to any one who will develop the causes which might and should have blackened the negro's skin and crisped his hair into wool. Until that is done, we shall take leave to speak, as of things _in esse_, of a degree of loyal devotion on the part of the slave to which the white man's heart is a stranger, and of the master's reciprocal feeling of parental attachment to his humble dependant, equally incomprehensible to him who drives a bargain with the cook who prepares his food, the servant who waits at his table, and the nurse who doses over his sick bed. That these sentiments in the breast of the negro and his master, are stronger than they would be under like circumstances between individuals of the white race, we believe. That they belong to the class of feelings "by which the heart is made better," we know. How come they? They have their rise in the relation between the infant and the nurse. They are cultivated between him and his foster brother. They are cherished by the parents of both. They are fostered by the habit of affording protection and favors to the younger offspring of the same nurse. They grow by the habitual use of the word "my," used as the language of affectionate appropriation, long before any idea of value mixes with it. It is a term of endearment. That is an easy transition by which he who is taught to call the little negro "his," in this sense and _because he loves him_, shall love him _because he is his_. The idea is not new, that our habits and affections are reciprocally cause and effect of each other.

But the great teacher in this school of feeling is sickness. In this school we have witnessed scenes at which even the hard heart of a thorough bred philanthropist would melt. But here, we shall be told, it is not humanity, but interest that prompts. Be it so. Our business is not with the cause but the effect. But is it interest, which, with assiduous care, prolongs the life of the aged and decrepid negro, who has been, for years, a burthen? Is it interest which labors to rear the crippled or deformed urchin, who can never be any thing but a burthen--which carefully feeds the feeble lamp of life that, without any appearance of neglect, might be permitted to expire? Is not the feeling more akin to that parental στοργη, which, in defiance of reason, is most careful of the life which is, all the time, felt to be a curse to the possessor. Are such cases rare? They are as rare as the occasions; but let the occasion occur, and you will see the case. How else is the longevity of the negro proverbial? A negro who does no work for thirty years! (and we know such examples) is it interest which has lengthened out his existence?

Let the philanthropist think as he may--by the negro himself, his master's care of him in sickness is not imputed to interested feelings. We know an instance of a negress who was invited by a benevolent lady in Philadelphia to leave her mistress. The lady promised to secrete her for a while, and then to pay her good wages. The poor creature felt the temptation and was about to yield. "You are mighty good, madam," said she "and I am a thousand times obliged to you. And if I am sick, or any thing, I am sure you will take care of me, and nurse me, like my good mistress used to do, and bring me something warm and good to comfort me, and tie up my head and fix my pillow." She spoke in the simplicity of her heart, and the tempter had not the heart to deceive her. "No," said she "all _that_ will come out of your wages--for you will have money enough to hire a nurse." The tears had already swelled into the warm hearted creature's eyes, at her own recital of her mistress's kindness. They now gushed forth in a flood, and running to her lady who was a lodger in the house, she threw herself on her knees, confessed her fault, was pardoned, and was happy.

But it is not by the bedside of the sick negro that the feeling we speak of is chiefly engendered. They who would view it in its causes and effects must see him by the sick bed of his master--must see _her_ by the sick bed of her _mistress_. We have seen these things. We have seen the dying infant in the lap of its nurse, and have stood with the same nurse by the bed side of her own dying child. Did mighty nature assert her empire, and wring from the mother's heart more and bitterer tears than she had shed over her foster babe? None that {339} the eye of man could distinguish. And he who sees the heart--did he see dissimulation giving energy to the choking sobs that _seemed_ to be rendered more vehement by her attempts to repress them? _Philanthropy_ may think so if it pleases.

A good lady was on her death bed. Her illness was long and protracted, but hopeless from the first. A servant, (by no means a favorite with her, being high tempered and ungovernable) was advanced in pregnancy, and in bad health. Yet she could not be kept out of the house. She was permitted to stay about her mistress during the day, but sent to bed at an early hour every night. Her reluctance to obey was obvious, and her master found that she evaded his order, whenever she could escape his eye. He once found her in the house late at night, and kindly reproving her, sent her home. An hour after, suddenly going out of the sick room, he stumbled over her in the dark. She was crouched down at the door, listening for the groans of the sufferer. She was again ordered home, and turned to go. Suddenly she stopped, and bursting into tears, said, "Master it aint no use for me to go to bed, Sir. It don't do me no good, I cannot sleep, Sir."

Such instances prove that in reasoning concerning the moral effect of slavery, he who regards man as a unit, the same under all circumstances, leaves out of view an important consideration. The fact that he is not so, is manifest to every body--but the application of the fact to this controversy is not made. The author of "The South Vindicated" quotes at page 228, a passage from Lamartine, on this very point, though he only uses it to show the absurdity of any attempt at amalgamation. The passage is so apt to our purpose that we beg leave to insert it.

The more I have travelled, the more I am convinced _that the races of men form the great secret of history and manners_. Man is not so capable of education as philosophers imagine. The influence of governments and laws has less power, radically, than is supposed, over the manners and instincts of any people, while the primitive constitution and the blood of the race have always their influence, and manifest themselves, thousands of years afterwards, in the physical formations and moral habits of a particular family or tribe. Human nature flows in rivers and streams into the vast ocean of humanity; but its waters mingle but slowly, sometimes never; and it emerges again, like the Rhone from the Lake of Geneva, with its own taste and color. Here is indeed an abyss of thought and meditation, and at the same time a grand secret for legislators. As long as they keep the spirit of the race in view they succeed; but they fail when they strive against this natural predisposition: nature is stronger than they are. This sentiment is not that of the philosophers of the present time, but it is evident to the traveller; and there is more philosophy to be found in a caravan journey of a hundred leagues, than in ten years' reading and meditation.

There is much truth here, though certainly not what passes for truth with those who study human nature wholly in the closet, and in reforming the world address themselves exclusively to the faults of _others_, and the evils of which they know the least, and which least concern themselves.

We hope the day has gone by when we are to be judged by the testimony of false, interested, and malignant accusers alone. We repeat that we are thankful to Mr. Paulding for having stepped forward in our defence. Our assailants arc numerous, and it is indispensable that we should meet the assault with vigor and activity. Nothing is wanting but manly discussion to convince our own people at least, that in continuing to command the services of their slaves, they violate no law divine or human, and that in the faithful discharge of their reciprocal obligations lies their true duty. Let these be performed, and we believe (with our esteemed correspondent Professor Dew) that society in the South will derive much more of good than of evil from this much abused and partially-considered institution.

BRUNNENS OF NASSAU.

_Bubbles from the Brunnens of Nassau. By an Old Man. New York: Harper and Brothers._

This "old man" is the present Governor of Canada, and a very amusing "old man" is he. A review of his work, which appeared a year ago in the North American, first incited us to read it, a pleasure which necessity has compelled us to forego until the present time--there not having been an American edition put to press until now, and the splendid hot-pressed, calf-bound, gilt-edged edition from Albemarle-street being too costly for very general circulation here.

The "bubbles" are blown into being by a gentleman who represents himself as having been sentenced, in the cold evening of his life, to drink the mineral waters of Nassau; and who, upon arriving at the springs, found that, in order to effect the cure designed by his physicians, the mind was to be relaxed as the body was being strengthened. The result of this regimen was the production of "The Bubbles," or hasty sketches of whatever chanced for the moment to please either the eyes or the mind of the patient. He anticipates the critic's verdict as to his book--that it is empty, light, vain, hollow and superficial: "but then," says he, "it is the nature of 'bubbles' to be so."

He describes his voyage from the Custom House Stairs in the Thames, by steamboat to Rotterdam, and thence his journey to the Nassau springs of _Langen-Schwalbach_, _Schlangen-bad_, _Nieder-selters_, and _Wiesbaden_. Here he spends a season, bathing and drinking the waters of those celebrated springs, and describing such incidents as occurred to relieve the monotony of his somewhat idle life, in a most agreeable and _taking_ way. To call this work facetious, as that term is commonly used, were not perhaps to give so accurate an idea of its style as might be conveyed by the adjective whimsical. Without subjecting the "old man" to the imputation of _copyism_, one may describe the manner as being an agreeable mixture of _Charles Lamb's_ and _Washington Irving's_. The same covert conceit, the same hidden humor, the same piquant allusion, which, while you read, place the author bodily before you, a quiet old gentleman fond of his ease, but fonder of his joke--not a broad, forced, loud, vacant-minded joke, but a quiet, pungent, sly, laughter-moving conceit, which, at first stirring the finest membranes of your _pericardium_, at length sets you out into a broad roar of laughter, honest fellow as you are, and which you must be, indeed, a very savage, if you can avoid.

Our bubble-blower observes everything within the sphere of his vision, and even makes a most amusing chapter out of "The schwein-general," or pig-drover of Schlangen-bad, which we wish we had space for entire. As it is, we give some reflections upon "the pig," {340} as being perfectly characteristic of the author's peculiar style.

There exists perhaps in creation no animal which has less justice and more injustice done to him by man than the pig. Gifted with every faculty of supplying himself, and of providing even against the approaching storm, which no creature is better capable of foretelling than a pig, we begin by putting an iron ring through the cartilage of his nose, and having thus barbarously deprived him of the power of searching for, and analyzing his food, we generally condemn him for the rest of his life to solitary confinement in a sty.

While his faculties are still his own, only observe how, with a bark or snort, he starts if you approach him, and mark what shrewd intelligence there is in his bright, twinkling little eye; but with pigs, as with mankind, idleness is the root of all evil. The poor animal, finding that he has absolutely nothing to do--having no enjoyment--nothing to look forward to but the pail which feeds him, naturally most eagerly, or as we accuse him, most greedily, greets its arrival. Having no natural business or diversion--nothing to occupy his brain--the whole powers of his system are directed to the digestion of a superabundance of food. To encourage this, nature assists him with sleep, which lulling his better faculties, leads his stomach to become the ruling power of his system--a tyrant that can bear no one's presence but his own. The poor pig, thus treated, gorges himself--sleeps--eats again--sleeps--wakens in a fright--screams--struggles against the blue apron--screams fainter and fainter--turns up the whites of his little eyes--and--dies!

It is probably from abhorring this picture, that I know of nothing which is more distressing to me than to witness an indolent man eating his own home-fed pork.

There is something so horribly similar between the life of the human being and that of his victim--their notions on all subjects are so unnaturally contracted--there is such a melancholy resemblance between the strutting residence in the village, and the stalking confinement in the sty--between the sound of the dinner-bell and the rattling of the pail--between snoring in an armchair and grunting in clean straw--that, when I contrast the "pig's countenance" in the dish with that of his lord and master, who, with outstretched elbows, sits leaning over it, I own I always feel it is so hard the one should have killed the other.--In short there is a sort of "Tu quoque, BRUTE!" moral in the picture, which to my mind is most painfully distressing.

The author thus speaks in relation to the mineral water of Wiesbaden.

In describing the taste of the mineral water of Wiesbaden, were I to say, that while drinking it, one hears in one's ears the cackling of hens, and that one sees feathers flying before one's eyes, I should certainly grossly exaggerate; but when I declare that it exactly resembles very hot chicken-broth, I only say what Dr. Granville said, and what in fact everybody says, and must say, respecting it; and certainly I do wonder why the common people should be at the inconvenience of making bad soup, when they can get much better from nature's great stock pot--the Koch-brunnen of Wiesbaden. At all periods of the year, summer or winter, the temperature of this broth remains the same, and when one reflects that it has been bubbling out of the ground, and boiling over in the same state, certainly from the time of the Romans, and probably from the time of the flood, it is really astonishing to think what a most wonderful apparatus there must exist below, what an inexhaustible stock of provisions to ensure such an everlasting supply of broth, always formed of exactly the same degree, and always served up at exactly the same heat.

One would think that some of the particles in the recipe would be exhausted; in short, to speak metaphorically, that the chickens would at last be boiled to rags, or that the fire would go out for want of coals; but the oftener one reflects on these sort of subjects, the oftener is the old-fashioned observation repeated, that let a man go where he will, Omnipotence is never from his view.