Life Without and Life Within; or, Reviews, Narratives, Essays, and Poems.
I wage my war,--no nation for my friend,
Yet in each nation having hosts of friends.
The bondsmen of the world, that to their lords
Are bound with chains of iron, unto me
Are knit by their affections. Be it so.
From kings and nobles will I seek no more
Aid, friendship, or alliance. With the poor
I make my treaty; and the heart of man
Sets the broad seal of its allegiance there,
And ratifies the compact. Vassals, serfs,
Ye that are bent with unrequited toil,
Ye that have whitened in the dungeon's darkness,
Through years that know not change of night nor day,
Tatterdemalions, lodgers in the hedge,
Lean beggars with raw backs, and rumbling maws,
Whose poverty was whipped for starving you,--
I hail you my auxiliars and allies,
The only potentates whose help I crave!
Richard of England, thou hast slain Jack Straw,
But thou hast left unquenched the vital spark
That set Jack Straw on fire. The spirit lives;
And as when he of Canterbury fell,
His seat was filled by some no better clerk,
So shall John Ball, that slew him, be replaced.
Fain would we extract Van Artevelde's reply to the French envoy--the
oration of the dying Van den Bosch in the market-place of Ypres, the
last scene between the hero and the double-dyed dastard and traitor, Sir
Heurant of Heurlee, and many, many more, had we but space enough.
We have purposely avoided telling the story, as is usual in an article
of this kind, because we wish that every one should buy and read Van
Artevelde, instead of resting content with the canvas side of the
carpet.
A few words more, and we shall conclude these, we fear, already too
prolonged remarks. We would compare Mr. Taylor with the most applauded
of living dramatists, the Italian Alessandro Manzoni.
To wide and accurate historical knowledge, to purity of taste, to the
greatest elevation of sentiment, Manzoni unites uncommon lyric power,
and a beautiful style in the most beautiful language of the modern
world. The conception of both his plays is striking, the detached
beauties of thought and imagery are many; but where are the life, the
glow, the exciting march of action, the thorough display of character
which charm us in Van Artevelde? We _live_ at Ghent and Senlis; we
_think_ of Italy. Van Artevelde dies,--and our hearts die with him. When
Elena says, "The body,--O!" we could echo that "long, funereal note,"
and weep as if the sun of heroic nobleness were quenched from our own
horizon. "Carmagnola, Adelchis die,"--we calmly shut the book, and think
how much we have enjoyed it. Manzoni can deeply feel goodness and
greatness, but he cannot localize them in the contours of life before
our eyes. His are capital sketches, poems of a deep meaning,--but this,
yes! this _is_ a drama.
We cannot conclude more fitly, nor inculcate a precept on the reader
more forcibly, than in Mr. Taylor's own words, with a slight alteration:
"To say that I admire him is to admit that I owe him much; for
admiration is never thrown away upon the mind of him who feels it,
except when it is misdirected or blindly indulged. There is perhaps
nothing which more enlarges or enriches the mind than the disposition to
lay it genially open to impressions of pleasure, from the exercise of
every species of talent; nothing by which it is more impoverished than
the habit of undue depreciation. What is puerile, pusillanimous, or
wicked, it can do us no good to admire; but let us admire all that can
be admired without debasing the dispositions or stultifying the
understanding."
UNITED STATES EXPLORING EXPEDITION.
Slight as the intercourse held by the Voyager with the South Sea Islands
is, his narrative is always more prized by us than those of the
missionary and traders, who, though they have better opportunity for
full and candid observation, rarely use it so well, because their minds
are biased towards their special objects. It is deeply interesting to us
to know how much and how little God has accomplished for the various
nations of the larger portion of the earth, before they are brought into
contact with the civilization of Europe and the Christian religion. To
suppose it so little as most people do, is to impugn the justice of
Providence. We see not how any one can contentedly think that such vast
multitudes of living souls have been left for thousands of years without
manifold and great means of instruction and happiness. To appreciate
justly how much these have availed them, to know how far they are
competent to receive new benefits, is essential to the philanthropist as
a means of aiding them, no less than it is important to one philosopher
who wishes to see the universe as God made it, not as some men think he
OUGHT TO have made it.
The want of correct knowledge, and a fair appreciation of the
uncultivated man as he stands, is a cause why even the good and generous
fail to aid him, and contact with Europe has proved so generally more of
a curse than a blessing. It is easy enough to see why our red man, to
whom the white extends the Bible or crucifix with one hand, and the
rum-bottle with the other, should look upon Jesus as only one more
Manitou, and learn nothing from his precepts or the civilization
connected with them. The Hindoo, the South American Indian, who knew
their teachers first as powerful robbers, and found themselves called
upon to yield to violence not only their property, personal freedom, and
peace, but also the convictions and ideas that had been rooted and
growing in their race for ages, could not be otherwise than degraded and
stupefied by a change effected through such violence and convulsion. But
not only those who came with fire and sword, crying, "Believe or die;"
"Understand or we will scourge you;" "Understand _and_ we will only
plunder and tyrannize over you,"--not only these ignorant despots,
self-deceiving robbers, have failed to benefit the people they dared
esteem more savage than themselves, but the worthy and generous have
failed from want of patience and an expanded intelligence. Would you
speak to a man? first learn his language. Would you have the tree grow?
learn the nature of the soil and climate in which you plant it. Better
days are coming, we do hope, as to these matters--days in which the new
shall be harmonized with the old, rather than violently rent asunder
from it; when progress shall be accomplished by gentle evolution, as the
stem of the plant grows up, rather than by the blasting of rocks, and
blindness or death of the miners.
The knowledge which can lead to such results must be collected, as all
true knowledge is, from the love of it. In the healthy state of the
mind, the state of elastic youth, which would be perpetual in the mind
if it were nobly disciplined and animated by immortal hopes, it likes to
learn just how the facts are, seeking truth for its own sake, not
doubting that the design and cause will be made clear in time. A mind in
such a state will find many facts ready for its use in these volumes
relative to the South Sea Islanders, and other objects of interest.
STORY-BOOKS FOR THE HOT WEATHER.
Does any shame still haunt the age of bronze--a shame, the lingering
blush of an heroic age, at being caught in doing any thing merely for
amusement? Is there a public still extant which needs to excuse its
delinquencies by the story of a man who liked to lie on the sofa all day
and read novels, though he could, at time of need, write the gravest
didactics? Live they still, those reverend seigniors, the object of
secret smiles to our childish years, who were obliged to apologize for
midnight oil spent in conning story-books by the "historic bearing" of
the novel, or the "correct and admirable descriptions of certain
countries, with climate, scenery, and manners therein contained," wheat,
for which they, industrious students, were willing to winnow bushels of
frivolous love-adventures? We know not, but incline to think the world
is now given over to frivolity so far as to replace by the novel the
minstrel's ballad, the drama, and even those games of agility and
strength in which it once sought pastime. For, indeed, _mere_ pass-time
is sometimes needed; the nursery legend comprised a primitive truth of
the understanding and the wisdom of nations in the lines,--
"All play and no work makes Jack a mere toy,
But all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy."
We have reversed the order of arrangement to suit our present purpose.
For we, O useful reader! being ourselves so far of the useful class as
to be always wanted somewhere, have also to fight a good fight for our
amusements, either with the foils of excuse, like the reverend seigniors
above mentioned, or with the sharp weapons of argument, or maintenance
of a view of our own without argument, which we take to be the sharpest
weapon of all.
Thus far do we defer to the claims of the human race, with its myriad of
useful errands to be done, that we read most of our novels in the long
sunny days, which call all beings to chirp and nestle, or fly abroad as
the birds do, and permit the very oxen to ruminate gently in the
just-mown fields.
On such days it was well, we think, to read "Sybil, or the Two Worlds."
We have always felt great interest in D'Israeli. He is one of the many
who share the difficulty of our era, which Carlyle says, quoting, we
believe, from his Master, consists in unlearning the false in order to
arrive at the true. We think these men, when they have once taken their
degree, can be of far greater use to their brethren than those who have
always kept their instincts unperverted.
In "Vivian Grey," the young D'Israeli, an educated Englishman, but with
the blood of sunnier climes glowing and careering in his veins, gave us
the very flower and essence of factitious life. That book sparkled and
frothed like champagne; like that, too, it produced no dull and imbecile
state by its intoxication, but one witty, genial, spiritual even. A
deep, soft melancholy thrilled through its gay mockeries; the eyes of
nature glimmered through the painted mask, and a nobler ambition was
felt beneath the follies of petty success and petty vengeance. Still,
the chief merit of the book, as a book, was the light and decided touch
with which its author took up the follies and poesies of the day, and
brought them all before us. The excellence of the foreign part, with its
popular superstitions, its deep passages in the glades of the summer
woods, and above all, the capital sketch of the prime minister with his
original whims and secret history of romantic sorrows, were beyond the
appreciation of most readers.
Since then, D'Israeli has never written any thing to be compared with
this first jet of the fountain of his mind in the sunlight of morning.
The "Young Duke" was full of brilliant sketches, and showed a soul
struggling, blinded by the gaudy mists of fashion, for realities. The
"Wondrous Tale of Alroy" showed great power of conception, though in
execution it is a failure. "Henrietta Temple" Mr. Willis, with his usual
justness of perception, has praised, as containing a collection of the
best love-letters ever written; and which show that excellence, signal
and singular among the literary tribe, of which D'Israeli never fails,
of daring to write a thing down exactly as it rises in his mind.
Now he has come to be a leader of Young England, and a rooted plant upon
her soil. If the performance of his prime do not entirely correspond
with the brilliant lights of its dawn, it is yet aspiring, and with a
large kernel of healthy nobleness in it. D'Israeli shows now not only
the heart, but the soul of a man. He cares for all men; he wishes to
care wisely for all.