Kitabı oku: «Graham's Magazine, Vol XXXIII, No. 6, December 1848», sayfa 14
J. Bayard Taylor, Esq. – A life-like portrait of our friend and co-laborer, J. B. Taylor, graces this number of the Magazine. We know our readers – our fair ones especially – will admire him; and we would remark, en passant, for their information, that well-looking as he unquestionably is, his merits in this particular are fully equaled by his good qualities of head and heart.
REVIEW OF NEW BOOKS
Principles of Political Economy, with some of their Applications to Social Philosophy. By John Stuart Mill. Boston: Little & Brown. 2 vols. 8vo.
Mr. Mill is almost the model man of science of his age. To habits of deep and thorough investigation, and rigid, penetrating, exhaustive thought – pursuing a principle through all the details of its application, and never stopping halfway to pause or digress – he adds a calm but strong sympathy with the philanthropic movements of the age; and the tendency of all his writings is to advance the cause of truth, justice and benevolence. But he is a reformer in a peculiar sense, not practically understood by many who bear the name. A comprehensive and patient thinker, and discussing every question bearing on the interest, happiness and elevation of mankind with a conscientious as well as rigid logic, he indulges in no vituperation, uses none of the weapons of passion and malice, and irresistibly conveys the impression to the most prejudiced mind that it is truth he is seeking, not the gratification of vanity or antipathy. The consequence is that he is the only radical thinker in England who is read by all parties, and who influences all parties. With more industry, mental vigor and scientific precision than Mackintosh, he has a great deal of that beneficence of spirit, that judicial comprehension, and that strict impartiality of understanding, which enabled Mackintosh to reach minds separated from his by the walls of sect and faction. Mill is one of those rare men who make no distinction between moral and logical honesty; who would as much disdain to utter a sophism as to tell a lie; and who can discuss questions which array the passions of a nation on different sides, without adopting any of the opposite bigotries with which they are usually connected. As a matter of course the prejudiced and the bigoted themselves, in those hours of calmness when they really desire to know the truth and reason of the things they are quarreling about, go to a man like him with perfect confidence. Thus Mill, a philosophical English radical, is ever treated with that respect which clings to a profound and conscientious thinker, even by the most violent of his Tory opponents. One of the late numbers of Blackwood's Magazine – a periodical accustomed to blackguard the men it cannot answer, and in which Mackintosh himself was ever treated with coarse invective or affected contempt – has a long article on Mill's present work on political economy, admitting its claim to be considered one of the greatest works of the century, even though it takes strong ground against many of the cherished absurdities of the Tory political creed.
The reputation of Mr. Mill was sufficiently established before his political economy was published. As the writer, over the signature of A., of several articles in the Westminster Review, such as those on Coleridge, Bentham, and the Privileged Classes, and the author of the profoundest and most complete treatise on Logic ever written, he needed no introduction to the public. "The Principles of Political Economy" is a book bearing on every page the decisive marks of his strong and accurate mind. It is a work after the model of Smith's Wealth of Nations, in which principles are always associated with their applications, and economical questions considered in their relations to social philosophy, and the general well-being of man. As, since the time of Adam Smith, political economy and social philosophy have both made a perceptible advance, Mr. Mill's work purports to supply the deficiency of a complete system of political economy, including all the latest discoveries, and combining a strict scientific exposition of the abstract principles of the subject with their practical applications. The result is that he has produced the most complete and satisfactory work of the kind at present in existence, and, on the whole, the most important contribution to political economy since the time of Adam Smith.
We, of course, have no space to refer at any length to his treatment of the different branches of his subject; but the book has one characteristic which we hope will have the effect to make it generally read. The style is so clear, vigorous, simple and lucid, and the illustrations so apt and copious, that the work can be readily understood by those readers who are commonly repelled by the dry and abstract character of other treatises on the science. The author intended that his book should be popular as well as profound, and has exerted his full strength of mind in simplifying the more abstruse principles of his subject; and we trust that his labor will not have been spent in vain. Every legislator, merchant, manufacturer, and agriculturist, every man who is in any way connected with the creation or distribution of wealth, should read this book.
An Oration Delivered Before the Society of Phi Beta Kappa, at Cambridge, August 24, 1848. By Horace Bushnell. Cambridge: George Nichols.
Dr. Bushnell has within a year or two taken a prominent position among New England divines, and promises to rank high among the influencing minds of the day. To deep and scholarly culture, he unites a strong, independent, and singularly keen and ingenious intellect, and a beautiful and bountiful spirit of cheerfulness and charity. The present oration is a fine poem, expressing rather a mood of mind than a system of philosophy, but grouping together with fine art many facts of consciousness, and applying them to the phenomena of life. Every thing, in fact, is surveyed in the light of two ideas, Work and Play, and though the application is sometimes more fanciful than reasonable, the result is a series of beautiful representations, original in conception and finely felicitous in expression. There is room for considerable difference of opinion in the oration, but none will be inclined to doubt the author's ability or keenness. As a specimen of the style we extract a passage relating to war, which he calls an imposing and plausible counterfeit of play, or inspiration.
"Since," he says, "we cannot stay content in the dull uninspired world of economy and work, we are as ready to see a hero as he is to be one. Nay, we must have our heroes, as I just said, and we are ready to harness ourselves, by the million, to any man who will let us fight him out the name. Thus we find out occasions for war – wrongs to be redressed, revenges to be taken, such as we may feign inspiration and play the great heart under. We collect armies, and dress up leaders in gold and high colors, meaning by the brave look, to inspire some notion of a hero beforehand. Then we set the men in phalanxes and squadrons, where the personality itself is taken away, and a vast impersonal person called an army, a magnanimous and brave monster, is all that remains. The masses of fierce color, the glitter of the steel, the dancing plumes, the waving flags, the deep throb of the music lifting every foot – under these the living acres of men, possessed by the one thought of playing brave to-day, are rolled on to battle. Thunder, fire, dust, blood, groans – what of these? – nobody thinks of these, for nobody dares to think till the day is over, and then the world rejoices to behold a new batch of heroes."
Three Sisters and Three Fortunes; or Rose, Blanche and Violet. By G. H. Lewes. New York: Harper & Brothers.
Mr. Lewes is an author very little known in this country. This is the first work of his which has been reprinted. But in England he has considerable reputation among the higher class of readers and men of taste for his brilliant powers of mind and extensive acquirements. His Biographical History of Philosophy we have never seen, but we have observed allusions to it in other publications, exalting it to a very high rank among thoughtful books. For some time, if we are not mistaken, he was the chief literary critic of the Westminster Review, and many of his articles were marked by strong and deep thinking, a little injured by vagaries of expression. In a novel by such a writer we should naturally expect more than a mere love story, more than a narrative of incidents and representation of passions; and he has not disappointed expectation. Indeed one can easily see that the book is based on a philosophical system, and that more is meant than directly meets the eye. The characters and events all illustrate some problems in metaphysics and ethics, and refer more to the understanding than the imagination. The story does not lack interest, nor the personages character, but both are o'erinformed with meditation. Fine as the novel undoubtedly is, the author has not given it the requisite artistical finish to produce an harmonious impression. Speculation on matters connected with literature, art and politics, essays on the passions and the will, appear in their naked character amid romantic incidents and imaginative representation. The author, in short, ought to have made his book altogether didactic or altogether dramatic, to fulfill the requisitions of either department. Had he fused all his abstract thought and practical speculation in the alembic of the imagination, and accordingly represented all in the concrete form of character and events, the result would have been a much better novel.
Euthanasy; or Happy Talk Toward the End of Life. By William Mountford, Author of Martyria, &c., &c. Boston: Crosby & Nichols. 1 vol. 12mo.
The author of this volume is one of the most profoundly meditative writers living. We are not aware that his productions have had an extended circulation out of New England, where they are very popular, and if they have not, we hardly know of a better service we could do our readers than to advise them to seek his companionship. Martyria and the present work are two books which no one can read without being benefitted – without having a deeper sense of the "dread soul within him," and without feeling a warmer love of his race. "Euthanasy" is one of those volumes which win their way into the heart with a soft unconscious persuasiveness, and abide there when they have once found an entrance. The author's spirit is rich, sweet, thoughtful, tender – seeking the beautiful and the good by a spontaneous instinct, and discerning them often, with the subtilty of purity in things which seem valueless to the common eye – and while it soars into the highest regions of spiritual contemplation, can still survey practical life with a wisdom and sagacity which almost seem incompatible with its loftiness. The truth is that the author possesses one of the rarest things ever seen in this world – a truly spiritual mind, in which there is established no divorce between the practical and the spiritual, the common and the ideal. Spirituality with him is a life – no hearsay or imagination, but an experience. He consequently spiritualizes the human and humanizes the spiritual.
The work, in addition to its own stores of original thought, has many a golden sentence and rhyme from the meditative poets of Germany and England, which lend it increased richness and beauty.
Ellen Middleton; a Tale. By Lady Georgiana Fullerton, Author of Grantly Manor. New York: D. Appleton & Co. 1 vol. 12mo.
Grantly Manor is a novel of high and peculiar excellence, and has had a great run. Its readers threw themselves upon the present work as soon as it was published, their expectations whetted by the memory of the last. The result has been comparative disappointment. The truth is Ellen Middleton preceded Grantly Manor, and is altogether a less pleasing production. Considered, however, as the first work of the author, it is rich in promise and by no means insignificant in performance. The characters are strongly drawn and well discriminated, and the passions with which it deals are of that potent kind which test a novelist's strength and daring. The difficulty with the book is not its lack of power, but its lack of homely interest. The characters and incidents are too much made up in the author's mind – enclosed, as it were, in a peculiar domain, and colored by one peculiar experience of life – to give that satisfaction which results from a delineation of actual life, or from vivid and beautiful ideal creations. There is too much agony, and anguish, and hyperbolical emotion, and splitting of the heart, and such like rioting in spiritual misery and ruin. The elegance, eloquence and sweetness of the author's style, and the high moral and religious character of her mind, appear, however, in Ellen Middleton as in Grantly Manor, and with the advantage of as good a story would produce as agreeable an impression.
History of Mary, Queen of Scotts. By Jacob Abbott. With Engravings. New York: Harper & Brothers. 1 vol. 16mo.
This is one of a series of popular histories which Mr. Abbott is preparing for his countrymen. The tone and object will considerably differ from the common historical works in circulation. Mr. Abbott considers that the situation and principles of American readers require views of historical events different from those they would obtain from foreigners. The present work is devoted to one of the most romantic and thrilling stories in historical literature – the Life of Mary, Queen of Scotts. It is elegantly and truthfully written, and the mechanical execution of the volume is exceedingly beautiful.
Macaulay's History of England.
The Harpers have received from the author, in sheets, the first and second volumes of "The History of England, from the Accession of James II., by T. B. Macaulay." For these they pay one hundred guineas a volume. The work itself will doubtless create as great a stir as any book published within the last twenty years. Every body is curious especially to discover the style which Macaulay has adopted – that of his Essays being too brisk, brilliant and epigrammatic for an historian. It will probably be something like that of the Preface to the "Lays of Ancient Rome," or that of his latest article on Lord Chatham.
