Kitabı oku: «The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No. 6, December 1864», sayfa 15
GENIUS
Far out at sea the wave was high,
While veered the wind and flapped the sail;
We saw a snow-white butterfly
Dancing before the fitful gale,
Far out at sea!
The little creature, which had lost
Its mate, of danger little knew;
Settled awhile upon the mast,
Then fluttered o'er the waters blue,
Far out at sea!
Away it danced with shimmering glee,
Now dim, distinct, now seen, now gone:
Night comes, with wind and rain, but he
No more shall dance before the morn,
Far out at sea!
He dies unlike his mates, I ween,
Perhaps not sooner or more crossed;
But he has known, and felt, and seen,
A wider, larger hope, though lost
Far out at sea!
LITERARY NOTICES
The American Conflict: A History of the Great Rebellion in the United States of America, 1860-'64: Its Causes, Incidents, and Results: Intended to Exhibit especially its Moral and Political Phases, with the Drift and Progress of American Opinion respecting Human Slavery from 1776 to the close of the War for the Union. By Horace Greeley. Illustrated by Portraits on Steel of Generals, Statesmen, and other Eminent Men; Views of Places of Historical Interest; Maps, Diagrams of Battle Fields, Naval Actions, etc., from official sources. Vol. I. Hartford: Published by O. D. Case & Co. Chicago; Geo. & E. W. Sherwood. 1864.
It is not our intention here to enter into any critical analysis of the volume before us, but rather to give the reader an idea of what he may find within it, in the words of Mr. Greeley himself. It is inscribed to Mr. Bright, under the following dedication: 'To John Bright, British Commoner and Christian Statesman, the Friend of my Country, because the Friend of Mankind, this Record of a Nation's Struggle up from Darkness and Bondage to Light and Liberty, is regardfully, gratefully inscribed by the Author.'
Mr. Greeley says in his preface: 'No one can realize more fully than I do that the History through whose pages our great-grandchildren will contemplate the momentous struggle whereof this country has recently been and still is the arena, will not and cannot now be written; and that its author must give to the patient, careful, critical study of innumerable documents and letters, an amount of time and thought which I could not have commanded, unless I had been able to devote years, instead of months only, to the preparation of this volume. I know, at least, what History is, and how it must be made; I know how very far this work must fall short of the lofty ideal.' … 'What I have aimed to do, is so to arrange the material facts, and so to embody the more essential documents, or parts of documents, illustrating those facts, that the attentive, intelligent reader may learn from this work, not only what were the leading incidents of our civil war, but its causes, incidents, and the inevitable sequence whereby ideas proved the germ of events.' … 'My subject naturally divides itself into two parts: I. How we got into the war for the Union; and II. How we got out of it. I have respected this division in my cast of the present work, and submit this volume as a clear elucidation of the former of these problems, hoping to be at least equally satisfactory in my treatment of the latter.' … 'I shall labor constantly to guard against Mr. Pollard's chief error—that of supposing that all the heroism, devotedness, humanity, chivalry, evinced in the contest, were displayed on one side; all the cowardice, ferocity, cruelty, rapacity, and general depravity, on the other. I believe it to be the truth, and as such I shall endeavor to show, that, while this war has been signalized by some deeds disgraceful to human nature, the general behavior of the combatants on either side has been calculated to do honor even to the men who, though fearfully misguided, are still our countrymen, and to exalt the prestige of the American name.'
The sale of the work before us has been immense. Such has been the demand for Vol. I. of 'The American Conflict,' that the publishers have found it impossible to supply the demand, even with regard to agents and subscribers. The subscription list already numbers 60,000, although but one fourth of the Free States have been canvassed.
Leading heads of chapters are: I. Our Country in 1782 and in 1860. II. Slavery in America prior to 1776. III. Slavery in the American Revolution. IV. Slavery Under the Confederation. V. The Convention of 1787 and the Federal Constitution, VI. Slavery after 1787. VII. Missouri—The Struggle for Restriction. VIII. State Rights—Resolutions of '98. IX. Abolition—Its Rise and Progress. X. The Churches on Slavery and Abolition. XI. The Pro-Slavery Reaction—Riots. XII. Texas and her Annexation to the United States. XIII. The Mission of Samuel Hoar to South Carolina. XIV. War with Mexico—Wilmot Proviso. XV. The Struggle for Compromise in 1850. XVI. The Era of Slave Hunting—1850-'60. XVII. The Nebraska-Kansas Struggle. XVIII. Case of Dred Scott in the Supreme Court. XIX. Our Foreign Policy—Monroe—Cuba. XX. John Brown and his Raid. XXI. The Presidential Canvass of 1860. XXII. Secession Inaugurated in South Carolina. XXIII. The Press and the People of the North Deprecate Civil War. XXIV. Attempts at Conciliation in Congress. XXV. Peace Democracy at the North and Peace Conference at Washington. XXVI. The Union versus the Confederacy. XXVII. The Pause before the Shock. XXVIII. Siege and Reduction of Fort Sumter. XXIX. The Nation Called to Arms—and Responds. XXX. Secession Resumes its March. XXXI. The Opposing Forces in Conflict. XXXII. West Virginia Clings to the Union. XXXIII. The War in Old Virginia. XXXIV. First Session of the Thirty-Seventh Congress. XXXV. The Rebellion and War in Missouri. XXXVI. War on the Seaboard and the Ocean. XXXVII. Kentucky Adheres to the Union. XXXVIII. The Potomac—Ball's Bluff. Notes and Analytical Index.
This work demands an extended review, and the readers of The Continental may again hear of it. Meantime the most varied estimates will be formed of its merits; as various as the political tenets held by its readers.
It is illustrated, containing Heads of President and Cabinet, Eminent Opponents of the Slave Power, Confederate Chieftains, Union Generals, Confederate Generals, Union Naval Officers, Plans of Battles, etc., etc.
Down in Tennessee, and Back by Way of Richmond. By Edmund Kirke, Author of 'Among the Pines,' 'My Southern Friends,' etc. New York: Carleton, publisher, 413 Broadway. 1864.
The author of this work, having been familiar with the South in days more tranquil, had 'a desire to study the undercurrents of popular sentiment, and to renew his acquaintance with former friends and Union prisoners,' and so visited the Southwest in May last: the present volume thus originated. We cannot very readily discern how much of this work is fact, how much fiction. We have the Union scout, the poor white, the negro, and other elements belonging both to the romance and reality of Southern life in these days of struggle. Are the exquisitely simple and heart-touching thoughts and expressions which fall from the lips of the poor white or scout, actually true, or are they the coinage of Mr. Kirke's own vivid fancy? Notwithstanding the hideous jargon in which they occur, if real they evince a high soul, even in the midst of ignorance, and are the gems of the work. The book ends with a detailed account of the author's introduction to Colonel Jaques, and their subsequent visit to Richmond, an episode in our history quite as curious as the Sanders and Greeley conference at Clifton House, and one which has excited quite as wide an interest. Mr. Kirke says of the poor whites: 'I have endeavored to sketch their characters faithfully—extenuating nothing and setting nothing down in malice—that the reader may believe what I know, that there is not in the whole North a more worthy, industrious, loving class of people than the great body of poor Southern Whites. Take the heel of the man-buying and woman-whipping aristocrat from off their necks, give them free schools, and a chance to rise, and they will make the South, with its prolific soil, its immense water power, and its vast mineral wealth, such a country as the sun never yet looked upon, and this Union such a Union as will be the light of nations and the glory of the earth!'
Poems of the War. By George H. Boker. Boston: Ticknor & Fields. 1864. New York: for sale by D. Appleton & Co.
Mr. Boker has attained, what his more elaborate efforts sometimes lack, fire, concentration, and energy, in these 'Poems of the War.' We thank him heartily that he has taken the glories of our country and the sufferings and deeds of our dauntless soldiers as his theme. Patriotism has inspired him, and the ever well-tuned chords of his lyre ring out with bolder and more soul-stirring melody than of old. 'On Board the Cumberland,' 'The Sword Bearer,' 'The Ballad of New Orleans,' 'Crossing at Fredericksburg,' 'The Black Regiment,' 'In the Wilderness,' are truly national poems, and should be read at every hearthstone in our land. We quote the closing lines from 'Upon the Hill before Centreville':
'Oh, let me not outlive the blow
That seals my country's overthrow!
And, lest this woful end come true,
Men of the North, I turn to you.
Display your vaunted flag once more,
Southward your eager columns pour!
Sound trump and fife and rallying drum;
From every hill and valley come!
Old men, yield up your treasured gold;
Can liberty be priced and sold?
Fair matrons, maids, and tender brides,
Gird weapons to your lovers' sides;
And, though your hearts break at the deed,
Give them your blessing and God-speed;
Then point them to the field of fame,
With words like those of Sparta's dame!
And when the ranks are full and strong,
And the whole army moves along,
A vast result of care and skill,
Obedient to the master will,
And our young hero draws the sword,
And gives the last commanding word
That hurls your strength upon the foe—
Oh, let them need no second blow!
Strike, as your fathers struck of old,
Through summer's heat and winter's cold;
Through pain, disaster, and defeat;
Through marches tracked with bloody feet;
Through every ill that could befall
The holy cause that bound them all!
Strike as they struck for liberty!
Strike as they struck to make you free!
Strike for the crown of victory!'
While we honor our brave soldiers and their glorious deeds, let us also honor their bards,
'Nor suffer them to steal,
Unthanked, away, to weep beside the harp,
Dejected, prayerful, while the fields are won.'
Broken Lights: An Inquiry into the Present Condition and Future Prospects of Religious Faith. By Frances Power Cobbe. Boston: J. E. Tilton & Co. 1864.
A book of decided ability, however much we may regret the conclusions arrived at by its author. Contents of Part I. are: The Present Condition of Religious Faith. Chapter I. The Great Problem. II. The Solutions of the Problem, Historical and Rational, Palæologian and Neologian. Under the head of Palæologian we have The High Church Solution, the Low Church Solution; under Neologian we have the First Broad Church Solution, the Second Broad Church Solution. We have then the Solutions of the Parties Outside the Church, Bishop Colenso on the Pentateuch, and Renan's 'Vie de Jesus.' Part II. gives us 'The Future Prospects of Religious Faith.' Under the head of Rational, we have the Rationalist Solution of the Problems, The Faith of the Future, Theoretic Theism, and Practical Theism.
Our author is of the school of Theodore Parker, a Theist. 'Three great principles—the absolute goodness of God; the final salvation of every created soul; and the divine authority of conscience—are the obvious fundamental canons of the Faith of the Future.' We continue our quotations: 'God will not leave us when all our puny theologies have failed us, and all our little systems shall have had their day and ceased to be. We shall yet praise Him who is the light of life, even though the darkness may seem to gather round us now. Christianity may fail us, and we may watch it with straining eyes going slowly down from the zenith where once it shone; but we need neither regret that it should pass away, nor dread lest we be left in gloom. Let it pass away—that grand and wonderful faith! Let it go down, calmly and slowly, like an orb which has brightened half our heaven through the night of the ages, and sets at last in glory, leaving its train of light long gleaming in the sky, and mingling with the dawn. Already up the East there climbs another Sun.' Again: 'The faith, then, for which we must contend—the faith which we believe shall be the religion of future ages—must be one founded on the Original Revelation of Consciousness, not on the Traditional Revelation of Church or Book—a faith, not resting for its sole support on the peculiar History of one nation, but rated by the whole history of humanity.' … 'The view which seems to be the sole fitting one for our estimate of the character of Christ, is that which regards him as the great REGENERATOR of Humanity. His coming was to the life of humanity what Regeneration is to the life of the individual. He has transformed the Law into the Gospel. He has changed the bondage of the alien for the liberty of the sons of God. He has glorified Virtue into Holiness, Religion into Piety, and Duty into Love.'
What a perpetual stumbling block in the way of all unbelief is the marvellous character of Christ! We may strive to throw away the record, but He remains a living force within the soul forever. The Theist would miss Him even in his certain heaven!
We think we have given, in the few short extracts above, enough to enable our readers to perceive the standpoint from which this work is written. It is a clear statement of the dogmas held, the reasons for their adoption, and the hopes of what is styled the Church of the Future. Of the ability of many of its adherents there can be no doubt. The contest is upon the children of Faith. Let them meet it with candor, fairness, prayer, love, profound biblical and scientific erudition, and may God comfort us with His eternal truth!
Dramatis Personæ. By Robert Browning. Boston: Ticknor & Field. New York: for sale by D. Appleton & Co.
This book has been already reviewed by the English critics, who are always appreciative of Browning's merits, and tender to his faults. It is as wilful as its predecessors, as unintelligible, as fragmentary, its rhythm as distorted and broken, its diction as peculiar, its sequences as disconnected. Yet we think it shows gleams of higher poetic talent than anything he has yet published. It contains eighteen poems. 'A Death in the Desert' is an imaginary portrayal of the death of St. John in his old age in a cave, to which he had been taken by some faithful adherents to save him from persecution. It is a sketch of power and originality. St. John is supposed to speak:
'If I live yet, it is for good, more love
Through me to men: be nought but ashes here
That keeps awhile my semblance, who was John—
Still when they scatter, there is left on earth
No one alive who knew (consider this!)
—Saw with his eyes and handled with his hands
That which was from the first the Word of Life.
How will it be when none more saith 'I saw?''
Very original and very disagreeable in its highly wrought and subtile Realism is 'Caliban upon Setebos, or Natural Theology in the Island,' a study from Shakspeare's 'Tempest.' It is a curious exposition of the philosophy of such a being. At the close, when Caliban, who speaks in the third person, is beginning to think of Setebos, 'his dam's god,' as not so formidable after all, a great storm awakes, which upsets all his reasoning, and makes him fall flat on his face with fright:
'What, what? A curtain o'er the world at once!
Crickets stop hissing; not a bird—or, yes,
There scuds His raven that hath told Him all!
It was fool's play, this prattling! Ha! The wind
Shoulders the pillared dust, death's house o' the move,
And fast invading fires begin! White blaze—
A tree's head snaps—and there, there, there, there, there,
His thunder follows! Fool to gibe at Him!
Lo! 'Lieth flat and loveth Setebos!
'Maketh his teeth meet through his upper lip,
Will let those quails fly, will not eat this mouth
One little mess of whelks, so he may 'scape!'
'Mr. Sludge, the Medium,' one of the longer poems, is intended, according to rumor, to demolish Mr. Home, and includes some sharp thrusts at various persons who still patronize him after having found him guilty of fraud.
The story runs that a lady and gentleman of eminence, devout spiritualists, residing at Rome, confessed to Mr. Browning that during Mr. Home's stay at their house they once forbade his putting his hand under the table, and the spirits wouldn't rap, and Home burst into tears, and confessed that on that occasion only he had deceived them; that on one other occasion he had put phosphorus on the tips of wires and stretched them from the roof of their house to represent certain spiritual apparitions. 'And what did you say, how did you act, upon the discovery?' asked Mr. Browning. 'Oh,' replied the lady, 'I rebuked him severely; told him plainly how shameful it was that one who had been so supernaturally gifted should act so, and told him that he ought to repent.' 'And he still remained with you, and—' 'Oh, yes, we are perfectly sure that everything was genuine afterward.' Upon which the poet was so disgusted that he vented his indignation in 'Mr. Sludge.'
Fireside Travels. By James Russell Lowell. 'Travelling makes a man sit still in his old age with satisfaction, and travel over the world again in his chair and bed by discourse and thoughts.'—The Voyage of Italy, by Richard Lassels, Gent. Boston; Ticknor & Fields. 1864. New York: for sale by D. Appleton & Co.
Mr. Lowell says, in big short preface: 'The greater part of this volume was printed ten years ago in Putnam's Monthly and Graham's Magazine. The additions (most of them about Italy) have been made up, as the original matter was, from old letters and journals written on the spot. My wish was to describe not so much what I went to see, as what I saw that was most unlike what one sees at home. If the reader find entertainment, he will find all I hoped to give him.'
And a churl he surely were if he find it not; for a right pleasant book it is to read—genial and full of the real Lowell humor, almost as characteristic as Jean Paul's, der einzige. 'Cambridge Thirty Years Ago' will carry many of our most distinguished men back to the sunny days of youth, while the boys of to-day will be delighted to know how it fared with them then and there. Contents: Cambridge Thirty Years Ago; A Moosehead Journal; Leaves from My Journal in Italy and Elsewhere; At Sea; In the Mediterranean; Italy; A Few Bits of Roman Mosaic.
There is no use in praising a book of Lowell's; everybody knows, reads, and loves him.
Simonson's Circular Zoological Chart. A Directory to the Study of the Animal Kingdom. Published by Schermerhorn, Bancroft & Co., 130 Grand street, New York, and 25 North Fourth street, Philadelphia.
This chart must prove a valuable guide to the teacher, and a great aid to the student of Natural History. It appears to have been carefully compiled from modern standard works, and is divided and subdivided as accurately as the limited space allows. It is a vast aid to the memory, showing at a glance the classification of the animal kingdom; and, bringing together the various groups of animals on one page, it stamps its complicated lesson on the mind through the rapid power of the eye. When the enormous number of species is considered, the advantage of such a chart may be readily imagined. It may be used as an introduction by the teacher, or side by side with any text book. We heartily recommend it to notice.
Perce's Magnetic Globes. A very ingenious invention is here offered to the public through Mr. J. F. Trow, of 50 Greene street, New York. It consists of a hollow Globe made of soft iron, and Magnetic Objects, representing the races of mankind, animals, trees, light-houses, are supplied with it, which, adhering to the surface, illustrate clearly the attraction of gravitation, the rotundity of the earth, its diurnal motion, the changes of day and night, and many other things very difficult to make intelligible to children. Teachers will find this globe and its magnetic objects of incalculable value in affording facilities for striking illustrations of principles, problems, and various terrestrial phenomena.
