Kitabı oku: «Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 57, No. 352, February 1845», sayfa 16

Bear with us, however, gentle ladies, while we explain to you how we would have you make and wear your hoods; and, to do so the better, examine with us some of those delightful portraits of the time of Rubens and Vandyke, when, among the nobler classes of females, dress had certainly attained a high, if not its highest point of picturesque and elegant effect. Look at some of those admirable Flemish pictures, where you will see many a pretty face enveloped in a fur-trimmed hood, and observe how much grace and modest dignity is given by that simple habiliment. It is something of this kind which we would recommend. For example — if a hood, so cut as not to admit of too close a conformation to the shape of the head, were attached to a tippet which might descend and protect the shoulders, or come even lower, at the fancy of the wearer, and were fastened round the neck, the hood itself might be elevated so as to cover the head, and might be drawn even over the face; or it might be instantly thrown back, and would lie on the upper part of the neck in picturesque and graceful folds. The lines of such a covering, not so flowing, indeed, as those of a veil, would yet be not inelegant; and they would afford sufficient contrast to the features of the face, while they would be far superior to the unmeaning rigidity of the bonnet. Hoods, such as those, are even now worn by some ladies for carriage purposes, or while going to evening parties; and they would look just as well in the bright light of the sun, as by the pale rays of the moon. Consider for a moment the comfort and the utility of such a dress; what a complete protection from cold, and, if necessary, from wet! Even in summer, the hood would keep off the sun's beams much more effectually than any bonnet; it would be light, warm, portable — useable at pleasure, always ornamental, always becoming. These hoods would be of service, whether for a walk or for a journey in a carriage; they would not need to be disentangled from the person like bonnets; they would merely have to be thrown back; they never could get spoiled by crushing; they never would need cumbrous boxes to be carried in; and, what is worthy of consideration, their cost might always be suited to the means of the wearer. They would admit of any kind of ornament that would not destroy their principle of utility; — for ornament ceases to be ornament when it negatives the purpose of the object to which it is applied — it becomes in such a case a mere excrescence: they might be edged and lined with any, the most sumptuous or the plainest materials: they might be attached round the neck by rich cords of gold and jewelled clasps; or they might be fastened with simple ribands. Thus, in spring time, a young and high-born damsel might wear her hood and tippet of light-coloured silk or brocade, edged with ermine or swan's-down, and attached with silver cords and clasps of pearl — while the noble matron might wear the same of crimson or purple velvet, edged with sable, and attached with golden cords and diamonds. The peasant's wife and daughter might use hoods of black, blue, or grey woollen cloth, lined with grey linen, edged with plain riband, and fastened with a simple button. How much better, how much more rational, how much more becoming, such head-dresses as these, than the gay but useless ribands, feathers, and chapeaux of the one class, or the misshapen, uncomfortable, untidy-looking bonnets of the other! According to the present system, it is almost impossible to infer the rank of a lady from her external costume — many a milliner's girl has passed for a duchess before now — whereas by the adoption of articles of dress, founded on principles like those of the hood, some decisive marks of distinction might be obtained. Thus the rich furs and the jewels, or the gold brocade of the princess, might indeed be imitated by the merchant's wife — who at the present day is nearly her equal in wealth — the representative of political power in, what is called, a constitutional government; but the shop-girl and the dancing-mistress might break their hearts with spite, ere they could set up a system of dress in keeping with hoods of the kind alluded to. We do not recommend, that distinction of dress according to difference of rank should be carried to an undue limit; for in the present age of the world, and especially in our country, where the basis of society is shifting, and where the pivots of the commonweal are loose, too little distinction of rank is allowed; rank is not respected as it ought to be; but, nevertheless, the promiscuous jumbling together and confounding of all men is carried too far; it is one of the elements of republicanism and anarchy that we should do well to discourage. To ladies, more than to men, would distinctions of dress be useful, and with them they would be more practicable of reintroduction; any thing that would tend to augment the outward respect of men for women, and of women for each other, would be so much gained toward a revival of some of the soundest maxims of former days.

Bonnets, then, to Orcus! Hoods to the seventh heaven!

H. L. J.

GERMAN-AMERICAN ROMANCES

The Viceroy and the Aristocracy, or Mexico in 1812

Part the First

The most obvious defect of the German school of romance is the universal tendency of its writers to the indefinite and periphrastic, and the consequent absence of the characteristic and the true in their descriptions both of human and of external nature. Much of this prevailing habit may perhaps be attributed to the example of Goethe, who, in his works of fiction, narrates the adventures of A and B, residing in the town of C, situate in some nameless and inscrutable section of Germany. And when, to all this mystery, is superadded the ponderous and ungraceful style of most German writers, and the Latin construction of their interminable sentences, for the solution of which the reader must wade to the final word, the lack of good original novels, and the universal preference, in Germany, of translations from French and English authors, will be readily accounted for. The main source of these defects in the German writers may be found in their retired and bookish habits. Shut up in their studies, with no companions but their books and their meerschaums, and viewing the eternal world through the loopholes of retreat, often anxious, too, to advance and illustrate some pet theory of their own, their writings smell horribly of the lamp, and are long-winded, tedious, and unnatural. Another cause of the deficiencies above-named, may perhaps be discovered in the severity of German censorship, and the apprehension that more clearness and identity in their descriptions of persons and places might be twisted into political and personal allusions.

The admitted superiority of French and English works of fiction, may be attributed to the widely different habits of the writers. Nearly all the French, and many of the English writers of the present day, are men of the world, eschewing solitude, and mixing largely in society. The good effects of this frequent collision with their fellow-men are visible in their works, many of which display a deep knowledge of human nature, a vivid power of description, and a command of dialogue, not only spirited and natural, but often rising with the occasion into dramatic point and brilliancy.

At length, however, a new and radiant star has arisen in the cloudy firmament of German fiction — a novel-writer whose works exhibit a striking example of entire exemption from the defects so evident in the great majority of his brethren. This is a nameless personage, known among German reviewers as Der Unbekannte, or the Unknown, and who has broken ground that no German writer had hitherto ventured upon. Some have supposed him to be a Pennsylvanian, a considerable part of which state was originally colonized by Germans, whose descendants still, to a large extent, preserve the language and habits of the mother country. Another report stated him to be a native German, who had emigrated to Louisiana, and established himself there as a planter. Nothing definite, in short, is known; but what is certain is, that he has been long resident in the United States and in Mexico, and has made excellent use of his opportunities for becoming acquainted with those countries and their inhabitants. His subjects are, with slight exceptions, Transatlantic, his materials original, his style singularly natural and forcible; proving that however rugged the German language may appear in the works of others, it will yield to the hand of a master, and readily adapt itself to every subject.

Our readers will probably not have forgotten a series of American, Texian, and Mexican tales and sketches, which have appeared during the last few months in the pages of this magazine. With some alterations and adaptations, intended to render them more acceptable to English tastes, they are selections from the works of the writer above described. These works being published, as already mentioned, anonymously, and at prices beyond the means of most German readers, are but partially known and read even in Germany; and in this country they are entirely unknown, such portions excepted as have appeared without a name in our recent numbers. Having there presented our readers with specimens only, and for the most part of his latest works, we will now proceed to give them some account of one of his earliest and most important productions — a Mexican historical romance of striking interest, dated two years subsequently to the first revolutionary outbreak in Mexico, and exhibiting a degree of descriptive and dramatic power unparalleled in the whole range of German fiction.

When, in the year 1776, the British colonies, now known as the United States of America, made their declaration of independence, the struggle that ensued was unmarked by any circumstances of particular atrocity or blood-thirstiness, except perhaps, occasionally, on the part of the Indian allies of either party. The fight was between men of the same race, who had been accustomed to look upon each other as countrymen and brothers, and whose sympathies and feelings were in many respects in unison; it was fought manfully and fairly, as beseemed civilized men in the eighteenth century of the Christian era. Whatever wrongs, real or imaginary, the British Americans had to complain of, they had none that sufficed, even in their own eyes, to justify reprisals or cruelties beyond those which the most humanely conducted and least envenomed wars inevitably entail. But it was under strikingly different circumstances that the second of the two great republics which, with the exception of British possessions, now comprise the whole civilized portion of the North American continent, started into existence. In the former instance was seen the young and vigorous country which, having attained its majority, and feeling itself able to dispense with parental guardianship, asserted its independence, and vindicated it, with a strong hand, it is true, but yet with a warm heart and a cool judgment. In the latter case it was the spring of the caged tiger, that for years had pined in narrow prison beneath the scourge of its keeper, whom it at last turned upon and rent in its fury.

Subdued by the fierce assault of a handful of desperate adventurers, the history of Mexico, from the earliest period of its conquest, is one continuous record of oppression and cruelty on the one hand, of long and bitter suffering on the other. Deprived of its religious and customs, its priesthood and legitimate sovereigns mercilessly tortured and slain, its temples and institutions annihilated, its very history and traditions blotted out, Mexico, in the hands of the Spaniards, was rapidly transformed from a flourishing and independent empire into a huge province; while its inhabitants became a disposable horde, on whom the conquerors seemed to think they were conferring a benefit, when they made gift of them by hundreds and thousands, like sheep or oxen, to a lawless and reckless soldiery. Their houses and lands, sometimes even their wives and children, were snatched from them, and they were driven in herds to labour in the mines, or condemned to carry burdens over pathless and precipitous mountains; like the Gibeonites of old, they were made hewers of wood and drawers of water to all the congregation. Expelled from the towns, and confined to hamlets and villages, whence they were only summoned to toil in the service of their oppressors, they became in time entirely brutalized, losing the finer and more noble qualities that distinguish man from the beast of the forest, and retaining only a bitter sense of their degradation, a vivid impression of the sufferings they daily endured, and a gloomy instinctive longing after a bloody revenge.

With these Indians, who, at the commencement of the present century, composed two-fifths of the population of Mexico, may be classed a race of beings equally numerous, equally unfortunate and destitute, and still wilder and more despised — namely, the various castes sprung from the intercourse of the conquerors of the country, of their successors and slaves, with the aborigines. These half-bloods, who united the apparent stupidity and real apathy of the Indian with the lawlessness and impatience of restraint of their white fathers, found themselves driven out into a world that branded them for the accident of their birth; deprived of all property, and reduced to the most ignoble employments; continual objects of fear and detestation to the better classes, because they had nothing to risk, and every thing to gain, by a political convulsion. Such were the principal elements of a population which, after centuries of patient endurance, was at last roused to enter the lists and struggle for its independence, with all the fury of the captive who breaks the long-worn fetters from his chafed and bleeding limbs, and seeks his deliverance in the utter extermination of his jailers.

For three hundred years had the Mexicans groaned under the lash of their taskmasters, ruled by monarchs whom they never beheld, and enduring innumerable evils, without nourishing a single rebellious or revolutionary thought. If the breeze of liberty that blew over from the north, occasionally awakened in their minds the idea of an improved state of things, the hope, or rather wish, speedily died away, crushed and annihilated under the well-combined system of oppression employed by the Spaniards. The nobles had ranged themselves entirely on the side of the government, the middle classes had followed their example, and the people were compelled to obey. All was quiet in Mexico, long after insurrections had broken out in Spanish colonies further south; and this state of tranquillity was not even disturbed, when news were brought of the invasion of Spain by its hereditary foe, of the occupation of Madrid by French armies, and of the scenes of butchery that took place in that capital on the second day of May 1808. The Mexicans, far from availing themselves of this favourable opportunity to proclaim their own independence, hastened to give proofs of their sympathy with the aggrieved honour of the mother country; and on all sides resounded curses upon the head of the powerful usurper who had ousted their legitimate but unknown monarch from his throne, and now detained him in captivity. Intelligence of the Junta's declaration of war against Napoleon was received with unbounded applause, and all were striving to demonstrate their enthusiasm in the most efficient manner, when a royal decree arrived, issued by the very prince whose misfortunes they were deploring, and by which Mexico was ordered to recognise as its sovereign the brother of that usurper who had dispossessed its rightful king.

A stronger proof of Ferdinand's unworthiness to rule, could hardly have been given to the Mexicans than the decree in question. Loyalty had long been an article of faith with the whole nation; but even as the blindest superstition is sometimes metamorphosed on a sudden into total infidelity, passing from one extreme to the other, so was all feeling of loyalty utterly extinguished in the breast of the Mexican people by this instance of regal abjectness. It would have been long before they revolted against their hereditary Spanish ruler; but to find themselves given away by him in so ignominious a manner, was a degradation which they felt the more deeply from its being almost the only one that had been hitherto spared them. Discontent was universal; and by a unanimous and popular movement, the decree was publicly burned.

With just indignation did the Mexicans now discover that those persons who had hitherto most prided themselves on their loyalty and fidelity to the king and the reigning dynasty, were precisely the first to transfer their allegiance to the new sovereign. The whole of the government officers, Spaniards nearly to a man, hastened to take measures for the surrender of the nation to its new ruler, without even enquiring whether it approved of the change. One man only was in favour of a more honourable expedient, and that man was Iturrigaray, the viceroy. Well acquainted with the cowardice and cunning of his captive sovereign, the former of which qualities had dictated the decree, he had nevertheless formed a plan to preserve Mexico for him, in accordance with the wish of its population. A junta, composed of Spaniards and of the most distinguished Mexicans, was to represent the nation till the arrival of further news or orders from Europe. This plan was generally approved of by the Mexicans, who looked forward with unbounded delight to the moment when they should have a voice in the public affairs of their country. The joy was universal; but in the very midst of this joy, and of the preliminaries to the carrying out of this project, the author of it, the viceroy himself, was seized in his palace by his own countrymen, conducted with his family to Vera Cruz, and slipped off to Spain as a state prisoner.

By this lawless proceeding, it was made evident to the weakest comprehension, that so long as the Spaniard ruled, the Mexican must remain in a state of unconditional slavery; that he could never hope to obtain a share in the management of his country; and that the act of violence of which Iturrigaray had been the victim, had been solely caused by the disposition he had shown to pave the way for the gradual emancipation of the Creoles. From this moment may be dated the decision of the Mexicans to get rid of the Spaniards at any price; and a conspiracy was immediately organized, which was joined by at least a hundred of the principal Creoles, and by a far larger number of the middle classes, and of the military — the object being to shake off the ignominious yoke that pressed so heavily upon them. The treason of one of the conspirators, who on his death-bed, in confession, betrayed his confederates, accelerated the outbreak of the plot.

It was at nine o'clock on the evening of the 15th September 1810, that Don Ignacio Allende y Unzaga, captain in the royal regiment de la Reyna, came in all haste from Gueretaro to Dolores, and burst into the dwelling of Padre Hidalgo, the parish priest of the latter place, with news that the conspiracy had been discovered, and an order issued to take prisoners, dead or alive, all those concerned in it. With the prospect of certain death before their eyes, the two conspirators held a short consultation, and then hastened to announce to their friends their firm decision to stake their lives upon the freedom of their country. Two officers, the lieutenants Abasalo and Aldama, and several musicians, friends and companions of the cura, joined them, and by these men, thirteen in number, was the great Mexican revolution begun.

Whilst Hidalgo, a crucifix in his left hand, a pistol in his right, hurried to the prison and set at liberty the criminals confined there, Allende proceeded to the houses of the Spanish inhabitants, and compelled them to deliver up their plate and ready money. Then, with the cry of "Viva la Independencia, y muera el mal gobierno!" the insurgents paraded the streets of Dolores. The whole of the Indian population ranged themselves under the banner of their beloved curate, who, in a few hours, found himself at the head of some thousand men. They took the road to Miguel el Grande, and, before reaching that place, were joined by eight hundred recruits from Allende's regiment. Shouting their war-cry of "Death to the Gachupins!"⁵ the rebels reached San Felipe; in three days their numbers amounted to twenty thousand; at Zelaya, a whole regiment of Mexican infantry, and a portion of the cavalry regiment of the Principe, came over to them. On they went, "Mueran los Gachupinos!" still their cry, to Guanaxato, the richest city in Mexico, where they were joined by some more troops. Indians kept flowing in from all sides, and the mob, for it was little more, soon reached fifty thousand men. The fortified alhondega, or granary, at Guanaxato, was taken by storm; the Spaniards and Creoles who had shut themselves up there with their treasures, were massacred; upwards of five millions of hard dollars fell into the hands of the insurgents. This success brought more Indians from all parts of the country. There were soon eighty thousand men collected together, but amongst them were hardly four thousand muskets. Pressing forward, by way of Valladolid, towards Mexico, they totally defeated Colonel Truxillo at Las Cruces, and, on the 31st October, looked down from the rising ground of Santa Fé upon the capital city, within the walls of which were thirty thousand Léperos,⁶ who awaited but the signal to break into open insurrection. Only two thousand troops of the line garrisoned Mexico; Calleja, the commander-in-chief, was a hundred leagues off; another general, the Count of Cadena, sixty; in the mountains the people were rising in favour of the revolution; another patriot chief was marching from Tlalnepatla to support Hidalgo, while the viceroy was preparing to retire to Vera Cruz. The fate of Mexico was, according to all appearance, about to be decided; one bold assault, and the Indians would again be the rulers of the country. But on the very day after their arrival within sight of Mexico, Hidalgo, with his hundred and ten thousand men, commenced a retreat. The capital was saved; and from that day may be dated the sufferings and reverses of the patriots.

Or the 7th November, at Aculco, Hidalgo met the united Spanish and Creole army, and was defeated in the combat that ensued. Soon afterwards, Allende experienced a like misfortune at Marfil; and a third action, near Calderon, decided the fate of the campaign. Hidalgo himself was betrayed at Acalito, with fifty of his companions, and put to death.

The first act of the revolutionary drama was over, within six months after the bloody curtain had been raised; but the torch of insurrection, far from being extinguished by the fall of its bearer, had divided and multiplied itself, as if to spread the conflagration with more certainty. Thousands of those who had escaped from the battle-fields of Aculco, Marfil, and Calderon, now spread themselves through the different provinces, and commenced a war of extermination that was destined, slowly but surely, to sweep away their unappeasable tyrants. Most of these bands were commanded by priests, lawyers, or adventurers, who acted without plan or concert, and possessed little or no qualification for their post as leaders, save their hatred of the Gachupins. But few of the better class of Creoles were to be found amongst the insurgents; and the strife was to all appearance between the Indians and half-bloods, on the one hand, and the property and intelligence of the country, represented by the Spaniards and Creoles, on the other.

The Creoles, although considerably less oppressed than the coloured races, had felt themselves more so; because, being more enlightened and civilized, they had a livelier feeling and perception of the yoke than the Indians and half-castes. Children and descendants of the Spaniards, who looked with sovereign contempt upon every thing Creole, even to their own offspring, the white Mexicans imbibed hatred of Spain almost with their mothers' milk. Far from enjoying what the letter of the law gave them, the same rights as their European fathers, they found themselves driven back among the people; while all offices and posts were filled by Spaniards, who, for the most part, came to Mexico in rags, and left it possessed of immense wealth. Even the possession of magnificent estates, with their incalculable subterranean treasures, was of precarious benefit to the Creoles; for the Spaniards paid small respect to the laws of property, and, in the name of their royal master, assumed unlimited power over the land.

The bitterness of feeling consequent on this state of things, at length roused into activity the latent desire of freedom from the Spanish rule, a freedom which was to have been obtained by the conspiracy already referred to. On a given day, there was to have been a general rising throughout Mexico; all the Spanish officers and employés were to have been arrested, and their places filled by Creoles; the seaports were to have been seized and garrisoned, so as to prevent succours coming to the Spaniards from the neighbouring island of Cuba. The discovery and premature outbreak of the plot, as already mentioned, were the causes of its failure. Hidalgo, who was too deeply compromised to recede, had put himself at the head of the revolution, and enraged against the Creoles, who had, for the most part, managed to draw their heads out of the noose, commenced with his Indians a war of extermination that spared neither Spaniards nor Creoles. This terrible blunder on the part of the soldier-priest, of itself decided the fate of the outbreak. The Creoles were compelled to unite with the very Spaniards whose downfall they had been plotting; and it was mainly through their co-operation that the three battles with the rebels had been won. The Spaniards, however, instead of being grateful for the assistance they had received from the Creoles, persisted in looking upon the latter as a pack of unlucky rebels, whose treason had not even been rendered respectable by success.

Enraged at the revolt that had threatened to deprive their king of his supremacy, and themselves of the plunder of the richest country in the world, the Spaniards applied themselves to obviate the possibility of any future rebellion, by pretty much the same measures that a bee-hunter takes to secure himself against the stings of the bees before seizing their honey, namely, by fire and the axe. Twenty-four cities, both large and small, and innumerable villages, were razed to the ground during the first eighteen months of the revolution, and their inhabitants utterly exterminated, as a punishment for having favoured the insurgents. Even then, these bigoted and barbarous servants of legitimacy were not satisfied with this wholesale slaughter. Through the medium of the church, and in the name of the divine Trinity and of the blessed Virgin, they proclaimed a solemn amnesty, and those among the credulous and unfortunate rebels who availed themselves of it were mercilessly massacred. This infamous and blasphemous piece of bad faith rendered any pacification of the country impossible, and went far towards uniting the whole population against its contemptible and blood-thirsty tyrants.

Amongst the adventurers who had joined Hidalgo on his triumphant march from Guanaxato to Mexico, was his old friend and schoolfellow, Morellos, rector of Nucupetaro. Hidalgo received him as a brother, and comnissioned him to raise the standard of revolt in the south-western provinces of Mexico. Morellos, who was then sixty years of age, repaired to his appointed post with only five followers. In Petalan he was joined by twenty negroes, to whom he promised their freedom; and soon afterwards several Creoles ranged themselves under his banner. Unlike the unfortunate Hidalgo, he began the war on a small scale, and after the fashion of those guerillas who in Spain had done so much mischief to the French armies. Gradually enlarging the sphere of his operations, he had, during a sixteen months' warfare, gained several not unimportant advantages over the Spanish generals. Report represented him as a man of grave and earnest character — quite the converse of the hasty and unreflecting Hidalgo — of sound judgment, irreproachable morals, and far more liberal and extended views than could have been expected from the confined education of a Mexican priest. The influence he possessed over the Indians was said to be unbounded.

At the time at which the action of the book now before us commences, namely, upon a carnival day of the year 1812, Morellos had marched into the vicinity of Mexico at the head of his little army. The principal leaders of the patriots, Vittoria, Guerero, Bravo, Ossourno, and others, had placed themselves under his orders; and the moral weight of his name seemed to be at last producing what had been wanting since the death of Hidalgo — namely, that unanimity in the operations of the patriots, and that degree of discipline amongst their troops, which were calculated to gain them the confidence of the nation.

The first two chapters of the "Viceroy" are of so striking a nature, and give such strange and startling glimpses of the state of Mexican society and feeling at that period, that, with some slight abridgement, we shall here translate them both.