Life Without and Life Within; or, Reviews, Narratives, Essays, and Poems.

around him, and wove it into a garment of light. It is not by ravelling that you will best appreciate its tissue or design. It is not by studying out the petty strifes or external relations of his time, that you can become acquainted with the thought of Dante. To him these things were only soil in which to plant himself--figures by which to dramatize and evolve his ideas. Would you learn him, go listen in the forest of human passions to all the terrible voices he heard with a tormented but never-to-be-deafened ear; go down into the hells, where each excess that mars the harmony of nature is punished by the sinner finding no food except from his own harvest; pass through the purgatories of speculation, of struggling hope, and faith, never quite quenched, but smouldering often and long beneath the ashes. Soar if thou canst, but if thou canst not, clear thine eye to see this great eagle soar into the higher region where forms arrange themselves for stellar dance and spheral melody,--and thought, with costly-accelerated motion, raises itself a spiral which can only end in the heart of the Supreme. He who finds in himself no fitness to study Dante in this way, should regard himself as in the position of a candidate for the ancient mysteries, when rejected as unfit for initiation. He should seek in other ways to purify, expand, and strengthen his being, and, when he feels that he is nobler and stronger, return and try again whether he is "grown up to it," as the Germans say. "The difficulty is in the thoughts;" and this cannot be obviated by the most minute acquaintance with the history of the times. Comparison of one edition with another is of use, as a guard against obstructions through mistake. Still more useful will be the method recommended by Mr. Cary, of comparing the Poet with himself; this belongs to the intellectual method, and is the way in which to study our intellectual friend. The versions of Cary and Lyell will be found of use to the student, if he wants to compare his ideas with those of accomplished fellow-students. The poems in the London book would aid much in a full appreciation of the comedy; they ought to be read in the original, but copies are not easily to be met here, unless in the great libraries. The Vita Nuova is the noblest expression extant of the inward life of Love, the best preface and comment to every thing else that Dante did. 'Tis pity that the designs of Flaxman are so poorly reproduced in this American book. It would have been far better to have had it a little dearer, and thus better done. The designs of Flaxman were really a noble comment upon Dante, and might help to interpret him; and we are sorry that those who can see only a few of them should see them so imperfectly. But in some, as in that of the meeting with Farinata, the expression cannot be destroyed while one line of the original remained. The "lost portrait" we do not like as preface to "La Divina Comedia." To that belongs our accustomed object of reverence, the head of Dante, such as the Florentine women saw him, when they thought his hair and beard were still singed, his face dark and sublime with what he had seen _below_. Prefixed to the other book is a head "from a cast taken after death at Ravenna, A. D. 1321." It has the grandeur which death sometimes puts on; the fulness of past life is there, but made sacred in Eternity. It is also the only front view of Dante we have seen. It is not unworthy to mark the point "When vigor failed the towering fantasy, But yet the will rolled onward, like a wheel In even motion by the love impelled That moves the sun in heaven, and all the stars." We ought to say, in behalf of this publication, that whosoever wants Cary's version will rejoice, at last, as do we, to possess it in so fair and legible guise. Before leaving the Italians, we must mourn over the misprints of our homages to the great tragedian in the preceding review. Our manuscripts being as illegible as if we were a great genius, we never complain of these errata, except when we are made to reverse our meaning on some vital point. We did not say that Alfieri was perfect _in person_, nor sundry other things that are there; but we do mourn at seeming to say of our friends, "_Why_ they felt they care little, but _what_ they felt they _scarcely_ knew," when in fact we asserted, "what they felt they _surely_ knew." In the article on the Celestial Empire we had made this assertion of the Chinese music: "Like _their_ poetry, the music is of the narrowest monotony;" in place of which stands this assertion: "Like _true_ poetry, their music is of the narrowest monotony." But we trust the most careless reader would not think the merely human mind capable of so original a remark, and will put this blasphemy to account of that little demon who has so much to answer for in the sufferings of poor writers before they can get their thoughts to the eyes of their fellow-creatures, in print, that there seems scarcely a chance of his being redeemed as long as there is one author in existence to accuse him.[11] AMERICAN FACTS. Such is the title of a volume just issued from the press; a grand title, which suggests the epic poet or the philosopher. The purpose of the work, however, is modest. It is merely a compilation, from which those who have lived at some distance from the great highway may get answers to their questions, as to events and circumstances which may have escaped them. It is one of those books which will be valued in the backwoods. It would be a great book indeed, and one that would require the eye and heart of a great man,--great as a judge, great as a seer, and great as a prophet,--that should select for us and present in harmonious outline the true American facts. To choose the right point of view supposes command of the field. Such a man must be attentive, a quiet observer of the slighter signs of growth. But he must not be one to dwell superstitiously on details, nor one to hasten to conclusions. He must have the eye of the eagle, the courage of the lion, the patience of the worm, and faith such as is the prerogative of man alone, and of man in the highest phase of his culture. We doubt not the destiny of our country--that she is to accomplish great things for human nature, and be the mother of a nobler race than the world has yet known. But she has been so false to the scheme made out at her nativity, that it is now hard to say which way that destiny points. We can hardly exhibit the true American facts without some idea of the real character of America. Only one thing seems clear--that the energy here at work is very great, though the men employed in carrying out its purposes may have generally no more individual ambition to understand those purposes, or cherish noble ones of their own, than the coral insect through whose restless working new continents are upheaved from ocean's breast. Such a man, passing in a boat from one extremity of the Mississippi to another, and observing every object on the shore as he passed, would yet learn nothing of universal or general value, because he has no principles, even in hope, by which to classify them. American facts! Why, what has been done that marks individuality? Among men there is Franklin. He is a fact, and an American fact. Niagara is another, in a different style. The way in which newspapers and other periodicals are managed is American; a go-ahead, fearless adroitness is American; so is _not_, exclusively, the want of strict honor. But we look about in vain for traits as characteristic of what may be individually the character of the nation, as we can find at a glance in reference to Spain, England, France, or Turkey. America is as yet but a European babe; some new ways and motions she has, consequent on a new position; but that soul that may shape her mature life scarce begins to know itself yet. One thing is certain; we live in a large place, no less morally than physically: woe to him who lives meanly here, and knows the exhibitions of selfishness and vanity as the only American facts. NAPOLEON AND HIS MARSHALS.[12] As we pass the old Brick Chapel our eye is sometimes arrested by placards that hang side by side. On one is advertised "the Lives of the Apostles," on the other "Napoleon and his Marshals." Surely it is the most monstrous thing the world ever saw, that eighteen hundred years' profound devotion to a religious teacher should not preclude flagrant and all but universal violation of his most obvious precepts; that Napoleon and his Marshals should be some of the best ripened fruit of our time; that our own people, so unwearied in building up temples of wood and stone to the Prince of Peace, should be at this era mad with boyish exultation at the winning of battles, and in a bad cause too. In view of such facts we cannot wonder that Dr. Channing, the editor of the Tribune, and others who make Christianity their standard, should find little savor in glowing expositions of the great French drama, and be disgusted at words of defence, still more of admiration, spoken in behalf of its leading actor. We can easily admit at once that the whole French drama was anti-Christian, just as the political conduct of every nation of Christendom has been thus far, with rare and brief exceptions. Something different might have been expected from our own, because the world has now attained a clearer consciousness of right, and in our case our position would have made obedience easy. We have not been led into temptation; we sought it. It is greed, and not want, that has impelled this nation to wrong. The paths of peace would have been for her also the paths of wisdom and of pleasantness, but she would not, and has preferred the path of the beast of prey in the uncertain forest, to the green pastures where "walks the good Shepherd, his meek temples crowned with roses red and white." Since the state of things is such, we see no extremity of censure that should fall upon the great French leader, except that he was like the majority. He was ruthless and selfish on a larger scale than most monarchs; but we see no difference in grain, nor in principles of action. Admit, then, that he was not a good man, and never for one moment acted disinterestedly. But do not refuse to do homage to his genius. It is well worth your while to learn to appreciate _that_, if you wish to understand the work that the spirit of the time did, and is still doing, through him; for his mind is still upon the earth, working here through the tributary minds it fed. We must say, for our own part, we cannot admit the right of men severely to criticise Napoleon, till they are able to appreciate what he was, as well as see what he was not. And we see no mind of sufficient grasp, or high-placed enough to take this estimate duly, nor do we believe this age will furnish one. Many problems will have to be worked out first. We reject the exclusively moral no less than the exclusively intellectual view, and find most satisfaction in those who, aiming neither at apology nor attack, make their observations upon the great phenomenon as partial, and to be received as partial. Mr. Headley, in his first surprise at finding how falsely John Bull, rarely liberal enough to be fully trusted in evidence on any topic, has spoken of the acts of a hated and dreaded foe, does indeed rush too much on the other side. He mistakes the touches of sentiment in Napoleon for genuine feeling. Now we know that Napoleon loved to read Ossian, and could appreciate the beauty of tenderness: but we do not believe that he had one particle of what is properly termed heart;--that is, he could